Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

chiefly interested in the service as the ultimate alternative, to be accepted only when no job was available at home. A man who had "earned" an office figured the value of a consular appointment at exactly its annual salary-plus fees and allowances multiplied by the number of years the appointing President had still in office. He never regarded it as a stepping stone, for he knew that, even if there were not a change of administration, his enforced residence abroad would probably minimize his "usefulness" to his party to an extent that would make him "ineligible" for re-appointment. the service was filled so largely from the office-seeking class was the principal reason for its unpopularity even among the office-seekers themselves, for the man standing faithfully at his post in Batavia, Durban, or Talcahuano had scant chance to continue those little services to his party in Maine, Michigan, or Nebraska which had been the principal reason for his appointment.

That

But things have changed, for when a man can pass his examinations and receive his appointment regardless of his politics we are on the way toward having the most efficient consular service of all nations, because it is generally admitted abroad that our consular system is in a class by itself as a "business machine," and such a machine, operated by the class of men who will be attracted to the service when it is in fact as well as in theory unshackled of politics, will be fully equal to the great work ahead of it, that of placing the United States in the front of the world's exporting nations.

Perhaps the consular appointments of the lower grades are even freer from politics than many of us guess. Certainly we cannot be too optimistic regarding the efficiency and usefulness to which the service may attain when it is freed not only from politics but from the fear of politics and kept on a basis where it will offer the young American what the consular services of Great Britain, Germany, France, and the other European nations offer their young men an opportunity for a life of endeavor, a worthy career.

The days of the "utterly impossibles"

in the consular service had largely passed even before the pernicious system which was responsible for them had begun to yield before the attacks of the civil service reformers of both parties. This had happened principally because increasingly larger trickles of our foreign trade were beginning to reach into the remoter corners of the earth, demanding that even the consulates lowest in rank should be occupied by men who are at least able to add a column of figures and to attend to a certain amount of correspondence and routine business.

The practice of making consular appointments as rewards for "political service rendered" continued all through the 90's, but in the early years of the new century the inclination to consider a candidate's fitness rather than his claim on the party appeared. Under a Presidential order of Mr. Roosevelt's in 1906, the competitive system for candidates for consular appointments was begun, and a striking improvement in the whole service has been shown since then.

During the four years, 1904-1907, inclusive, I covered, fairly leisurely and generally country by country and colony by colony, a greater portion of the six continents of the old and new worlds, writing articles for Sunday newspaper publication, but also devoting considerable time to the collection of material on industrial, economic, agricultural, and commercial progress and prospects in their relation to American trade. I covered South America and the West Indies the most thoroughly, because during the year and a half that I spent in those parts I was also supplying information to a London corporation which had opened a department for supplying down-to-the-minute data on business opportunities in various parts of the world. During this four-year period I made the acquaintance of what I shall call the last of the old régime in the consular service. I came into contact with the young men of the new régime during another trip of two years and a half-from the middle of 1910 to the end of 1912. On this journey I traveled over Asia, Africa, and Europe with much the same ends in view as on my former trip.

In the fall of 1904, while the RussianJapanese War was in progress, I visited a little consulate perched on the rocky side of the harbor of one of the busiest of the ports of South China. I hoped to secure information regarding a number of little things in the interval of a three-day wait between steamer connections. Morning and afternoon for two days I called at the consulate, but always to find only an abnormally stupid Eurasian clerk in charge, from whom I was able to learn little more than that the consul was away pheasant shooting, that he was usually away pheasant shooting, and that the best thing I could do would be to keep calling until I chanced upon a day when he was not away pheasant shooting. My last morning I had better luck, not because there was any slackening of interest in pheasant shooting, but because it happened to be the second day after the November elections in the States and a cable or two was expected announcing the results. There were a dozen or more Chinese-apparently of the merchant class waiting outside, but the clerk, evidently acting on orders, passed me in ahead of them. The consul, dressed in a bath robe, was lounging comfortably with his feet on his desk.

"Always give my own people first call," he said genially, not rising, I supposed, for fear of disturbing the setter puppy that lay asleep in his lap. "It never seems to rile a Chinkie to be kept waiting like it does an American. That bunch outside has been accumulating for three days; guess a day or two more won't make much difference. Heard the election news? Party landslide, of course. But say I'm mighty worried for fear that something's wrong in my home district. I'm here principally because my friends and I have made that little corner of Indiana go 'right' for the last twelve years. I've spent half a year's pay in cables trying to keep the boys lined up, and if we win out again I've got something a lot better'n this graveyard in sight for me. If we lose it'll mean another four years of sticking on here, even if they don't chuck me out entirely. Last cable says, 'Doubtful but hopeful.' It's about time now the straight dope was coming through."

This was the burden of what threatened to be a monologue on "The Troubles of a Consul." Quietly and unobtrusively I tried to swing the drift of it, through war rumors and Peking politics, to trade prospects of South China.

Did it seem likely that construction work would shortly commence on the railroad which rumor said local Chinese were planning to build to the interior?

"A railroad! No hope. Nothing but Chinkies behind it. No need of it, anyway. Besides, it would scare all the pheasants out of the valley, and shooting's the thing that makes life worth living here."

The big iron deposit up the river, with all the fluxing materials close at handwas anything likely to be done with that?

"Never heard of it. What could the Chinkies do with iron, anyhow? Takes brains and money to exploit properties of that class; Chinkies haven't got the one nor t'other."

"As a chance for American capital and brains, then," I began.

"Tommyrot!" he snorted, contemptuously. "This whole Chinese monkeyshow will be gobbled up by Japan and the European Powers within a year, and they'll exploit the thing to suit themselves."

"Coal" murmured faintly, for I had been told that there were great outcroppings not ten miles from tide-water and knew that the opening of a good mine in fuelless South China meant a big thing for somebody.

"Coal" (he spoke with a slightly increased show of interest), "yes, there is coal around here somewhere we warmed our tiffin with some lumps of it one day when we were shooting though I don't recall exactly where. But”

I never learned what the objections were to the coal project, for at that moment the clerk came in with a cable which bore the magic word "Carried," and the "interview" came to an abrupt end.

The setter puppy had a rude awakening this time. "I'm off to shave and change,' shouted the consul as he bolted for the door. "Meet me at the club at one o'clock and help me give the rest of the exiles the little U. S. A. celebration I promised in case this event pulled off."

My steamer was sailing at twelve, but before going aboard I dropped in at the British consulate, and gathered in a half hour's chat with that courteous official a considerable amount of practical information; about all, in fact, that I carried away on this occasion regarding that rich and promising section of China.

Six years later, as a member of a commercial commission from the Pacific Coast, I went to the East again, and one of the points on our itinerary was the important South China port of which I have just written. A new consul was in charge there, a young man who had come into the service by way of Peking, after completing the course at the legation as student interpreter. He was a graduate of a Western university and had settled upon the consular service as a definite career.

The exigencies of a hurried schedule. allowed us only from daylight till dark at this port, and during that time at least a half dozen receptions, tiffins, and similar functions had to be got through with, included among which, it may be interesting to note, was a short trip by special train over a part of the line of railroad regarding which I had so vainly sought information at our consulate six years before. That enthusiastic young consul was in evidence at every turn, now answering questions regarding the trade outlook or openings for capital, now asking for suggestions and advice on ways to make his efforts more effective. Finally, in the interval between a gala tiffin at a Buddhist temple and a reception at the Tennis Club, he gathered a dozen of us together at the consulate and there, in the same room in which I had so signally failed in my search for a few crumbs of information six years before, he gave us facts and figures with mimeographed notes. on the most salient points concerning various projects of interest in the hinterland. Among these were included detailed descriptions of important coal and iron deposits.

[ocr errors]

Naturally, the visit of a semi-officially accredited party which included men of wealth and influence was the proper occasion for an ambitious official to put

his best foot forward; but this particular young man's enthusiasm was no flash in the pan, as I fully satisfied myself later by careful inquiries. I learned, for instance, that not only had he gained a thorough knowledge of the province in which his consulate was situated, but that he had also, at his own expense, made a trip to the Philippines to study trade relations between his port the point from which most of the Philippine Chinese have emigrated and the islands of that archipelago. He had published the fruits of his investigations locally in Chinesealso at his own expense with the result that a steadily increasing improvement in trade between the points in question has been effected.

[ocr errors]

There were several other types of "undesirables" common to the old régime, the worst one of them men who entered the consular service for selfish ends. I have a number of these in mind, but as there is one in particular who may be convicted on his own frank admission, his case will serve as the most effective instance:

One morning in the fall of 1905 I called upon the American consul in a large Rio Plate city and asked regarding the corn crop that would soon be harvested.

"Corn? Dunno. Don't take no interest in corn, even in Virginia. That's my state. But tobacco-Virginia tobacco crop's goin' to be as good as ever.""

Queries regarding wheat and live stock prospects met with similar rebuffs, but when, quite by chance; I mentioned cotton, the consul's manner changed at once.

"I came down from Entre Rios last week," he said excitedly. "Greatest cotton land and climate in the world. Been in cotton myself an' know what I'm talkin' about. Got an option on 25,000 acres there, an' am goin' to go home an' raise the money to buy it next summer. If I can form a company big enough to buy up the best of the cotton land in Entre Rios an' get the Sea Island seed to start plantin' it, I can have the Car'linas backed off the map in ten years."

I mildly inquired if those same Carolinas didn't happen to be numbered among the United States which he had the hom to represent in Argentina

half a snort of indignation, half a guffaw of derision.

"The Car'linas be d-d! I'm here in the int'rest of 'John B. Smith,' an' I don't give a d―n who knows it. What's more, I don't mind sayin' that any man that'd come down here an' live among these dagoes in the int'rest of any one but himself ought to be shut up in a lunatic asylum."

[ocr errors]

vice-consuls, I found men trying to accomplish the same things in the same way -to further American interests, at home and abroad, by keen, earnest, well-directed, personal effort. One had "circularized" all the importers of American goods in his city, asking for frank complaints on all matters shipping, credit, etc. - regarding which they were in any way dissatisfied; another was collecting seeds of drought-resisting grains and grasses to send to the Agricultural Department; another had gone out of his way to gather some valuable re-forestation data; another was making a study of natural fertilizers; and another had risked a half year's salary to bring out a low-priced American automobile which had promptly sold a dozen others.

Having at least conversational proficiency in one or more foreign languages, these new men are proving far better "mixers," both in business and official circles, than was the "mono-lingual" consul of the old school. "Mixing" means friends, and friends are the "open sesame" to most of the things that make a consul's work effective, especially on the outermost fringes of civilization. The "hermit" or "recluse" type of consul, the very obvious "stranger-in-a-strange-land" type, was

So much for some of the bent and broken cogs in the works of our old consular machine. Some of them still rattle on in their old places, but the worst are wearing out and dropping out, to be replaced by parts of tried metal. The efficiency of the consular service is not a thing that can be charted, and it would therefore be difficult to say just how much better it is to-day than it was six or eight years ago. Very roughly, however, my experiences may serve as an indicator. On both trips of which I have spoken I was persistently seeking the same kind of information, and in the same way - direct from our consuls, or through sources to which they were able to direct me. On the earlier trip not more than 75 per cent. of the consuls were able or willing to put me in the way of acquiring the very simplest information on trade and business conditions beyond such as happened to have been caught in the drag-net of regular official routine. On the trip on which II have enumerated was more useless. dealt with the new régime - and very largely with that part of it which has come into the service by competitive examination I do not recall a single consulate from which I was unable ultimately to secure authentic information on whatever subject I desired.

The young men who have become consuls under Civil Service rules, being "standardized units," so to speak, present no such diversity of types as did the representatives of the old régime. Almost without exception, they are either university graduates or men who have been in some other branch of Government ser

That enthusiastic young worker whom I encountered in South China is a fair sample of them all, for in Singapore, Calcutta, Muscat, Bagdad, Beirut, and a score of other places, as consuls or

fairly common eight or ten years ago, and perhaps none of the other "undesirables"

I have not encountered a single one of these under the new order. I did, to be sure, occasionally find the "round post in the square hole" — the man who has qualified in Spanish stationed in Hongkong, or the man who has passed in French stationed in Ecuador - but rarely is there dampened enthusiasm discernible on that account. In most cases of this kind I noted that the young consul was taking his appointment and disappointment philosophically and was doing his best.

The civil service appointees are present confined almost exclusively to consulates of the ninth, eighth, and seventh classes, or to vice-consulships. The consulates above the seventh class are largely filled with "fit survivors" of the old régime, most of them good men, many of them very good men. Whether or not vacan

cies of these higher classes are to be filled by promotions from below is the point upon which the future of the service hinges. According to the newspapers the new Secretary of State recently let it be known that he is friendly to the merit system of appointment, promotion, and tenure, in the consular service.

If merit is to weigh in promotion as well as in the original appointment - the service will continue to improve until it is a thoroughly fit instrument for the big work ahead of it; otherwise - if "pull" and "friends at court" ever again influence selections for the highest positions -the service cannot but slip back to its comparatively low level of efficiency of a decade ago. I lay stress upon this point because I have heard, even in the last year, several consuls of conspicuous ability say that this class, or that class, was as high as a man with his influence, or lack of influence, at Washington was likely to be able to attain.

Now and then a consul complains of the inadequacy of his pay or that he has no pension to look forward to on retirement, as his foreign colleagues have; but I am convinced that these considerations have

had far less to do in influencing the withdrawal of a number of very able men from the service than has their belief that the higher places the ones which they had a good right to feel they would be fully qualified to fill at the end of ten or fifteen years of consular experience - were to continue to be handed out according to influence rather than merit.

We now export more than $1,000,000 worth of American manufactures every day. We are starting on the way to our destined place in the van of the world's trading nations, but that way is to be no rose-path. The two great short-cuts to foreign trade, extensive colonies and heavy foreign investments — the advantages of both of which are enjoyed by our greatest rivals, Great Britain, Germany, and France

are not, and will not, be open for us to follow. We shall have to win on the merits and prices of pure goods alone against competitors who enjoy special advantages in many fields. In this fight our consular service combines the functions of the scout and the signal corps, and unless it is kept up to the standard of the rest of the army there is going to be a big waste of powder if not serious reverses.

THE Y. M. C. A.-MAKER OF MEN

ITS GREAT WORK TO CONSERVE YOUNG MANHOOD
TO UPLIFT WORK THE BASIS OF ITS SUCCESS

T

[ocr errors]

APPLYING BUSINESS METHODS - THE AMAZING GROWTH OF ITS

MEMBERSHIP AND OF ITS MORAL INFLUENCE

BY

LEWIS EDWIN THEISS

HREESCORE years ago Mr. T. V.Sullivan, a sea-captain, organized in Boston a new business, modeled after something he had heard existed in England. It was different from any American business then in existence. The new venture began in a very small way, with practically no capital and no backing. As it became a demonstrated success, capital came to it and men of affairs became interested in its management.

To-day this organization has thousands of employees. It has 2,196 offices in almost as many American cities. Its expenses are more than $10,000,000 a year. It has recently erected a building in Chicago worth $300,000, one in New York costing $400,000, and another in Cleveland valued at $953,000. It is building an office building in Atlanta at a cost of $442,000, another in Philadelphia valued at $687,000, and a third in Boston at an expenditure of $1,300,000. For five

« PředchozíPokračovat »