es were not ratified.

Had the Senate ratified those treaties, a large number of other
treaties probably would have been negotiated, and we would not have
been compelled to go through the long struggle and agitation over
the passage of the Aldrich-Payne Tariff Bill. There would have
been no tariff revision necessary. At the same time, we could not
possibly help vastly increasing our foreign commerce. It was a
very short-sighted policy on the part of Senator Aldrich and others
in the Senate when they insisted that those treaties should be
killed. After it was determined, and it became so known to the
country that it would be impossible to secure the ratification of
reciprocity treaties, the agitation for tariff revision commenced,
and finally culminated in the act of 1909, which resulted in the
election of a Democratic House of Representatives.

The committee did favorably report, and the Senate ratify, a
reciprocity treaty with Cuba. This was the treaty of December 11,
1902, and it was the third reciprocal agreement in all our history
ratified, proclaimed, and placed in effect. The first one was the
treaty of 1854, providing for reciprocity with Canada. The second
was the treaty of 1875, with the Hawaiian Islands, and the third
and the only one now in effect is the treaty with Cuba.

That treaty would never have been ratified, and would have suffered
the same fate as the Kasson treaties, had it not been for the
determined, vigorous fight made by President Roosevelt for its
ratification, and had not Cuba stood in a relation to us entirely
different from any other country. We bound her to us by insisting
that the Platt amendments be made a part of her Constitution, and
in addition that a treaty be made between the two countries embodying
those amendments.

This treaty with Cuba and the law carrying it into effect were the
occasion of a very bitter struggle in both Senate and House. The
sugar and tobacco interests used all the power at their command to
defeat, first the treaty, and then the law carrying the treaty into
effect. The beet-sugar people asserted that it would ruin that
industry, and that a reduction of twenty per cent on Cuban sugar
would enable the Cubans to ship their sugar into the United States
and undersell the beet sugar. I never could see that there was
any force in their contention, because the United States does not
produce more than half the sugar we consume, and it was absolutely
nec