Fourth Session.

Thursday Evening, June 1, 1905.

The Chairman called the Conference to order at 8.25, and introduced the chairman of the Business Committee.

JUDGE STINESS: At the last conference a committee was appointed to present certain resolutions to the President relating to the capture of private property at sea in time of war. The President being about to call a conference at The Hague, it is deemed best that these resolutions should go to that convention instead of to the President, and the committee ask to be continued with such authority. The Business Committee have approved that request, and therefore I move that the committee be continued with authority to present the resolutions as stated.

The motion was unanimously adopted.

THE CHAIRMAN: I have received, as presiding officer of this Conference, the following telegram:

HON. GEORGE GRAY,

ITHACA, N. Y., June 1, 1905.

Presiding at International Arbitration Conference,

Mohonk Lake, N. Y.

Please tender to the Conference my most hearty thanks for their kind message, and my best wishes for a fruitful result of their deliberations.

ANDREW D. WHITE.

Pursuant to our understanding, this evening session is to be devoted to the business men of the Conference, and we look forward with pleasure to hearing from them and of their efforts and their influence in the great cause which has brought us here this week. The report of the committee to appeal to business men will be read by MR. CHARLES RICHARDSON of Philadelphia.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED TO APPEAL TO BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS.

PRESENTED BY CHARLES RICHARDSON, CHAIRMAN, TO THE MOHONK LAKE ARBITRATION CONFERENCE, MAY 31, 1905.

The committee appointed to appeal to business men and business organizations for a more general and effective support of international arbitration, desires to report that much work has been done, and results of a very encouraging character have been achieved during the past year.

It has always been the desire of the committee that its efforts should be

directed in practical as well as in educational lines. It has sought, first, by arguments and appeals, to multiply and stimulate the sentiment in favor of arbitration, and, second, to suggest and promote such methods of expressing that sentiment as would enable it to influence and control the spirit and conduct of our national government.

With the approval and assistance of Mr. Smiley there has been a large additional distribution of the circular referred to in the reports of this committee for 1903 and 1904. Three editions of that circular have been printed since its preparation in 1902. It has been favorably endorsed by the executive committees or officials of seventy-eight of the business organizations of the United States, and about thirty-nine thousand copies have been sent out from this great centre of inspiration and enlightenment. Thirty-nine organizations, including some of the most prominent and influential associations in this country, have adopted strong resolutions or provided for standing committees for the promotion of international arbitration, and thirty-two have availed themselves of Mr. Smiley's generous invitation to appoint delegates to this Conference.

A list of the associations which have responded to the requests of our committee, with some explanatory notes in regard to the action they have taken, is annexed to this report.

The encouraging character of our voluminous correspondence and the admirable and enthusiastic addresses of business men at the Conference of 1904 seemed to make it clear that we ought to do all that could be done to secure the utmost possible support for the treaties, which it was supposed would be negotiated by the President and Secretary Hay, and submitted to the Senate in December. With this object in view, and in accordance with the wishes of Mr. Smiley and of this committee, the Secretary, Mr. Phillips, was busily engaged from July to December in carefully planned and conducted efforts to obtain from the business organizations such simultaneous and energetic action as we hoped would be effective. The direct and indirect results of these efforts were very gratifying, and we believe that they were a powerful factor in securing such a general and almost unanimous expression of public opinion in favor of the treaties that it seemed as though it would be impossible for any legislative body to ignore or disregard it.

The action of the Senate was, of course, a keen disappointment to all of us, but without attempting to discuss the peculiar conditions which led to the failure of the treaties, we may express our confidence that it will only be a temporary check to the great movement which is destined, as we believe, to achieve in the near future a triumph much greater than that which we thought we had almost

won.

In concluding this report the committee desires to say that if it should be decided to continue the work, we believe that its field could be greatly enlarged and its good results and influence multiplied. Enough has already been done to show that there is no longer any room for doubt in regard to the ability and readiness of American business men to realize that the general adoption of international arbitration is as essential for the protection and promotion of their material interests as it is for the moral and spiritual advancement of the whole human race. We feel, however, that some decided advantages might be gained by the appointment of a new committee and the preparation of new forms of argument and appeal, and we therefore suggest that this committee be discharged. But in making this suggestion we wish to express our grateful appreciation of the honor and privilege of having served for three years in the ranks of those who have been working under Mr. Smiley's guidance for the uplifting and improvement of their fellow-men.

CHARLES RICHARDSON,

CLINTON ROGERS Woodruff,
GEORGE FOSTER PEABODY,

The circular "Why Business Men Should Promote International Arbitration has been recommended for the careful consideration of their members by the executive committees or officials of the following organizations:

Organizations marked with a * have lately adopted strong resolutions favoring arbitration and arbitration treaties; those marked with a † have recently appointed standing committees on international arbitration; and those with || sent delegates to the 1904 or 1905 meeting of the Mohonk Lake Conference.

THE CHAIRMAN: The declaration made by the business men at their meeting yesterday will now be read by MR. KLINE of Philadelphia.

MR. MAHLON N. KLINE.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Smiley, Ladies and Gentlemen: The group of business men who held a sort of caucus yesterday were kind enough to honor me with the chairmanship of their meeting. They asked me to read this declaration, and were kind enough to say that although everybody else's time was to be limited to four minutes, I might have ten. I shall, however, take much less time than that. The influence of this doctrine of arbitration has so spread that we have here, as has been stated in the report just read, more than thirty organizations which, on Mr. Smiley's invitation, appointed delegates to this meeting. Only twenty-four of these, I believe, were finally able to be present, so that it is necessary, under the action which the caucus has taken, that you permit us to inflict upon you to-night some twenty-four speeches. Now, for fear that everybody will get up and leave, I want that the business men differ somewhat from the preachers, only

to say

the preachers preach and we have to practice, and there is not very much opportunity for us to cultivate that gift which seems sometimes, even in others besides preachers, to lack but one thing, as a clergyman said to me before I came into the room, and that is "terminal facilities." As a warning to my confrères, I am going to tell a story and they can make the application. The story is about the Frenchman who was invited to speak before some Englishmen at a dinner. The Frenchman had not yet fully mastered the peculiarities and difficulties of the English language. But he got up and made his speech, and at the close he said, "Gentlemen, I will cockroach upon your patience no longer," and sat down, and said to the man alongside of him, “How did I get along?" "You got along all right until you came to the close of your speech, and then you made an awful bungle of it." "How is that? "he said. "Why," the other replied, “you said that you would cockroach upon their patience no longer. What you ought to have said was, I will hencroach upon your patience no longer."

I do not propose to encroach myself, or that any of my confrères shall encroach upon your patience to-night so long as to make you tire of hearing about the business organizations. On my way to this Conference I had the privilege of visiting the Hippodrone in New York, and I saw there a remarkable feat: a man hit the bull's eye with a rifle nine times in four seconds. I predict that if the representatives of the business men acquit themselves as well as they did last year, we shall have a similar feat performed to-night, though perhaps not in four seconds. With these desultory remarks, Mr. Chairman, which have no particular bearing upon the subject in hand, I will read the declaration, which will give a sort of text for the other gentlemen to talk about:

DECLARATION OF THE BUSINESS MEN IN THE CONFERENCE.

The business men and representatives of business organizations in attendance at the Eleventh Annual Mohonk Lake Conference on International Arbitration, recognizing the supreme importance to the business community of adopting the enlightened principles of arbitration as a method of peaceful adjustment of international disputes, recommend that the various business organizations throughout the United States take action to secure this rational method of adjustment.

Nothing to-day is of greater importance in its bearing upon the general welfare than the movement for the peaceful adjustment of international differences with the resultant better relations and better conditions of mankind. The success of modern commercial enterprise depends largely upon stable conditions, which can best be secured by maintaining peaceful relations among the nations of the earth; and to this end no greater security is offered than by the universal adoption of international arbitration.

This meeting of business men therefore recommends to their respective organ. izations, and to all the commercial bodies of the United States, the following: First: The endorsement of the wisdom of the establishment at The Hague of the permanent court for the pacific settlement of all international disputes that may be submitted to it.

Second: The appointment of committees within the respective commercial bodies, where that has not already been done, for the advocacy of the principles of international arbitration.