to nearly $53,000,000 in 1910, or more than
doubled. But even with this considerable increase in our exports
to Cuba, I had hoped that by this time we should have increased
them to at least one hundred million dollars. Our own exporters
and manufacturers are at fault, because they will not do business
with the Cubans on the same credit basis as will the exporters of
Spain, Germany, and England; and American exporters do not cater
to the peculiar needs of the Cubans. They seem to go on the theory
that if their goods are good enough for Americans they should be
good enough for Cubans, too.

The Cuban treaty is a good illustration of the scare and the
unwarranted opposition on the part of American industries when even
the slightest reduction of the tariff is attempted. To listen to
the beet-sugar and tobacco interests during the consideration of
the Cuban treaty, one would think they would have been absolutely
ruined if the treaty were ratified. The Cuban treaty has not in
the slightest degree injuriously affected the American sugar or
tobacco interests.

The principle of Reciprocity as heretofore applied in this country
has been extended somewhat by the agreement of 1911 between the
United States and Canada. This compact was negotiated by President
Taft and Secretary Knox on the one side, and by Premier Laurier
and Mr. Fielding on the other. Under this agreement a wide exchange
of articles of every-day use is provided for, and it is hoped and
believed that if the treaty becomes effective it will prove more
satisfactory and enduring than the previous reciprocal agreement
with the Dominion of Canada.

The pending agreement was entered into between representatives of
the two Governments in January, 1911, but it was not until the
latter part of July of that year that a law was enacted by Congress
to provide for its enforcement. Much opposition was manifested,
especially in the Senate, in both the Sixty-first and Sixty-second
Congresses, on the ground that under its terms a great many
agricultural products are admitted free from Canada; but this
objection has been, I think, successfully met by the Administration
and its friends in the argument that any injury that might be
sustained by agriculture would be more than compensated for by the
benefits derived by the manufacturing interests. For one I have
never believed that agriculture would suffer in any degree through
the operation of the agreement, and I do belie