we could. My two parents, two sisters, young ladies, and a young lady cousin, ran as fast as they could. We had to go about a quarter of a mile to the Confederate line, and as we went the guns were firing, reminding me very much of the fire-crackers on the Fourth of July at the present time.

"I recall one event that impressed me forcibly at that time. We had to cross an old-fashioned rail fence-some of you may have seen such a 'fence-but to my mind it was a wonder how we were going to get over it, and as we approached it two soldiers threw it down, two rails at a time, and we passed on. We went to the home of Mrs. Martin in the Confederate lines and remained there several weeks, leaving in charge of our home two faithful colored servants, Mollie and Lizzie. They took care of the property, and although the house was set afire several times they put it out. They were determined to save it, and did save it.

"Corn and grain, horse feed of every kind, was remarkably scarce, as you can well understand, after three years of warfare. But there was a lot of sugar. It was before we made the fine white sugar; it was the brown sugar. There was a great quantity of this sugar in all of the sugar mills, and time and again have I seen the Confederate soldiers ride. up to the sugar mill of the Martin place, go into the mill and bring out big bucketfuls of sugar which they poured on the ground in front of the horses. The horses ate it as though it were grain,-sugar being plentiful, and, as I have said, the grain very scarce.

"You can imagine that we did not especially love General Banks in those days, but there was another citizen of Massachusetts, General Benjamin Butler, who was even less popular than General Banks.

"He was the man who inaugurated the custom of collecting souvenir spoons, which has since become so very popular throughout the United States. It was not quite so popular with the people of New Orleans then as it is now.

"Gentlemen, I might go on and speak of those things, pleasant as they are, but I really came to discuss with you a business subject.

"As I understand it, the Boston City Club is the melting-pot for all that is good and great and truly beneficial to the people of Boston, Massachusetts, and New England. I understand that is your purpose, and from what I hear you are succeeding in doing a great deal that is very beneficial in the civic life of this great section of our common union.

"It seems to me that if Mr. Lincoln were alive to-day he would attempt to form a great alliance, union, or brotherhood, of all the people of the Western Hemisphere. He would make that alliance or 'Greater Union' a melting-pot in which all the troubles and differences of every kind and sort existing anywhere on the Western Hemisphere might be worked out and settled in a wise and beneficent way.

"By 'Greater Union' I mean that we should attempt to create an alliance of every State on this Hemisphere, from the North Pole to the Straits of Magellan,-a union of all America, North, South, Centralin bonds of brotherly love, business intercourse and reciprocal union,

for the mutual benefit of all; and I believe if Lincoln were alive, no man would take greater interest in such a union than he.

"Why do I think this is necessary? I am convinced of it because many people in the United States have too exalted an opinion of their own importance, and no true conception of their Latin brethren. We are entirely too self-sufficient, and are neglecting the opportunities presented by the wonderful country to the south of us-Latin America.

"We do not understand the people of Latin America, nor do they understand us, and I shall attempt this evening to discuss some practical business questions to which, I think, you gentlemen should give your consideration.

"In a union of that kind I don't know exactly how Canada would come in, but we are already on the very best of terms with that country. The people of Canada and the United States speak the same language, and we have close social and business intercourse with them. We have a colossal commerce to-day with Canada, importing from her something like $164,000,000, and exporting to her about $210,000,000, a total commerce of $374,000,000 per annum with our northern neighbor, as against $825,000,000 total foreign commerce with all Latin America, by which I mean Mexico, Central and South America, and the West Indies.

"We are getting along all right with Canada, but unfortunately that is not the case with the people of Latin America. There is a great deal of misunderstanding, some friction, and, I am sorry to say, a lack of mutual confidence. There is on our part a certain tendency to look down upon the people of Latin America.

"Do you, my friends, in this proud educational centre of Boston, which you call the 'Hub of the Universe,' remember that the university of San Marcos was founded at Lima, Peru, in 1551, and is still a flourishing institution; while your own Harvard was not established until 1636, or thirty-six years later; and do you realize that the people of South America have in proportion to their numbers as long a list of great men in every walk of life as our proud Republic? Do you know that Latin America is. more than three times as large as continental United States? Do you appreciate the fact that Brazil alone covers an area of 3,218,991 square miles, while the United States has only 2,973,890; that you could place our entire Union on the map of Brazil, and have space enough left for Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Denmark; that Buenos Aires in wealth, culture, population, and all that goes to make a city great is easily the third city on this continent, aye, even ahead of Boston in many things; and that Argentina has by odds the largest and most powerful banking institution in America? There are just a few facts about Latin America, and if we would study those marvelous countries closely we would find many others of equal or greater interest and importance, which should give us pause, mayhap cause some of us to wear smaller hats.

"It is true that the countries of Latin America are not developed as we are. It is true that while we claim about 90,000,000 people, Latin

America claims only 70,000,000. They are about 20 million behind us, but they are improving wonderfully. They are well worth our business efforts, my friends, very well worth it, and are we going after that business as we should? Let us see. In 1912-and I hope you will pardon me for using so many figures-in 1912 the total foreign commerce of Latin America was $2,811,000,000, and how much did we get? Only $825,000,000, out of a total, let me repeat, of $2,811,000,000; considerably less than one-third came to the United States, although we are right here at the doors of Latin America. And again, let me say by Latin America, I mean Mexico, Cuba, the West Indies, Central and South America. I mean all of those countries which are at our very doors, as well as South America, portions of which we know are nearer to Europe than to us. Considerably less than one-third of that colossal commerce came to us. Ah, but you say, what does that matter when we have four and one-half billion dollars for foreign commerce? I say it figures pretty big, because we think we are the greatest country on Earth, and our commerce is only a little over four and one-half billion dollars, while that of Latin America is $2,811,000,000-considerably more than threefifths of ours.

"We imported into the United States in 1912 from Latin America $519,000,000, principally of raw products, the crude material for our manufactures. New England got a vast quantity of it; but how much of our manufactured goods did we sell them? How much did we sell of the things on which the great profit comes? For it is needless for me to tell you, people of New England, who produce nothing in the raw state, but make everything of manufactured kind; that the profit comes in the manufactured article. We sold to Latin America that year $306,000,000 of manufactures, while Europe and the Eastern world-principally Europe-sold them upward of $900,000,000; we furnishing about one-fourth of the manufactured product, and Europe three-fourths. Of the raw material, however, we imported from Latin America about $500,000,000, while Europe imported from them about $1,071,000,000. In other words we import approximately one-third of their raw material and sell them one-fourth of the manufactured articles. Isn't that a very unfair proportion? Doesn't it seem strange, my friends, that we should receive so little of the business of that great country? Beyond question it is ridiculous.

"Now, why do we do so little? Bear with me patiently, and I will try to explain some of the reasons. One is that we do not speak the Spanish and Portuguese languages. Portuguese is the tongue of that great country, Brazil, which I have shown you is much larger than the whole United States. There are 21,000,000 people in Brazil, and writers relate, and I am told by travelers, that when American goods are shipped into Brazil the descriptions accompanying them are printed in Spanish. Our writer relates that a visitor, traveling in Brazil on a steamboat, asked the Captain what kind of fuel was he using on his boat. The Captain replied, "Sometimes coal, generally wood, but always catalogues

sent to us from the United States and printed in a language that we cannot read.' I fear that there is a great deal of truth in that statement. It is unpleasant to say these things, but a doctor never treated a disease successfully until he diagnosed it properly, and we must diagnose correctly the trouble between this country and Latin America.

"What are we doing to teach the Spanish and Portuguese tongues in the United States? I am glad to say we are making some progress. A report of the Commissioner of Education, addressed to me and just received, shows that he attempted to get the facts from about 15,000 high schools, public and private, in the United States in regard to the teaching of Spanish and Portuguese therein. He received 11,562 replies, which showed that the tongue was being taught in 731 high schools, a considerable number more than at any time in the past. California had more of these schools than any other State, 148, if I recall correctly; Texas came next with 98, and third, your own State of Massachusetts, with 44 schools where Spanish is being taught. Portuguese was being taught in only three of these high schools.

"The Bureau of Education also made a close examination of the catalogues of 600 colleges and universities, and it was ascertained that courses in Spanish were offered in 287 out of the 600, or very nearly one-half. So, we are making real progress in teaching Spanish. Five of these colleges offered courses in Portuguese.

"If we wish to do business with the people of Brazil we must not attempt to deal with them in the Spanish tongue, but we must address them in Portuguese. Do the Germans and English attempt to do business with them in Spanish? Oh, no. The writers all tell us that these shrewd traders all speak Portuguese when they go to Brazil and talk to the people in their own tongue. They appeal to them in their own language; and if we are to do business with that great country, we must follow the example of the Germans and English.

"Massachusetts and the rest of New England manufacture an enormous quantity of cotton goods. What percentage of cotton goods did you sell Brazil in 1913? Only three per cent. Argentina bought $40,000,000 worth of cotton goods that year, according to official reports, and the United States sold her also only three per cent. Think of that, my friends.

"In the whole of South America, not Latin America, remember, but the whole of South America in 1912, according to the report of the First National Bank of the city of New York, which publishes a very interesting bulletin, known as The Americas, there were $100,000,000 worth of cotton goods sold and five per cent. of it-$40,000,000 worth-emanated from the United States, the balance presumably coming from Europe; and that, my friends, in spite of the fact that the Southern States of this Union produce sixty per cent. of all the raw cotton grown in the world. We produce raw cotton and we manufacture an immense amount of cotton goods, and yet to these South American people, some of them very near us, we sold only five per cent., and taking Latin America as a whole in 1912, we furnished only eight per cent. of the

manufactured articles of cotton. Can you conceive a thing of that kind? "Let me carry this comparison a little further. The United States has a supply of coal greater than any other country in the world. It is estimated that our supply of coal is actually one-half as great as that of all the balance of the world. South America has some coal, but it has not been developed, and of the $70,000,000 worth of coal used by South America in 1912, only $4,000,000 came from the United States. Think of it!

"South America consumed that same year $175,000,000 worth of products of steel and iron, and we think we are ahead of the world in the manufacture of steel and iron. We know we are. We don't think anything about it. And yet they bought from us only twenty per cent. of iron and steel manufactures. And so on it goes, all down the line, my friends. We are not doing the business we are entitled to do. Why? I have given you one reason.

"Another is that these countries use the metric system and we do not. We are behind the times in that respect, and I appeal to you men of the Boston City Club to become pioneers in a movement to have the metric system adopted by Congress, and put the United States on a par with the business nations of the world in dealing with our brethren, for the metric system prevails throughout all of Latin America. It prevails also in the Philippine Islands, in Hawaii, and in every country of Europe, so far as I have been able to ascertain, with the single exception of Great Britain. Even in England the metric system is thoroughly understood, and in their dealings with Latin America they use it to a great extent.

"Put yourselves now in the place of the Latin Americans. Suppose you were down there and machinery were shipped to you weighing 20,000 pounds. When that machinery reaches the Custom House in Buenos Aires, or in Rio de Janeiro, or in any of the big cities, do you not know that it is going to be very troublesome to make the calculations when the people do not understand what is meant by pounds? They deal in kilos, and all their calculations are based upon the metric units. It is also annoying when cloth of every kind is shipped to them measured in yards, when they are in the habit of dealing in meters. We must meet them on their own ground if we are to do business with them.

"The President of the Leland Stanford University of California, Mr. Brown, who has traveled very extensively through Brazil, wrote an interesting article on that country, and, among other things, says he went into a store where he saw a large quantity of cotton goods-calicos and things of that kind-and the calicos of the Germans and English, especially the English, were put up in dress patterns, with a pretty piece of cloth around it. The American calicos were superior in quality, but they were in bolts of forty, fifty, or more yards, and the people, by preference, bought the English article, although it was inferior.

"A gentleman friend of mine from South America was in Washington a few days ago, and told me that he had lived there for six years. He