No. 499.
Mr. Stevens to Mr. Fish.
Montevideo, October 10, 1872. (Received November 21.)
Sir: Believing it among the official duties of the diplomatic agents of the United States residing in foreign countries to give information to the Department of State in respect to whatever may tend to facilitate commercial intercourse between our own citizens and those of other nations, the undersigned begs leave to submit some facts as to the necessities of American trade with the Rio dela Plata. It may be unnecessary to repeat to what extent the methods and agencies of commerce have changed within the last quarter of a century. It is fully appreciated by our citizens that railways, telegraphs lines of steamers, and express companies, aided by organization and discipline far superior to former times, have revolutionized and vastly increased our home intercourse and commerce. It will not be denied that in some important respects the exigencies of our foreign commerce have been overlooked.
What are the facts as to the countries of the Atlantic side of South America! What are the means of prompt and regular transport of intelligence and merchandise? Our reliance in a large degree is on the old methods of “wind and sail. The Atlantic slope of South America, leaving out Central America, has a population of thirteen millions, with an annual trade of nearly three hundred millions gold dollars, producing much that the United States do not produce but need for consumption, and requiring much that the United States can supply, and wish to export. To make the necessary exchanges of productions between these thirteen millions of foreign people and the forty millions of our own population, what is there in operation of the great agencies which have so revolutionized and accelerated modern commerce! One monthly line of steamers between New York and Rio de Janeiro. All else save what is done by this line of three steamers must be done by the same methods in use centuries ago.
What are the European agencies of commercial communication with these thirteen millions of people of Atlantic South America! One company—Lamport & Holt—has twenty-four steamers, affording transit for passengers, freight, and mail, once a week each way. The average tonnage of these steamers is fifteen hundred tons. The Royal Mail, six magnificent steamers of three thousand tons each, carries freight, passengers, and mail twice a month, each way. The Pacific Company has [Page 711] twelve magnificent steamers of three thousand tons each, carrying passengers, freight, and mail twice a month, each way. The Belgian line, of four large steamers for passengers, freight, and mail, affords monthly transit each way. The White Star line has recently commenced service, and has six steamers of four thousand tons each, carrying passengers, freight, and mails monthly, to and from Europe. The French line has four first-class iron steamers, of three to four thousand tons each, and transports passengers, freight, and mails once a month, each way. The Italian line has four large iron steamers, for passengers, freight, and mails, and affords monthly transit to and from Italy and intermediate ports. The German line, of four steamers, for passengers, freight, and mails, affords monthly transit to and from Hamburg. The Clyde line, of four steamers, for passengers, freight, and mails, provides monthly transportation to and from Great Britain and intermediate ports. The Polana line, of four steamers, for passengers, freight, and mail, affords monthly transportation to and from Liverpool and Antwerp. The Royal Mail, the French, the Belgian, and the Pacific lines are subsidized, the first by the English government, the second by the French government, the third by the Belgian government, and the fourth by the Chilian government. Thus, while the citizens of the United States have direct steam communication with the thirteen millions of people of Atlantic South America twelve times in a year, with the service of three steamers, the European countries have communication with the same Atlantic South America one hundred and eighty times in a year, with the service of seventy steamers—a regular transit for passengers, freight, and mail, on an average of each alternate clay. And, while Europe has this constant communication with all the countries and chief cities of Atlantic South America, the United States monthly communications extend no farther south than Rio de Janeiro, stopping eleven hundred miles short of the three millions of people of the Rio de la Plata countries, as well as the commercial ports of Brazil south of Rio de Janeiro. Against this tremendous odds of regular and rapid means of communication which Europe has against the United States, is it a wonder that the latter has no greater proportion of the trade of Atlantic South America Rather, is it not a marvel that the United States retains so much of this commerce? Even had our citizens a regular and reliable monthly steam transit for passengers, freight, and mail to the Rio de la Plata, without the present perplexing and damaging impediment and delay at Rio de Janeiro, our trade with the former would be largely increased.
Our lamentable destitution of regular steam-transit to the commercial points south of Rio de Janeiro need only to be stated to be understood. The Gallison line takes passengers, freight, and mail from New York via Saint Thomas to Rio monthly, and another steamer equally often makes the passage from Rio to New York—the distance five thousand four hundred miles—leaving passengers, freight, and mail one thousand and thirty miles short of Montevideo, and one thousand one hundred and fifty miles short of Buenos Ayres. It may be said that as the numerous European lines stop at Rio de Janeiro on the passage to and from the commercial ports of the Rio de la Plata, the passengers, merchandise, and mail of the New York line can be put on board the European steamers, and thus the commercial interests of the United States can be served nearly as well as though the American steamers proceeded directly the whole distance to Montevideo and Buenos Ayres. This opinion, if cherished, is a practical delusion. True, the mail can generally be transferred without serious delay on board the European steamers, though this is far from being always realized. [Page 712] Passengers are necessarily compelled to make an expensive delay at Rio de Janeiro. But the obstruction to freight amounts to a most damaging barricade. All the boxes and packages of merchandise must be landed at Rio, and go through the Brazilian citstom-house. This imposes on the owners of the goods the vexations and charges of the custom-house officials, amounting to a considerable percentage on the first cost, and makes a delay, running all the way from two weeks to four months. But these custom house charges on goods in transit are as nothing compared with the actual disadvantages and loss to the merchants in the United States or in Montevideo and Buenos Avers, whose goods are thus blockaded at Rio de Janeiro. In addition to the loss of interest on the capital invested is the far greater loss of trade by not having the merchandise at the opportune season when it is wanted, especially as these dealers in United States goods are in direct competition with the merchants who have their orders filled in Liverpool, Antwerp, and Paris through the regular weekly transit of the European steamers. The marvel is, how the United States trade can even partially withstand this strain. To obviate this destructive delay of United States goods at Rio, arriving by the New York steamers, mercantile agencies can be employed at that point to attend to the forwarding of the goods through the custom-house and transshipment on board the European steamers bound to the Rio de la Plata. While the majority of those who wish to send packages of merchandise from the United States by the New York steamers to the Rio de la Plata are unable to keep in employ a dispatch-agent at Rio de Janeiro, those who are able to do this have an additional expense put on their goods for this dispatch-service; besides, the European steamers, in the interests of European commerce, tax a much higher rate of freight on United States goods between Rio de Janeiro and the Rio de la Plata than between Europe and Rio de Janeiro. That is, the freight charged by European steamers on boxes of United States merchandise between Rio de Janeiro and the Rio de la Plata, commercial cities, is more than half the amount charged on similar freight from Liverpool to Rio de Janeiro, though the distance between the former points is not more than one-fifth of the distance between the two latter places. The magnitude of this Rio de Janeiro barricade must be obvious to all who will give it consideration. It is too intolerable to be long endured.
But what is the inducement to the action of government to aid in the extension of our steam transit to the Rio de la Plata? The numbers of people living in this part of Atlantic South America cannot vary much from three millions. The trade of these people, almost entirely concentrated at Monte Video and Buenos Ayres, is about $80,000,000 in gold per annum. At this time the United States have about one-tenth of this trade. This proportion would be speedily changed greatly in our favor, could the New York line of steamers be extended to Montevideo and Buenos Ayres. The products of the Rio de la Plata are now readily transported to the United States by sail-vessels, and lumber, flour, petroleum, and some other coarse freight can be successfully shipped by the same class of vessels to the Rio de la Plata. But our manufactured articles, our agricultural tools and machinery, the compact and valuable packages of goods, the numerous “specialties,” in the production of which American ingenuity so much excels, direct and regular steam transit is indispensable. As our steamers make the passage of five thousand four hundred miles from New York to Rio de Janeiro, why should they not continue the other one thousand and thirty miles to Montevideo and one thousand one hundred and fifty miles to Buenos [Page 713] Ayres? Why the transit of five-sixths of the distance, and the omission to make the other sixth of the transit to the three millions of people of the Rio de la Plata, who consume a greater pro rata of such articles as we produce than the people living nearer the Equator? Perhaps it may be said that the same reasons for the extension of our steam line to Montevideo and Buenos Ayres would require its continuance up the Parana, Paraguay, and the Uruguay Rivers. This is an error. Already the means of steam transportation up the Rio de la Plata and its tributaries are thoroughly supplied, and not organized adversely to the interests of the United States.
Far up into southern Brazil, two thousand miles above Montevideo, run regularly light-draught steamers, and thus the entire commerce, export and import, of the Argentine Republic, Paraguay, Uruguay, and the southern provinces of Brazil are concentrated at Buenos Ayres and Montevideo, and there transshipped to ocean vessels, and in no respect would there be any discrimination against ocean transit in the United States steamers. It would result, then, that if the link is supplied between Rio de Janeiro and the two great commercial ports of the Rio de la Plata, that we should have a complete chain of organized steam-transport of eight thousand miles from New York to the province of Matto Grosso, far up the River Paraguay in southwestern Brazil. Shall that link remain unsupplied, and the commercial barricade remain at Rio de Janeiro, when it can be filled at one-fourth of the expense to the United States Government that it now costs to maintain the line from New York to Rio de Janeiro? Clearly the imperative interests of our commerce demand a semi-monthly line of superior steamers, equal to those of the Gallison line, between New York and the Rio de la Plata. But the immediate extension of the monthly line to Buenos Ayres is necessary to enable American trade to break through the wall at Rio de Janeiro, which shuts our citizens from the commerce of three millions of people. The completion of numerous lines of railway now under construction in the Argentine Republic and Uruguay is tending largely to increase the trade and population of Montevideo and Buenos Ayres, the former now of a population of one hundred thousand, and the latter of two hundred thousand population, and the citizens of the United States should place themselves at once in more intimate relations with them, and it should not be forgotten that in these Rio de la Plata countries, with a vast fertile territory and a genial climate is growing up a vigorous and spirited people, whose commercial wants are rapidly on the increase, and whose institutions more contact with us could not fail to stimulate and improve.
I have, &c.,