No. 5.
Mr. Thayer to Mr. Seward.
Trieste, November 10, 1877. (Received December 20.)
Sir: Referring to the circular of the Department of State, “Separate,” August, 1877, on the subject of augmenting trade between the United States and foreign nations, I have the honor to state that, although the topic has for several years frequently engaged my attention, I have never felt less able to report upon it satisfactorily, at least to myself, than now. It is no small gratification to me, who have for forty years earnestly advocated the cause of protection to American industry, to find this policy at last triumphantly vindicated in an official announcement by the Department of State, that the United States “are in a condition to supply cheaply and easily many * * * manufactured articles suitable to the wants of the different countries”; and to find in English newspapers at the same time such singular confirmation of the fact as the following short citations from the report of a speech by Sir Stafford Northcote, present:
The most marvelous aspect of the economical problem is, that free-trade principles, the soundness of which has been indubitably demonstrated by practical experience in this country [England] for thirty years, should still be obstinately resisted by nearly all other civilized communities to their own probable detriment, with a degree of perverseness utterly incomprehensible in a nation transcendently distinguished for industrial and commercial enterprise. The people of the United States still appear to cherish or the most part the suicidal illusion that they are enriched in proportion as they place fiscal obstructions in the way of foreign manufactures entering their ports, provided it is in their power to match them by the products of national labor even at a higher cost. * * * American calicoes are reported to meet with increasing acceptance in Manchester. The saws and cutlery of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are sometimes [Page 14] preferred to similar manufactures produced in Sheffield. The machine-made watches of Waltham threaten to supplant the solid horologic workmanship of Coventry. Leather from the United States evokes from the tanners of Bermondsey the confession that they are no longer able to sell the same material of a certain quality against the transatlantic product. Agricultural implements bearing the trade-mark of a New York company are to be found exposed for sale in English hardware-shops.
In thus conclusively proving by instances and examples the wisdom and success of a policy which he has just exhausted his vocabulary in abusing, the orator gives us the finest specimen of the “logically incongruous” that I know. At first view it would seem that if we can compete with England on her own soil in such important articles of manufacture, we certainly can do so elsewhere: but in this consular district, for which alone I am required to speak, this does not follow. Time; distance; communication, direct, regular, frequent; channels of trade long established; mercantile connections of old date; preoccupation of the market, and perhaps still other elements of success, are all against us. Even for the foreign trade of by far the greater part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Trieste and Fiume cannot compete with Bremen and Hamburg, as a glance at their position on a globe will show.
A few articles of large bulk, such as can bear shipment in sailing-vessels—resin, petroleum, tobacco—come, and will continue to come here; and enterprising merchants, who have been in the United States or who have special means of knowing our productions, are and will continue to be on the watch for any manufacture that can be profitably sold, in spite of the advantages possessed by English and continental competitors. That foreign manufactures in great variety and considerable value find sale here, the annual commercial tables of the port show; they show, also, how small in number and value are those produced in the United States. Swift’s Laputans obtained water-power by pumping the river to the top of the mountain, and their mills were a success so long as capital for the pumping lasted. Any effort to conquer and control the Trieste market perforce, by stocking it with United States products, would be, in my opinion, doing business on Laputan principles. I presume that no such project is entertained. If it be, there is another point to be considered.
The foreboding expressed m this correspondence (Commercial Relations, 1865, page 352), several years since, that Trieste, for reasons there stated, might soon be without a “commercial back country,” appears to have been but too well grounded; and, if my observations and the concurrent testimony of merchants, with whom I have conversed, be trustworthy, this place is rapidly losing its comparative position as an emporium, and declining to the condition of a port of transshipment. The great development of telegraphic, postal, and railroad systems, and of English, French, Italian, and Austrian lines of steamships, has produced the natural result of bringing producer and consumer into closer relations, and many a Trieste “middleman” finds his occupation going, if not gone already.
The merchant of the Orient and the manufacturer of Europe are ceasing to purchase—the one, fabrics, the other, raw materials—in Trieste; both go to the source, and the merchant here sees nothing of the merchandise but its transshipment at the wharf. Under these circumstances it would be Laputan policy for the United States manufacturer to store goods here in the hope of occasionally intercepting an order from the Levant; and the local market is decidedly too insignificant to induce him to take any such risk. But, provided one great disadvantage under which we labor could be removed, I have long believed Trieste might be made of great value to us in opening a trade with the Orient, especially [Page 15] in the products of the loom and the anvil, perhaps even the fabrics of wood and leather.
A merchant of Cairo, for instance, telegraphs an order to Germany for cottons or woolens. In twelve or fifteen days his goods can be in his warehouse. If the order be to England, it makes but some ten days’ difference, with probably some saving in expense of freight, inasmuch as the steamship is cheaper than the steam-car, and there is no transshipment at Trieste or elsewhere. If to the United States, the merchant must wait the slow motions of a sailing vessel—sixty to eighty days—or transship at some English port. When the United States can remove or overcome this difficulty, or can produce fabrics of such quality and prices as to counterbalance it, it will only be necessary to make them known, in order to begin, at least, a commerce, which in time may prove successful in spite of all the other impediments enumerated above. Since the submarine telegraph has placed England and the United States practically on equal terms as to the time needed for the receipt of orders from the Levant, it would certainly seem possible to devise some means of delivering our merchandise there with sufficient promptness and economy to secure a profitable trade. Possibly the time has come when the late Austrian Consul-General Loosey’s favorite project of a line of steamers from New York to Trieste, touching at intermediate ports, might succeed, a problem on which I am not prepared to express an opinion, but which perhaps may be worth solving by experiment. At all events, with such a line Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania could fill an order from Alexandria or Smyrna within so few days of the time in which England could do it, that it could make no essential difference to the purchaser.
The markets of this consular district may safely be left to private enterprise; for the desire of gain brings the trader to a far keener insight into local commercial matters than any consul can possess. But there is another aspect of the question: “Of methods by which trade with the United States can be most judiciously fostered at or through this port.”
Notwithstanding the fact that the completion of certain lines of railroad in Italy and the establishment of divers new Oriental lines of steamships from other ports, have greatly reduced the passenger traffic at Trieste, still this port is the one in this part of the world where merchants of the Levant at certain seasons of the year most do congregate; it is that from which the most frequent and regular communication by steam and sail with the Orient exists; it is that which, since the decline of Venice, has had and still has the largest and closest commercial relations with Levantine ports; that from which their markets can, on the whole, be most easily and effectually influenced, and must continue so, so long as it remains a free port. Trieste, then, is the point from which a knowledge of the manufactures of the United States can most readily and widely be spread throughout all the countries bordering the eastern Mediterranean. And this could be effected by an exhibition here of a collection of the products of the United States, especially of articles of common demand and utility from our factories aud workshops. I have said “exhibition”—a huge “sample-warehouse” would be the better term.
Such a project could meet no custom-house impediments, while the local authorities, I have reason to think, would highly favor it. If the United States take part in the Paris Exhibition, at its close why should not those classes of articles in which our manufacturers can rival those of England and the Continent be transferred hither? The effects of [Page 16] our failure at Vienna, on public opinion in this part of the world, might thus be remedied.
The advantages of such a sample-warehouse, kept open one or two years under the auspices of the government or of the chambers of commerce of the United States, are too obvious to require enumeration, and, it would seem, would soon create a demand for the productions of our industry and skill, which would amply repay the comparatively small expense to be incurred. At all events it would yield the Oriental merchant an opportunity to compare our cottons, woolens, tools, fabrics of iron, wood, and leather, &c., with those of Europe on the shelves of the neighboring warehouses, both in price and quality, and furnish him the useful basis for deciding whether to telegraph his orders to Europe or across the Atlantic.
The idea of such an exhibition has been so long before my mind, as to appear to me no longer Quixotic or Laputan; on the contrary, both rational and feasible; and should the United States Government appoint commissioners to the Paris Exhibition, I should hope to see one or more of them quietly examining the project on the spot,
In this hope, I remain, &c.,
Consul.