Dark Finance:

An Unofficial History of Wall Street, American Empire and the Caribbean,

1889-1925

by

Peter James Hudson

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Program in American Studies

New York University

May 2007

Walter Johnson
 UMI Number: 3361257

Copyright 2009 by
Hudson, Peter James

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In the colonies the economic substructure is also a superstructure.

The cause is the consequence; you are rich because you are white,

you are white because you are rich.

Frantz Fanon

Live richly.

Citigroup
 Anne Eliza Hudson

Maria Matijevic

James Edward Hudson

Peter Matjevic

V
 Acknowledgements

Walter Johnson understood this project before 1 did. Both he andAna María

Dopico kept me steady through its development with an unbalanced diet of

humor, cynicism, joy and a love of writing. Robín D.G. Kelley and Philip Brian

Harper helped me out of the gate. Jennifer Morgan got meto the finish Iine.

Andrew Ross offered academic wit, football wisdom, and Arsenal sympathy.

Madala Hilaire and Alyssa Burke made everything possible. The staff, and

collections, of the following archives and libraries were of invaluable assistance:

the Archivo Nacional de Cuba (gracias, Julio), the Bibloteca Nacional de Cuba,

José Martí, the Morgan Library and Museum, the JP Morgan Chase Archives, the

New York State Archives, the New York State Banking Department, the Bancroft

Library at UC Berkeley, the Seeley G. Mudd Library, Princeton University,

Stanford University Libraries, Y ale University Libraries, the lnterlibrary Loan

Office and the collection of the Research Institute for the Study of Man at New

York University's Bobst Library, and, especially, the Humanities Research

Library and the Science, Industry, and Business Library ofthe New York Public

Library- the latter, New York City diamonds. This dissertation has benefited

from the encouragement, financial support, and critical space offered by

numerous institutions and individuals. At New York University: the American

Studies Program, the Graduate School of Arts and Science, the Center for Latín

American and Caribbean Studies, the Cuban Studies Working Group, the African

vi
Di aspera Program in the Department of History, and Ka te Stimpson, David

Slocum, Kimani Paul-Emile and the participants in the NYU Graduate Forum.

Beyond Washington Square 1 am grateful to the Conference on Caribbean

Culture, University of the West lndies, Mona, Jamaica; Jean Rahier, Percy

Hintzen, Michael Hanchard and the participants in Interrogating the African

Diaspora, African-New World Studies Program, Florida International University;

Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de la Cultura Cubana "Juan Marinello,"

Havana; Richard White, Shelley Fisher Fishkin and the Department of History,

the Program in American Studies, and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race

and Ethnicity at Stanford University; Tom Conley, Etienne Balibar, Dominick

LaCapra and the School of Criticism and Theory, Cornell University; and, finally,

Black Marxism, NYC- of which this dissertation is a product. Thanks to the

following for offering support and encouragement at various stages: Linda

Zaretsky, Manuel Piña, Mary Poovey, Hans Schmidt, Brenda Gayle Plummer,

Richard Sylla, Horace Campbell, George Yudice, Car Suzuki, Kyo MacKlear,

David Austin, Jim Zwick, Denisse Ronden, Marg Pringle, Michelle Moyd, Marty

Correia, Ramona Knepp, Marc Goulding, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Miranda Pyne,

Danny Widener, LeGrace Benson, Ada Ferrer, Fritha Wolsak, Caro! Boyce Davis,

Jen Kaplan, Ornar Williams, Marlon Bailey, Njoroge Njoroge, Kamau

Brathwaite, Joan Dayan, Evelyn Encarnacion, Sinclair Thomson, Santa en

Habana del Este, Dick and Patrick, J. Michael Dash, Robert Hinton, Gabrielle

Williams, Chris Winks, Andrew Bell, Nimo Ahmed, Lisa Duggan, Dara Culhane,

vii
Amina Jones, Roy Miki, Beverley Pitman, Danny Dawson, Sean Hanretta,

Alondra Nelson, and the entire Maeba clan. To my family: Newell Hudson, Anna

Hudson, Sheila Hudson, Tony, Judy, and Aaron, the Burnetts in London, the

Pattersons in Toronto, and Elsa and Arnell Gordon. Finally, for those who know:

Aaron Kamugisha, Andrea Fatona, Sophie Saint-Just, Maboula Soumahoro,

Lyndon Philip, Carmelo LaRose, Aisha Finch, Allen Forbes, Barbaro Martinez-

Ruiz, Mike Vasquez, Sukdev Sandhu, Stephane Robolin, Forrest Hylton, Hillina

Seife, Sobque Odinga, Mikaila Brown, Karen Williams, Adam Waterman, lfeona

Fulani, Shoshana Guy, Peter Stebbings, and, more than anyone else, my brother

Michael Ramsey Hudson.

viii
 ABSTRACT

Dark Finance reconstructs the narrative history of the expansion of New York's

banks and trust companies into the Caribbean through an exhaustive reading of

diplomatic and governmental sources in the United States and Cuba, the financia!

press, and available banking archives. While demonstrating the importance of

banks and banking to the success of the US colonial administrations in the

Caribbean, 1 argue that the Caribbean was a laboratory in which bankers

experimented with new organizational forms, new financia! instruments, new

regimes of capital accumulation, and new working relationships with an

American imperial bureaucracy. 1 also show that bankers saw their economic

labors in cultural terms. They understood notions of financia! aptitude, fluency,

and development in terms of racial mission and national destiny. The economic

jargon that bankers used to describe their work and rationalize their market

strategies drew on metaphors of race, biology, and cultural difference. Bankers'

descriptions of how the economy functioned, how markets were formed, and how

modern banks should be organized were based on beliefs in naturallaws

governing racial behavior, theories of history drawn from Social Darwinism, and

conceptions of geography based on environmental determinism. Moreover, in

order to sell the Caribbean toan American investing public, bankers engaged in

an imaginative practice that saw the region performed within pamphlet literature,

sales briefs, and newspaper articles. 1 illustrate the workings of this performative

practice by comparing New York bankers' engagement with Cuba and Haiti. 1

ix
argue that the different ways in which these two countries emerged within

banking discourses- Cuba as a "mongrel" nation, Haiti as the atavistic "black

republic"- shaped banking policy, while circumscribing the possibilities for the

economic reform and national and racial development of the entire Caribbean

region.

X
TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATON V

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT vi

ABSTRACT ix

LIST OF APPENDICES xi

CHAPTER 1 1

CHAPTER 2 28

CHAPTER 3 98

CHAPTER4 181

CHAPTER 5 231

CODA 262

APPENDICES 264

WORKS CITED 281

xi
 LIST OF APPENDICES

APPENDIX A 264

Participations by US Bankers in Flotations of Caribbean Securities before 1914

APPENDIX B 268

The Speyer 1904 Cuban Loan Syndicate

APPENDIX C 270

List of Stockholders in Proposed Participation in $9,200,000 credit from the

American Foreign Banking Corporation to L.R. Munoz

APPENDIX D 273

Examples of National City Advertisements

APPENDIX E 275

Failures of Cuban Banks, 1921-1922

APPENDIX F 276

Examples of National City Advertisements inCuban paper, 1921-29

xii
APPENDIX G 280

Examples of the Haitian Gourde

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Money Plantations, Darkie Histories, Coon Diasporas:

Race, Finance and Banking in the American Imperial Project

Black is never black.

Frank A. Vanderlip, President, The National City Bank of New York

On Saturday evening, March 28 1h, 1914, the National City Bank's neoclassical

headquarters at 55 Wall Street underwent a remarkable conversion. lt was

transformed from a modern "money plant," whose ceaseless operations made

National City into one of the most powerful banks in the world, into an

antebellum plantation populated by darkies, niggers, and coons enacting an

inverted and distorted version of its daily operations. 1 The occasion? The City

Bank Minstrel Show. Staged annually by the National City Club, the educational

and social organization for the bank's employees, the Minstrel Show was held in

55 Wall Street's opulent main banking room until the growth of the bank's staff

forced it to other locations. No. 8, the National City Club's house journal,

recounted the opening scene:

Severa! darkies ... are gathered on the shore of a river engaging in the
colo red man' s national pastime, shooting craps. Gus Gemuendt, of the
Foreign Department, concealing his robust German proportions in a pair
of blue jeans, becomes dissatisfied with the crap game. H. Dolan, Jr., a

1
John Moody and George Kibbe Turner, "Masters of Capital in America: Wall
Street: The City Bank: The Federation of Great Merchants," McClure's Magazine,
XXXVII:! (May 1911) 89.
 black nigger crap-shooter from the check desk, is winning all the money.
After a heated discussion, Dolan is called upon for a song and he responds
nobly, being joined by two other dark characters, in a trio. The effect of
this close harmony is to bring onto the scene the owner of the plantation,
who announces the arrival of the City Bank Minstrels. Fast music, a flash
of lights, and in they come ... 2

By the teens, the minstrel show no longer held preeminence amongst

American forms of entertainment, though in its waning years the genre still

retained a measure of popularity, intelligibility, and signifying power. No. 8

claimed that Americans were used to seeing "a half circle of black-faces on plain

chairs tenor twelve times ayear since the earliest days of childhood," 3 and the

Ethiopian jingles and plantation lullabies performed by the City Bank Minstrels-

members of the bank's staff, their faces smudged and darkened with burnt cork-

certainly made sense to their rapturous audience. That night the audience heard

Miss Crosby solo "I'm on My Way to Mandalay." The Credit Department's Del

Hoyt sang "Down in Monkeyville." F.H. Bartlett, recently returned from a trip to

the US south, belted out "That's Plenty" in what was described as "true darkey

style." W. McKever- "the Irish nigger"- crooned "Mother Machree." Por the

sake of diversity, "The Navajo Rag" was performed by Mr. Frank Kelley and his

Navajo Braves "in a fiery and savage ragtime melody," garnering four enceres in

2
"Annual Minstrel Show ,"No. 8, 9:4 (April, 1914) 27. The journal 's name
references National City's position in the New York Clearing House Association.
3
"The Minstrel Men," No. 8, VII: 1 (January 1912), pp. 16. See Ann Douglass,
Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (New York: Noonday Press
1995), 75-77. Robert C. Toll, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-
Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 79-80; 187;
244-5. Also see Eric Lott, Love & Theft: Black Face Minstrelsy and the American
Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

2
the process. 4 From the first National City minstrel show in 1911 to its

discontinuation in the late 1920s, these acts were joined by a roster of black

caricatures- "pink-costumed coons," "beautiful dusky queens in black and

yellow watermelon costume," a vainglorious and flamboyant figure called "the

darktown multi-millionaire"- all cooning and clowning and singing songs like

"The Gi bson Coon," "Oh Y o u Coon," "Go A way, Mistah Moon," "There' s a

Little Bit of Monkey in You and Me," "The Arrival of that Emerald Pair from

Ethiopia," "Come Back to Alabam,"' and "How's Every Little Thing in Dixie?"5

This chapter uses this perplexing spectacle from National City's history as

a way of exploring the relationship between culture, race and, ultimately,

violence, as part of the everyday life of banking, finance, and economics. 1 argue

that the National City minstrel show and other episodes similar to it were not

simply aberrations, surpluses, or excesses within National City's history. They

helped the bank's staff to understand their work as part of their history.

Furthermore they allowed the bank to perform a politics of difference, especially

in regards to African Americans that located them within a narrative of white

American racial development and national consolidation. However, and more

importantly for the are of the dissertation, the domestic understanding of race and

racial difference performed and imagined through the minstrel show also

4
"Annual Minstrel Show," No. 8, 9:4(April, 1914), 27.
5
"The Minstrels as Seen by Bill," No. 8, V: 12, (December, 1910), 16; "City
Bank Club's Annual Minstrel Show Won Unmeasured Approval of 2,000 who
saw it," No. 8,14:3 (March 1919), pp. 8

3
occurred, as 1 will show, at the same moment that American bankers, and the

American state, began a push overseas for new markets.

In this light, there is a double significance to the minstrel show: while it

demarcates domestic racial difference, it also helped stage Wall Street's encounter

with the wider world. Bankers exported stereotypes of African Americans into the

American colonies in the Caribbean- and into the larger African diaspora. While

these stereotypes were used to understand black populations beyond the

boundaries of the United States, they also became part of a system of regulation

and imperial control, especially in the Caribbean- and the targets of a set of anti-

imperial cultural discourses.

National City was not the only New York financial institution staging

minstrel shows during these years. The National Bank of Commerce and the

Guaranty Trust Company incorporated minstrelsy into the programs of their staff

dinners and social events, as did the various regional branches of the American

Institute of Bank Clerks. 6 A blackface troupe called the Darktown Agony

Quartette performed at the Guaranty's Second Annual Dinner, held at Whyte's

Restaurant on Fulton Street and black-faced waiters served the bank's staff ata

6
"A Commerce Night: Commerce Minstrels Delight Huge Throng- Big Show a
Great Success- Sorne Sidelights," Commerce Comments (IV: 3, May, 1920), pp.
1, 18; "The Second Annual Dinner of the Guaranty Club," Guaranty News, 1:2
(February 1913), pp. 15. The minstrel performances of the American Institute of
Bank Clerks are noted in various issues of the Bankers Magazine between 1902
and 1920.

4
later dinner at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. 7 Like National City, the Guaranty

Club occasionally held their minstrel shows in the bank's lower Manhattan

headquarters, but they went one better than the National City Club by staging

Orientalist pageants, like "Chin Chin China Maid," as well as elaborate and gaudy

initiation rituals for staffers inducted into make-believe Oriental lodges. 8

In all cases, the minstrel shows, pageants, and initiation rituals were part

of a larger racist discourse within the interna) culture of New York City's

financia) institutions mirroring the racist forms of white American culture writ

large during the first decades of the early twentieth century. H.L. Mencken

dubbed this period of American cultural history the "coon age." 9 The phrase

signifies doubly. On one hand, it evokes the modernist fetishization of the

primitive and the embrace of exoticism and racial difference within popular

culture and the arts, especially in metropolitan cultural capitals like New York.

On the other, it speaks to the intensification of scientifically ordained state racism

during the Progressive Era. National City's participation in the Coon Age

included both the staging of minstrel shows and the generation and dissemination

of racist representations and racist discourses throughout the organization itself.

"The editor is seriously considering the plan of devoting a page of NUMBER

7
"The Second Annual Dinner of the Guaranty Club," Guaranty News, I:2
(February 1913), pp. 15
8
"Annual Theatrical Entertainment," The Guaranty News, IX: 11 (January 1921)
pp 362-366. "Guaranty Council No. 107, Twentieth Century Orient, O.M.F:
Grand Ceremonial Initiation," The Guaranty News, IV: 9 (November, 1915), pp.
125-127, 129. Also see "A Night at the Guaranty Club," Guaranty News 6: 10
(December 1917), pp. 10
9
Qtd. In Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty, pp. 77

5
EIGHT each month exclusively to natal statistics," reads a graphic non sequitur

next to the journal' s educational essays, reports on social events, and dispatches

from various departments and the growing network of overseas branches. "No

race suicide in our club!" 10 Unabashedly racist stories, jokes and anecdotes

featuring Asians, Jews, Native Americans and, most frequently, African

Americans, appeared within No. 8, paralleling their appearance in trade and

professional journals such as the Bulletin ofthe American lnstitute of Bank Clerks

and the Banker's Monthly. 11

Their depiction is striking. Not simply because of their absurd and

grotesque features, but because they were tied to representations of banking,

finance, and the economy. Black people were repeatedly depicted muddling their

way through the everyday economic situations that most whites apparently took

for granted, unable to grasp the logics of the instruments and institutions of

modern finance and contemporary banking. One such story, "Tight Money," was

given asan illustration of the follies and backward forms of African American

participation in and access to the arcane, negrophobic worlds of "high finance":

10
"Untitled," No. 8, VII: 12, (December 1912), pp. 12
11
For an example of National City Bank's anti-Semitic cartoons see: "Unitled,"
No. 8, VII: 12, (December 1912), 26, and "Retrospection of the Masquerade
Ball," No. 8, 15: 5, (May 1920) pp. 31. For examples of sinophobia, see "A
Chinese Boy's Application for Position in a Shanghai Firm", The Chase V: 1
(June-July 1925) 14
"The American Bank in China," Bulletin ofthe American lnstitute of Bank Clerks
1: 21 (April 1, 1902), 15; and the illustration "Wall Street Notes: Chinese
Exchange- Opened Strong and Active," No. 8 VII: 4 (April, 1912) 15; and "An
American Bank in the Far East," Bulletin ofthe American lnstitute of Bank Clerks
II: 9 (October 1, 1902) 24

6
 A Kentucky darkey negotiated a loan of $10 from a local banker,
pledging his mule and cartas security.
"Money is pretty tight," explained the banker, "and 1 shall have to
charge you $2.50 now for the use of the ten for a month."
The darky consented, signed the papers, and half an hour later was
found by a friend standing in the road scratching his wool with one hand
and looking ruefully at the $7.50 in his other.
"W'ats de matter Sam?" asked his friend.
"Oh, dere ain 't nothin' de matter, 'cept 1 knows 1' se right. Dat
bank man he done charge me $2.50 for $10 for a month. I's right sur. Fo'
if 1 hada ast fo' de ten fo' foah months 1 wouldn't a got nothing." 12

Another example, "Banking in Jawgy," the latter terma phonetic

bastardization of "Georgia," was reprinted from the legal journal Case and

Cornrnent:

The leading negroes of a Georgia town started a bank and invited

persons of their race to become depositors. One day a darkey, with shoes
run down at the heels, a gallus over one shoulder, and a cotton shirt,
showed up at the cashier's window.
"See here," he said, "1 want mah ten dollars."
"Who is yuh?" asked the cashier.
"Mah name's Jim Johnson, an' 1 wants dat ten dollars."
"Yuh ain't got no money in dis here bank," said the cashier, after
looking over the books.
"Y es 1 has," insisted the visitor. "1 put ten dollars in here six
mont's ergo."
"Why, man, yuh shure is foolish. De intrist done et dat up long
ago."13

12 "Tight Money," No. 8, III: 2, (November, 1907), np.

13 "Banking in Jawgy," No. 8 VII: 12 (December 1912), 25. For additional
stories, jokes, and anecdotes, see, "Untitled," No. 8, VIII: 1(January 1913), pp.
18; "Untitled," VIII: 3, (March 1913), pp. 29; "Untitled," No. 8, March 1919 14:
3, pp. 38; "Untitled," No. 8, 16: 11 (November, 1921); pp. 23; Jack Nelson, "The
Offering (Minstrel and Dance by City Bank Club Members)," No. 8, 18: 2
(February 1923), n.p. "Gloom Chase," No. 8, 22: 4 (April, 1927) pp. 18

7
Where other banks besides National City staged minstrel shows, they also printed

stories similar to the ones just recounted. In The Chase, the house organ of the

Chase National Bank of New York, a story called "Dark Finance" appeared:

A darky named Sam borrowed $35 from his friend Tom, and gave
his note for the amount.
Time went on, the note became long past due, and Tom was very
impatient for its payment.
One day the two men met on the street. Tom stopped and said,
with determination: "look heah, man, when ah you-all gwine t' pay thet
note?"
"1 ain 't got no money now ," replied Sam, "but I'm going to pay it
soon as 1 kin."
"Yo' been sayin' thet fer months," retorted Tom, "but it don't git
me no money. Yer gwine t' pay thet money here and NOW, thet's whut
yer gwine t' do. Ef y' don't, y' know whit I'm goin' t' do, I'm goin' to
BURN yer old note, then whar'll yo' be at?"
"Y as yo' will. Y as yo wil," Sam shouted. "Jes' yo' burn dat note o'
mine and 1" popa law-suit onto yo'." 14

Finally, in sorne cases these representations of African Americans danced

from the realm of darkies and coons into the real world, and Tom and Sam

appeared as employees of the bank, though rendered in such a fashion asto make

them indistinguishable from their doppelgangers within a white American racial

fantasy. The Equitable Envoy, the house-journal for the Equitable Trust Company,

published a brief interview with Junius Darden, a twenty-year employ of the bank

and one of the few African American employees mentioned in any of the banking

journals. Born in Franklin, Virginia, Darden carne to New York in 1899 and

worked in various positions until he joined the Equitable in 1904 w he re he

worked as a messenger in their collection department. Darden is not depicted as

14
"Dark Finance," The Chase 8. 4 (July 1925), 151

8
unable to master the worlds of white finance; rather, the interviewer express a

skepticism towards Darden claiming the normal economic desires, advantages,

and benefits that are normal for white people. In the interview, Darden tells the

writer that he wants to stay with the Equitable for twenty more years. The writer

shoots back, "Y ou want to collect that pension." Darden- or Junius, as he is

referred- denies any interest in personal gain, while bowing to his employer's

munificence in that humble, self-effacing tradition of the minstrel icon, the Old

Darkie. "No'm; 1 don't care so much about that [the pension]," Darden states. "1

just natchelly like working here. 1 always tried todo the right thing, and 1 always

been treated right." 15

15
"Mr. & Mrs. Junius Darden and their family," The Equitable Envoy IV: 8
(February 1925) 17. On the figure of the Old Darkey within the Minstrel Show
see Robert C. Toll, Blacking Up, pp. 79-80; 187; 244-5. Frank A. Vanderlip,
founder of the National City Club and National City Bank President from 1909-
1919, evokes one enduring figure of the Coon Age in his autobiography From
Farm Boy to Financier (published, somewhat later, in 1934). In the book, he
fondly remembers Richard Oreen, "a colored man, an ex-slave," who worked for
him while he was an Assistant Secretary to Lyman Oage at the Treasury
Department. Oreen taught him the etiquette of Washington sociallife, and like
any black friend worth his salt, helped introduce Vanderlip to his future wife.
Vanderlip, in return, evokes Oreen within the transcendental minstrel trope of the
Old Darkie. Oreen, writes Vanderlip, was "aman tall, black, handsome, wise and
tenderly considerate." He continues: "In every function of a servant [Oreen] was
thoroughly competent and with a sincere wish to avoid even the semblance of
condescension 1 report that 1 formed a friendship for that man, as did most
persons who carne in contact with him ... In our relations we were as two men
encountering each other at a masquerade, our places in life, the color of our hides
were but part of the scene in which we found ourselves." Vanderlip, in a curious,
liberal twist on craniological observation, describes Oreen's "finely modeled
skull" as "the very shape of sensitive intelligence." Vanderlip doesn't mention his
endorsement of racial hygiene through his philanthropic contributions to a home
for imbeciles. See Frank A. Vanderlip w. Boyden Sparkes, From Farm Boy to
Financier (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1935) 67.

9
 How are we to read these stories? What are we to make of the minstrel

shows? Of the appearance of a plantation within the modern confines of 55 Wall

Street? "Pantomime and burlesque often teach valuable and lasting lessons which

make us better and stronger for their learning," wrote the editors of the Guaranty

News in their account of the induction ceremonies for their Oriental Orders. 16 But

the Guaranty Club doesn't suggest what lessons the bank's staff learned- or for

that matter what a contemporary audience might glean from their own glance

back. They are, obviously, racist. Y et is there something in the fact that that

racism operates through a particular knowledge of the economy, around notions

of racial difference articulated through ideas of economic aptitude, competency

and fluency? Are they simply what economists refer toas externalities or

overflows: the cultural surplus ultimately irrelevant to the economy's

reproduction in its purest form? They appear to have no immediate bearing or

impact on National City's operations- especially if considered as a kind of

cloistered, ironic text, asan inside joke for a small audience whose significance is

limited to the moment of enunciation and whose relevance, while part of a larger

discourse of race, is confined to its immediate constituency and audience. And

while they do not make an appearance in the corporate histories of National City

or the Chase, from the present's vantage they can also be read allegorically, as the

dissembled history of National City's complicity, and, by implication, Wall

Street's complicity as a whole, in the economic subjugation and

16
"Guaranty Council No. 107, Twentieth Century Orient, O.M.F: Grand
Ceremonial Initiation," The Guaranty News, IV: 9 (November, 1915), pp. 126

10
disenfranchisement of African bodies in the American context and of the

recurring ritualized violence against and abjection of black bodies that gives white

Americans a sense of themselves. But here, that violence and abjection is

enforced and articulated through the institutions and instruments of banking and

finance. 17

In this sense, the banks can be seen as reprising and claiming the history

of slavery in New York City. The most visible symbol of this history was the

slave market inside the Dutch blockhouse where Wall Street met the East River,

now the comer of Wall and Water streets. Despite its closing, and despite the

gradual abolition of slavery in New York State from 1799, the Empire City's ties

to the Cotton Kingdom before the Civil War, as Philip Foner and others have

described, were extensive. They permeated almost all aspects of New York's

economic life and involved many of the city's bankers, brokerage houses, and

commission merchants. 18 Private merchant banks with prominent New York

17
M y reading of the minstrel show throughout this dissertation, especially in its
relationship to racial violence, draws on Sylvia Wynter, "Sambos and Minstrels,"
Social Text 1 (Winter, 1979), pp. 149-156; Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of
Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) 25-32; Louis Chude-Sokei, "The Last
Darky ": Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).
18
Philip S. Foner, Business & Slavery: The New York Merchants and the
lrrepressible Conflict, (Chape) Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941), 7.
On the history of slavery in New York City itself, see James G. Lydon, "New
York and the S lave Trade, 1700-1774," The William and Mary Quarterly, 35: 2
(April 1978), 375-394; Edgar J. McManus, A History of Negro Slavery in New
York (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2001); Jill Lepore, New York Burning:
Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 2005); Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed

11
agencies like Brown Brothers and Lehman Brothers acted as cotton brokers and

extended credit to Southern planters; many of these banks also marketed

Confederate War Bonds to European investors who for sorne time bet on a victory

for the South. 19 National City's directors were not uninvolved with the economy

of slavery. Textile importer Isaac Wright, director ofthe bank from 1825 to 1827

and President from 1827 to 1832, owned a Iine of clippers, the Black Ball

Shipping line, initiating regular packet service between New York and

Liverpool. 20 Southern planter Charles Stillman, father of later bank president

James Stillman, used the bank as a depository. Stillman ran cotton around the

blockade of the south and maintained a lucrative business during the last years of

the Civil War supplying southern cotton to Liverpool and Manchester

manufacturers and provisioning the Confederate army. 21 Moses Taylor, president

Hydra: Sailors, S laves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary
Atlantic (Boston: Beacon, 2001), pp. 174-210.
19
On Lehman' s Brothers as cotton brokers, see A Centennial: Lehman Brothers,
1850-1950 (New York: Lehman Brothers, 1950). Stephen Birmingham, "Our
Crowd," The Great Jewish Families of New York (New York: Harper & Row,
1967) 69, 79; Joseph Wechsberg, The Merchant Bankers (New York: Pocket
Books, 1966) 232-235. On Brown Brothers, see Brown Brothers and Co.,
Experiences of a Century, 1818-1918 (Philadelphia: Brown Brothers and Co.,
1918), 46-8; John Crosby Brown, A Hundred Years of Merchant Banking (New
York: Arno Press, 1978) 95-6; 103-4; Edwin J. Perkins, Financing Anglo-
American Trade: The House of Brown, 1800-1880 (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1975); John A. Kouwenhoven, Partners in Banking: An
Historical Portrait of a Great Private Bank: Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.,
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968).
20
Harold van B. Cleveland and Thomas F. Huertas, Citibank: 1812-1970
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985) 11
21
John K. Winkler, The First Billion: The Stillmans and the National City Bank,
(New York: Vanguard Press, 1934) 42; John Mason Hart, Empire and Revolution:

12
of National City from 1856 until his death in 1882, extended this connection

beyond the United States. As the most prominent sugar broker in the city, he

derived most of his profits from his dealings with Cuban sugar planters. 22

The National City minstrel shows perversely chronicle black experiences

with modern finance in the post-Emancipation era through both the continued

circulation of slave-generated capital within the contemporary economy, and the

reformulation and continuation of practices of black economic disenfranchisement

after abolition. As Alfred Chandler has observed, the nature of the corporate form

gives banks and businesses a longevity and permanence far exceeding that of any

particular director, manager or president-as well as a personality, identity, and

self-vindicating autonomy given Iife by share-holders and employees. 23 "The

function of the banks in financing rests on the circular character of banking

operations," writes Suzanne de Brunhoff invoking the self-replicating nature of

the Americans in Mexico Since the Civil War (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2002): 60-71.
22
Daniel Hodas, The Business Career of Mases Taylor: Merchant, Finance
Capitalist, and Industrialist (New York: New York University Press, 1976) 22-3.
Roland T. Ely, "The Old Cuba Trade: Highlights and Case Studies of Cuban-
American lnterdependence during the Nineteenth Century ," The Business History
Review 38:4 (Winter, 1964), 456-478; John Moody and George Kibbe Turner,
"Masters of Capital in America: Wall Street: The City Bank: The Federation of
Great Merchants" McClure's Magazine, (May 1911; XXXVII: 1) 74; Louis
Windmuller, "The Commercial Progress of Gotham," The Progress ofthe Empire
State: A Work Devoted to the Historical, Financia!, and Literary Development of
New York: Volume 1: New York State and City. Charles A. Conant, Ed., (New
York: Progress ofthe Empire State Company, 1913); Lawrence Turnure and Co.:
A Short History, 1832-1942 (New York: Lawrence Turnure and Co, 1942). Other
banks, like Philip Speyer and Co. and J. & W. Seligman, lent financia! support to
the federal government.
23
Alfred Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American
Business (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1977)

13
financia) institutions, "by virtue of which the banking system maintains and

reproduces itself." 24 Thus institutions involved in the slave economy, like Brown

Brothers, Lehman Brothers, and National City (now as the multinational financia)

services leviathan Citigroup) still exist. In sorne cases, acquisitions and mergers

created a practically unbroken link between now-defunct antebellum banks and

contemporary institutions. The Citizens Bank and the Canal Bank, for instance,

both established in the 1830s in Louisiana owned 1,250 slaves between 1830 and

1865 and accepted sorne 13,000 more as collateral. The two institutions merged in

1924 and were absorbed by Chase Manhattan in 1931. Chase is now part of

JPMorganChase/BankOne, formed in 2004 through the second largest bank

merger in US history. 25

While the accumulations from earlier periods of black expropriation and

exploitation still circulate today, in the open ended period "after" slavery and the

ambiguously defined era of freedom that followed emancipation, black economic

disenfranchisement was retooled into productive, generative forms that

emphasized (while simultaneously circumscribing) the agency and rationality of

economic actors within free labour markets. 26 American banking institutions

24
Suzanne de Brunhoff, Marx on Money, Maurice J. Goldbloom, Trans. New
York: U rizen Books, 1976.
25
See Banküne, Summary of Findings: JPMorgan Chase and Bank One (New
York: JPMorgan Chase-Bank One, 2005). Al so see Larry Schweikart, Ranking in
the American Southfrom the Age of Jackson to Reconstruction (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1987)
26
On post-Emancipation forms of labour control see: Amy Dru Stanley, From
Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave
Emancipation, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Frederick

14
deliberately turned black people into easy and ill-gotten profits using the veiled

bondage of debt and the racially-cloaked cultures of confidence and credit. The

collapse of the Freedman' s Savings and Trust Company offers the most

spectacular moment in this history. Incorporated in 1865, the Freedman's bank

was among the philanthropic efforts designed to encourage African American

self-sufficiency and teach participation in free labour markets following the Civil

War. Its immediate success seemed to disprove the African American's

"proverbial thriftlessness.'m At one time deposits totaled $57 million, all corralled

from the small surpluses and savings of black workers. But it became a target of

embittered Southern planters and speculators from Washington and New York,

including the utterly corrupt and vulgar Jay Cooke, who drained its funds and

replaced the stable government securities its deposits were invested in with

worthless mortgage bonds. In 1874 it was finally forced into receivership. 28 Over

a century later, this kind of financia) bamboozling became institutionalized

through predatory lending to and redlining of African American communities - as

well as through the ways in which service charges and fees, sorne hidden, sorne

Cooper, Thomas C. Holt, Rebecca J. Scott Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race,

Labour, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies (London: University of
North Carolina Press, 2000).
27
W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History
ofthe Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in
America, 1860-1880 (1935, rpt. New York: The World Publishing Company,
1956), 600
28
lbid. pp. 599-600. Also see Walter L. Fleming, The Freedmen's Savings Bank:
A Chapter in the Economic History ofthe Negro Race, (Chape) Hill, University of
North Carolina Press, 1927); Carl R. Osthaus, The Freedman's Savings and Trust
Company: The Tragedy of a Black Bank in Reconstruction America, (Ph. D. Diss:
University of Chicago, 1971).

15
not, of both regular banks as well as non-bank financia! institutions such as

Western Union and Money Mart used by the "unbanked," primarily,

undocumented aliens and the working poor, "done et," as it were, the small capital

reserves of average people. In this light Jim Johnson, No. 8's "Georgia darkey,"

represents us al!. 29

While these are plausible interpretations of the minstrel show and the

proliferation of anti-black representations within National City's publications and

social events, 1 want to suggest a reading of these stories and performances that

requires a broader frame of reference. 1 want to suggest that they only partly

concerned the US domestic economy and African Americans as economic agents

- or victims- within it. Rather than allegorizing, or simply spoofing, the history

of African Americans within US financia! institutions, the minstrel shows, the

racist financia! narratives and economic anecdotes caricaturing black people,

imagined and performed a racial and economic geography externa! to the United

States. They helped stage the American encounter with the darker races and

nations of the world during a period of rapid economic and poli ti cal expansion

into the Caribbean, Latin America, and Asia.

The Coon Age, of course, was also the age of American empire. It was a

period of American military intervention and commercial expansion, two decades

following the heights of the European "Age of Empire," peaking during the dollar

diplomacy of the interwar years. While 1898 has been seen as arrival of the

29
Dalton Conley, Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth and Social Policy
in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

16
United States on the imperial stage after defeating Spain, it was only a bridge

between a long but unheralded nineteenth century of political interference in the

hemisphere, anda period at the beginning of the twentieth that saw, up until

World War II, a prolonged phase of counterinsurgency, anti-"banditry"

campaigning, and small "banana" warfare, and extended military occupation, in

the southern reaches of the hemisphere, especially throughout the Caribbean and

Central America, as part of a push to secure new markets and to fulfill the Monroe

Doctrine's impulse toa muscular and paternal dominance in the hemisphere. In

consequence, the United States occupied Cuba from 1898 to 1902, and

subsequently intervened from 1906 to 1909, in 1912, and in 1920. Puerto Rico

was annexed in 1901; the Danish Islands purchased in 1917. The United States

(and, more specifically J.P. Morgan and New York law firm Sullivan and

Cromwell) were behind the revolution through which Panama ceded from

Columbia in 1903, granting them sole rights to the Canal concession and the

establishment of a U.S. protectorate over the Canal Zone in 1904. They backed

the overthrow of Nicaragua's government in 1909 and US troops were stationed

in the country between 1912 and 1925 and from 1926 to 1933. The United States

occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934 and the Dominican Republic from 1916 to

1924. They landed troops to protect US property in Honduras in 1910, 1912, 1919

and 1924 and in Vera Cruz, Mexico in 1914.

US policy makers viewed the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico as

America's mare nostrum, what Eric Williams called "America's closed sea," or

17
the American Mediterranean. 30 Because of its proximity to the United States, the

Caribbean region, and Latin America more generally, was viewed as the United

States' natural market, the logical dumping grounds for surplus American capital

and goods. But more than this, the importance of the American Mediterranean

rested on its strategic geography, especially with the opening of the Panama Canal

in 1914. The Canal drastically reduced the time and costs for maritime

commercial traffic, providing mid-western farmers and eastern manufacturers

ready access to Asian and Latin American markets through New York City and

New Orleans. As naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan argued, the Isthmus of

Panama was the most important strategic point in the region, but its defense, and,

hence, the defense of the United States and its commercial interests, rested not

simply in securing the Canal. The Canal was less a single point than a link in a

logistical chain or web stitching the Caribbean together as a specific spatial and

30
Eric Williams, From Columbus to Castro (New York: Vintage, 1970), 422. In
contrast, the Martinician poet Edouard Glissant described the Caribbean as the
"estuary of the Americas." For Glissant the Caribbean was an unstable contact
zone characterized by flux, instability, anda hybridized history and culture
combining Asian, American, African, and European influences resisting the
attempted hegemony of the United States. Edouard Glissant, Caribbean
Discourse: Selected Essays, Trans, J. Michael Dash (Charlottesville, University
Press of Virginia, 1989) xxxix. 1 should stress at this point that the Caribbean,
from the practica! perspective of New York's bankers, was defined rather loosely.
Occasionally it was its own entity, though sometimes conjoined with the Central
American republics fronting the Caribbean coasts. Occasionally, it fell within the
general rubric of Latin or South America. Occasionally, for purposes of
commercial strategy, it was seen merely as a gateway or funnel to the Pacific. My
sense of the Caribbean throughout this dissertation carries this contextua!
flexibility. Also see Antonio Benítez-Rojo, The Repeating lsland: the Caribbean
and the Postmodern Perspective, James Maraniss, trans. (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1992)

18
discursive entity. The Canal was but one node in a series of "communications"

cutting across the Caribbean: a network of maritime vectors creating a system of

dependent, fortified points that could fulfill the logistical needs of peace and war.

Control of the Canal, and control of the Caribbean, necessitated control of its

approaches through the militarization of maritime routes and shipping lanes, the

establishment of dry docks, coaling stations, safe ports, forts, and ammunition-

and supply-depots. All of them, according to Mahan, necessarily augmented by a

large navy and merchant marine. 31

Y et the promotion of American hegemony and the maintenance of interna)

political stability in the Caribbean was understood through and complicated by

two forms of racial ideology. In the first instance, American policy makers feared

that the region 's racial make-up, combined with its position next to the equator,

and, especially in the former Spanish-colonies, its Latin heritage, conspired to

31
Alfred Mahan, "Strategic Features of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of
Mexico," The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future (Boston:
Little, Brown and Company, 1898), 281-2. Mahan's idea's are reiterated by naval
scholar W.V. Judson, "Strategic Value of Her West Indian Possessions to the
United States," Annals ofthe American Academy of Political Science (May,
1902), 53-61. Also see Robert T. Hill. Cuba and Porto Rico with the other /slands
ofthe West Indies (New York: Century Company, 1899) 16-17; William Thorp,
"The Control of the Approach to the Panama Canal," World's Work VII (March
1904), 4594-4599; Archibald R. Colquhoun, "The Control of the Caribbean,"
Greater America, (New York and London: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1904)
171-198; and Ellen Churchill Semple, "The United States in Relation to the
American Mediterranean," American History and its Geographic Condition (New
York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1903). Lester Langley, in his Strugglefor the
American Mediterranean: United States-European Rivalry in the Gulf Caribbean,
1776-1904 (Athens: University ofGeorgia Press, 1976) locates the popularization
of the phrase in journalist Stephen Bonsal 's American Mediterranean (New York:
Moffat Yard, 1912). But neither Bonsal nor Langley explicitly discuss its origins
or its meanings.

19
create a racially unstable and politically turbulent environment. They feared

regression to either European control or African savagery. "The Caribbean

archipelago," wrote Brooke Adams, "must ... either be absorbed by the economic

system of the United States or lapse into barbarism."32 However, justas the

Caribbean's strategic character was determined relationally, its racial integrity

was composed of a series of racial contrasts and contingencies across the

archipelago based on the internal history of each political entity within it.

While Jamaica was prized because of its central position in the Caribbean

Sea and the quality of the harbor at Kingston, the perceived loyalty of its black

populations to the British Crown, their apparent lack of desire for self-government

-as well as a broader, unspoken fraternal alliance between the US and England-

relieved it, along with the other British West Indies, from American intervention,

though British colonial governors occasionally requested American warships to

help calm internal strife?3 Cuba and Haiti, on the other hand, posed altogether

different questions. But their fates were implicitly linked through their parallel,

occasionally intertwining, histories, economies, racial compositions, and claims to

republican status. Although of mixed race and constantly teetering on the verge of

32
Brooke Adams, America's Economic Supremacy (New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1900), 263. Also see Charles A. Conant, The United States in the
Orient: The Nature of the Economic Problem, (New York: Houghton, Mifflin,
1900).
33
See Fitz A. Baptiste, The United States and West Indian Unrest, 1918-1919
(Mona, Jamaica: lnstitute of Social and Economic Research, University of the
West Indies, 1978). The US Occupation of Trinidad during World War 11 was the
major exception, though this case is beyond the scope of my analysis. See Harvey
R. Neptune, Ca/iban and the Yankees: Trinidad and the United States Occupation
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).

20
African numerical preponderance, Cuba ranked higher on the civilizational scale

and closer to the exalted stage of self-government that America herself had

reached. Haiti, in contrast, was a blood clot in the American imagination and had

been since the Haitian Revolution. Haiti's independence struggle was what T.

Lothrop Stoddard described as a "grim tragedy" serving only to destroy a

prosperous outpost of white civilization and unleash a long period of blood,

barbarism, and incessant revolutions that proved that the African was incapable of

self-government and would regress to the savagery he had Ieft behind in Africa. 34

More than a century after the Haitian Revolution, the fears of Jean Jacques

Dessalines' massacres of the white French population of Port-au-Prince in 1804

and the total destruction of the plantation economy and white rule on the island

remained a palpable threat to American politicians and capitalists. Indeed, in

1912, when black Cubans were massacred in Havana's downtown Parque Central

and Iynched on the streets of the nouveau riche suburb of Vedado, instead of

reporting on the attacks on Afro-Cubans, the American press published reports of

rumors that blacks were committing "crimes against white women." They wrote

that thousands of Haitians (in sorne accounts joined by Dominicans and

Jamaicans) had "surreptitiously ente red the [Oriente] and [were] ... inflaming the

Cuban negroes by citing the example of the Haitians in exterminating the whites

in their country, and urging the establishment of a "black republic" in the eastern

34
T. Lothrop Stoddard, The French Revolution in San Domingo (Boston and New
York: Houghton Mifflin, 1914) viii.

21
end of Cuba. 35 No matter that the United Fruit Company had begun importing

Haitian and Jamaican braceros to work in the company's plantation but ayear

before. 36

The second racial optic through which American policy in the Caribbean

was shaped was less about the Caribbean's turbulent, potentially revolutionary,

racially mixed populations then about the racial identity of the United States

itself. The belief that the most exalted traditions of European civilization- of

Athens and Rome, of the Anglo-Saxon race- had landed in the Americas,

bestowing a special destiny on the (white) American population. This translated

John O'Sullivan's 1845 rhetoric of manifest destiny into an everyday ideology

explaining the American past and predicting the American future. Through

notions of Anglo-Saxon mission and white supremacist messianism, it explained

the expansion that saw the United States absorb half of Mexico in 1848- while

naturalizing the push across the frontier to the Pacificas part of the country's

historical destiny and justifying the slaughter of countless indigenous peoples.

And it rationalized the further expansion of American commercial and economic

power, both in the hemisphere and across the globe.

35
See: "Cuban Crisis Grave," The Washington Post (May 22, 1912), 1; "Fighting
in Cuba; US Marines Go," The New York Times, (May 24, 1912), l. Por an
account of 1912, see Aline Helg, Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle
for Equality, 1886-1912 (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1995): 193-248.
36
Ramiro Guerra y Sanchez, La Industria Azucarera de Cuba: Su importancia
nacional, su organizacin, sus mercados, su situacion actual (Habana: Cultural,
SA 1940).

22
 At the beginning of the new century imperial theorist, financial reformer,

and sometime banker Charles A. Conant announced that:

the United States today seem about to enter upon a path marked out for
them as the children of the Anglo-Saxon race, not yet traversed because
there has been so much todo at home ... The irresistible tendency to
expansion, which leads the growing tree to burst every barrier, which
drove the Goths, the Vandals, and finally our Saxon ancestors in
successive and irresistible waves over the decadent provinces of Rome,
seems again in operation, demanding new outlets for American capital and
new opportunities for American enterprise. 37

This expansion, for Conant, was imperialism. But imperialism was not ba~ed in a

question of mere "sentiment;" instead, driven by theories of overaccumulation,

underconsumption, and capital export based in a rational account of the function

of national economies and markets, it was al so guided by a series of natural, racial

laws- by the "instinctive tendency of a race or civilization," by the currents of

"race or national tendency," and by "the law of self preservation, as well as that of

the survival of the fittest."38 And its end goal, as Conant put it in a 1900 address to

37
Charles A. Conant, "The Economic Basis of 'Imperialism, "' The North
American Review, 167: DII (September 1898), 326.
38
lbid. 326. Al so see Charles A. Conant, "Meaning of the Recent Expansion of
the Foreign Trade of the United States: Discussion," Publications ofthe American
Economic Association, 3rd series, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Feb., 1902), 102-108. Conant's
racial theories are overlooked by the few authors who have examined his work.
See David Healy, US Expansionism: The Imperialist Urge in the 1890s (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1970) 205; Martín J. Sklar, The Corporate
Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1960: The Market, the Law and
Politics (New York: Cambrdige UP, 1986); Carl Parrini, "Charles A. Conant,
Economic Crises and Foreign Policy, 1896-1903," Behind the Throne: Servants to
Imperial Presidents, 1898-1968, Thomas J. McCormick and Walter LaFeber, Eds.
(University of Wisconsin Press, 1981) 35-60; Emily S. Rosenberg, Financia!
Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Cutlure of Dallar Diplomacy, 1900-
1930 (Cambridge, Harvard UP, 1999). Richard Hofstadter' s brief mention of

23
the American Banker's Association, was the movement, following history's path,

of the "star of financia) supremacy" from Lombard Street to Wall Street, from

London to New Y ork?9

New York City's trust companies, private banks, and national banking

associations were critica) to the westward traversa) of the star of financia)

supremacy, the rise of New York, and the American imperial project in the

Caribbean. Their impact was felt not only in an economic but in a racial and

cultural register as well. There were often direct lines between Wall Street and the

S tate Department; the political aims of the American state were often coupled

with the economic aims of New York capital. The Chase, J. P. Morgan, the

Guaranty Trust Company, Brown Brothers, and, especially, the National City

Bank ofNew York, founded in 1812 and still operating atfull steam today, both

aided US colonial administration in the insular territories and colonies and

encouraged the expansion of commercial markets and the enlargement of

financia) dependencies. At first glance, their aims were motivated by the twinned

Conant in his Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1880-1915 (Philadelphia:

U of Pennsylvania Press, 1945) 156, is the exception.
39
"Banker' s Meeting Closes," New York Times (October 5, 1900), 9 Conant was
treasurer of Levi P. Morton's The Morton Trust Company, an early backer of Sir
William Van Horne's Cuba Company, that included amongst its directors John
Jacob Astor, George F. Baker, Paul D. Cravath, A.D. Julliard, Thomas F. Ryan,
Jacob H. Schiff, Valentine P. Snyder, and Harry Payne Whitney. For
biographical information on Conant see: "Charles A. Conant: The New Treasurer
of the Morton Trust Company," The Bankers' Magazine (LXIV: 5 February,
1902) 247; "Charles A. Conant," The North American Review, 185:2 (1907) np;
Charles, A. Conant, Ed., The Progress ofthe Empire State: A Work Devoted to
the Historical, Financia!, and Literary Development of New York: Volume 1: New
York State and City. (New York: Progress of the Empire State Company, 1913),
np; "Charles A. Conant Dies in Havana," New York Times (July 7, 1915) 11.

24
signs of patriotism and accumulation, especially through the value-free,

deracinated, and emancipatory space of capitalism, but, much like the American

jingoists and filibusterers who unabashedly embraced the cause of racial

regeneration as a motivation for imperialism, they understood the capitalist

market as a cultural possibility only after successive stages in the evolution of

racial and national economic and social organization had been attained. The

people of the Caribbean, especially those of African descent, represented the

geographically distant but temporally aligned cousins of African Americans; both

needing the white man' s tutelage, guidance, and fatherly care to prevent him from

slipping back into the dark abyss of African atavism. Bankers used the grammars

of popular racial science and populist racial ideologies to explain theories of

economic growth, capital accumulation, and imperial expansion, and used both to

explain the necessity for the expansion of white American commercial and

financia! power over the savage and backward regions of the world. The

enlargement of markets and the expansion of empire were rationalized

simultaneously by economic and racial ideologies, while the putatively economic

and financia! reforms bankers engaged occurred with in a broader register of race

and culture. 40

40
This link between domestic racial ideology and empire has been suggested by
C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1957) and Herbert Aptheker, "U.S. Imperialism and Racism: A
History," Racism lmperialism and Peace: Selected Essays by Herbert Aptheker,
Marvin J. Berlowitz and Caro! E. Morgan, Eds. (Minneapolis: MEP Publications,
1987), pp. 132-142.

25
 While the minstrel shows appeared on 55 Wall Street, offering a twisted

version of a domestic history of racial subordination and capital accumulation,

these representations were simultaneously exported to the American imperial

peripheries. Bankers created a "coon" diaspora, a diaspora of racial stereotypes,

caricatures, and typologies circulating in the American colonies, whose spectral

presence mediated the American encounter with the flesh and blood races to the

south. 41 Bankers exported their "knowledge" of African American populations to

the tropics, creating a set of cultural and behavioral linkages between black

populations worldwide- while disseminating a parallel set of representations

within the United States to potential investors and the general public. About the

time the Guaranty Club staged Chin Chin China Maid, the Guaranty Trust

Company was opening branches in Asia and participating in an inter-imperial

project to bring China, India, the Philippines, and the Straits Settlements, under

the sway, as W.E.B. DuBois commented with no small irony, of the "opium of

international finance." 42 And while the evocations of plantation scenes from

"Jawgy" and Kentucky were being staged on Wall Street, National City, the

Chase National, and the Guaranty were helping to convert the Caribbean into

41
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New
York: Grave Press, 1967), p. 173. Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making
of the Black Radical Tradition: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition
(London: Zed Books, 1983).
42
W.E.B. Dubois, "The Negro Mind Reaches Out," The New Negro, Alain Locke,
ed. 1925, rpt. New York: Atheneum, 1992, pp. 406.

26
economic fiefdoms: Cuba into "a billion-dollar plantation"43 controlled by US

interests, and Haiti into what the Trinidadian pan-Africanist George Padmore-

acutely aware of the reversals and anachronistic nature of US imperial practice-

descri bed as an "American slave colon y. "44

The following chapters recount this history.

43
Charles M. Pepper, To-Morrow in Cuba (New York: Harper and Brothers,
1899) 348.
44
George Padmore, Haití: An American Slave Colony (Moscow: Centrizdat,
1931)

27
 CHAPTER 2

White Gods, Adventurers, Financiers:

New York Banking and the American Imperial Frontier, 1889-1913

the White Gods ... are calling and opening the eyes of mankind to
the wonders and beauties of the great open world

Alonzo Barton Hepburn, President, Chase National Bank of New York

Introduction

"Sacrifice to the Red Gods," Alonzo Barton Hepburn writes in The Story of an

Outing, "build shrines to the White Gods!" 1 lt is a remarkable declaration from

the President of the Chase National Bank of New York, and it is a far cry from the

dry, sober analysis that Hepburn offers in his history of canal systems or, for that

matter, the commonplace representations of early twentieth-century bankers as

urbane, aloof, cerebral and effete creatures: J. P. Morgan' s favorite past time was

collecting art; James Stillman, Hepburn's confrere at the National City Bank,

loved sailing and dressing his daughters in matching outfits. 2 lnstead, The Story of

an Outing, Hepburn's account of his Kenyan safari, is a guide to the ways of

Rooseveltian manliness, a handbook for the performance of white American

1
A. Barton Hepburn, The Story of an Outing (New York and London: Harper and
Brothers, 1913) 8.
2
Alonzo Barton Hepburn, Artificial Waterways and Commercial (New York:
Macmillan, 1909);"James Stillman," New York Times (July 24, 1898); Anna
Robeson Burr, The Portrait ofa Banker: James Stillman, 1850-1918 (New York:
Duffield and Company, 1937).

28
masculinity through an encounter with the primitive world. 3 Writing with a giddy,

boyish enthusiasm, Hepburn describes marshaling an army of "native negrees"

for the hunt, he discusses the finer points of weaponry, and he exhorts his readers

to seek out sources of energy that will regenerate the Anglo-Saxon spirit while

countering modern society's vigor-sapping tendencies. "Foster the habit of

vacations that recreate and give strength," Hepburn exhorts his readers, "rather

than those that enervate and impair the strength you have."4

lf approached with an interpretive generosity, The Story of an Outing can

also be seen as allegorical call to arms for American bankers; a rallying cry- not

just to Hepburn's "great plateaus of Africa where the herds of bovidae, cervidae,

and various carnivora are little disturbed by the native negrees and the very few

white men who have made a lodgment at comparatively few points of vantage"-

but to the world at large. After all, by 1913, the year The Story of an Outing was

published, the chorus calling for trade expansion and the internationalization of

American banking was reaching a crescendo, having been built up over the years

3
Gail Bederman, Manliness & Civilization: a Cultural History of Gender and
Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1995). On the US-Caribbean encounter, see Mary A. Renda, Taking Haiti:
Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915-1940 (Chapel Hill
: University of North Carolina Press, 2001) and Harvey Neptune, "Manly
Rivalries and Mopsies: Gender, Nationality, and Sexuality in United States-
Occupied Trinidad," Radical History Review 87 (2003) 78-95. The analysis in this
introduction has an obvious debt to Amy Kaplan, '"Left Alone with America':
The Absence of Empire in the Study of American Culture," in Cultures of United
States Imperialism, ed. Amy Kaplan and Donald Pease (Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 1994), 3-21.
4
A. Barton Hepburn, The Story of an Outing (New York and London: Harper and
Brothers, 1913) 8.

29
by market-hungry manufacturers, imperial cheerleaders, and those financiers who

sought to make New York City the clearinghouse of the world. Domestic growth,

they argued, could only be facilitated by the conquest of foreign markets; the

nation 's virility and strength, they claimed, could only be sustained through

imperial venture. "The White Gods are calling," Hepburn wrote, "and opening the

eyes of mankind to the wonders and beauties of the great open world." 5

The White Gods were calling. They had been calling since the end of the

nineteenth century. But for years, white America's bankers hadn 't responded. At

least not in any systematized way. lnstead, the first wave of New York City, and

American, international banking and financing consisted of a patchwork of

practices spread over a broken geography. Stretching from the end cif the

nineteenth century to the onset of World War 1, it was disorganized, experimental,

reckless, transitional and ultimately more memorable for its failures than

successes. 6 The era represented an interregnum separating a long nineteenth

century witnessing the domestic proliferation of banking institutions as part of the

nation 's rapid territorial, commercial, and industrial expansion, and the

emergence between the wars of New York City as an international banking power

challenging Europe's established financial centers. Historian Guy Pierre has

5
A. Barton Hepburn, The Story of an Outing, New York and London: Harper and
Brothers, 1913. 6
6
The idea of this era as a "transition" period comes from Paul D. Dickens, The
Transition Period in American International Financing: 1897-1914 (Phd Thesis:
George Washington U ni versity, 1933 ), and is taken up again by Barbara Stallings
in her Banker to the Third World: U.S. Portfolio Investment in Latin America,
1900-1986 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987) 60-66. For reasons
that will become apparent, 1 have pulled this date back to 1889.

30
described this period as one of perfect competition. 7 In sorne senses it was. Where

we ha ve come to think of the domestic banking scene at the beginning of the

century as dominated by a Money Trust presided over by a small group of

taciturn, seemingly omnipotent patriarchs, in the Caribbean, at least, banking was

something of an open frontier for Americans. It appeared that anybody with a

sack full of gold and a fistful of dollars could claim to be an international banker

and the loose regulatory environments, the overall lack of supervision and

oversight, and the sometimes desperate capital demands of Caribbean and Latin

American countries encouraged such performances. The international field was

caught in the transition between empires and dominated by a coterie of

speculators and adventurers, crooks and hustlers, wild-cat banks and,

occasionally, established businesses- though ones whose conduct oftentimes

differed Iittle from their lesser-known peers.

This chapter recounts the history of this disorganized, tentative, and

transitional period. It is told through the stories of a series of forgotten and

obscure characters and institutions whose negotiations with foreign governments,

foreign capitalists, and the American state provided the experimental frame for

the systematized working relationships of American empire during and following

World War l. The chapter is broken into two sections. 1 begin with the earliest

7
Guy Pierre, "La supremacia del National City Bank en el sistema bancario del
Caribe y su impacto en el crecimiento economice de la region (1900-1940)," La
formacion de los bancos centrales en Espana y America Latina (Siglos XIX y XX)
Vol. /1: Suramerica y el Caribe, Pedro Tedde y Carlos Marichal, Eds. (Madrid:
Banco de Espana-Servicio de Estudios/Estudios de Historia Economica,
1994)119-139

31
attempts at creating the framework for the internationalization of American

banking through the calls to organize a federally sponsored American

lnternational or Pan-American bank, as well as the private institutions that used

the mantle of pan-Americanism to cloak their own self-promoting schemes. 1 then

turn to 1898 and the American colonial moment in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the

Philippines where the need for banking and financia) institutions supporting the

operations of the War Department stretched domestic banking legislation to cover

the colonies, and provided a virtually-risk free excuse for bankers to venture

abroad. At about the same time, New York's financia) institutions began lending

to foreign governments, often asan adjunct to US colonial authority, anticipating

the lending boom of the 1920s while creating a laboratory for what carne to be

known as dollar diplomacy.

The second section looks at three different entities and their attempts to

extend New York City finance and banking overseas through the creation of a

system of branch and correspondent banks in the Caribbean (and elsewhere in

Latin America and Asia) provided a foothold for the rapid expansion of American

banking o verseas after 1914. First, 1 recount the history of the partnershi p of

Samuel Miller Jarvis and Roland Ray Conklin, two mortgage brokers who made a

small fortune in the Midwest, carne to New York, and were among the first

businessmen to recognize the potential profits to be made in the Caribbean

following the war with Spain. 1 then turn to the lnternational Banking Corporation

(IBC). lncorporated in 1902, the IBC provides a radical contrast to the

32
entrepreneurial ethos guiding Jarvis and Conklin. lt became a model for the

faceless banking corporation made up of capital pooled from sorne of the largest

American financia!, insurance, and industrial firms- from the Equitable Life

Assurance Company and Brown Brothers, to Henry Clay Frick and Isaac

Guggenheim. These institutions used the IBC as a conduit for American capital

and products overseas, while, at the same time, the US government used the IBC

asan imperial agent abroad. Finally, 1 turn to the National City Bank of New

York. Early on, National City recognized the importance of the foreign field for

American banks. However, they initially exercised a caution policy towards

internationalization, though they did participate in syndicates floating foreign

loans and bought stock in Caribbean correspondent banks, often with their

European competitors. And most importantly, they established the National City

Company, an arguably-illegal stock-holding affiliate through which their post-

1914 international expansion was mediated and, as the next chapter demonstrates,

though which the kinds of abstract characterizations of racial difference and

cultural identity- found, for instance in Hepburn 's invocations of his White Gods

- was turned into a pragmatic knowledge aiding the conquest of foreign markets. 8

8
Prior to 1914, while racist ideas and opinions may have hada personal or
national motivation behind the movement to secure and overseas trade, they had
Iittle effect on banking practice. Certainly, anecdotal accounts of racial difference
and of the superiority of the white race appear in the published statements of the
handful of American bankers overseas during this period, but it wasn't until after
1914 that race was instrumentalized by bankers - that racial difference was turned
into a set of usable facts aiding foreign expansion. For examples of the anecdotal
encounters, see W.A. Williams, "Banque Nationale de la Republique d'haiti," No.
8 VIII: 2 (February 1913); J.C. Martine, "Cuban Financia! Methods," No. 811: 4

33
 l.

"Unfettered ... control of the world 's exchanges ": Plans for a Pan-American

Bank

The exponential growth of banks and trust companies throughout the country

during the latter half of the nineteenth century, aiding the United States' industrial

and agricultura! development, did not translate into a presence overseas. The

domestic demands for capital precluded the need for the foreign expansion of

American banking while both state and federal legislation restricted branch

banking. 9 New York's powerful prívate merchant banks, like J. & W. Seligman

and August Belmont & Co. (the exclusive US representative of the House of

Rothschild), acted as conduits for European capital entering the country and were

more than willing to concede the international field to their more powerful

patrons. These institutions marketed US government and industrial securities

across the Atlantic to European buyers, often, as in the case of Philip Speyer and

(January 1907), np.; George M. Smith, "The Dominican Republic," No. 8 VIII: 5
(May, 1913) 10; F.W. Black, "Banking in Cuba: Cuban Banking Methods
Described," Bulletin ofthe American Institute of Bank Clerks, 1: 18(February 15,
1902) 5-7; JC Martine, "Banking in Cuba," Bulletin ofthe American Institute of
Bank Clerks 1117 (November 1906) 1082; J.C. Martine, "Cuban Commerce,"
Bulletin ofthe American Institute of Bank Clerks 111 8 (December, 1906) 1234;
Henry C. Neise, "Cuban Banking," Bulletin ofthe American Institute of Bank
Clerks. 111: 11 (March 1908), 261; James C. Martine, "Cuban Banking Methods,"
No. 8, 11: 4 (January 1907), nsp; WF Turtle, "Nassau and the Bahamas," No. 8 111:
1 (October, 1907), np; R.M. Atwater, "Bolivia: A Country with a Future, No. 8
111: 1 (October, 1907), np.
9
For a detailed discussion of state banking legislation regarding branch banking,
see George E. Barnett, State Banks and Trust Companies Since the Passage ofthe
National-BankAct(Washington: GPO, 1911), 135-143.

34
Co., using long-established family banking houses in Europeas correspondents. 10

The restrictions placed on state banks and trust companies and, after the signing

of the National Banking Act in 1864, national banking associations, on

conducting operations outside their jurisdiction of incorporation also hindered

foreign expansion. 11 While merchants engaged in foreign trade often offered the

services of bankers to their clients- the sugar merchants of Boston and New

York, for example, provided advances on future harvests and loans on new

equipment to their Cuban growers- European, and toa lesser extent Canadian,

institutions handled the remittance, discount, acceptance and exchange operations

of American foreign trade. 12

10
Stephen Birmingham, "Our Crowd," The Great Jewish Families of New York
(New York: Harper & Row, 1967); Paul Philip Abrahams, The Foreign
Expansion of American Finance and its Relationship to the Foreign Economic
Policies ofthe United States, 1907-1921 (New York: Arno Press, 1976). 1-3;
Jeffrey A. Frieden, Banking on the World: The Politics of American International
Finance (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 15-17. Though founded by Philip
Speyer in 1837, the Speyer's have a history of banking dating as far back as
fourteenth century Germany. The original house was founded in 1800 in
Frankfurt. See "James Speyer, 80, Banker. Dies Here," New York Times
(November 1, 1941); Barry E. Supple, "A Business Elite: German-Jewish
Financiers in Nineteenth-Century New York, The Business History Review 31:2
(Summer, 1957),145.
11
Cf. Samuel McRoberts, "The Extension of American Banking in Foreign
Countries," Annals ofthe American Academy of Política[ and Social Science 36: 3
(November, 1910) 24-32.
12
Louis Windmuller, "The Commercial Progress of Gotham," The Progress ofthe
Empire State: A Work Devoted to the Historical, Financia[, and Literary
Development of New York: Volume 1: New York State and City, Charles A.
Conant, Ed., (New York: Progress of the Empire State Company, 1913); Edwin F.
Atkins, Sixty Years in Cuba: Reminiscences of Edwin F. Atkins, (Cambridge:
Riverside Press, 1926) 7-8.

35
 Only a handful of private institutions had established agencies overseas by

the 1890s. The Liverpool merchant bankers Brown Brothers maintained quasi-

independent houses in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and a number of

southern cities. The Boston-based dry-goods merchants Monroe and Company

opened a Paris commission agent in 1835 that by 1851 was completely dedicated

to trade financing. A similar shift from mercantile to financia) operations occurred

with J. & W. Seligman. Established in 1848 asan importer and textiles merchant,

by 1862 it was directing its surplus capital towards industrial and government

financing, lending support to the Federal Government during the Civil War. In

1863, Seligman opened branches in London, Paris, and Frankfurt, all of which

became independent concerns by 1897. Drexel, Morgan, established in 1860 with

nominally distinct agencies in London and Paris was the only nineteenth-century

international American banking house whose interests began, though they hardly

ended, in finance. 13

During the nineteenth century, then, there was neither the need, nor the

infrastructure, for the international expansion of American banks. But the

increasing saturation of Western capital markets near the el ose of the century

stirred anxieties of declining returns on investments and economic stagnation,

prompting a search for new markets for agricultura) products, manufactured

goods, and surplus capital. At the same time, American foreign trade was growing

rapidly, especially with Latin America and the Caribbean, and bankers and

13
Ciyde William Phelps, "American Banks Abroad," Bankers' Magazine 119:6
(December, 1929) 994.

36
merchants began searching for ways of developing a system of exchanges to aid

the US export trade. Articulating their own desires for economic growth and

expansion through the Pan-Americanism of Secretary of State James G. Blaine

and the slumbering prophesy of the Monroe Doctrine, American business

envisioned a US-dominated hemispheric market supported by a New York City-

centered international banking and financia} infrastructure. The US presence in

Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean and Hawaii and the Philippines in the

Pacific, created a far-flung commercial network held in place by the keystone of

Panama Canal. All that was missing was a navy and merchant marine to man the

maritime routes striating this vast territory - and the machinery of international

banking.

The earliest calls for the development of an international American

banking institution were raised at the first International American Conference,

held in Washington in 1889 to promote trade relations and the standardization of

commercial protocols within the hemisphere. 14 Delegates to the conference

pointed to the growing trade figures of the Americas as both a sign of the great

strength of the bonds between the American republics, and as symptomatic of its

primary weakness: its domination by European financiers. In the fiscal year

ending on June 30, 1889, the total foreign commerce of the Caribbean, Mexico,

14
The following year, Japanese businessman Nee Soko traveled to New York and
San Francisco to gain support for the organization of an international banking
institution, capitalist at $6,000,000, with branches in Japan, China, and the United
states for Asian trade. Nothing appears to have come of his efforts. See: "Plans for
an International Bank System," The Bankers' Magazine (April 1890) 801

37
and South and Central American amounted to sorne $1.2 billion United States

gold; in the same year, almost $300 million worth of goods were exchanged

between the United States and South and Central America. European banks

financed the bulk of this trade. An American merchant importing or exporting

goods to or from Latin America had to present a letter of credit, secured from a

European bank established in the region, to a Latin American merchant for an

advance on agricultura! products or manufactured goods, remitting funds to

Europe to cover the cost of the transaction. In the process, American merchants

were charged three-quarters of one percent of the total cost of the shipped goods

as well as the fees for exchanging US gold for Mexican silver or Spanish gold for

sterling and back again for US gold. European banks, noted the delegates, "reap

this great profit ata minimum risk. " 15 Besides using the shipped goods as

collateral, American merchants often had to deposit cash with European bankers

before their drafts reached maturity - causing a great problem of liquidity for

American merchants that invariably stymied the growth of commerce by retarding

the expansion of credit.

The report from the Conference's Committee on Banking argued that the

future development of the hemisphere was contingent upon breaking the

dependence on European banking institutions, especially the powerful, London-

based British imperial banks. To staunch the loss of commissions to European

15
lnternational American Conference. "International American Bank." Report of
the Majority of the Committee on Banking. Reports of Committees and
Discussions Thereon. Volume Il (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1890)
829-837. PAGE

38
bankers, and to help promete not only the efficiency of financia! transactions

within the hemisphere but also the region's very economic independence,

delegates to the conference passed a resolution calling for the opening of a pan-

American or American International bank. The bank would be authorized by the

United States Congress to instill public confidence in its stability and liquidity.

Shares would be issued to the other American republics taking part and branches

or agencies would also be established beyond Washington. lt would have no

power of note issuance but could issue letters of credits and make loans. 16

The plan for the American International Bank was endorsed by President

Benjamin Harrison and Secretary of S tate Blaine, as well as by industry journals

such as the Bankers' Magazine and Statistical Register. 17 But no headway was

made with its organization and its plan stalled until 1897. At that time, during the

fall convention of the New York Board of Trade and Transportation, the idea of

an American International Bank was again raised. Delegates cited its importance

in facilitating hemispheric trade and, furthermore, promoting the international

financia! supremacy of New York City. "Why may not Greater New York

become first the Clearing House of the business of this hemisphere," asked one

16
lnternational American Conference. "lnternational American Bank." Report of
the Majority of the Committee on Banking. Reports of Committees and
Discussions Thereon. Volume 11 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1890)
829-837; United States. Congress. House Committee on Banking and Currency.
Sorne facts and lnformation about the Proposed lnternational American Bank
(Washington: GPO, 1897-8).
17
"South American Trade and Banking," The Banker's Magazine and Statistical
Register XLIV: 11 (May, 1890) 817.

39
delegate, "and later on the Clearing House of the commerce of the world?" 18 That

year Congress passed a bill authorizing the charter for the lnternational American

Bank. Initially, it would be capitalized at $5 million, though this sum could be

increased to a maximum of $25 mili ion. The Comptroller of the Currency would

supervise it. After sorne senators complained of its potential monopoly on

international banking, the bill was amended, allowing any group of citizens

complying with the requirements of the charter to organize a similar institution. 19

The plan for the bank received strong editorial endorsements from the

Washington Post and the New York Times. The latter linked the bank's

importance to gendered discourses of national development and imperial virility,

claiming that the lack of an American international bank was an affront to the

United States' manliness. "This nation combines in a singular degree the powers

of stalwart manhood with the weakness of infancy," the Times wrote. Contrasting

the manufacturing strength of the country with its dependence on European

exchanges, they saw the current American way of commerce as "a preposterously

childish way of doing business." 20 Still, the bank remained on paper only. The

following year, commenting on the Jack of movement in the bank's realization,

the Bankers' Magazine reversed its position from earlier in the decade and

18
"An International Bank," New York Times (October 16, 1897) 16
19
"The Pan-American Bank," New York Times (June 18, 1898) 5
20
"Goes to Senate," Chicago Daily Tribune, (Jun 18, 1898) 9; "The International
Bank Bill," New York Times (January 26, 1898), 6; "The American lnternational
Bank," Chicago Daily Tribune, (June 19, 1898), 28 "International American
Bank," The Washington Post (March 17, 1898) 4; "The Pan American Bank,"
New York Times (Jun 17, 1898), 4.

40
claimed that there was no need for a federal institution whose business could be

handled by existing private, state, and national banking institutions. The editors

evoked a general suspicion of federally organized banking institutions and their

potential tendencies towards national monopoly dating back to the failure of the

Second Bank of the United States, while claiming that existing banking facilities

would work. "Naturally it is suspected that the extraordinary powers are desired

to enable the incorporators to exercise a sinister competition in other branches of

the banking business." 21

During the second International American Conference, held in Mexico

City in 1902, delegates affirmed the claims made by the first Conference, also

voting in favor of an International American bank. 22 1t was not until the 1915 Pan

American Financial Conference in Washington, and the subsequent organization

of the Mercantil e Bank of the Americas, that the dream of a pan-American bank

was realized. In the meantime, privately organized financial institutions, like

those associated with speculator William H. Hunt, stepped into the breach.

"Any and alllawful business, whatsoever, wheresoever, and whensover"

21
"An International Bank," The Bankers' Magazine and Statistical Register 59:
(July-December, 1899). On the Second Bank of the United States
22
lnternational American Conference. Organization of the conference, projects,
reports, motions, debates and resolution (Mexico: Government Printing Office,
1902) page. United States. Congress. 57 1h, ¡st Session. Second lnternational
Conference of American States. Messagefrom the President ofthe United States,
Transmitting A Communication from the Secretary of S tate Submitting the
Report, with Accompanying Papers, of the Delegates of the United States to the
Second lnternational Conference of American States, held at the City of Mexico
from October 22, 1901, to January 22, 1902. April29, 1902. 7, 21, 173

41
While the plan for a federally-chartered international financia! institution went

nowhere, a number of private bankers stepped into the arena, taking up the mantle

of pan-American banking and setting up branches and agencies in the Caribbean,

Latin America, and domestically for their own commercial interests. They found

their way around legislation restricting branch banking by chartering in states like

Delaware and West Virginia with liberal banking laws. They operated

unsupervised across state !ines and in the lax (or nonexistent) regulatory

environments of countries like Mexico and Cuba. Sorne of these companies, like

the Pan-American Bank and Trust Company (PABTC), were successful.

Journalists claimed that PABTC, organized in 1903 by a syndicate of northeastern

banking and industrial interests, would eventual! y "ha ve control practically of the

finances of [Mexico]." Mexican President Porfiro Díaz, who eagerly sought

foreign investment as part of his program of modernization, granted it a

concession. 23 Others still, like the West Virginia-chartered, Illinois-based

American lnternational Bank, were found to have depositors, but no assets. When

it went into receivership in 1905, al! the Chicago police could claim was its

furniture. lts dissolution prompted calls for more stringent regulations of

institutions using the word "bank" in their name. 24

William H. Hunt's Pan-American Bank was the most notorious example

of this species of international American financia! institution. In 1901, Hunt,

23
"Plan for Mexican Bank," New York Times (June 6,1903) 2.
24<'Depositors but no assets," Chicago Daily Tribune (Mar 11, 1905) 6; "Head
aches, bank closes," Chicago Daily Tribune (Mar 10, 1905). 4

42
seeing the possibility of diverting remittance income from European banks in

Mexico and undoubtedly encouraged by the climate of the Porfiriato, organized

the Mexican Trust Company (MTC). Because of its competitive rates of discount,

it soon had seven branches in Mexico, as well as agencies in New York and

Chicago, and further plans to expand in the US, South America, and Europe. 25 In

1903, the MTC merged with Charles Francis Phillip's Corporation Trust

Company, forming the International Banking and Corporation Trust Company

(IBCTC). 26 A circular released by the bank claimed that under Mexican

corporation laws the combined charter of the new company allowed it to engage

in "any and alllawful business, whatsoever, wheresoever, and whensover"-

including the power "to undertake the management of a sovereign government."

"Well might the prospectus of the IBCTC remark in closing," quipped the New

York Times, "under this charter no opportunity for profit need be neglected, for

there is practically no limit whatsoever to the scope of the operations allowed." 27

Less than ayear after its merger, on October 18, 1903, the Mexico City

Branch of the IBCTC closed its doors and the Mexican courts appointed a

receiver to preside over its liquidation. The bank's cashier claimed he had

received a telegram from Hunt instructing him to forward all deposits to the New

York parent, draining the bank of funds. Hunt denied the cashier's accusations

25
"Manila's First American Bank." New York Times (Jun 15, 1902) 3
26
"International Bank Planned," New York Times (Jul 24, 1902), 11; "Latin-
American Bank is Formed," Chicago Daily Tribune, (Sep 5, 1902), 5 "To control
Mexican banks," The Washington Post, (Sep 5, 1902), 4.
27
"The International Bank," New York Times (Nov 1, 1903) F1

43
and blamed the insolvency on a run of Mexican depositors who wiped out the

bank's reserve by withdrawing more than $600,000. 28 The actual cause of the

crisis was not determined, however, and Hunt set about re-organizing the bank by

forming a new company, the Pan-American Bank (PAB). IBCTC depositors were

offered stock options in the new institution at the par value of their deposits. But

during the re-organization, it emerged that the new underwriters were barely

solvent and, additionally, that the stockholders of the bank directed deposits to

personal accounts despite knowing of the bank's insolvency. The company's

underwriters had marginal credit, at best, and the directors appeared to be

reorganizing for their own benefit. 29

Hunt was arrested in New York on January 21st, 1905 and extradited to

Chicago- the press reporting on his every move- where proceedings were

instigated against him for "collusion, trickery and fraud." He at first pleaded not

guilty to the charges, claiming securities he possessed would cover depositors'

losses. Two weeks later, however, apparently realizing he was caught, he

admitted his culpability and, in September, 1905 was found guilty of

embezzlement, ordered to pay a fine of $298, and sentenced to a one- to three-

28
"Banks Close their Doors," The Washington Post (Oct 20, 1903) 3; "Mexican
Bank Failure," Los Angeles Times (Oct 20, 1903) 2; "Bank to be re-organized,"
New York Times, (Dec 15, 1903) 11; "The Pan American Bank," Wall Street
Journal, (Jan 5, 1904), 7; "Planto Rehabilitate a Bank," New York Times, (Jan 5,
1904), 11.
29
s"To Reorganize Bank," Los Angeles Times (May 15, 1904) Cl.

44
year prison term. Ayear later, Hunt was refused bis liberty on a writ of habeas

corpus and he disappeared from the world of finance. 30

Banking and the Art of American Colonial Government

While debates over a Pan-American commercial bank were occurring amongst

bankers, businessmen, and politicians, the United States government needed to

extend its banking facilities as part of the colonial administration of Cuba, Puerto

Rico, the Philippines and, later, the Panama Canal Zone. Banking was notan

explicit part of what W. F. Willoughby, Treasurer of Puerto Rico, called the

"dual problem" of colonial administration: "that of colonial government proper,

and that of the education of the colonists in the art of government." 31 For

Willoughby and other American colonial bureaucrats, alongside the more

workaday questions of governmental bureaucratic organization in the insular

territories, the aim of colonial administration was establishing the institutions for

self-government while, at the same time, educating the natives in the practices of

sovereignty.

30
"Creditors Charge Collusion," The Washington Post (February 16, 1905) 2;
"Pan-American Bank Head Sentenced." New York Times (September 21, 1905), 2;
"Banker Hunt is Refused Liberty," Chicago Daily Tribune, (August 3, 1906),
"W.H. Hunt pleads guilty." New York Times, (April 13, 1905) 8; "Bail for Banker
Hunt," The Washington Post, (January 29, 1905); "Securities on their way," The
Washington Post (January 30, 1905) l.
31
W. F. Willoughby, Territories and Dependencies ofthe United States: Their
Government and Administration, (New York: The Century Co, 1905) 14. On the
philosophy of US colonial administration and the "art of colonial governance" see
Albert J. Beveridge, "The Development of a Colonial Policy for the United
States," Annals ofthe American Academy of Political and Social Science, 30 (July
1907), 3-15.

45
 Yet the broader concern with financia! reformas part of the civilizational

project of US occupation was part of the question of colonial governance and

administration. Alongside sanitation, education, land, and currency reforms, both

bankers and colonial bureaucrats viewed the establishment of "American"

banking facilities as necessary for an organized and efficient economy and as a

way of aiding the development of insular economies retarded by Spain's colonial

policy- which bankrupted the colonies by directing all revenue out of the country

- and, especially in the case of Cuba, devastated by war. 32

Already receiving applications to incorporate national banking

associations in Puerto Rico and Hawaii, Comptroller of the Currency Charles

Dawes urged the United States Congress in 1898 to enact legislation regulating

banking in the insular territories and setting out the legal relations of domestic

banks to the United States' colonies?3 Dawes' concern was primarily of a

commercial nature. Like the delegates to the 1889 lnternational American

Conference, whose report he cited, he argued that without its own international

(or what he called "intercolonial") banking institutions, US foreign trade would be

impaired- as would the development of the colonies themselves?4 In the same

32
For an example of US disgust with Spain' s colonial administration, see Frank
W. Blackmar, "Spanish Colonial Policy," Essays in Colonial Finance, Members
of the American Economic Association, Eds. (New York: American Economic
Association, 1900).
33
"Banks for newly acquired territories." Chicago Daily (August 5, 1898), 7
34
United States. Department of the Treasury. Comptroller of the Currency.
Annual Report ofthe Comptroller ofthe Currency to the Third Session ofthe
Fifty-Fifth Congress ofthe United States. December 5, 1898. Volume l.
(Washington: GPO, 1898) XLIV

46
year, Charles A. Conant, calling on Secretary of the Treasury Lyman Gage for a

radically revised national banking act, argued that if the United States was to

become a world power, it would have to allow its bankers to establish branches in

Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and China to aid US foreign business and to

"enter unfettered u pon the race for the control of the world' s exchanges" - a race

dominated by Great Britain, with its imperial banks, although both Russia and

Germany appeared as worthy rivals in the competition. 35

Dawes' and Conant's calls were echoed by the American bankers and

businessmen, who, following the conflict with Spain, joined the army of

journalists and government officials who fanned out into the United States'

newly-acquired territories, exhaustively cataloging their commercial potential. 36

They found the culture of banking, as Americans knew it, to be practically non-

35
Charles A. Conant, "Revenue is too Great," The Washington Post (September 5,
1898) 4.
36
See, for example, Charles Morris, Our /stand Empire: A Hand-Book ofCuba,
Porto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippine Islands (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott
1899), 158-9; Robert P. Porter, "The Future of Cuba," North American Review,
(168: DIX, Apr 1899), 13; William Jared Clark, Commercial Cuba: A Handbook
for Business Men (New York: Charles Scribner's 1898), 144; W.G. Bowdoin, A
Step Across the Gulf: Cuba: Commercial, Agricultura!, Historical Statistical ...
Pictorially Presented (Savannah, GA: Pant System, 1899) 21; Franklin Matthews,
The New Born Cuba (New York: Harper and Brothers,1899) 197. This official
literature includes: On Cuba, Robert P. Porter, Report on the Commercial and
Industrial Condition ofthe Island ofCuba (Washington: GPO, 1898). This was
reprinted as Commercial Cuba (New York: G.P. Putnam' s Sons, 1899). On
Puerto Rico, Robert P. Porter, Report on the Currency Question of Porto Rico
(Washington, GPO, 1899); Guy V. Henry, "Remarks on The Financia!
Administration of Colonial Dependencies." Journal of Social Science 37
(December 1899) 158-164. On the Philippines, see Edward W. Harden, Report on
thefinancial and industrial conditions ofthe Philippine Islands (Washington,
Government Printing Office, 1898) and Frank A. Vanderlip, "Facts about the
Philippines," Century Illustrated Magazine LVI: 4 (Aug 1898), 555-564.

47
existent. While claims that there were no savings banks in the islands were

exaggerated, they were not far from the truth. In Puerto Rico, there were three. 37

In Cuba the only savings bank suspended operations in 1884 after the manager

shot himself in the head and an audit revealed unpaid debts dating back to the

bank' s establishment in 1856?8 Sin ce then, in Cuba, as well as in the Philippines,

the Monte de Piedad, an institution similar to a pawnshop that offered low interest

loans secured by pledges of personal possessions and household items, was the

only credit institution available to workers. 39 The relatively recent fact of

emancipation in Cuba, and its potential effects on the development of credit

institutions, did not seem to occur to American observers. Their informants on the

industrial conditions of the island were limited to planters and merchants. 40 If

37
"Exhibit V: Letter from P. Salazar, of A.S. Lascelles & Co., Coffee Exchange,
New York to Lyman J. Gage, Secretary ofthe Treasury, August 12, 1898," Report
on the Currency Question of Porto Rico, Robert P. Porter, Ed. (Washington:
GPO, 1899) 11. Also: D.P. Bailey, "Banking in Cuba," The Bankers' Magazine
and Statistical Register 38: 12 (June 1884) 921.
38
Robert P. Porter. Appendix to the Report on the Commercial and Industrial
Condition ofthe !stand ofCuba (Washington: GPO, 1899) 214. "The only savings
bank in Cuba failed in 1884, ruining in its fall not only those who had deposited
their funds here, but also the share holders and to this day no other institution has
been established to take its place, and at the present moment there is not a single
public institution where money can be deposited in large or small quantities
earning interest." See "Banking in Cuba," The Bankers Magazine, (June 1884)
921-923
39
Henry C. Ide, "Banking, Currency and Finance in the Philippines Islands,"
Annals ofthe American Academy of Political and Social Science 30 (July, 1907)
27. On the history of the Monte de Piede in Cuba see Jose Antonio Pulido
Ledesma, El Monte de Piedad: Comercio y Usura (La Habana: Editorial de
Ciencias Sociales, 1996)
40
In his famous autobiography, for instance, Esteban Montejo describes a
"currency situation" from below, as it were, for emancipated slaves. Cf: Estaban

48
vernacular or indigenous forms of credit organization existed in Cuba, Puerto

Rico, or the Philippines prior to the occupation, they escaped the notice of

American authorities.

The natives, according to American observers, knew nothing of thrift. And

thrift, for every American since Benjamin Franklin (whom the National City Bank

would later term "Father of Thrift"), was the key to the modern reformation of the

individual and the state through their mutual and repressive entrance into the

market. Instead, observers found a culture of hoarding; business people

maintained stacks of silver and gold in their offices and vaults, rarely lending

them out for profit or otherwise putting it into circulation as a means of increasing

the wealth of the country. Credit systems were based on familia! ties and marked

by infuriatingly long duration. Checks were all but unknown. Monetary standards

constantly shifted and a head-spinning array of currencies circulated, forcing

merchants to keep accounts, in Cuba at least, in three different standards while

encouraging the proliferation of hundreds of curbside exchange houses that

profited off the constant fluctuations of value. One observer described Cuba's

monetary geography as a '"mongrel' system of coinage."41 The phrase contains an

implied notion of the economy as a hybrid, biological entity containing a moody,

Montejo, The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave, Miguel Barnet, Ed. Jocasta

Innes, Trans. (Toronto: Bodley Head, 1968) 24, 70.
41
A. Hyatt Verrill, Cuba: Past and Present (New York: Dodd, Mead, and
Company, 1914) 60. On the Cuban currency situation during the Occupation, see,
Robert P. Porter, Report on the Commercial and Industrial Condition of the
/stand ofCuba. (Washington GPO, 1898) 6-9

49
fluctuating, and erratic standard of value whose racial grammar paralleled, in the

eyes of Americans, that of the country's racial and national development.

A large group of private Cuban, Spanish, French, and German merchant

banks financing the export trade existed in the American colonies despite both the

conflict and the onerous conditions Spain imposed on business in its colonies. 42

Many of the banks in Cuba and Puerto Rico had long-established links to New

York and Boston through the trade in coffee, sugar, and other regional export

staples. 43 But the only banks of issue- the Banco Español de la Isle de Cuba, the

Banco Español de Puerto Rico, and the Banco Español de Filipino- were

chartered by Spanish royal decree, given a monopoly on note issuance,

maintained a policy dictated by the interests of the Spanish colonial government,

and offered little support to the economic ambitions of the creole bourgeoisie. 44 In

the Philippines, the Department of the Treasury's Committee on the Currency

encouraged extending the National Banking Act to the islands to allow national

42
For a list of these banks in Havana, see: William J. Clark, Commercial Cuba: A
Bookfor Business Men (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898) 478; and
Official Commercial Directory of Cuba, Porto Rico and the entire West Indies
with Bermudafor 1901 containing complete commerciallists and descriptions of
the various islands and colonies their customs tariffs statistical information etc.
(New York: Spanish-American Directories Company, 1901) 54-55.
43
The extent of these connections is ill ustrated by the 1899 editions of the
Banker's Directory, the first edition through which listings of "Colonial and
Intercolonial Banks" appear. The most prominent American institutions in Cuba
and Puerto Rico were the firms Lawrence Turnure & Co., (the former Moses
Taylor & Co. with ties to the Farmers Loan and Trust Company and the National
City Bank), as well as of Knauth, Nachode & Kuhne; and Muller, Schalle & Co ..
All three had vast networks of private merchant banks as correspondents.
44
The best history of the Banco Español de la Isla de Cuba is Susan J. Fernandez,
Encumbered Cuba: Capital Markets and Revolt, 1878-1895 (Gainsesville: U
Press of Florida, 2002), 85-115.

50
banking institutions to establish themselves as banks of issue, restricted only by a

set reserve requirement. 45 There, the Banco Español threatened to sue the US

government, claiming that their monopoly on note issuance granted by Spain

should continue under the new regime. In Puerto Rico, the Banco Español was

allowed to continue its operations, though under a charter whose main revision

consisted in nominally de-linking it from Spain. 46 The National Banking Act was

extended to Puerto Rico, though the first national banking association (the First

National Bank of Porto Rico) was not organized there until 1903. 47 Similarly, in

Cuba, the Banco Español was reorganized as a prívate concern after the Spanish

evacuation, joining other prívate banks like Zaldo y Hijos and Bances y

Compania who had been financing Cuban export trade for years. Even though

members of the Cuban Junta had argued for banking reform, echoing similar

suggestions from earlier in the century, banking in Cuba remained unregulated

well into the twenties, falling under the jurisdiction of an inherited Spanish

45
US Commission on International Exchange (Hugh. H. Hanna, Charles A.
Conant, Jeremiah W. Jenks, Commissioners) Report on the Introduction ofthe
Gold-Exchange Standard into China, the Philippine /slands, Panama, and Other
Silver-Using Countries and on the Stability of Exchange (Washington: GPO,
1904).
46
United States. Senate. 56th Congress. The Spanish Bank of Puerto Rico.
February 26, 1900.
47
"Financial Institutions of Porto Rico." Bankers' Magazine 68:1 (January 1904)
28. For an appraisal of the history of the accession of the fiscal responsibility for
Porto Rico see J. H. Hollander, "The Finances of Porto Rico," Political Science
Quarterly XCI: 4(December 1901) 553-582

51
commercial code that did not distinguish financial institutions from other types of

business. 48

In the immediate years of occupation, US military and financial history

and practice converged. The House Committee on Insular Affairs authorized

Elihu Root's War Department, the government agency in charge of Cuba, Puerto

Rico, and the Philippines, to use private banks as depositories for insular funds

and for the collection of local taxation and customs revenue, and deployed them

as fiscal agents for dispersing monies to local governments for civil salaries and

public works financing. 49 Other public monies, such as for the payment of US

officers, were dispersed through the Secretary of the Treasury who, domestically,

used national banking associations as depositories of public funds, but since there

were no national banking associations in the insular territories, Secretary of the

48
Dionisio Alcala Galiana, De la círculation en Cuba y de su actual estado
(Habana: Imprenta del tiempo 1859); Rafael Calzadilla, La cuestión monetaria
cubana en sus aspectos econiómico y politico (New York: S Figueroa, 1898);
Gordon Ireland, "Observations upon the status of Corporations in Cuba Since
1898," Pennsylvania Law Review 76:43 (1927) 43-73.
49
United States. 56th Congress, 1st Session. Report No. 712. Safe-Keeping and
Disbursement of Public Moneys in the Philippines, Etc. March 19, 1900.
Apparently there was sorne competition for these positions, but how the final
decisions were determined, I have yet to find out. National City petitioned the
Naval Secretary for the Philippines account, which it would administer through
the Deutsche Bank. It al so competed for the Pan ama account in 1904, the bank' s
principals, including James Stillman, filing a petition with the Comptroller of the
Currency to establish a branch there. CF Robert Stanley Mayer, The Influence of
Frank A. Vanderlip and the National City Bank on American Commerce and
Foreign Policy, 1910-1920 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987); "Standard Oil
Interest After Bank in Panama," New York Times, (May 18, 1904).

52
Treasury Lyman Gage appealed to Congress to allow provision for the Treasury

to designate established bankers for Treasury funds. 50

In Puerto Rico, de Ford and Company of Boston and the American

Colonial Bank, chartered in West Virginia by the New York merchants Muller,

Schalle and Co. and Cuban-American banker Juan Ceballos, took on these

responsibilities. 51 In Cuba, the contract was originally granted to the Banco

Español but was rescinded and transferred to New York's North American Trust

Company after Cubans protested the use of such a blatant symbol of Spanish

colonial rule. 52 The newly-formed International Banking Corporation, chartered in

Connecticut, and the Guaranty Trust Company of New York, originally organized

in 1864, were chosen for the Philippines. 53 The Guaranty Trust transferred its

50
United S tates. 561h Congress, 1st Session. Depositaries of Public Moneys in
Islands Under Administration of United States. Letter from the Secretary ofthe
Treasury, in Relation to Establishing Depositaries of Public Money in Islands
Under Administration ofthe United States. (December 14, 1899).
51
"American Colonial Bank in Porto Rico," The Washington Post (April 29, 1899)
4; "Financial Institutions of Porto Rico," Bankers' Magazine 68:1 (January 1904),
28.
52
E. F. Ladd, "Report of Major E. F. Ladd, Treasurer of the Island of Cuba," Civil
Report of Majar General Leonard Wood, Military Governor ofCuba. Volume V:
Finance, (Washington: GPO, 1900) 7.
53
Between 1902 and 1912, the number of banks the US administration would
deploy in the Philippines expanded rapidly. The IBC was joined by the Morton
Trust, New York (1906); Mercantil e Trust, St. Louis, Missouri (1907); the
National City Bank of New York, Standard Trust, New York City; Central Trust
Company of Illinois; Seattle National Bank, Seattle, Washington; National Bank
of Iowa, Boise, (1909); Union Trust Company, New York; Illinois Trust and
Savings Bank, Chicago; National Bank of Commerce, Seattle (1910); and the
Commercial National Bank, Washington, DC (1911).

53
business to the IBC soon after opening in Manila, however. 54 When the United

States carved the Republic of Panama out of Colombia in 1904, the contractas

fiscal agent of the new-born protectorate was given to J. P. Morgan. Morgan

reportedly received $300,000 annually for his role as fiscal agent to the

Panamanian government - in addition to $57,283 made in the $40 mi Ilion transfer

of the rights of the New Panama Canal Company to the United States

government. 55 The profits made by other banks as fiscal agents are near

impossible to determine because of the lack of existing records. Depositaries were

required to post a bond of various approved securities whose value equaled that of

a given deposit with the Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland or the US

Fidelity and Guaranty Company. While they could not charge for actually holding

deposits, they received one quarter of one percent discounted from every

disbursement made. 56

The United States also turned to Canadian and British banks for assistance

in fiscal operations. Both had prior experience in the foreign field and, in the case

54
"American Dependencies," Current Literature XXXIV: 5(May 1903) 520;
Henry W. Lucy, "Far East Bank Move: Guaranty Trust Assigns lts Interests in
Shanghai, Hongkong, and Manila to the International Banking Corporation," New
York Times (February 7, 1904) 4.
55
Vincent P. Carosso, The Morgans: Private International Bankers, 1854-1913
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1987), 822 n. 58 Carosso points out that the
amount of the yearly contract is neither refuted not confirmed in the archives of
the company.
56
United States. Senate. Fifty-sixth Congress. Document no. 440. Letter from the
Secretary ofWar, In response to Resolution ofthe Senate of May 22, 1900,
Relative to the North American Trust Company, A Corporation organized under
the laws ofthe state of New York, having its principal office in the city of New
York, and Branch alfices at Havana, Santiago, Cienfuegos, and Matanzas, in the
/stand ofCuba. (Washington: GPO, 1900)

54
of the British banks, colonial administration. Canadian banks, building on the

nineteenth-century Atlantic trade of rum, sugar, and cod, pioneered extending

North American banking facilities into the Caribbean. They were the first North

American institutions to engage in Caribbean trade financing, in part stepping into

the void created by the legal restrictions on US branch banking to finance US-

Caribbean commerce. 57 The Royal Bank of Canada (originally chartered in 1864

in Halifax as the Merchant' s Bank) established two branches in Bermuda in 1882,

both of which failed soon after opening, and a permanent branch in Havana in

1898 after the visit of manager E.L. Pease at the conclusion of the war. 58 It

expanded after purchasing the assets of the Banco d'Oriente in Santiago in 1903

and would later win contracts from the War Department to distribute the $31

million due the Army of Liberation 59 - a fact that they apparently thought would

get them more Cuban customers. During the 191 Os, they would advertise in the

Cuban financial press as the agente fiscal del gobierno de la republica de cuba

para el pago de los cheques del ejercito libertador.ro By 1910 the Royal Bank

had created a far-flung network that had 200 branches world-wide including

57
For an overview of the history of Canadian banking in the Anglophone
Caribbean, see Daniel Jay Baum, The Banks ofCanada in the Commonwealth
Caribbean: Economic Nationalism and Multinational Enterprises of a Medium
Power (New York: Praeger, 1974)
58
"Growth of Royal Bank of Canada," Wall Street Journal (August, 21, 1926) 6
59
James Muir, "Hace 60 Años," The Royal Bank of Canada en Cuba (Habana:
The Royal Bank of Canada, 1958); Francis Sherman, The Complete Poems of
Francis Sherman, Lorne Pierce, Ed. (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1935), "Cuban
Soldiers Sold the Scrip," Wall Street Journal (Aug 18, 1906) 8.
roSee the Royal Bank of Canada advertisements in various issues of El
Economista y Revista Comercial (Havana) between 1903 and 1907.

55
eleven in Cuba, two in Puerto Rico, and one in each of Nassau, Port-of-Spain, and

Kingston. 61 lt was to become the largest rival of National City and the other US

banks involved in financing sugar and other Cuban industries. The Bank of Nova

Scotia, established in Halifax in 1832 for the trade between the Canadian

maritime and the West Indies, opened a branch in Kingston, Jamaica in 1889.

Seven years later it opened a branch in Cuba, followed by one in Puerto Rico in

1910, and in the Dominican Republic in 1920. 62

In addition to the Canadian banks, the Americans also called on British

institutions for aid. The British had developed and international branch since that

was long admired by the US banking community. Since the middle of the

nineteenth century, British banks were involved with both financing colonial trade

and aiding colonial administration in the Empire. The Caribbean region was

dominated by Barclays Dominion, Colonial and Overseas, founded as the

Colonial Bank in 1836 to deal, in part, with the brief prosperity of the colonies

following the influx of capital as compensation to former slave holders in the

61
La Habana y sus grandes edificios modernos: Obra conmemorativa del N
centenario de su fundacion (Habana: Pernas y Figueroa 1919) 82; "Royal Bank of
Canada," Wall Street Journal (September 1, 1910) 8
62
Joseph Schull and J. Douglas Gibson. The Scotiabank Story: A History ofthe
Bank of Nova Scotia, 1832-1982 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1982); Bank of Nova
Scotia, Bank of Nova Scotia: One Hundredth Anniversary, 1832-1932 (Toronto:
Bank of Nova Scotia, 1932); Neil C. Quigley, "The Bank of Nova Scotia in the
Cari bbean, 1889-1940," Business History Review 63 (Winter 89): 797-838. The
Canadian Bank of Commerce al so opened branches in Cuba, Jamaica, Barbados,
and Trinidad through the twenties. The Bank of Montreal appears to ha ve had
interests in Cuba from 1898 through William Van Horne and the Cuba Company.

56
wake of emancipation. 63 In Latín America, they established the London and River

Plate, the bank of Tarapaca and Argentina, and the London and Brazilian Bank. In

Asia, they were served by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, the

Chartered Bank of India, Australia, and China, and the Y okohama Specie Bank,

Imperial Bank of China, Mercantile Bank of India, National Bank of China, The

Bank of Japan -as well as, in Australia, the London Bank of Australia, the Bank

of Australasia, and the Commercial Bank of Australia. Trade between Europe and

Africa was financed through the Bank of Africa, the Standard Bank of South

Africa, the Bank of Egypt, and the Anglo-Egyptian Bank. 64 The US authorities

originally commissioned the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and

the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China as depositories in the

Philippines. 65 However, according to one report, the exorbitant exchange rates

63
Barclays, DCO. A banking centenary: Barclays bank (Dominion, Colonial and
overseas) 1836-1936 (Plymouth: W. Brendon & Son, Ltd., 1938) 126.
64
William L. Moyer, "International Banking," New York Times (January 1, 1903).
For overviews of the history of British banks in the colonies, see A. Raman.
British overseas banking in the developing countries: the past, present & the
future, (Madras, Simma Enterprises and Printers 1976). W.T. Newlyn and D.C.
Rowan, Money andBanking in British Colonial Africa (New York: Oxford UP,
1954); Keith le Cheminant. Colonial and Foreign Banking Systems (London:
Routledge, 1924); A. S. J. Baster, The Imperial Banks (London: P. S. King & Son,
1929); Geoffrey Jones, British Multinational Banking, 1830-1990 (New York:
Oxford UP, 1993); Richard S. Sayers, Banking in the British Commonwealth
(New York: Oxford UP, 1952). For a summary of European colonial banking at
the turn of the century, see Emil S. Fischer, "The Expansion of American Banking
in the Far East," Bankers' Magazine 64:1 (Jan 1902),19.
65
"Banks in the Philippines," The Washington Post (Jun 11, 1903) 5; "American
Dependencies," Current Literature XXXIV: 5 (May 1903) 520; Henry C. Ide,
"Banking, Currency and Finance in the Philippine Islands," Annals ofthe
American Academy of Política! and Social Science, 30 (July, 1907), 27-37; United
States. Bureau of Insular Affairs. Report of the Chief of the Bureau of Insular

57
charged by the bank, as well as the "many opportunities [that] arose for them

seriously to hamper the fiscal operations of the government," prompted the United

States authorities to drop the British banks. 66

American Imperial Banking and the Rise of Private Indirect Government

At the same time that New York bankers aided the United States government in

direct colonial supervision and administration in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the

Philippines, Panama, and China, they were also instrumental in developing the

terms, methods, and protocols of neo-colonialism and "private indirect

government," as Achilles Mbembe has termed it- the devolution and transfer of

state functions to the private sector- that marked the forms of imperial

governmentality of the African, Asian, Latin American and Caribbean

postcolonies of the late-twentieth century via the International Monetary Fund and

the World Bank. 67 Sorne historians have seen this as a shift from "colonialism,"

as a practice of outright military conquest and territorial control, to

"professionalism," using strategies that maintained territorial integrity and state

sovereignty while disciplining states through fiscal regulation, debt management,

and the deployment of financia) advisors and experts to enact and administer

Affairs to the Secretary ofWar. (Washington, GPO, 1904), 17; United States. War
Department. "Report for 1901." Five Years ofthe War Departmentfollowing the
War with Spin, 1899-1903, as Shown in the Reports of the Secretary of War.
(Washigton: GPO, 1904) 228; "Manila's First American Bank," New York Times
(Jun 15, 1902), 3.
66
"American Bank for the Orient," Chicago Daily (December 16, 1901)1.
67
Achille Mbembe, On Private lndirect Government (Dakar: Council for the
Development of Social Science Research in Africa, 1999).

58
economic reform. 68 But such progressivist and evolutionary models of colonial

power neglect the fact that apparently antiseptic modes of professionalism were

often only possible because of a prior colonial violence and often recurred to

violence for their enshrinement. Thus, in Cuba's case, the threat of and monopoly

on violence by the United States was written into the Cuban constitution through

the Platt Amendment, and those countries where the new form of professionalism

were first deployed - Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua -were

subjected to the most brutal forms of US military intervention and occupation of

the first half of the twentieth century. 69

Before 1 turn to the relationship between violence and professionalism,

however, parenthetically, it is worth noting that these Caribbean and Latin

68
Emily S. Rosenberg and Norman L. Rosenberg, "From Colonialism to
Professionalism: the Public-Private Dynamic in United States Foreign Financia)
Advising, 1898-1929," The Journal of American History, 74:1 (June, 1987), 59-
82. Also, David M. Pletcher, The Diplomacy ofTrade and Investment: American
Economic Expansion in the Hemisphere, 1865-1930 (Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 1998). Of course, a more radical, anti-evolutionary take on the
question of neo-colonialism and finance is provided within a so-called
"nationalist" historiography of empire and colonialism. See, for instance, Frantz
Fanon, The Wretched ofthe Earth Trans. Constance Farrington (New York:
Grove Press, 1968), 95-106; Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage
of Imperialism (New York: lnternational Publishers, 1965); Walter Rodney, How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa, (Washington, DC: Howard University Press,
1982).
69
The third clause of the Platt Amendment reads "That the government of Cuba
consents that the United States may exercise the right to intervene for the
preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate
for the protection of life, property, and individualliberty, and for discharging the
obligations with respect to Cuba imposed by the treaty of Paris on the United
S tates, now to be assumed and undertaken by the government of Cuba. IV. That
all Acts of the United States in Cuba during its military occupancy thereof are
ratified and validated, and all lawful rights acquired there under shall be
maintained and protected."

59
America loans were not the first floated by New York bankers. The private firms

of J.P. Morgan and Co. and Speyer and Co. both participated in, or organized,

syndicates floating government bonds in the region. 70 Through its London

affiliate, J.P. Morgan participated in syndicates organized by European banks

loaning money to the governments of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Peru and Brazil

- and, thus, were silent partners to European informal empire in Latin America.

While they aborted plans to float a municipal bond for Havana in 1883, Morgan,

along with J. & W. Seligman and Winslow, Lanier & Co., was a part of the

American Committee on the Panama Canal Company, receiving $400,000 in fees

before resigning in October, 1888, ayear before the company collapsed, wiping

out the savings of thousands of French workers and peasants who had bought into

Ferdinand de Lesseps dream. 71 In 1899, Morgan floated a $110 million five

percent loan to Mexico. lt was the first issue of foreign securities payable in New

York, instead of London or another European capital. 72

In 1904, Speyer & Co. headed a syndicate that secured a $35 million five-

percent loan to the Cuban government at 90 112, and a $40 million four-percent

loan to Mexico at 93 112. Members of the syndicate included the Mutual and the

Equitable Life Insurance Companies; the Union, Central and Guaranty Trust

Companies; the National City Bank, Harvey Fisk & Sons, and Lazard Freres, all

7
°For a Iist of US flotations of Caribbean loans prior to 1914, see Appendix A.
For a breakdown of how the loan syndicates operated see Appendix B.
71
Carosso, The Morgans, 217.
72
"The Bond Market," Wall Street Journal (June 14, 1909) 5. On Morgan's Latin
American loans see Carosso, The Morgans, op. Cit, 209-211,413-420.

60
of New York; the First National Bank of Chicago, the Girard Trust Company of

Philadelphia, the Old Colony Trust Company of Boston; Berlin's Deutsche Bank;

and Speyer's affiliates in London, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam. 73 Speyer also

gained a twenty-year monopoly for the building of railroads in northern Mexico in

1904. 74 The following year they joined with National City to forma construction

company for the building of a railroad from La Paz to the Chilean border for the

Bolivian government ata cost of $27 mi ilion. Y ears later National City President

Frank A. Vanderlip stated that while he had preferred the importation of Sikh

labour, the Bolivian government instead used the army to conscript local Indians.

"At intervals the impressed swarms were released," wrote Vanderlip, "and their

places were taken by another round-up of conscripts." When National City sold

their interests to a British firm two years later, Vanderlip recalled that "the bank

got out with something like $1,000,000 of profit. " 75 On the other hand, by the

73
See Mexico. Contratos celebrados entre los Estatos Unidos Mexicanos y
Speyer y Cia., por su mismos y por Speyer brothers, Lazard Speyere-Elllissen,
Deutsche Bank y Teixeira de Mattoos brothers, y Banco nacional de Mexico. En
31 de octubre de 1904, y en 29 de noviembre de 1904. (Mexico: Publishers, 1904)
74
Mexican Central Railway Company agreement dated May 12, 1904, Kuhn,
Loeb & Co., Speyer & Co., New York, Speyer Brothers, London.
75
Frank A. Vanderlip with Boyden Sparkes. From Farm Boy to Financier (New
York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1935). 158. Cf: Contract and concession
for the construction and operation ofrailways: The Republic of Bolivia with the
National City Bank and Messrs. Speyer & Co., May 22, 1906; Republic of Bolivia
with the National City Bank and Messrs. Speyer and Co., Supplements to
Contract and concession of the construction and operations railways (np: 1906)

61
1930s, the Bolivian government traced their current financia! problems to this

initialloan. 76

But to return to Wall Street and the Caribbean in the context of the rise of

private-indirect government and fiscal control, though the British colonial

administration of Egypt provided the original model for these arrangements, the

first instance in the American context occurred through the work of the Santo

Domingo Improvement Company (SDIC) and its subsidiaries. 77 The SDIC was

organized in 1892 by a group of New York businessmen with el ose ti es to the

White House and Dominican President Ulises Heureux. In 1893, the SDIC

refunded much of the Dominican debt, at that point held by Europeans financiers,

and contracted with the government for a number of road and railway building

projects. They also attempted to institute currency and agricultura! reform

designed to expand the export base of the economy but which only succeeded in

plunging the country further into debt and economic chaos. Heureux was

assassinated in July 1899. Two years later, the SDIC was expelled from the

country and the Dominican government repudiated their debts to the company. 78

76
Max Winkler, Foreign Bonds: An Autopsy (Philadelphia: Roland Swain
Company, 1933) 55-57.
77
On the Egyptian precedent, see Melvin Knight, The Americans in Santo
Domingo (New York: Vanguard Press, 1928) 22.
78
The comprehensive account of the Santo Domingo Improvement Company is
Cyrus Veeser, A World Saje For Capitalism: Dollar Diplomacy and America's
Rise to Global Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). For a
succinct and devastating characterization of the Dominican debt crisis from the
nineteenth century, see Jacob H. Hollander, "The Financia! Difficulties of San
Domingo," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 30
(July 1907) 93-103.

62
While the SDIC's appeals to the U.S. State Department for intervention into Santo

Domingo to protect their interests were turned down, in 1904 the company

reached a settlement with the Dominican government through international

arbitration in which the Dominican's recognized their claims to $4,500,000. They

agreed to pay the SDIC in monthly installments of $37,500, increasing to

$41,666.66 after two years, with four percent yearly interest secured by customs

revenues and port dues. In the event of default, the SDIC was permitted to expand

their collection to additional ports.

But the country's European creditors felt that the Dominican government

privileged American interests over those of their own citizens. Paced with the

threat of European seizure of Dominican ports as a means of rectifying this

perceived imbalance, US President Theodore Roosevelt, in his December, 1904

message to Congress outlined an arrangement that would, in theory, satisfy both

the European and American creditors, ensure interna) stability, and maintain US

hegemony in the region under the Monroe Doctrine. His plan, known as the

Roosevelt Corollary, became the basis for the policy of "dollar diplomacy"

employed in the Caribbean and Central America by the subsequent

administrations of Presidents William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson.

Roosevelt proposed the American "financia) rehabilitation" of Santo Domingo

through an arrangement loosely based on the Platt Amendment's paternalistic

clauses. Under the Platt Amendment, the Cuban government could not contract

63
external debt without the approval of the US government. 79 In the Dominican

case, the United States gained fiscal control of the country. Dominican customs

revenues would be collected by a fiscal agent appointed by the United States and

deposited in the National City Bank of New York. Forty-five percent of the

revenue would be returned to the Dominican government for its operations, the

other fifty-five percent would be distributed pro rata amongst the nation's

American and European creditors. lf the Dominicans defaulted, the US reserved

the right to intervene militarily in the country to seize various custom ports and

collect further debts. Two years later, in 1907, the United States and the

Dominican governments signed a convention based largely on Roosevelt's initial

proposal. The $3 million dollars that had accrued in National City's vaults in the

interim was transferred to the Morton Trust Company, and the entire public debt

was refunded through a $20 million US bond issued by Kuhn, Loeb & Co. 80

The convention between the United States and the Dominican Republic

marked the first time that State Department interest in the international

commercial affairs of private bankers was coordinated with bankers' interest in

the foreign policy aims of the state. This new model of contract became a

prototype for the shape of relations between the State Department, private

79
Article 11 of the Platt Amendment reads: "The Government of Cuba shall not
assume or contract any public debt to pay the interest upon which, and to make
reasonable sinking-fund provision for the ultimate discharge of which, the
ordinary revenues of the Island of Cuba, after defraying the current expenses of
the Government, shall be inadequate."
80
The 1907 Treaty is reproduced in Nearing and Freeman, Dollar Diplomacy,
312-315.

64
bankers, and Caribbean and Central American governments. President William

Howard Taft evoked the Dominican Convention while encouraging loan

negotiations between New York bankers and the Republics of Honduras,

Nicaragua, and Costa Rica in the 1910s. However, these models were contested.

The loan proposals to Honduras and Costa Rica were rejected by the congresses

of the respective countries, however, and public pressure drastically reduced the

scale of Wall Street involvement in Nicaragua.

In the Honduran case, a loan was proposed to place the government on

sound financia! footing by retiring a debt of $26,000,000, bloated to $128,000,000

with accrued interest, that had accumulated since the end of the nineteenth

century. The debt crippled the Honduran government and appeared to the State

Department as a potential threat to the stability of the region. A group of bankers

-J. P. Morgan, Kuhn, Loeb, the National City Bank, and the First National Bank-

proposed to settle the claims by European countries by refunding the entire debt

for $10,000,000, raising the funds through a five percent bond sold at 88. The

customs receipts were set aside for interest payments and internal improvements

and the syndicate received a claim to the railway anda concession to establish a

commercial bank acting as fiscal agent, depositar and the national mint. The

Guaranty Trust Company acted as the fiscal agent for the loan and the US

recommended customs receivers. 81

81
For a full account of these negotiations see: Juan E. Paredes, The Morgan-
Honduran Loan (New Orleans: L. Graham, 1911); Honduras. The republic of
Honduras and J.P. Morgan & Co., Kuhn, Loeb & Co., National City Bank of New

65
 In Costa Rica, the National City Bank proposed a contract converting the debt by

offering a loan through which the entire customs duties were pledged to the bank, and, in

the case of default, the United States were granted the right to military intervention. 82 In

Nicaragua, Brown Brothers and J. & W. Seligman hired Charles A. Conant and Francis

C. Harrison, recently Head Commissioner of the Paper Currency of British India, paying

them each $10,000 from the Nicaraguan treasury, to commission a study on the finances

of the republic before it was offered a loan. Conant and Harrison recommended retiring

the depreciated paper currency that had been in use since 1893 and adapting a gold coin,

the Córdoba, at par with the dollar. The bank would offer a ten million dollar loan

secured through a lien on customs receipts. They also established and took a fifty-one

percent stake in a Connecticut-chartered bank of issue that would serve as a depository

and fiscal agent for the Nicaraguan government. 83

11.

York and First National Bank of New York. Agreement dated February 15, 1911;
La república de Honduras y J.P. Morgan & Co., Kuhn, Loeb & Co., National City
Bank of New York and First National Bank of New York. Convenio. Celebrado
enfebrero 15 de 1911.
82
"Defaulted Loans in Latin America," Bankers' Magazine 80: 4 (April 1910),
605.
83
For Conant's assessment of the background of the affair see, Charles A. Conant,
"Our Mission in Nicaragua," The North American Review 196: DCLXXX (July,
1912), 63-72. Charles A. Conant and F.C. Harrison, Monetary Reformfor
Nicaragua. Report Presenting a Plan of Monetary Reform for Nicaragua,
submitted to Messrs. Brown Brothers & Company and Messrs. J& W Seligman &
Company, by Messrs. F.C. Harrison and Charles A. Conant, Apri/23, 1912.
(New York: W. R. Ficke 1912). For a summary ofthe loan negotiations and their
consequences, see Nearing and Freeman, op. Cit. 151-172.

66
No single American financia! institution dominated the international field before

the First World War. Speyer and Morgan may have been the great American

lenders to the Caribbean and Latín America during this period, but they did not

venture into the foreign field as commercial banks. There were three

organizations, however, beyond the fly-by-night pan-American banks, that

emerged from the jurisdictional tangle concerning American banking abroad and

acted as the forward guard of the rapid and total saturation of Caribbean financia!

markets after 1914: the lnternational Banking Corporation; the long-term

partnership of Samuel Miller Jarvis and Roland Ray Conklin; and the National

City Bank of New York, the powerful national banking association led by James

A. Stillman and Frank A. Vanderlip. The International Banking Corporation

emerged as the staid patriarch of New York's international banking community.

Jarvis and Conklin were wily upstarts, standard bearers of individualist

entrepreneurialism. National City would lay the groundwork for the tremendous

expansion of American banking in the foreign field during and after the War.

The remainder of this chapter discussions these three institutions in turn.

"A world-encircling banking corporation ": The lnternational Ranking

Corporation

The International Banking Corporation was perhaps the most important institution

in the development of a permanent infrastructure for American international

banking operating before 1914- save National City, which, in 1915, purchased

67
the IBC's network of international agencies wholesale. Chartered in Connecticut

in 1901, the IBC was the brainchild of General Thomas Hamlin Hubbard, a

decorated Civil War Veteran and law graduate of Bowdoin College. Hubbard had

a vision of a "world-encircling banking corporation," an international American

merchant bank that could furnish financia! services to American manufacturers

and exporters in foreign markets, aid in the United States' commercial and

military expansion, and contribute to New York's international financia!

supremacy. 84 The organization of the IBC, one observer commented, was the

"first step toward the transfer from London to New York of the financia!

supremacy of the world." 85 Hubbard, squarely placing the bank within the

purview of the relationship of American empire to New York banking, and

American rhetorics of messianic mission and growth, claimed that the bank's

organization was "but the natural outgrowth of the commercial and territorial

expansion of the United States."86

The IBC was modeled after the British imperial banks that had up to that

point dominated international trade. One of their first managers, John B. Lee, had

previously spent twenty-two years with England's Charted Bank of India,

Australia and China. The vast, decentralized network of overseas branches of the

British banks allowed them to gain on the ground knowledge of local economic

conditions. Regional managers, with local linguistic aptitude, had a better grasp

84
"Holland writes of..." The Washington Post (Nov 3, 1915), 10.
85
"Fiscal Agents in Orient," Washington Post (January 1, 1902).
86
"Many Branch Banks to be Established," New York Times (January 2, 1902), 6.

68
on local conditions than the London home offices because of their long-term

cultivation of a network of trade, agricultura!, and manufacturing correspondents.

They could thus aid English exporters in suggesting what kinds of goods were

appropriate for specific markets and in determining where capital exports could

receive their most profitable rates of return.

The IBC incorporated in Connecticut beca use the state' s relatively lax

policy regarding banking examinations made it easier for the IBC to maintain a

world-wide network of branch banks. lts charter was similar in most respects to

American banks except for the provision, radical at the time in the United States,

where the benefits of branch-banking was still very much open to debate,

allowing it "to establish branches in any part or parts of the world." 87

Headquarters were established at 1 Wall Street at Broadway in New York, and

branches were initially opened in London, Manila, and Shanghai - the latter run

by James S. Fearon, banker, merchant and head of the militant trade organization

the American Asiatic Society. 88 Other branches were la ter opened in Y okohama,

Shanghai, San Francisco, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Penang, Rangoon, Amey,

87
"Cabinet names agent to collect indemnity," New York Times (Jan 1, 1902);
William L. Moyer "lnternational Banking," New York Times (January 4, 1903);
3"The International Bank," Los Angeles Times (January 2nct, 1902); "Many Branch
banks to be established," New York Times (January 2, 1902). "lnternational
Banking Corporation," New York Times (January 1st, 1902).
88
lnternational Banking Corporation, Charter and by-laws, New York:
lnternational Banking Corporation, 1902. On the American Asiatic Association,
see James J. Lorence, "Coordinating Business Interests and the Open Door
Policy: The American Asiatic Association, 1898-1904," Building the
Organizational Society: Essays on Associated Activities in Modern America, Jerry
Israel, Ed., (New York: The Free Press, 1972) 127-142.

69
Hankow, Canton, and Tien-Tsin. The IBC's New York address processed for

foreign exchange and acted as a clearinghouse for its international branches; the

other branches transferred funds through direct wire, issued letters of credit, and

offered interest-bearing checking accounts and high-interest, fixed-term deposit

certificates.

The IBC's first actions were to secure the contractas fiscal agent for the

War Department in the Philippines, andas collector of the United States' $25

mili ion indemnity share of the $333 million paid to it, along with Russia,

Germany, England, for damages to foreign property sustained during the Boxer

Rebellion. 89 In 1902, Chinese nationals called for a boycott of the bank in

response to anti-Asian immigration policies in the United States. 90 In 1904, they

became one of four American banks who obtained contracts for operations in the

Canal Zone, establishing branches in Panama City, Colon, and Empire. They

acted as depositories for the Canal funds. They would also set up in the

89
At the same time, the Guaranty Trust Company, founded as the New York
Guaranty and Indemnity Company in 1864, and re-organized to manage railway
stocks in the late nineteenth century, also attempted to secure contracts with the
US government in the Pacific. Their work as a government depository in the
Philippines was short lived, however, and their operations were taken over by the
IBC (and their role as fiscal agents for the syndicate floating loans to Santo
Domingo appears to have been largely passive.) They did not assume a prominent
role in international financing until their organization of the ambitious and ill-
fated Mercantile Bank of the Americas. See Guaranty Trust Company of New
York, One Hundred Years of Banking Service, 1839-1939, (New York: Guaranty
Trust Company of New York, 1939) 29
90
"International Banking Corporation," Washington Post (February 24, 1907);
"Capital ten millions," Washington Post, (November 11, 1902); Citigroup,
Citibank: A Century in Asia (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2002)

70
Dominican Republic in 1913 as part ofthe 1907 convention, while loaning money

on sugar harvests and plantation mortgages.

But more than these specific actions, the link between the IBC and

American empire was actualized by the make up of its directorship. The bank's

directorate included individuals well-established in banking, insurance, industrial,

and manufacturing, providing a ready made force for the conquest of foreign

markets and the commercial invasion of territories previously dominated by

Europe. Like many of the IBC's directors, Hubbard was linked to the Equitable

Life Assurance Company and the Western National Bank, as well asto a group of

railroads throughout the country. 91 The IBC's first president, Marcellus Hartley,

was al so a director of the Western National, the Equitable Life Assurance

Company, and, ironically enough, a number of arms and munitions companies

including the Remington Arms Company, Union Metallic Cartridge Company,

the Remington Arms Company, the Bridgeport Gun Implement Company, the

American Ordnance Company and the M. Hartley Company. 92 (Hartley, who also

91
Hubbard served as a director for the Guatemala Central, the Chattanooga
Southern, the Wabash Railroad, the Southern Pacific Railroad, the Austin and
Northwestern, the Central Texas and Northwestern, the Fort Worth and New
Orleans Railway, the Houston and Texas Central Railroad Company, the Mexican
International Railroad Company, the Oregon and California Railroad, and the
South Pacific Coast Railway Co. He was also a director of the Acadia Coa!
Company, the Central Park Safe Deposit Company, the Chattanooga Southern
Railroad, the Detroit City Gas Company, the Pacific Improvement Company, the
Toledo, St. Louis and Western Rail Road Company, the Wabash Rail Road, the
Washington Building Company.
92
Hartley was a director of the Mercantile Trust Company, the American
District Telegraph Company, the Manhattan Railway Company, and the
Westinghouse Electrical and Manufacturing Company. He was also a

71
had banking, steel, and railroad interests, died soon after the bank was chartered

and William L. Moyer, of New York's Mechanics and Traders Bank, was elected

President.)

Other IBC figures associated with the Equitable included Valentine P.

Snyder, W.H. Mclntyre, Edward F. Cragin, James W. Alexander and James H.

Hyde. Snyder was also president of the Western National Bank. Cragin was a

director of the Trust Company of America; Mclntyre of the Colonial Bank of

London. Hyde's father, Henry Baldwin Hyde, founded the Equitable. 93 Jules S.

Bache, broker and head of the private bank Jules S. Bache and Co., vice president

of the Toledo St. Louis and Kansas City Railroad, and a director of the Banco

Nacionale de Cuba was on the board, as was Eugene Delano of Brown Brothers

and William Salomon of Speyer &Co. and founder of William Salomon & Co.,

predecessor to the investment bank, Salomon Smith Barney. So was P.H. Flynn,

director of the Hamilton Trust Company of Brooklyn, and Juan M. Ceballos,

called the J.P. Morgan of Cuba, a Cuban-American merchant and private banker

who had extensive interests in banking, breweries, construction, sugar and

shipping in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the United States. Edward H. Harriman of the

Union Pacific sat on the board, as did Collis P. Huntington of the South Pacific

Trustee in the American Deposit and Loan Company, the American Surety
Company, and the Fifth Avenue Trust Company.
93
The younger Hyde, a known Francophile, threw a notorious $200,000 hall in a
hall that neo-classical auteur Stanford White recreated as a wing of Louis XIV
court in Versailles. The party's decadence led toa public outcry andan
investigation into the insurance industry, at the end of which Hyde resigned from
all of his business concerns and relocated to Versailles, where he lived until 1941.

72
Railway. Isaac Guggenheim was there alongside Henry Clay Frick, the Pittsburgh

coke producer and steel manufacture involved in United States Steel Corporation,

and union-busting during the 1892 strike at Carnegie's Homestead Works left

sixteen workers dead and motivated anarchist Alexander Berkmann's

assassination attempt.

"To rob, steel and plunder": Samuel Miller Jarvis and Roland Ray Conklin

The International Banking Corporation represented the energy of American

banking power in support of American expansion in its coordinated, corporate

form: a consortium of powerful manufacturing and financia! interests bonding

together under the sign of national progress. 94 The partnership of Samuel M.

Jarvis and Roland R. Conklin represented the cavalier, pioneering, and

individualist ethos of American capitalism. Described by a contemporary as a

"gang of crooks," whose higher aims were to "rob, steal, and plunder," the story

of Jarvis and Conklin offers one of the more interesting, and perhaps least known,

subplots of the international history of American banking. 95 Their tale stretches

from the American West to the new American frontiers in Cuba, the Dominican

Republic and Nicaragua.

94
See if Vanderlip correspondence has anything on IBC financing figures.
95
Conference with Charles M. Lewis, Cuban Representative, Fire Insurance
Company, Hartford, CT, February 10, 1926, Leland Hamilton Jenks Collection on
the Cuban Sugar Industry 1925-1934. (C0712) Special Collections, Princeton
University, Princeton New Jersey

73
 Lawyer Samuel M. Jarvis formed a partnership with accountant Roland R.

Conklin in Winfield, Kansas in 1876. 96 The company moved to Kansas City,

Missouri in 1880 and, in 1886, after severa) successful years, incorporated as the

Jarvis-Conklin Mortgage and Trust Company an organization that directed

English investment capital into Kansas City real estate development, particularly

to the tony Hyde Park and Rowland Park neighborhoods. Jarvis-Conklin became

one of the better-known firms in the city. lt hadan office in New York, Iinks toa

number of other regional banking institution, and connections to New York's

National Bank of Commerce and Philadelphia's lndependence National Bank. 97 1t

was the first US financia) institution to set up a branch overseas, in London in

From the start, Jarvis and Conklin were able to corral huge sums of money

even as they were continually dogged by scandal. In 1892, the company was

96
Biographical data on Jarvis and Conklin can be found in Theodore S. Case,
History of Kansas City, Missouri, With Illustrations and biographical sketches of
sorne of its prominent men and pioneers (Syracuse, New York: D. Masen & CO,
1888), 265-267,464-5,548. Additionally, on Jarvis, see "S.M. Jarvis, Banker,
Dead," New York Times (December 27, 1913), 9; and on Conklin, see "R.R.
Conklin Dies; Retired Financier," New York Times (Jan 3, 1938), 21. William S.
Worley offers a Iimited history of Jarvis and Conklin's Kansas City days in his
J.C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City: Innovation in Planned Residential
Communities (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990), 29-31, 52-3, 268.
97
The Bankers Directory and Collection Guide. (New York: Bradford Rhodes &
Co., 1887): 142.
98
The London branch was run by F. H. Sheldon. His wife, Mary French-Sheldon,
was a paid apologist and lobbyist for King Leopold of Belgium and the Congo
Free State anda friend of Stanley Livingstone. She published her accounts of her
own expeditions to Africa as Sultan to Sultan: Adventures among the Masai and
other Tribes of East Africa (1892). See Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost:
A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (New York: Houghto
Mifflin, 1999), 237-8

74
involved in a well-publicized incident involving a Canadian racketeer dubbed

Embezzler Kerr. Augustus Theophilus Kerr had inherited a comfortable fortune,

estimated at $150,000, which he lost through stock and grain speculation in

Ontario. Kerr opened a number of bucket shops (an unregistered brokerage house

using their customer's capital to gamble on the stock exchange) in Toronto and

then drifted to Kansas City where he became Jarvis and Conklin 's head

bookkeeper. After resigning for health reasons in April 1892, a routine audit of

his books revealed $12,000 in missing securities. Further investigation by the

American Surety Company revealed that he had been leading a double life: using

company money to both fund a lavish Iifestyle far beyond his means as a

bookkeeper and support his penchants for stock speculation. He fled first to

Canada, then to Europe, where he lost most of his new-found fortune gambling,

then to England, where he gained confidence with the locals by, as one report

noted, "proclaiming himself an American capitalist." He was eventually traced to

Liverpool where he was caught trying to cash securities belonging to Jarvis-

Conklin. While being extradited back to the US, he announced that he was being

persecuted for the information he had regarding the company's illicit business

practices and had written an expose of the company. 99

Kerr wound up in prison back in Kansas City. The details of his

accusations were not revealed. However, his claims foreshadowed the company's

99
"Comes in Shackles," Chicago Daily (December 8, 1892); "Embezzler Kerr
Brought Back," New York Times (December 6 1892); "Arrest of the Jarvis-
Conklin Embezzler." Chicago Daily Tribune (October 20, 1892) 9; "Because He
Exposed the Company," The Washington Post (Nov 18, 1892) 7

75
practices over the next twenty years. Following the crash of 1893, the Jarvis-

Conklin carne into conflict with the Farmers Alliance. The Alliance posses seized

lands repossessed by the company, evicted the Jarvis and Conklin representatives

and returned it to the prior owners. The same year the company was faced with

their own foreclosure as a series of outstanding indebentures were reaching

maturity and the company did not have the resources to make payments to its

creditors. The company went into receivership and Jarvis and Conklin were

appointed the receivers. The English creditors were furious, arguing that not only

was it irresponsible for the courts to appoint as receivers the same individuals that

drove the company into bankruptcy, but alleging that the company's failure was

due to Jarvis and Conklin' s reckless management and fraudulent accounting

practices. Creditors claimed that Jarvis and Conklin took $32,000 for themselves

and $180,000 for the company when it failed. They asserted that the receivership

plan was part of a hustle wherein they devalued the assets of the company and

later purchased them at below-market prices through straw men, in-laws and

associates of Jarvis and Conklin, who would then transfer the mortgages back to

the duo through a corporate facrade named the Western Improvement Company . 100

The mortgages were then re-sold at more than double their actual worth to

investors unaware of the behind-the-scenes dealings. 101

100
"Two Receivers Appointed," New York Times, (September 29, 1893).
101
"Wants the receivers removed," New York Times (August, 29,1894); "Gross
Mortgage Frauds Alleged," Chicago Daily Tribune (August 23, 1894); "A Big
Mortgage" Los Angeles Times (January 3'd, 1894); New York Times, "In and about
Wall Street" (May 19, 1894); "Jarvis-Conklin Assets," Wall Street Journal (July

76
 In December 1895 the company's assets were auctioned in New York and

bought in their entirety by the North American Trust Company (NATC), founded

in 1885 in New York and later absorbed by the Chase Manhattan Bank. 102 "This

sale," noted the New York Times, "is practically a reorganization of the old

company." 103 Indeed, the North American counted Jarvis as President and Conklin

as Vice President. But the duo's involvement in the American operations of the

NATC was short lived. In 1898, Jarvis went to Cuba, where he was appointed to

the War Department's Finance Commission, responsible for reorganizing the

revenue and taxation of Havana. 104 He resigned soon after, however, apparently

realizing the profits that could be made in private banking. President McKinley

granted Jarvis a concession to actas the fiscal agent for both the Treasury and

War Departments in Cuba and at the same time, the NATC began operating a

commercial banking business with branches in Santiago de Cuba, in a building

formerly occupied by the Banco Español, and Havana, that was praised for its

19, 1894) "Jarvis-Conklin Paper to be sold," Chicago Daily Tribune, (August 18,
1894).
102
The North American was involved in a unprecedented series of mergers with
other trust companies at the beginning of the century creating a bank- what a
contemporary journalist called a "financial department store"- capitalized near
$50 million with branches across the country. Included in the merger were the
International Banking and Trust Company, the Ninth National Bank, the Trust
Company of New York, and the Corporation Trust Company. Cf: "Place for Col.
Trenholm," New York Times (January 20, 1898).
103
"Securities sold at big Discount," New York Times, (December 6
1895); "Sale of Assets" Los Angeles Times (December 12, 1895).
104
Annual Report of Brigadier-General William Ludlow, United States Army,
Military Governor of Habana, and Commanding Department of Habana, for the
period July 1, 1899, to May 1, 1900. (Wash: GPO, 1900). 36.

77
introduction of American banking methods to the island. 105 In 1900, the NATC

was subject toa congressional investigation after the New York Journal charged it

with breaching the anti-monopoly terms of the Foraker Amendment. 106 In

response, the bank claimed that they had never collected any revenue from their

employment as depositors and in sorne instances, it was costing them to provide

the service. N othing carne of the charges. Either way, in 1901, the North

American's Cuban operations were dissolved and the bank was reconstituted as

the Banco Nacional de Cuba. While controlled by Cuban, Spanish, and English

interests, Jarvis and Conklin remained on its board of directors. The Banco

Nacional also served as the Republic's depository, and yet again it faced

controversy; first, after issuing currency imprinted with the faces of Cuban

President Tomas Estrada Palma and his Treasury Secretary in 1905 apparently

exceeding the limits of its charter, and fifteen later, as the focal point of the

105
"New Investment Fields" New York Times, (August 4t\ 1898); "Fiscal Agents
at Santiago," New York Times, (August 12, 1898); "Revenue Agent in Cuba,"
New York Times (August 15, 1889); "Tells of Cuba's Bank," Chicago Daily
(August 31st, 1898); "Depository for Cuban Funds" Washington Post (May 11th,
1899); "Depository of Cuban Revenues," Washington Post, (May 7th, 1899). One
source claims that President McKinley owed Jarvis for "invaluable favors" the
banker lent the President during the War though I have not been able to
substantiate this. Franklin Matthews, The New Born Cuba (New York: Harper and
Brothers: 1899) 200.
106
See: United States. Senate. 56th Congress, 1st Session. Document No. 440.
Letter from the Secretary of War, In response to Resolution of the Senate of May
22, 1900, Relative to the North American Trust Company, A Corporation
organized under the laws ofthe state of New York, having its principal office in
the city of New York, and Branch offices at Havana, Santiago, Cienfuegos, and
Matanzas, in the /stand of Cuba.

78
banking crash following the post-war sugar boom. 107 Over the next few years,

Conklin remained in Cuba, maintaining interests in the Havana Telephone

Company, the Central Cuban Sugar Company, the Cuban Railroad, and other

companies in the Republic, before returning to his estate in Huntington, Long

Island, and becoming a prometer for motor buses.

Jarvis went to Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. 108 Jarvis's

excursion to Nicaragua was short-lived and unsuccessful. Despite (or perhaps

because of) the efforts in 1912 by Brown Brothers and Seligman, and the reforms

of Charles Conant and Francis Harrison, to place the country's financia! system

on a sound basis, the Nicaraguan government found itself short of money. The

Nicaraguans complained to the US State Department that there was only one bank

in the capital, but its resources were so meager that it could not fulfill the

country's credit needs, that interest rates throughout the country ranged from

eighteen to twenty-four percent, even for advances on the harvest. "We need a

bank with more capital," the Nicaraguan ministers wrote to Secretary of State

William Jennings Bryan, "and an experienced man who understands dealing with

our people at its head." 109 That man, they believed, was Samuel Miller Jarvis.

107
"National Bank of Cuba," Wall Street Journal (July 2, 1901) 2
108
Roland R. Conklin, Appellant, v. United Construction and Supply Company
and William J. Patterson and Hugh S. Jarvis, as Executors of and Trustees under
the Last Will and Testament of Samuel M. Jarvis, Deceased, Respondent,
Supreme Court of New York, Appellate Division, First Department, February 5,
1915; "The Cuban Telephone Company," The Times (London) (January 26,
1911), 13.
109
United States. Foreign Relations. "The Minister of Nicaragua and the Minister
of the Treasury of Nicaragua to the Secretary of State," ( Sept 1, 1913) 1050

79
Citing Jarvis' experience in Cuba, they seemed to think that Jarvis could not only

negotiate with Latin temperaments but that he could quickly float a loan of

between $2 and 2.5 million. Jarvis claimed he would put the first million up

himself and could raise the remainder through subscription in England. The

Nicaraugans recommended appointing Jarvis as the country's Finance

Commissioner, charged with caring for the republic's international financial

affairs, refunding the public debt, and securing additional loans. He would be

recompensed through an optional fifty-one percent stake in the national bank and

a one percent commission on any loans secured. 110 The loan, however, went to

Brown Brothers and Seligman.

Jarvis' experience in the Dominican Republic was justas unsuccessful,

though more acrimonious. Between 1905 and 1912, the Guaranty Trust Company

of New York (which had absorbed the Morton Trust Company, the original

depository, in 1910) 111 collected more than thirty-three million dollars in customs

duties as part of the convention between the Dominican Republic and the United

States signed in 1907 after the hassles with the Santo Domingo Improvement

Company. Fourteen million dollars of this amount went to the Dominican

government. Thirteen million went to the fiscal agents. The remainder, sorne six

million dollars, went to interest payments on the Dominican loan and the

expenses of the receivership and, hence profits to the Guaranty Trust Company

110
ibid.
111
"Morton Trust Company," Historical Directory ofthe Banks ofthe State of New
York, William H. Dillistin, Comp. (New York: New York State Bankers
Association, 1946) 53

80
and its agent in Santo Domingo, the Puerto Rican private banker Santiago

Michelena. 112 With his sights set on the receivership account profits Jarvis, with

Henry C. Niese, a staff member of the Banco Nacional de Cuba, organized the

Banco Nacional de Santo Domingo on January 31, 1912. Soon thereafter, the

Dominican government, finding itself in financia) straits because of the cost of

suppressing a series of interna) revolts, approached the bank for a loan of $1.5

million to keep it afloat. 113 The State Department invited additional proposals for

the contract and received a bid from the National City Bank. The National City

bid, at 97 112 percent and six percent interest, was preferred by the Dominican

government. 114 U pon learning that the Banco Nacional e' s bid had not been

accepted, Jarvis complained to Secretary of State Knox and the Dominican press,

arguing that not only had the National City bid been submitted after the deadline

but that it was, in fact, illegal as the interest rate on the loan, once its amortization

had been calculated, exceeded the maximum seven percent stipulated by the State

112
United States. Santo Domingo lnvestigation: Copy ofthe Report, Findings, and
Opinion of James D. Phelan, Commissioner named by the Secretary of State, with
the approval of the President, to investigate charges against the United States
Minister to the Dominican Republic (Washington: Gibson Brothers, 1916), 3. The
Guaranty Trust were found to have had "made illegal charges and engaged in
other doubtful practices in their handling of the 1907 $20 million loan, costing the
Dominican treasury $228,000, which the bank was forced to return in 1923." See
Bruce J. Calder, The lmpact of lntervention: The Dominican Republic during the
U.S. Occupation of 1916-1924 (Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1984), 80.
113
The diplomatic correspondence of the loan agreement, of which this section is
largely derived, is found in: United States. Foreign Relations. "Financia) Affairs-
Conclusion of a Loan Contract Between the Dominican Republic and the National
City Bank of New York, with the Approval of the United States." September 1,
1913 Avail: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.di.FRUS:456-467 p 1050.
114
"Bryan defends Minister Sullivan" New York Times (December 12, 1913)

81
Department. Knox investigated the complaints and found them baseless, pointing

out that it was the Dominican government that had made the final decision on the

loan and that they had found the National City bid somewhat stronger than the

Banco Nacional's. The National City bid was accepted on February 22nct, 1913-

three days before the Taft administration, and almost the entire Dominican

diplomatic staff, left office.

An embittered Jarvis, alongside his nephew, F.J.R. Mitchell, a New York

lawyer and president of the bank, decided to wage a low-intensity defamatory

campaign against Santiago Michelena in an attempt to secure the receivership

account as well as a separate account of public works funds. Through their

connections to newly-appointed Secretary of State Bryan, and, according to Dana

Munro, because of Bryan's sympathetic view of the Jarvis concern as a somehow

anti-corporate entity resisting the money-trust forces of National City, they

engineered the replacement of Russell as the US Minister to the Dominican

Republic with James M. Sullivan- an inexperienced and completely incompetent

individual with little to no experience in politics, no knowledge of Spanish, and a

proclivity to patronage, if not outright graft. Before his appointment, Mitchell,

publicly announcing that there would be a "general house cleaning" of the US

diplomatic offices and alluded to the fact that he knew who the new appointment

would be. 115

115
qtd. In Santo Domingo Investigation, 9.

82
 Upon arriving in Santo Domingo, Sullivan immediately got to work in the

service of the bank. "Under the previous American administration in Santo

Domingo," he reportedly stated during a dinner-party toast, "honest people could

not get their rights, and the best and straightest men, Mr. Jarvis and Mr. Mitchell,

had fought night and day without success; but now the American Minister has his

fist on the throat of Michelena, and if he does not come across, the fist is going to

close tighter and tighter until he suffocates." 116 Sullivan threatened Michelena

with an investigation into his financia! connections to the Dominican government,

imprisonment and, on at least one occasion, physical violence. He ordered the

public works fund, and, soon after, the customs receipts, transferred to the Banco

Nacional.

The Banco Nacional, however, was hardly solvent. During an

investigation into Sullivan 's conduct led by California Senator James D. Phelan,

one witnessed described the Banco Nacional as "a joke," claiming it had no credit

anywhere and "nobody would accept their notes of issue accept as handbills on

the street."m The former manager of the bank's exchange department asserted

that Sullivan, whose personal debts had already caused sorne concern in

Washington, was generally overdrawn at the Banco Nacional and was forced to

discount his salary in advance. The manager claimed that the bank only survived

by taking cash from the receivership accounts and through the personal

confidence other financia! institutions had in him. By 1914, the Dominican

116
lbid. 12
ll7"Domingo Probe hits W.J. Bryan" New York Times (January 1, 1915)

83
government was still deeply in debt, largely from a spate of borrowing since

Sullivan's arrival.

During the Phelan investigation Mitchell produced affidavits, later preven

false, alleging that former Customs Inspector Walker M. Vick, whose complaints

had triggered the investigation, had participated in a "Bacanallian orgy" and

committed "indecent acts" at Santo Domingo City's Shanghai Hotel in

September, 1913. lt also emerged that Jarvis' associates staged a series of

shooting incidents apparently designed to intimidate Vick. Mitchell claimed that

the Banco Nacional was acting in the interests of American patriotism, on one

hand, and against the tyranny of the Money Trust, on the other. However, the

Phelan report pointed out that the corporate citizenship of Santiago Michelena's

bank, chartered in Puerto Rico, was legally more American than the Banco

Nacional, which was incorporated in the Dominican Republic, and counted a

large share of English nationals as shareholders. National City Vice-President

Roger L. Farnham was produced as a witness to dismiss the conspiratorial

allegations of Money Trust designs on Santo Domingo. While Farnham claimed

that the bank's only interest in the country was through its loans, his later

appearances in Cuba and Haiti would suggest otherwise. Either way, Sullivan's

caseto continue as Minister to the Republic was not aided by the release of a

private letter in which he wrote that:

the trouble with the Dominican Republic is that many of the people are
unmoral [sic]. Religion ... is unable to cope with the savage, brutal
tendencies of a semi-civilization- a constant predisposition to immorality
and spoliation ... and no moral fiber or stability, anda gross and crass

84
 ignorance prevails throughout the land ... The men of this generation are
hopeless, the highest aspiration of the best being to make public office the
means for private plunder. 118

Sullivan, though perhaps expressing what many others believed (including

National City's Roger Farnham), was forced to resign his post. Bryan 's

diplomatic career was blighted by the scandal. The commercial operations of the

Banco Nacional de Santo Domingo continued on for a few more years, although

Jarvis died during the Phelan investigations.

In the meantime, Jarvis' longtime rival, the National City Bank of New

York, already among the most powerful in the country, was emerging as the

dominant American financia! force in the Caribbean.

"An epoch in the history ofbanking": The National City Bank ofNew York

The National City Bank of New York was originally organized as the City Bank

of New York in 1812 by former-Secretary of the Treasury Samuel Osgood. lt took

o ver the charter of Alexander Hamilton' s Bank of the U nited States after the

federal government decided not to renew it. It joined the National Banking Act in

1865, taking on the "national" in its name. Over the first century of its existence it

was known primarily through its association with the New York merchants who

served as its presidents: Isaac Wright, Moses Taylor, Percy Pyne, and, near the

end of the century, James A. Stillman. Under Stillman's watch, the bank's

prestige grew through a legendary policy of cautious but astute lending and

118
qtd in Santo Domingo lnvestigation, 28

85
constant supply of ready cash. This latter policy would bode well during the panic

of 1893 where National City, amongst all the New York banks would stand

resolute and solid; after the crash National City's deposits grew exponentially.

S ti liman' s ti es to Percy Rockefeller and Standard Oil did not hurt its growth.

National City provided the massive capitalizations needed for the expansion of

Standard Oil' s operations as well as the maintenance of reserves strong enough to

weather the oil industry's radical oscillations of production and investment. But

while National City became known in the press as the "Standard Oil bank" its

interests were hardly subordinate to the industrial giant and, under Stillman, while

other banks failed during the transition from merchant to industrial financing, it

would grow from a patrician nineteenth century merchant bank into a dynamic,

and flexible modern financia! institution governed by managerial principies and

active in the pursuit of investments and markets.

National City's interests in the Caribbean dated from the nineteenth

century. Moses Taylor, President of National City from 1856 to 1882 and

proprietor of Moses Taylor and Co., derived most of his profits from his dealings

with Cuban sugar planters. Taylor was thought to have made the sorne $3,000,000

in profits re-investing their money in US government securities. 119

119
Daniel Hodas, The Business Career of Moses Taylor: Merchant, Finance
Capitalist, and Industrialist (New York: New York University Press, 1976) 22-3.
Roland T. Ely, "The Old Cuba Trade: Highlights and Case Studies of Cuban-
American Interdependence during the Nineteenth Century," The Business History
Review 38:4 (Winter, 1964), 456-478; John Moody and George Kibbe Turner,
"Masters of Capital in America: Wall Street: The City Bank: The Federation of
Great Merchants" McClure's Magazine, (May 1911; VOL. XXXVII: 1) 74. But

86
 But it was under Stillman that the bank began to seriously considera push

overseas, with the Caribbean and Latin America seemingly its natural market.

Stillman saw the potential of the overseas market for the bank's expansion but did

not think American business was ready to enter the field; he worried that racial

and cultural differences between Americans and their neighbors in the hemisphere

were of far too great a difference and that there were not enough bankers trained

to staff a foreign network. 120 Nonetheless, in 1897, the bank opened a foreign

exchange department and set up agencies in Berlin, Hamburg, London, Paris, and

Brussells. 121 Vice President John E. Gardin took over the foreign department

1904, presiding over an expansion that saw it become, by 1909, the largest of any

American bank, handling transactions of more than $1 billion annually. 122 At the

same time, National City was becoming active in the floating of foreign securities.

1t was a syndicate partner in J .P. Morgan' s 1899 loan to Mexico, Speyer' s 1904

loans to Cuba and Mexico, and, also with Speyer, the Bolivian railway

construction contract of 1907. They joined with J.P. Morgan and First Natioanl in

al so see: see Louis Windmuller, "The Commercial Progress of Gotham," The

Progress ofthe Empire State: A Work Devoted to the Historical, Financia!, and
Literary Development of New York: Volume /: New York State and City. Charles
A. Conant, Ed., (New York: Progress of the Empire State Company, 1913).
PAGES; Lawrence Turnure and Co.: A Short History, 1832-1942(New York:
Lawrence Turnure and Co, 1942)
120
See "Holland writes of our Trade With South American Nations," The
Washington Post (July 23, 1912).
121
"Retrospect: From Foreign Parts" No. 8, III: 4 (January 1908) np
122
"Creation of a New Vice Presidency," No. 8, IV: 5 (January 1909) np; Robert
Mayer, "The Origins of the American Banking Empire in Latin America: Frank
A. Vanderlip and the National City Bank." Journal of Interamerican Studies and
World Affairs 15:1 (February 1973): 73 n. 5.

87
1908 to entera bid for the entire $30 million worth of United States anama

bonds. 123 While the banks attempts to refund the Costa Rican debt in 1911

failed, 124 the following year it was at the head of a syndicate floating the short

term, six percent, $1.5 million loan to the Dominican Republic, beating out Jarvis'

Banco Nacionale de Santo Domingo. 125

National City's extension into the Caribbean served asan experiment for

its later expansion throughout the hemisphere. Since branch banking was

prohibited under the National Bank Act, their initial foray occurred via the

establishment of correspondent relationships. The correspondent system had been

used domestically by since the beginning of the nineteenth century. lt was one of

the major reasons that New York grew to its financia) preeminence in the United

States. New York banks paid favorable rates of interests on deposits made by

country banks- what were called banker's balances or banker's deposits- as well

as using other banks for clearances, and to promote the sale of securities through a

ready-made network of buyers. 126 To establish a correspondent relationship, a

New York bank merely had to open an account with another bank and maintain

123
See "United States Panama 2% Bonds, 1918-38: Syndicate Records, December
4, 1908," ARC Syndicate Book, Volume 5, pp. 83-88 J.P. Morgan Library, New
York
1244
'Pan-American Bank," Wall Street Journal (Jan 28, 1910) 8
125
George M. Smith, "The Dominican Republic," No. 8 VIII: 5 (May, 1913) 10;
la Republica Dominicana. Secretaria de Estado y Comercio. Contrato de
Emprestito entre la Republica Dominicana y The Natioanl City Bank of New
York. De fecha 22 de Febrero de 1913. (Santo Domingo: El Tiempo, 1913).
126
On the development of correspondent banking, see Fritz Redlich, The Molding
of American Banking: Men and Ideas (New York: Johnson Reprint Company,
1968) 1947, 16, 53.

88
balances large enough to cover transaction fees or, through the directors, purchase

shares in the correspondent bank. Corresponden! banking circumvented the

restrictions on both branch banking by national banking associations while

allowing them to maintain holdings in other banks without purchasing them out

right- also illegal under the National Banking Act. Through correspondent

banking, bankers were able to create a complex, interconnected, and unregulated

web of banking institutions, in sorne cases involving thousands of regional

institutions. In this way, too, the spatial area the bank apprehended could be

expanded far beyond thejurisdiction of incorporation. By the 1910s fears of

banking monopoly were sparked by corresponden! banking. Critics of the system

argued that it encouraged the concentration of banking power and the monetary

supply in larger reserve cities like Chicago and New York, depriving other

regions of the country of both circulating capital and economic autonomy. 127

Sorne banks, like the First National and the Hanover National, specialized

in corresponden! relationships, becoming known as banker's banks. But National

City, under Taylor and Pyne, was slow to develop these links. Though it had had

connections to institutions like the Farmers Loan and Trust Company since the

early nineteenth century, by 1893, National City had only 116 correspondents and

but $2 million in bankers deposits. 128 When the Third National Bank -a bank

127
Harold van B. Cleveland and Thomas F. Heurtas, Citibank, 1812-1970
(Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1985) 44
128
On the history of the Farmers Loan and Trust Company, see Henry Wysham
Lanier, A Century of Banking in New York, 1822-1922 (New York: The Gilliss
Press, 1922). It would be completely absorbed by the bank in 1929.

89
known for its banker's balances- failed in 1897, Stillman purchased it. He

instilled Alonzo Barton Hepburn, formerly of the Comptroller, as Vice President,

but soon after, Hepburn resigned to take over the presidency of the Chase

National Bank, and Stillman appointed Frank A. Vanderlip. A former editor of the

London Economist and an assistant to Lyman Gage in the Treasury Department,

Vanderlip saw the correspondent system as one of the major ways he could

increase National City's business. His solicited correspondent accounts from the

hundreds of regional banks he had been in contact with during his stint in the

Treasury. As a result, between 1902 and 1905 National City's correspondents

more than doubled, expanding from 606 to 1,230. The $44 million in

correspondent accounts represented almost twenty percent of National City's total

capital. 129

In the Caribbean, National City's correspondent connections became

central to their growing commercial interests in the region. 130 In 1906, National

City was part of a consortium of European and American bankers that re-

organized Cuba's Zaldo y Hijos, a private merchant bank originally chartered in

1860 by Spanish immigrant Guillermo de Zaldo. It was engaged in sugar

financing and maintained a well developed set of financia) and commercial tiesto

129
Cleveland and Heurtas, Citibank, 46.
130
It was not alone in this respect. In the Caribbean, Speyer had connections with
Cuba's Upmann y Cia. J.P. Morgan was linked to the Banco Nacionale de Cuba
and to the Trust Company of Cuba, organized in 1905 by Norman H. Davis and
others. Lawrence Turnure had developed relationships with a number of Puerto
Rican and Cuban merchant banks. The Guaranty Trust and National City had
connections with Santiago Michelena in the Dominican Republic.

90
American and European banks. Also involved in the syndicate behind the new

institution, called the Banco de la Habana, were Kuhn, Loeb & Co., August

Belmont's Belmont and Company, and the venerable Farmers Loan and Trust

Company, all of New York; the Comptoir Nationale de Escompte, the Societe

General e, and the Banque Fran~aise pour le commerce et 1'industrie all of París;

and the London Bank of Mexico and South America, Warburg and Co., and

Henry Schroeder of London. 131 Carlos de Zaldo, of Zaldo y Hijos, was president

of the new institution. lt was partly managed by a New York committee of

National City personnel including John E. Gardin, James H. Post, al so of the

National Sugar Refining Company, and Alvin H. Krech, also President of the J.P.

Morgan-backed Equitable Trust Company. 132 In 1915, National City bought out

the competing interests and absorbed the bank completely, making it the center of

a planned Caribbean network. 133

During the same period, National City became interested in Haití through

the Banque Nationale de la Republique d'Haiti. In 1880, the Haitian government

granted a French company a concession to form the Banque Nationale d'Haiti, a

French société anonyme that acted as the government's treasury and floated the

public debt. Haitian President Simon rescinded its contract on October 25, 1910

131
"Havana Bank Liquidating," New York Times Jan 25, 1909. pg. 13
132
"Colonial Banks and Bankers," The Bankers Directory and Collection Guide.
(New York: Bradford Rhodes & Co., 1911).
133
Enrique Collazo Perez, Banco de la Habana: Un Caso de Penetracion
Interimperialista en Cuba (Habana: Banco Nacional de Cuba, Centro de
Documentacion, 1981); "Bank's West Indian Branch," Wall Street Journal
(August 23, 1915) 2.

91
and chartered a new institution the Banque Nationale de la République d'Haiti.

Roger Farnham, the National City Vice-President, who would eventually become

President of the Banque Nationale, claimed that Secretary of State Philander

Knox encouraged National City to take up stock in the bank as a way of

neutralizing the influence of European interests in the region as part of the

broader policy of dollar diplomacy. As with the Banco de la Habana, the BNH

was run by an administrative council divided between New York and Paris.

The management of the Banco de la Habana and the Banque National de

la République d'Haiti would fall under the auspices of the National City Company

and the National City Company, in turn, would play a massive part in the overseas

expansion of the National City Bank and, it was later revealed, in the fraudulent

stock exchange practices that contributed to investors' losses during the 1929

stock market crash. The organization of the National City Company was heralded

by the resurgence of calls, two decades after they were first heard, for the

organization of a pan-American or international American bank, as well as rumors

that one was actually being organized. 134 In a 1908 editorial, The Bankers'

Magazine, reversing their long held position against a federally-chartered pan-

American bank, called on the US Congress to establish such a bank, citing the

growth in foreign trade since 1898 and the Jack of an American banking

institution to carry it and the need to facilitate such transactions for the growth of

the country. "No sound reason exists why an American bank should not be

134
Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of the Finances for
the Fiscal year ended ]une 30, 1910. (Washington GPO, 1910) 6

92
established with branches in every part of the world, and thus reap part of the

profits now made by the banks of other nations," they wrote. "At our very doors-

in Mexico and Cuba- the banks of Canada may operate branches while our own

banks many not." 135 Two years later, Claude Smith also noted the international

presence of Canadian banks in an article within the pages of the National City

staff journal No. 8. He marveled at the fact of direct steamship service between

Havana and Montreal, the predominance of Canadian capital investment in Cuban

railroads, and, like National City Vice President Samuel McRoberts in an address

about the same time, wondered why the United States could not have a "world-

encircling banking" network. 136 Meanwhile, in 1910, the Secretary of the

Treasury, in a jingoist and somewhat petulant article, al so argued that national

banking associations should enter the international field to aid American

expansion.

Now, there can be no doubt that we shall never be international a full-

fledged commercial nation until we have merchant ships of our own and
foreign banks of our own - a free supply of ships of our own and a free
supply of banks of our own. We should have banks at all ports that are
important to our commerce. And, of course, there is no reason why we
should not ha ve them if we wish them. And if we are to ha ve banks doing
a foreign business, what banks are more entitled to the opportunity, or
what banks are better fitted, owing to governmental supervision and

135
"An lnternational American Bank," Bankers Magazine 77:5 (November 1908)
685
136
Claude A. Smith, "Our National Banks Around the World: Foreign Branches:
Why Not?," No. 8, 5:1 (January 1910), np. Cf. Samuel McRoberts, "The
Extension of American Banking in Foreign Countries," Annals ofthe American
Academy of Política[ and Social Science 36: 3 (November, 1910) 24-32; "Shall
Banks of the United States Maintain Foreign Branches?" Bankers' Magazine 82: 2
(February 1911), 250

93
 control, to afford real and reliable facilities to our commerce than the
national banks? 137

An international American bank seemed imminent. Combined with this

constant refrain, the recent attempts by New York bankers to refund European

owned debts in the Caribbean and Central America, as well as J.P. Morgan's 1909

visit to South America promised a new period of economic relations within the

hemisphere. Indeed, rumors began circulating in the financia) press of the creation

of a new Pan-American bank or an American international banking organization

headed by Margan, a superbank that would control the hemisphere's exchanges,

providing loans to Latín American countries secured through liens on customs. 138

Against this imperious hype, National City's Vanderlip announced the

formation of the National City Company (NCC) in July 1911. It was organized, as

Vanderlip stated,

for the purpose of bringing about eventually the extension of American

banking facilities to our merchants and others doing business in Mexico
and South and Central America. Altogether the country has become
largely interested in these countries, and its investments relate very largely
to bonds of the state of Sao Paulo, the great coffee-producing state of
Brazil; bonds of the Argentine Republic, of the city of Lima, Peru; of

137
United States. Treasury Department. Annual Report ofthe Secretary ofthe
Treasury on the State ofthe Financesfor the Fiscal year ended June 30, 1910.
(Washington GPO, 1910). 6
138
"Margan seizes Speyer Scheme" Los Angeles Times (Jan 26, 1910) 15; "Bank
is Favored for Pan-America," Christian Science Monitor (July 16, 1909). 10;
"Pan-American Bank Receives the Support and Encouragement of Latín
American Diplomats" Bankers' Magazine 80: 3 (March 1910), 483; "An
lnternational American Bank," Bankers' Magazine Jun 1910; 80, 6; 87; "Pan-
American Bank with Headquarters in New York," Bankers' Magazine 79: 5.
(November 1909) 816

94
 Costa Rica, and of Haiti. The company is also interested in the Chinese
financia! situation, and is one of the participants in the Manchurian loan.

But in the short term, the NCC was not noted for its contribution to hemispheric

trade relations, but for its legality.

The National City Company was modeled after the First Securities

Company (FSC), a "stock-holding adjunct" of George F. Baker's First National

Bank of New York, organized in 1908. Baker and the First National had wanted

permission for the bank to engage in the buying and selling of stock in other

national banks and other corporations but had been informed by the Comptroller

that this was illegal under the National Banking Act. To do so, they organized the

FSC. While it was legally a separate entity, its charter stipulated that its trustees

would be the First National 's president, vice president, and cashier. First National

then sold stock to the FSC at below market value so that it could engage in the

sale and marketing of securities not permitted by the bank itself. The profits the

FSC garnered for the First National's directors were said to amount to twelve

percent annually. 139

Since the organization of the FSC, it was estimated that sorne three

hundred national banking associations had developed similar adjuncts. However,

the size of the National City Bank- by 1911 it was by far the largest national

banking association- attracted regulatory scrutiny. An investigation into the

139
United States. 62"d Congress, 3rct Session. Report ofthe Committee Appointed
Pursuant to House Resolutions 429 and 504 to Investigare the Concentration of
Control ofmoney and Credit. (Washington: GPO, 1913) 66-8; 72

95
legality of the National City Company initiated by Attorney General Charles W

Wickersham and performed by Solicitor General Frederick W. Lehmann.

Lehmann's report carne back negative; the organization of the National City

Company was, in fact, illegal, and it threatened to create the kind of monopoly

and concentration in money and banking that the National Banking Act was

designed, in part, to avoid. But Lehmann's report was suppressed by President

Taft and would not see the light of day until Congressional Hearings into stock

exchange practices in 1932. 140 As a result, the National City Company was

separated from the National City Bank and dismantled. The combination of

commercial and investment wings within a single financial institution remained

illegal until Citibank successfully lobbied President William Jefferson Clinton to

deregulate the banking industry in the 1990s- and merged with Traveler' s Life to

create the financial behemoth, Citigroup.

"The entrance of the National City Company into the South American

field," proclaimed Vanderlip upon its organization, "probably marks an epoch in

the history of banking in the western hemisphere. It is the first real effort toward a

comprehensive scheme for brining into closer relationship this country with the

countries of South and Central America." 141 While its goals were ambitious, its

initial results were hardly epoch making. Frank A. Vanderlip had sent to South

140
For the text of the report, see "Frederick W. Lehmann, Solictor General to the
Hon. Charles W. Wickersham, Attorney General," United States. Senate.
Seventy-Second Congress. First Session. S. Res. 84. Hearings Before the
Committee on Banking and Currency. Stock Exchange Practices. Part 6.
(Washington: GPO, 1932) 2030-2042
141
"Extends U.S. Finance," The Washington Post (Apr 2, 1912).

96
America- John Kiernan in 1910, James Gardin in 1911, John H. Cobsy in 1912;

H. Morgan Shuster in 1913- had come back negatively. The global financia!

conditions brought on by the war changed the bank's outlook. 142 In 1912,

Vanderlip hired W. Morgan Shuster, formerly treasurer general appointed by the

United States to Persia, to appraise conditions in South America for the expansion

of US trade. 143 But after his tour of Latin America in 1913, Shuster's report carne

back negative. He feared that the National City Company would not be able to

compete with established European bankers, and that American investors would

be reluctant to invest in Latin American securities given the high yields of

domestic security and bond issues. "Mr. Shuster," commented a disappointed

editorial from an Argentinean newspaper reprinted in the Annalist, "says that the

inducement would have to be very strong indeed, both as regards security and rate

of interest return offered, in order to convince the investor that the change was

worthwhile." 144 The following year conditions would change drastically, and the

inducements to invest would be more than apparent.

142
"Joseph T. Cosby," No. 8, 9:3 (March 1914).
143
W. Morgan Shuster, "Address of Mr. W. Morgan Shuster," No. 8, VII: NO
(May 1912): 1-15
144
"As Morgan Shuster Saw South America," The New York Times Annalist (June
16, 1913), 681

97
 CHAPTER 3

Annihilating Geography, Visualizing Empire:

Wall Street and the Caribbean, 1914-1925

The material is immaterial.

Citigroup

Introduction

"Five Years in Jungle Land," lrving M. Barnard's account of his Panama sojourn,

published in No.8 in 1917, admits an American ignorance and provincialism. "1 was

bound for a land of which no man seemed able to give me any information," writes

the clerk in the National City Bank's foreign department, "other than that it was

probably extreme) y hot there, and that 1 would die of fever or snake-bite before 1 had

been there a year." 1 And, Barnard adds, his informants admitted that they based their

own information "on general principies, and not from any specific knowledge." 2 Once

he arrives in Panama, those general principies are partially confirmed. The heat is

often intolerable, though not nearly as bad as a New York August. Tropical storms

flood the region. He battles snakes, scorpions, centipedes, tapirs, and a local lndian

with filed teeth who hites him just above the knee during a brawl outside a saloon in

La Concepción. But if Barnard's Panama was only half-known, it was also only half-

formed. Despite the United Fruit Company railways and plantations, despite the

presence of a modern American financia) institution in the lnternational Banking

1
lrving M. Barnard, "Five Years in Jungle Land," No. 8 12:3 (April, 1917), 12
2
ibid. 12

98
Corporation, and despite the Panama Canal itself, Panama remains an untamed,

unstable frontier threatening to revert back to the wild jungle from whence it

originally carne. These characteristics extended to the population. For Barnard, Iittle

seems to have changed in Panama from a decade earlier when the Isthmus'

population was described as "the remnants and off-scourings of all creation. "3 He

encounters a cast of characters of dubious origin and uncertain race: exiles, treasure

hunters, landless peasants displaced by the advance of American capitalism. He meets

European and American speculators. A Bohemian-Austrian Jewish-American from

Brooklyn who runs La Discordia, the only American hotel in David, and a Jamaican

"whom the tar brush had slightly touched in passing" and who insisted that he was "a

real sure-enough Englishman."4 The unlikely duo stage a "vaudeville performance,"

constantly bickering over World War l. Barnard falls in love with the Costa Rican

whores in Bocas-del-toro, "red-cheeked, bright-eyed, dark-haired, goddesses of grace

and beauty, but with very human hearts." 5 He sees Indians who have retreated into

an anti-modern quietude, seemingly victimized by the work of progress around them,

and attempts to hire others, like his mozo (and "heathen friend") Phthedaxytcl, who

prefers booze to labor and can be coerced to work but two days a week. 6 He meets

"pure-blooded" Spaniards, merchants and officials whose blood remains defiantly

"un-mixed" over generations, as well as Spaniards with sorne "Indian blood" -

3
Qtd in. W. Storrs Lee, The Strength to Move a Mountain, (New York: GP
Putnam' s Sons, 1958), 88.
4
Barnard, "Five Years," 23.
5
ibid. 18.
6
ibid. 22.

99
though "Indian blood," Barnard assures his compatriots on Wall Street, "is not

objectionable and should not be confused with negro blood." 7

As for the Negroes themselves, they seem reduced to a perpetua!, blissful

servitude, from the "little niggers" at Kingston, Jamaica, Barnard's first port of call

after leaving New York, diving for coins thrown into the ocean for the amusement of

the ship's passengers, to the servants, cooks, and laborers working on the UFC

plantations and in the foreign-owned hotels. Barnard makes no mention of the labors

and lost lives of the tens of thousands of "sil ver men" from around the Caribbean who

traveled to Panama to build the Canal. Instead, he encounters a "tribe" of West

Indians who are humble, affable, bewilderingly ignorant and "quick imitator[s]": after

being wished a Merry Christmas, one Caribbean migrant repeats the greeting

incessantly but, either mis-hearing it or, as Barnard thinks, expressing his gratitude to

his northern patrons, it comes out as American Christmas. 8

Here, though, Barnard betrays his own race's tendency towards imitation and

mimicry. His description of Panama's West Indians differs little from the African

Americans from the US south in the National City minstrel show or shuffling through

the pages of No. 8. All black people are fungible for Barnard. The West Indian is

conscripted into a racial performance populated by white American caricatures of

African Americans and in "Five Y ears in Jungle Land," he acts as the interlocutor in

the Panamanian scene of a pan-African coon show staged for the National City

staffers in New York:

7
ibid. 24
8
ibid. 12

100
 The lingo of the West lndian, supposedly English, is almost incomprehensible
to one whose ear has not been trained to it. They frequently misunderstand us
Americans. Por example, one day at breakfast (which is there the midday
mea!, served about eleven o'clock) the cook served meat, which was not
touched, as we happened not to be hungry. 1 told the cook to take it back and
heat it up for dinner. At dinner we had the customary layout, minus meat.
When 1 inquired, he replied, "Meat, sir? 1 thought you told me to heat it hup,
sir!" 1 affirmed that such was the case, and asked him to pronounce it. "But,
sir," he stammered, "1 did- 1 hate it hall hup, sir." 1 had neglected to take into
consideration the bally English "haitch," you know. 9

Like the minstrel shows and racist anecdotes printed in the pages of No. 8, "Pive

Years in Jungle Land" provided National City's staff with a frivolous respite from the

doldrums of desk work and a sense of a shared narrative within an institution that had

rapidly expanded from its nineteenth-century days as a merchant bank manned by a

small coterie of owner-managers, cashiers, and pages, to a modero financia!

institution with an ever-growing staff compartmentalized within increasingly

specialized divisions. 10 Yet beyond a function limited to entertainment, these

representations played a larger role within National City, a role closer to its actual

transactions and operations. Beginning in 1914, National City and other New York

City banks embarked on a period of foreign expansion up to that time unprecedented

in US financia! history. They set up operations in Asia, Europe, and, especially, the

9
ibid. 16. Such descriptions of Panama were not unusual at the time. Por a book-
length study, see Harry A. Pranck, Zone Policeman 88: A Clase Range Study of
the Panama Canal and its workers (New York: The Century Co., 1913). For a
general discussion of these representations, see Stephen Prenkel, "Jungle Stories:
North American Representations of Tropical Panama," The Geographical Review
86: 3 (July 1996), 317-333
10
This sentiment was also given as the rationale behind in-house journals
produced by others banks. See, for instance, "Untitled," The Chase: A Monthly
Magazine 1:1 (April 1918), 23; "Editorial," The Equitable Envoy 1.1 (July 1921),
pp. 11; "The Compass: Objects and Aims," The Compass 1: 1 (January 1920) 24

101
Caribbean and Central and South America, financing the American export trade,

funding plantations and public works, floating public debts and corralling local

deposits for Wall Street's reinvestment and profits. With the blessing of the US State

Department, they were part of a broader expansion of a regime of neocolonial control

whose locus of operations was in Lower Manhattan. They established branch banks

overseas and developed correspondent networks in commercial centers and ports

throughout the world, deploying a small army of financia! and commercial

representatives, like Barnard, to the tropics to develop intimate relations with their

foreign counterparts and create an archive of knowledge through which the tangle of

cultures, races, and ethnicities that Barnard found in Panama but characterized the

Caribbean region as a whole, were codified and explained to American exporters and

investors.

New York bankers realized that the conquest of foreign markets could not

simply occur through the rational extension of banking Iegislation and the intuitive

movement of fiscal bureaucracies into a cultural vacuum beyond the United States.

Nor could the racial ideologies that had helped shaped popular understandings of

America's mission in the wider world easily translate into the practica! grammars of

the new financia! instruments and technologies for foreign trade and banking as they

apprehended the tropics. Instead, bankers had to revise and recreate American

perceptions of the world, using domestic racial knowledge to explain foreign cultures,

drawing on a deep textual history of North American and European representations of

102
the Caribbean. 11 "Five Years in Jungle Land" can be seen as a conceptual bridge

linking No. 8's racist anecdotes and the narratives describing the possibilities for

investment beyond the United States and the protocols and etiquette of foreign trade

relationships- as the interpretive tie between fantastical stereotypes and crude racial

imaginaries and the increasingly-codified racial and cultural "facts" of the

Caribbean. 12 Articles such as Barnard's complemented the work of branch and

correspondent banks in the region by making the world known, recognizable,

tangible; they helped create a vocabulary that translated foreign worlds into

something intelligible for Americans and, in the process enabled the conditions for

financia! transactions, economic exchange, and commercial conquest in the other-

wise abstracted space of the international market. "In establishing a comprehensive

system of branches all through [the Caribbean]," National City Bank vice president

John H. Allen wrote in The Americas, "The National City Bank has tried to visualize

the development which is certain to come to this interesting and prodigally rich part

of the world." 13 The efforts by New York's bankers to visualize, to imagine, the

region meant turning the vague geographies of the Caribbean, a region largely known,

as Barnard wrote of Panama, "on general principies, and not from any specific

11
On the longer history of North American and European representation of the
Caribbean asan adjunct to economic exploitation, see Peter Hulme, Colonial
Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492-1797 (New York: Methuen,
1986) and Mimi Sheller, Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies
(New York: Routledge, 2003).
1
~he idea of "fact" here comes from Mary Poovey, A History ofthe Modern Fact
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
13
John H. Allen, "Prosperous Caribbean Countries Turn to American Markets,"
The Americas 6:2 (November, 1919), 10. Italics added.

103
knowledge," into tactile and sensual worlds primed for the expansion of American

capitalism.

What follows recounts the history of the representational work by New York

bankers as it accompanied their expansion into the Caribbean between 1914 and

1924. This period, like the one preceding it, was marked by experimentation. Short-

term success was tainted by long-term failure. Des pite the euphoria of the post-war

boom years, the development of a permanent foreign trade and the maintenance of

American empire could not be taken for granted. However, unlike the previous

period, the players in Wall Street's foreign ventures were no longer rogue

entrepreneurs like William H. Hunt of the ill-fated Pan-American Trust Company or

Samuel M. Jarvis with his various financia! ventures in Cuba, Nicaragua and the

Dominican Republic. Instead, asan editorial in the The Americas described it, it was

a "merger period" in American finance and the foreign field was dominated by New

York City's powerful national banking associations, trust companies, and private

bankers. 14 There was a coordinated effort between government and business to

capitalize on wartime trade conditions and the brief but intense post-war inflationary

period. Federallegislation permitted the expansion of national banking associations

overseas as well as the formation of cartels for the export trade of a sort that was

prohibited domestically because of anti-trust regulation but that Europeans had long

used. They permitted the pooling of capital resources and the vertical and horizontal

14
"Beginning the Merger Period of World-Wide American Business," The
Americas 5:5 (1919), l.

104
integration of industry and finance creating financia) consortiums promoting the

export of US capital and industrial products abroad. 15

National City led the march overseas. The chapter begins by detailing their

attempts to build a branch bank network, while describing its purposes and functions

in developing the US export trade. In addition to a branch bank network, National

City also embarked on two other major projects in the quest for foreign markets. They

organized the American lnternational Corporation, a mammoth holding company

whose purpose was to facilitate the movement of American capital and manufactured

goods overseas, and they expanded their bond department under the aegis of their

securities affiliate, the National City Company. 1 then turn to the work of the foreign

banking corporations authorized to do business by the Federal Reserve Act. While

these institutions were created for a global market, the most important of them - the

15
Besides the provisions in the Federal Reserve, there were two important pieces
of commerciallegislation developed for the US export trade during this period.
The Webb-Pomerene or Export Trade Law (1918) and the Edge Act (1919). The
Webb Law permitted the creation of foreign trade cartels of a nature that were not
permitted domestically under anti-trust restrictions. The Edge Act permitted
national banking associations capitalized at $2 M or more to finance American
exports by accepting foreign industrial plants, bonds of foreign governments or
municipalities, or the stock of trading as security. While it was hoped that the so-
called Edge Act Corporations would carry the United States' post-war tradem
only two institutions were formed in the wake of its enactment, and neither
actually did any business. See Burton l. Kaufman, Efficiency and Expansion:
Foreign Trade Organization in the Wilson Administration, 1913-1921 (Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 1974) 256. Por more detailed descriptions of the history of
the Edge Amendment and the Webb Act see William F. Notz and Richard S.
Harvey, American Foreign Trade (lndianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company,
1921). On their operation, see Combination in Export Trade Permitted by the
Webb law, approved April JO, 1918 (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of
New York, 1918); Combining for Foreign Trade: Plans and Methods of
Operation (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of New York, 1920); "The
Webb-Pomerene Law," The Americas 5.5. (February, 1919), 3-8.

105
Mercantile Bank of the Americas, organized by Brown Brothers, J. & W. Seligman,

and the Guaranty Trust Company, and the American Foreign Banking Corporation,

organized by the Chase National Bank- had their most extensive operations within

the hemisphere.

While the coordinated organizational work of American finance, business, and

government during this period has been well documented, 16 the representational and

cultural labor on the part of New York's bankers as a practice of foreign expansion

and imperial government has been less studied. 17 To attend to this criticallapse, the

latter half of the chapter turns to the work of imagination and what has been termed

the "enterprise of knowledge": the production of a dense set of representations about

the Caribbean and Latin America for domestic consumption as a constitutive part of

16
See Burton l. Kaufman, Efficiency and Expansion: Foreign Trade Organization
in the Wilson Administration, 1913-192J(Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood
Press, 1974); Carl P. Parrini, Heir to Empire: United States Economic Diplomacy,
1916-1923 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969); Gabriel Kolko, The
Triumph ofConservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916
(New York: The Free Press, 1963); Joseph S. Tulchin, The Aftermath ofWar:
World War 1 and U.S. Policy Toward Latín America (New York: New York
University Press, 1971); Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State:
The Expansion of National Administrative capacities, 1877-1920 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982).
17
The exceptions are Max Winkler, Foreign Bonds: An Autopsy (Philadelphia,
Roland Swain Company, 1933) 6; W. Nelson Peach, The Security Affiliates of
National Banks. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1941) 28-9; Emily
S. Rosenberg, Financia! Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of
Dollar Diplomacy, 1900-1930, (Cambridge, Harvard UP, 1999) and Ricardo
Salvatore, "The Enterprise of Knowledge: Representational Machines of Informal
Empire," Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S-Latin
American Relations, Gilbert M. Joseph, et al. Eds, Durham: Duke UP: 1998), 69-
104.

106
other forms of international financial practice and imperial expansion. 18 It considers

banker's attempts to visualize, as National City's Gardin put it, the Caribbean, and to

find a way of suturing the seemingly incommensurable cultural spaces of the tropics

to the everyday life of the American economy within the abstract space of the

international market. 1 argue that this imaginative work was pedagogical. lt educated

both the bank's staff as well as the wider American public on the Caribbean and

South America, while translating vague racial ideologies based on anecdotal

knowledges, casual experiences, and a kind of amateur ethnology into a practical

instrumentality organized around malleable categories, ultimately-reformable bodies,

and geographies of future productivity. lt was also performative. 19 lt did not simply

18
Salvatore, "The Enterprise of Knowledge," 69-70.
19
My use of the performative comes from Michel Callon understanding of the
discipline of economics and its relationship toan idea of the "economy." See his
"lntroduction: The Embeddedness of Economic Markets in Economics," The
Laws of the Markets (Mal den, MA: Blackwell Publishers/The Sociological
Review, 1998), 1-57 and Timothy Mitchell 's reading of Callon in, "The Work of
Economics: How a Discipline Makes its World," European Journal of Sociology
45:2 (2005), 297-320; and Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-
Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). While 1
accept Mitchell argument that the idea of the "economy" emerged after World
War 11, produced by a new disciplinary formation, the period currently under
investigation provides the foundation for the later movement since, as 1 show later
in the chapter, bankers began partnering with universities to train financial experts
who could both work within the bank and speak toan emerging American
discipline of international political economy as well as the general public. And,
importantly, the motivation for this work carne from bankers. 1 am also indebted
in the analysis that follows to the work of Frantz Fanon and Cedric Robinson who
understood the text of race as a constituent part of the formation of colonial
economies and, in the case of Fanon, offered an early resolution to the kinds of
binarism between political economy and culture and materiality and
representation that have dogged culturalist attempts to understand political
economy. See Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam
Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967), and Cedric Robinson, Black

107
describe these new territories, but actively produced them; in the process of narration,

they delimited the terms of reception and the scope of perception. Bankers' writing

about the Caribbean was of a type that, as Michel de Certeau has put it,

"transform[ed] the space of the other into a field of expansion for a system of

production" and primed the region for neo-colonial control exercised through the

machinery of American finance. 20

l.

Of course, only ayear before, in 1913, National City's H. Morgan Shuster had

returned from his fact-finding trip to South America arguing against banking

expansion. He thought that returns on domestic investments were sufficient for US

investors while, at the same time, American bankers would be unable to compete with

the well-established European banks in the region. But three factors combined to

radically reorient the position of the United States, and New York City, in

international finance: the onset of war in Europe, the opening of the Panama Canal,

and the organization of the Federal Reserve System. The First World War's

reordering of global financia! markets and trade relations is well documented. 21 lt

Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition: The Making of the Black
Radical Tradition (London: Zed Books, 1983). Edward Said's pioneering
Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979) is still the best example of "postcolonial"
readings of the work of narrative and representation in the imperial project.
20
Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History. Tom Conley, Trans. New York:
Columbia UP, 1988, xxvi, 216,224.
21
See, for instance, John T. Madden, Marcus Nadler, and Harry C. Sauvain,
America's Experience as a Creditor Nation (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1937), 41-
56. For a summary enumeration of the factors contributing to New York's rise,

108
accelerated the United States' shift from a net debtor toa net creditor. The nation

rapidly paid off its Civil War debts and repatriated the US government securities held

in Europe. Because of the war, Caribbean and Latín American countries found their

traditional, European sources of credit had dried up and they lost their historical

export market. Increasingly, they turned to New York for their financing needs and to

the United States as a market for their raw materials and agricultural products.

Where World War 1, according to W.E.B. DuBois, was rooted in European

ínter-imperial rivalries for Africa, on the other side of the Atlantic the War

temporarily removed Europe from the region and positioned the United States as the

sole imperial power in the hemisphere. John E. Barnett of the Pan-American Union

claimed that the War spurred "the development of the Monroe Doctrine into a Pan-

American policy or principie" while awakening the hemisphere's nations to their

"common interests ... aspirations, and ... purposes.'m In 1915, Barnett helped

convene the Pan-American Financial Conference in Washington as a way of

promoting this commonality and extending the commercial and financial links within

the Americas, introducing the region' s statesmen, business leaders, and financiers to

each other and to their American counterparts. The conference was greeted with

euphoria in sorne circles, generating the call of "America for the Americans"- a

see Mira Wilkins, "Cosmopolitan Finance in the 1920s: New York's Emergence
asan International Financial Centre," The State, the Financia! System, and
Economic Modernization, Richard Sylla et al., eds, (New York: Cambridge UP,
1999), 271-291.
22
W.E.B. Du Bois. "The African Roots of War." Monthly Review, 24: 11 (April
1973), pp. 28-40; John E. Barrett, "A New Pan-Americanism Born of the War,"
New York Times (December 7, 1915), 12.

109
phrase that National City Bank statistician Osear Phelps Austin described as "a new

commercial battle-cry. " 23

Yet the United States was only able to take advantage of this epochal shift in

global finance beca use of the opening of an American-controlled canal cutting across

the Isthmus of Panama and the organization of the Federal Reserve System. 24 The

building of the Canal brought the American public's attention to the region. "We have

read daily accounts of the digging of the 'big ditch,"' wrote one of Barnard's National

City compatriots, "and, in locating the canal on our maps, have had our attention

drawn to the important lands of the south. In a way this has amounted for many of us

toa new discovery." 25 But the Canal 's opening al so helped consolidate the Caribbean

as a military and strategic unit to American financiers and policy makers.

Commercially, the Canal drastically reduced the time and cost of shipping, bringing

Atlantic ports closer to those on the Pacific, but in addition, bankers found a lucrative

revenue source as depositories for the US authority in the Canal Zone and through the

handling and disbursement of funds from vessels transiting the Canal. 26

23
"Cry of Americas for the Americans," The Atlanta Constitution (May 26, 1915)
4; O.P. Austin, "Why South America?" No. 8, 9:12 (December, 1914) 15
24
Frank A. Vanderlip, "Branch banks and the Federal Reserve Act." Proceedings
ofthe First Pan American Financia/ Conference, Washington, May 24-29, 1915.
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1915); "Branch Banks under the
Federal Reserve Act," National City Monthly Letter (August 1914). The Federal
Reserve's member banks were also required to float Panama Canal bonds.
25
Ames Higgins, "A New Era in Banking," No. 8 IX: 7-10 (October 1914)1-7.
26
The Chase National Bank in the Caribbean Area (New York: Chase National
Bank of New York, 1944), n.p.; Milton S. Harrison, "Panama Canal and the
Question ofTolls," No. 8 9: 4 (April 1914); "Down in Panama with the IBC," No.
8 18: 2 (February 1923), 8-9.

110
 The Federal Reserve was the result of organized efforts to create a national

banking system with a liquid currency that could attend to seasonal fluctuations in

credit demand and stave off the kind of monetary crisis seen in 1907 inwhich J.P.

Morgan and his cronies famously intervened, saving the national economy from

collapse. But the Fed al so contained a number of provisions crucial to the expansion

of American banks and American markets abroad. lt created an international system

of discount, allowing national banking associations to handle foreign acceptances-

the primary instrumentality of international trade- of an amount that, with approval

of the Reserve board, could be extended to the entirety of a given bank's paid-up

capital stock and surplus. The permission to use acceptances in foreign trade

repatriated commissions previously lost through American use of European banks

while promoting the dollar asan international commercial currency. 27 1t permitted

those national banking associations operating under the system capitalized at $1

million or more to establish branch banks outside of the United States. Finally, it

allowed national banks to use up to ten percent of their capital and surplus for the

27
An "acceptance" is a bill of exchange ora commercial draft that has been
endorsed by whomever to it is addressed to, thus entering into an agreement
requiring the endorse (or, once he or she has signed the bill, the "acceptor") to pay
a given sum ata time determined by the bill. Acceptances were issued by banking
institutions to their commercial customers, allowing customers to keep accounts
with the bank, clearing of balances between international merchants and
manufacturers. Thus, if an Williamsburg manufacturer wanted to import sugar
into the United States, he would arrange a letter of credit for the amount of his
purchase through his bank, arrange for his Cuban agent to make the purchase by
drawing against, attaching the proper shipping and customs documents, and
arranging the export of the sugar. Graham F. Towers, Financing Foreign Trade
(Montreal: The Royal Bank of Canada, 1921) 6-7; Stuart H. Patterson, A Bank
Catechism (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of New York, 1925), 36-7.

111
purchase of stock in corporations whose primary purpose was the American export

trade. 28

One banker described the historical convergence of the Fed, the Canal, and the

war in August 1914 as "providential."29 Others were more circumspect. The lrving

National Bank's Lewis E. Pierson argued that Americans should be wary that the

conditions of the war and the post-war period would be temporary; that the conditions

of the time so favorable to American trade, "will quietly pass away and leave us but

little better off than before" he wrote, somewhat presciently?0 Either way, the war

accelerated the international tilt of the US economy and New York bankers used itas

an opportunity to consolidate Wall Street's position in the world while arguing that

continued domestic prosperity was built on securing an enlarged and permanent

foreign trade through the export of American capital funding the foreign purchase of

American goods. "Our capacity for production has been fast increasing beyond local

consumption," noted National City's Beverly D. Harris, " ... our national prosperity

28
For an accessible description of the Federal Reserve System during the period
under study, see: National Banking under the Federal Reserve System (New
York: The National City Bank of New York, 1927). The literature on the origins
of the Federal Reserve System is extensive. See, for instance, James Laurence
Laughlin, The Federal Reserve Act: lts Origins and Problems (New York:
Macmillan, 1993); Lawrence Broz. The lnternational Origins ofthe Federal
Reserve System. (lthaca: Cornell UP, 1997) and James Livingston, Origins ofthe
Federal Reserve System: Money, Class and Corporate Capitalism, 1890-1913,
(lthaca: Cornell UP, 1986).
29
Beverly D. Harris, Branch Banks and Foreign Trade (New York: The National
City Bank of New York, 1916), 8. This sentiment was echoed by Clyde William
Phelps in his unsurpassed history of American foreign banking expansion during
this period, The Foreign Expansion of American Banks: American Banks Abroad
(N ew York: The Ronald Press, 1927).
30
Lewis E. Pierson, American Banking in Foreign Trade (New York: National
Foreign Trade Council, 1917) 3.

112
depends upon the expansion, development and prosperity of our manufacturing

industries; ... in order to keep our industrial organizations fully employed at the

highest degree of efficiency and on a profitable basis, it has become increasingly

necessary to seek foreign markets." 31

Harris' comments echo those of figures like Charles Conant and other

imperial boosters who had feverishly anticipated New York City's financia!

dominance for years. Y et where Conant had expressed an ambivalence towards the

means of imperial expansion- whether it was through brutal conquest or benevolent

expansion mattered little to him and was ultimately irrelevant in the face of historical

laws and national salvation- bankers, at least publicly, and especially by the time of

the armistice, tried to rearticulate the connection between domestic growth and

international expansion, distancing themselves from the ugly, violent forms of US

imperialism, especially through the "dollar diplomacy" of justa few years before,

where bankers appeared to be engaging in easy, though ham-fisted profit grabs from

vulnerable Caribbean and Central American republics and US marines were deployed

to protect the foreign investments of a handful of Wall Street suits.

31
Beverly D. Harris, Branch Banks and Foreign Trade (New York: The National
City Bank of New York, 1916), 5. For similar viewpoints from other National
City's officers, see E.A. Groff, American Banks in Foreign Trade (New York:
The National City Bank of New York, 1920), 5-6; W.S. Kies, "Branch Banking
and South American Trade," Journal ofthe American Bankers Association 8:3
(September 1915), 278-281. For examples from other banks, see Willis H. Booth,
Foreign Trade and the Interior Bank, (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of
New York, 1920) passim; "American Banks Abroad," The Equitable Envoy 1.4
(October 1921), 21; Ernest B. Filsinger, Trading with Latin America (New York:
lrving National Bank, 1919), n.p.; Sigmund Metz, "Our Opportunities in South
America," The Chase VII: 1 (March 1918), 1; Grovesnor M. Jones, "A New
Outlook in Foreign Trade," The Compass 1.11 (November 1920), 325.

113
 Instead, New York's bankers explained their expansion into the Caribbean

and South America through an economic internationalism that stood in stark contrast

to what was seen as an insular, provincial, and protectionist mentality that had long

dominated US economic life. "We believe," stated National City's Frank A.

Vanderlip, "that the period of America's isolation is over." 32 "The American financial

mind," commented WH Eldridge, also with National City, "is beginning to take a

world view.'m "lt is a time," wrote Beverly Harris, "for international thinking." 34

Bankers were not in favor of a Wilsonian internationalism based on the establishment

of global political governance. They believed in strengthening national sovereignty

through the intensification of global economic interdependence. In what amounts to

an early account of globalization, they argued that the internationalization of the

market was re-configuring the world's political-economic geography. As Vanderlip

stated,

electricity has annihilated the geographies for it has destroyed the distinctions
which gave geographical boundaries their significance. Political distinctions
will continue to live, languages and religions will continue to be different; but
the peoples of the earth, regardless of political boundaries, of racial
differences, of national ambitions, are coming rapidly to form one great

32
Frank A. Vanderlip, "The Further Expansion of the National City Bank of New
York Abroad," The Americas 5:4 (January, 1919), l. Ernest B. Filsinger expresses
as similar sentiment in the introduction toa volume published by New York's
Irving National Bank. See his Trading with Latín America (New York: Irving
National Bank, 1919), n.p.
33
qtd. In Edward Marshall, "European war opens South America's Big Market to
Us," New York Times (August 23, 1914).
34
Beverly D. Harris, Branch Banks and Foreign Trade (New York: The National
City Bank of New York, 1916) 4.

114
 commercial unit, one great economic organism. There are no tariff walls
against capital. The language talked by money is a universal tongue? 5

New York bankers argued that the foreign expansion of American markets

promoted democracy and the economic development of unstable and backward

nations while contributing to regional stability and security. But their economic

internationalism was dependent on an acknowledged inequality. lt assumed that the

United States had reached a mature stage in their economic life that allowed them to

sit at the table of the European great powers while assuming a paternal stance towards

others countries, especially in the hemisphere. "There are stages of national

development, not old to the world," wrote the Irving National Bank's Lewis E.

Pierson, "which we are just approaching." 36 The War, and the role of the United

States as a creditor, signified a new-found civilizational status for the United States, a

new found virility and masculinity that bestowed upon the Republic a duty for

paternalistic uplift and the support of the weaker, more vulnerable, backward nations.

While in 1912, National City's John E. Gardin had described the United States'

inability to capture foreign markets as "an impotence,"37 by 1920 he asserted that

"American manhood can hold its own, physically and intellectually, with all races." 38

35
Frank. A. Vanderlip qtd. In Ferdinand C. Schwedtman, "The Making of Better
Trained Men," The Americas 2:3 (May 1915), 6.
36
Lewis E. Pierson, American Banking in Foreign Trade (New York: National
Foreign Trade Council, 1917) 3.
37
John E. Gardin, "American and European Business Interests in South America,"
No.8 VII: 6 (June 1912), 5.
38
John E. Gardin, "Financing Foreign Trade Through Credit and Investment, "
Proceedings ofthe Seventh National Foreign Trade Convention, San Francisco,
May 12-15, 1920, (New York: National Foreign Trade Council, 1920) 137.

115
 For New York's bankers paternalism was the order the day. America's new

financia! power should be brandished with benevolent intentions, with "the spirit of

service, rather than with the spirit of conquest," as Frank A. Vanderlip put it.

Vanderlip and other bankers argued that America held a moral obligation to develop

and nurture les powerful, less mature nations and they attempted to reassure the

public that their own efforts to do so were generous and large-hearted. 39 Albert Breton

of the Guaranty Trust Company described the American banker's role in the world as

"an obligation rather than an opportunity."40 "lt is not necessary in pursuing

commercíal success that we follow a course of relentless, bitter trade aggression ... "

the Irving National Bank noted in a publication on US foreign trade with the Asia-

Pacific region. "As a large creditor nation, we can afford to temper just demands with

a spirit of generosity consistent with the finest ideals of our business life. Co-

39
Frank A. Vanderlip, Sorne Elements of National Foreign Trade Policy (New
York: The National City Bank of New York, 1916), 15. Occasionally, these
assertions reached absolutely absurd levels of self-importance. During a visit to
St. Petersburg before the opening of the National City's Russian branches,
Vanderlip hada revelation where he realizes that after years of working for the
bank, he "began to feel the kinship of [bis] work with that of the spiritualleaders
of humanity." However, in Vanderlip's case, such metaphysicallabor was less
powerful than the Russian Revolution. As part of its international expansion,
National City opened a number of Russian branches. But it suffered enormous
losses to National City following the nationalization of the Russian banking
industry in 1917, costing Vanderlip hisjob. On Vanderlip's epiphany, see Frank
Vanderlip w. Boyden Sparkes, From Farm Boy to Financier (New York: D.
Appleton-Century Co, 1935) 104. On the Russian problem see Cleveland and
Heurtas, Citibank, 99-1 OO.
40
Albert Breton, "Protection of Foreign Investments," The Guaranty News VII: 1
(March 1918), 36-37.

116
operation rather than competition will be our sure guide." 41 "We are not going

anywhere to exploit anybody orto make ourselves a bad neighbor oran undesirable

resident," Vanderlip asserted. "We are going into these communities for the purposes

of establishing helpful relations not only between them and the United States but

between them and still other parts of the world." 42 Chase National Vice President

Gerhard Dahl called for a "New Dollar Diplomacy" whose terms insisted upon the

essentially good-hearted endeavors of bankers, on "friendly trade and competition

with beneficia! results to the competitors," breaking from an old practice notable for

its "unfair or grasping methods or at the expense of others."43 Yet despite these

proclamations and the re-branded face of empire, the revelations of the work of New

York's banks in Cuba, Haití, and elsewhere in the Caribbean, made the new dollar

diplomacy look little different than the old.

41
Irving National Bank, Trading with the Far East, (New York: Irving National
Bank, 1920).
42
Frank A. Vanderlip, "The Further Expansion of the National City Bank of New
York Abroad," The Americas 5:4 (January, 1919), l. Ernest B. Filsinger expresses
a similar sentiment in the introduction toa volume published by New York's
lrving National Bank. See his Trading with Latin America (New York: lrving
N ational Bank, 1919), np. On the other hand, domestically Alexander J.
Hemphill, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Guaranty Trust Corporation,
saw the banker's role as intensifying "Americanization"- saving the incoming
immigrant populations from "Socialists, Anarchists, Industrial Workers of the
World, Bolshevists" as well as "the ignorant, the shiftless, and the vicious" by
teaching them to save and to use the American banking system. See his "The
Banker's Part in Americanization," The Guaranty News VIII: 1 (March, 1919), 1-
6.
43
Gerhard M. Dahl, "The New Dollar Diplomacy: A Necessity for Foreign
Trade," The Chase 1:11 (February, 1919), 423; also see Gerhard M. Dahl, "Our
Overseas Trade," The Chase 1.8 (November, 1918), 299-304; Albert Breton,
"Protection of Foreign Investments," Guaranty News VII: 1 (March 1918), 35-
40; James H. Carter, "South America as a Field for Y oung Men," No. 8 10: 5 &6
(J uly 1915), 23-32

117
National City and the American Imperialism

By 1914, two years past their centenary, National City had grown into America's

largest and most powerful financial institution and were seeking to strengthen their

position in the wider world of finance through a coordinated and concerted push

overseas. For many years, they had eyed foreign markets, believing that the bank's

growth would be determined by its ability to compete with Europe's imperial banks

and through the establishment of the dallar as an international medium of exchange

and New York City as an international clearinghouse. But National City President

James Stillman had worried that the racial differences between the United States and

the rest of the world would prove an impediment to expansion, and the fact finding

missions that he and Frank A. Vanderlip had sent to South America- John Kiernan in

1910, James Gardin in 1911, John H. Cosby in 1912, H. Margan Shuster in 1913-

had all come back negatively. 44 The global financia) conditions brought on by the war

changed the bank's outlook.

National City was well prepared to enter the foreign field when the War

opened the channels for American foreign banking and investment and the Fed

authorized national banking associations to set up branches overseas. Although the

earlier missions to South America temporarily cooled the bank's interest in foreign

expansion, they did provide it with a set of relationships throughout the hemisphere,

contributing to the build-up of a knowledge of regional business and trade that would

44
"Holland Writes of.. .," The Washington Post (July 6, 1914), pp. 9

118
prove valuable from 1914 onwards. Vanderlip had also sent out questionnaires to

thousands of domestic merchants and bankers inquiring after their specific needs and

requirements to engage in foreign commerce. Uniformly, his contacts pointed toa

generallack of knowledge about foreign markets: What goods would sell? How did

one package items? How did one fill out shipping documents? Were standards of

measurement and money uniform? How could Americans engage in trade when they

had neither credit information nor personal contact with local bankers, traders,

merchants, manufacturers or planters?

Vanderlip conceived of an international branch network that could respond to

these inquiries. His overseas branch banks, while performing the regular functions of

a domestic commercial bank- accepting deposits, issuing letters of credit, handling

commercial collections, and dealing in foreign exchange- offered an expanded

service in the foreign field. The branches provided a diversified and comprehensive

commercial service that facilitated business connections and supplied commercial

information while creating a market for the American dollar. The branch

representatives studied local trade conditions, alerted American manufacturers to

potential marketing opportunities, and explained the technical details of regional and

local trade and customs protocols. They created an archive of knowledge of the

international economy through the development of extensive foreign trade libraries,

the hiring of statisticians to collect and evaluate information on foreign trade

conditions, and the publication of circulars, journals, newsletters, and pamphlets on

foreign markets. They also offered travelers and businessmen a free informational

119
service - Vanderlip assuming that the experience with the bank would breed a

loyalty that eventually would bring customers - casting the bank and its staff as "the

personal representatives of American business. " 45

In November 1914, months after the Fed was operational, National City

opened its first overseas branch in Buenos Aires. Argentina was chosen as the site for

the bank's initial expansion largely because US Steel Corporation president James A.

Farrell had wanted an American bank to help finance his $100 million business in that

country. He asked Vanderlip to open a branch in Buenos Aires and offered to help

obtain deposits from International Harvester, Armour, and Swift (all of whom were

selling in Latin America) as well as access to their credit files, thus providing

National City with an immediate capital and knowledge base on which to conduct and

expand their foreign business. Other branches soon followed. In April of the

following year, a branch was opened in Rio de Janeiro, followed by sub-branches in

Sao Paulo, Santos, and Bahia, the latter two cities the centers of the Brazilian coffee

and sugar trade, respectively. In August 1915, National City opened a branch in

Montevideo, the center of the Uruguayan hide trade, and Valparaiso, Chile's main

45
James H. Perkins, "An American Bank in Argentina and Brazil: What the
National City Bank of New York is Trying todo," The World's Work XXIX: 2
(December 1914) pp. 190-2; A.H. Titus, "Establishment of Branches by National
Banks in Foreign Countries," Journal ofthe American Bankers Association 7: 8
(February 1915), 615-619; E.A. Groff, American Banks in Foreign Trade, (New
York: The National City Bank of New York, 1920); "Commercial Relations with
South America," National City Monthly Letter (August 1914).

120
port and a centre for nitrates and copper. Branches in Colombia and Venezuela

followed. 46

Unlike the rest of the Americas, National City's involvement in the Caribbean

was not limited to export and industrial financing. While they became heavily

involved in financing regional export staples, especially sugar, investing in railroad

and public works projects, and floating government and municipal bonds, the bank

al so played a important role in the US colonial administrations of Cuba, Santo

Domingo, Panama, and Haiti as fiscal agents and depositiories. And while National

City built new branches from the ground up in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, in the

Caribbean, they absorbed the Caribbean banks that they had developed corresponden!

relationships during the previous decade.

In 1915, National City purchased the Banco de la Habana, an institution they

had owned stock in since 1906 and whose tiesto Wall Street dated to the late-

nineteenth century when it was the merchant bank Zaldo y Hijos. Dubbed the "West

Indian Branch," it became the center of a Caribbean network, grouped under an

administrative "Caribbean Division," whose purview included the Caribbean ports of

46
Robert Mayer, "The Origins of the American Banking Empire in Latin
America: Frank A. Vanderlip and the National City Bank," Journal of
Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 15: 1, (Feb. 1973), 60-76; James
Addison, "Our Foreign Branches and their Development," 135 Years of Ranking.
(New York: National City Bank of New York, 1947); Harold van B. Cleveland
and Thomas Heurtas, Citibank, 1812-1970 (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1985), 78-
70. On the longer history of the bank in Argentina, see Marcelo Zlotogwiazda and
Luis Balaguer, Citibank vs. Argentina: Historia de un país en bancarrota (Buenos
Aires: Sudamericana, 2003).

121
Central and South America. 47 They opened Caribbean sub-branches (branches whose

capital resources were supplied by the parent) in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Port-of-

Spain, Trinidad. However, their expansion was most rapid and thorough in Cuba

itself. Initially, National City opened branches in Havana, Santiago, Matanzas,

Cienfuegos, Guantánamo, Camaguey, Cárdenas, and Manzanillo. By 1920 they had

twenty-four sub-branches throughout the island besides its main branch in Havana,

the most of any American bank in any single country in the world. lt was described as

"a network that cover[ed] the entire island," its branches "reach[ing] every industry of

importance ... whether sugar, tobacco, fruit, livestock, hemp, fodder, or timber."48 But

National City was most profoundly interested in Cuban sugar, a crop that, as

Fernando Ortiz put it, exerted an almost "tyrannical pressure" on Cuba history, with

its almost deterministic tendency towards monocrop production, industrial monopoly

and foreign capitalization. 49 They invested heavily in sugar during the boom years,

providing major credits to planters to support future harvests and to upgrade milis.

47
"Por Carlos Ignacio Parraza y Fernandez, sobre la protocolizacion de estatutos
del 'The National City Bank of New York' y otros documentos relacionados con
el misma, 11 de Agosta de 1915," Banco Nacional de Cuba. Cuentas Corrientes:
9, N: 12. Archivo Nacionale de Cuba, Havana, Cuba; "National City Bank's
Operations in Cuba," Wall Street Journal (November 20, 1915), pg. 2. "Bank's
West lndian Branch," Wall Street Journal, (August 23, 1915), pg. 2; "Six More
Branches of the National City Bank opened in the Caribbean Territory," No. 8 14:
7 (July 1919), 15
48
"City Bank Service now has Seventy Foreign Branches," The Americas 6:12
(September, 1920), 13; "Foreign Branches of National Bank," Report ofthe
Comptroller of the Currency (1918), 57. This so urce al so lists a branch in
Kingston, Jamaica; however, it is not Iisted within any of National City's material
on foreign expansion.
49
Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar Harriet de Onis,
trans. (1947; Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 65, 193

122
When the crash of 1920-1 carne following the drastic drop of sugar prices, National

City carne close to ruination: an estimated eighty percent of the banks capital was tied

up inCuban sugar. 50 But while the Cuban banking industry was devastated by the

crash, National City not only emerged with a massive share of the country's deposits,

but with a large portfolio of plantations from defaulted mortgages- prompting

criticism, both in Cuba and the United States, of Wall Street control of the Cuban

economy.

In Panama and the Dominican Republic, National City's initially operated

through the International Banking Corporation. A pioneer in American foreign

banking, the IBC was chartered in 1902 and financed foreign trade in the Caribbean

and Asia while acting as a fiscal agent for the United States government in Panama,

China, and the Philippines. After the death of IBC founder Thomas H. Hubbard in

1915, National City purchased a controlling stake in the Corporation, absorbing an

institution that had, almost anonymously, created the largest network of overseas

branch banks of any American financial institution. The purchase immediately gave

them a ready-formed and staffed system of branches worldwide. The IBC had

branches in Bombay, Colon, London, Calcutta, Hankow, Manila, Shanghai, Hong

Kong, Singapore, Ce bu, Tientsin, Kobe, Peking, and Yokohama.

In the Caribbean, the IBC had two branches in Panama where it was one of

four American financial institutions established in the Canal Zone handling the US

government's disbursements to workers on the isthmus. After the opening of the

50
Harold Cleveland and Thomas Huertas, Citibank, 1812-1970 (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard Uni versi ty Press, 1985), p. 106

123
Canal, the bank was used by transiting ships for toll payments. 51 In 1917 the IBC took

over Santiago Michelena's bank in Santo Domingo. Michelena's institution served as

the depository for customs revenue under the 1907 convention between the

Dominican government and the United States. After purchasing the IBC, National

City acted as the fiscal agent for the US colonial re gime until the Occupation ended in

1924. At the same time, they also extended their commercial tiesto the country

through a network of sub-branches in the cities of Pedro de Macoris, the center of the

country's sugar industry, Puerto Plata, and Santiago. 52

National City's involvement in Haiti occurred through the Banque Nationale

de la Republique d'Haiti (BNRH), a French société anonyme granted a concession by

the Haitian government for the floatation of the public debt, tax and tariff collection,

currency issue, and the payment of civil salaries. Chartered by the Banque d'Union

Parissiene, the BNRH, replaced an earlier bank granted a concession in 1880. When

the new bank was organized, the US Secretary of State encouraged National City,

along with three other New York financia! institutions, to become shareholders as a

means of neutralizing French and German interests in Haiti. At the beginning of

World War 1, National City began assuming a larger role in the bank's daily

operations and its Paris headquarters were moved to 55 Wall Street. It also

51
"National City Bank's Plans for Foreign Branches," Christian Science Monitor
(November 2, 1915), 20.
52
"The City Bank in Santo Domingo," National City Monthly Letter (April 1917);
"Foreign Business of the National City Bank of New York," Federal Reserve
Bulletin (October 1, 1918), 947; "Santo Domingo," New York Times (April 9,
1917); Melvin M. Knight, The Americans in Santo Domingo (1928; New York:
Arnold Press, 1970), 90.

124
maintained a central branch in Port-au-Prince, branches in Cap-Ha'itien, Port-de-Paix,

Gona'ives, Saint-Marc, Petit-Goave, Jérémie, Les Cayes, and Jacmel, and agencies in

Fort-Liberté, Mole-Saint-Nicolas, Miragoane, and Aquin. 53 The story of the bank is

complex and contested, and 1 will return to it in Chapter 5; briefly, however, National

City desired that the Haitian government enter into a convention with the United

States, like those already in place in the Dominican Republic and in Cuba, under the

Platt Amendment, to bring stability to the fiscal operations of the government,

maintain the regular collection of export duties, and prevented from contracting debt

from foreign governments other than the US, while giving the United States to

intervene militarily in order to maintain domestic stability and protect American

interests. They forced the Haitian government to sign the Convention in 1915; the

same year, interna) political strife prompted the landing of American Marines. They

would stay until 1934, as would National City.

By 1920 National City had ninety-five overseas branches, the most of any

American bank. They boasted 500,000 names of foreign business in their credit files.

They claimed to have received almost eight thousand commercial reports from their

overseas representatives. They noted that sorne 65,000 American trading firms and

53
"Bank of Haiti," The Bankers Magazine 93: 3 (Sep 1916) 265; "Bank of Haiti,"
National City Monthly Letter (August 1916), 11; Banque nationale de la
République d'Ha'iti, Renseignements financiers statistiques et économiques sur la
République d'Hai'ti 1 Banque nationale de la République d'Hai'ti. (Paris : E.
Cassegrain, 1915); "Bank of Haiti is Ours," No. 8 17: 10 (October 1922) 5; Guy
Pierre, "L'implantation et l'éviction de la banque franrraise dans la Cara'ibe entre
la fin du XIXe siecle et le début du XXe. Un coup d'reil sur les archives publiques
et les fonds de trois banques d'affaires," Unpublished Manuscript.

125
businesses had used their foreign trade facilities. 54 In 1920, they produced a map of

the Caribbean, their branches, and those of the International Banking Corporation

marked by small stars, creating a constellation arcing across the Caribbean

archipelago and ringing the Caribbean ports of Colombia, Venezuela and Panama. 55

The branches nurtured favorable business contacts overseas, developing relationships

with local capitalists, receiving deposits, offering loans, and accepting discounts.

However, they did little to prompt American interest in investing abroad. The branch

bank system was but a part of National City's plans for foreign expansion. Vanderlip

made two additional major organizational moves to capture foreign markets: he

formed the American International Corporation, while, with Charles E. Mitchell, re-

vamping National City's bond department.

The American lnternational Corporation

Vanderlip recognized that while overseas branch banking could create the financia)

infrastructure for the American export trade, unaided it would not prompt Americans

to engage in that trade or invest overseas. He realized that US investors held a

profound skepticism concerning foreign investing, largely because the foreign field

was unknown and Americans remained deeply provincial when it carne to the world

beyond the United States. Vanderlip realized that by organizing an American

corporation, associated with the nation 's largest bank and tied to its most prominent

54
E.A. Groff, American Banks in Foreign Trade, (New York: The National City
Bank of New York, 1920) 12.
55
See The Americas 6: 10 (July 1920).

126
capitalists, he could imbue it with an aura of trust and confidence in American

investors wary offoreign trade. 56 In 1915, in an attempt to build this confidence,

Vanderlip organized the American International Corporation. Though now largely

forgotten, relegated to the dustbin of both corporate and imperial history, the AIC

anticipated the massive, privately held corporations feeding off federal government

subsidies, foreign government contracts, and military funding -like the Halliburton's

and KBR's of today's imperial moment. The AIC used National City's developing

network of branch banks to handle the financia! transactions involved in foreign trade

and development and the bank stood to make a tidy profit from the service fees and

exchange commissions on any transaction it handled.

To the financia! press, the AIC's formation signaled an apocryphal moment in

United States' financia! standing in the world. One critic viewed the AIC's formation

as the beginning of a policy of a "new imperialism" led by Vanderlip and motivated

by the National City Bank Vice President's resentment that President Wilson did not

intervene to protect US investments in Mexico during that country's revolution. 57

Others claimed its importance and influence for the United States in the foreign field

would be comparable to, if not exceeding that of the East India and the Hudson's Bay

companies had had for England. Though, as a member of the National City's foreign

56
"Company Planto Place U.S. in World Trade," Christian Science Monitor (Nov
24, 1915)14.
57
"Walsh Aid Excited Over 'Big Business,"' New York Times (Jan 31, 1916) 18.

127
department pointed out, while these older institutions were confined to specific

portions of the world for their activities, the AIC's scope was global. 58

To promete confidence among potential American investors, Vanderlip

sought individuals representing what he described as "spectacular or visible success"

in business for the AIC. The AIC's financia! muscle began with James Stillman and

National City and continued through a roll call including sorne of America's largest

financia! and manufacturing powers, many of them composing a series of interlocking

corporate directorships: J. Ogden Armour of Armour and Co, Charles A. Coffin of

General Electric; William E. Corey of Midvale Steel and Ordnance; Joseph P. Grace

of W.R. Grace; James J. Hill of the Great Northern Railway; Otto H. Kahn of Kuhn,

Loeb; Robert S. Lovett of the Union Pacific Railroad; Ambrose Monell of

International Nickel; Henry S. Pritchett of the Carnegie Foundation; Percy A.

Rockefeller of Standard Oil; John D. Ryan of Anaconda Copper; Charles H. Sabin of

the Guaranty Trust; William L. Saunders of Ingersoll-Rand; Theodore N. Vail of

American Telephone and Telegraph; Albert H. Wiggin of the Chase National Bank;

and William Woodward of the Hanover National Bank. 59 Charles A. Stone of Stone &

58
Harold R. Smart, "The Hudson Bay Company," No.8 11: 2 (August 1916), 13;
"Our Financia! Renaissance," Wall Street Journal (Nov 25, 1915); pg. 1; "The
American International Corporation,"No.811:1 (January 1916), 3; Edward
Marshall, "America at last Really in the Foreign Field," New York Times
(December 12, 1915).
59
See various issues of the Bulletin of American lnternational Corporation
between February 1917 and May 1920. Por a general history of the AIC,
especially regarding the work of Willard Strait, see Harry N. Scheiber, "World
War 1 as Entrepreneurial Opportunity: Willard Straight and the American
lnternational Corporation," Political Science Quarterly, 84:3 (September, 1969),
486-511. On the geography of interlocking directorships, see United States. 62"ct

128
Webster was appointed President and Willard Strait, of J.P. Morgan and Company,

Vice President. At $50 million dollars, its initial capitalization was the largest of its

time. Its mandate was equally grand. Open and expansive, the charter enabled it to

engage in any business outside of New York State, permitting the AIC to

own and operate, or buy and sell, shipping, railroads, street car lines, lighting
and water plants, docks, warehouses, mines, factories and mercantile
establishments. It can organize such enterprises, start them and as going
concerns, offer their securities to the public, or it can hold and operate these
companies as subsidiaries and sell its own securities to the public, based upon
these properties. 60

Besides establishing "friendly commercial relations with all countries of the

world," the AIC's acted as both a conduit for the export of American goods while

also loaning capital for development projects abroad, especially in those countries

suffering because of the war.

Within ayear of its organization, the AIC had received more than twelve

hundred propositions for consideration, a majority from South America and the

Caribbean. From its initial projects building water works and sewage systems in

Uruguay, the AIC financed the construction of utilities and public works projects

throughout the world. It formed subsidiaries, like the China Corporation and the

Grace Russian Company, for the development of railways and canals. It consolidated

the production of rubber, rosin, turpentine and tea through the formation of the United

S tates Rubber Company, the Rosin and Turpentine Export Company, and Carter

Congress, 3rd Session. Report ofthe Committee Appointed Pursuant to House

Resolutions 429 and 504 to Investigate the Concentration ofControl ofmoney
and Credit (Washington: GPO, 1913).
60
lbid. Marshall, "America at last," New York Times (December 12, 1915).

129
Macy & Company. Perhaps its most important contribution to American foreign trade

was its almost single-handed revitalization of the US mercantile marine. The marine

had been moribund since after the Civil War, and imperial theorists and boosters

argued that its revitalization, justas much as the creation of a world-wide system of

American branch banks, was necessary for the development of US international trade.

The AIC purchased stock in a number of shipping lines, creating a global maritime

network under the US flag and breaking US dependency on foreign bottoms. In

partnership with W.R. Grace, the AIC purchased a stake in the Pacific Mail

Steamship Company, with lines extending from Baltimore through the Panama Canal

and through the Pacific as far west as India. It bought stock in the United Fruit

Company, its vessels traversing routes to the Caribbean and Central America. It

purchased the International Mercantile Marine Company, a Morgan-controlled

company then in receivership- its most famous vessel was the Titanic- whose ships

plied the Atlantic while expanding German ports and the Mediterranean.

Additionally, the AIC purchased the New York Shipbuilding Corporation and its one

hundred and sixty acre facility at Camden, New Jersey. The purchase instantly made

the AIC the world's largest shipbuilding concern. During the war, it garnered

guaranteed contracts through the federal government' s Emergency Fleet Corporation

for two hundred ships; after the war it tendered numerous commercial and private

contracts. 61

61
On the AIC's role in shipbuilding, specifically, History and Development of
New York Shipbuilding Corporation (New York: New York Shipbuilding
Corporation, 1920, rpt. Of American lnternational Corporation Bulletin, (June,

130
The Bond Department

While the AIC offered American investors an American institution that could instill

confidence in foreign investing National City also took a more active and direct role

in both domestic and international securities marketing through the expansion of their

bond department under the aegis of the National City Company, the securities

affiliate organized by Vanderlip in 1911 in order to hold stock in banks and

corporations not allowed national banking association. At the time of its organization,

the NCC was heralded as the vehicle through which National City's foreign

expansion would occur. But in its early years, despite the notable increase in the

holdings of securities affiliates more generally, the NCC was failry inactive in the

foreign field. 62 Its primary foreign holdings were in the Banco de la Habana and the

Banque Nationale de la Republic d'Haiti.

In March 1916 the bank hired Charles E. Mitchell to run the National City

Company. Mitchell was a Massachusetts-born bond salesman who had joined the

Trust Company of America shortly before the 1907 crash, and, after a stint in Europe,

had formed his own bond house, C.E. Mitchell & Co. 63 Mitchell revived the NCC. In

1920). For a succinct summary of the decline and rebirth of the US mercantil e
marine, see Robert E. Peabody, "America Returns to the High Seas," The New
England Quarterly, 4:3 (July, 1931), 409-419.
62
Jacob H. Hollander, "The Security Holdings of National Banks," The American
Economic Review, Vol. 3, No. 4. (Dec., 1913), pp. 793-814. W. Nelson Peach,
The Security Affiliates of National Banks. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1941) 18-9.
63
This section is based on Charles E. Mitchell, "National City Company," No. 8
XIV: 5 (May, 1919) and Charles E. Mitchell, The National City Company's Plans

131
1916 it absorbed National City's bond department (a modestly successful affair since

Vanderlip organized it) and purchased N.W. Halsey and Co., the second largest bond

house in the country, and too k o ver its approximately $100 mi Ilion business retailing

and marketing domestic railroad, utilities, and municipality bonds. The NCC

increased its capital stock from $10M to $25 M. 64 1t's staff grew rapidly. They had

364 employees in 1916,571 in 1917,928 in 1918, and almost 1,300 by 1919. 65 1t

quickly outgrew its offices within the National City headquarters at 55 Wall Street

and took over its own building, across the street at 50 Wall Street. They opened an

uptown sales office at Fifth A venue and Forty-third Street. They expanded into more

than fifty cities throughout the United States and Canada, opening regional

subsidiaries like the National City Company of California alongside overseas offices

in England, Switzerland, Denmark and Japan, while maintaing hundreds of agents

and staff and correspondents and selling. 66

Under Mitchell, the National City Company entered territory traditionally held

by bond houses and trust companies. They began retailing a plate of domestic

industrials like Brooklyn Edison, the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, the

Pennsylvania Rail Road, and Portland Rail Road Light and Power. But the volume

and geographic scope of the National City Company's bond business greatly

for world wide investments service," The Americas 5: 11 (August 1919); and
"The Story ofthe National City Company," No. 819:1 (January 1924); "Financia!
Notes," New York Times (March 18, 1916),15; A. St. John, "Men in Wall Street's
Eye: lntroducing Mr. Charles E. Mitchell," Barron's 3: 10 (March 5 1923), 11.
64
"N.W. Halsey & Co. Sold to City Bank," New York Times (August 20, 1916), 3
65
St. John, "Men in Wall Street's Eye," 11
66
"Topics in Wall Street," New York Times (January 4, 1917), 14.

132
expanded and they moved overseas. 67 From its reorganization in 1916, over the

course of the twenties, the National marketed the bonds for corporations,

governments, cities, and municipalities in France, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia,

Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland,

Netherlands, lreland, Greece, Canada, Australia, China, the Philippines, and Japan.

They made a major push into South America, taking the place previously held by

European financiers, and floated bonds for Chile, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, and Costa

Rica. In the Caribbean, they organized syndicates that lent funds to the governments

of Cuba, Porto Rico, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Haití, while

they refinancing companies like the Cuba Railroad, Cuban American Sugar, and the

Porto Rican Tobacco Company. 68 By 1923, National City's bond department was the

most active in the country, dealing in $1 billion annually. Mitchell claimed the bank

did $20,000,000,000 in securities business, averaging about $2 billion in sales per

year until the Crash. 69

67
Peach, The Security Affiliates. 104-5. Also see Huertas, Citibank for a
comprehensive list.
68
These are only the National City Company issues in which J.P. Morgan and
Company participated in 1922. There are, presumably, more. "Participations from
National City Company, 1921, Syndicate Book JO, 47; "Participations from
National City Company, 1922," Syndicate Book 1O, 93; "Participations from
National City Company, 1923," Syndicate Book JO, 121; and "Participations
received from National City Company, 1924," Syndicate Book JO, pp. 216, all in
ARC 117 JPMorgan Archives. Por a partiallist, see W. Nelson Peach, The
Security Affiliates of National Banks. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1941) 104-5.
69
A. St. John, "Men in Wall Street's Eye: Introducing Mr. Charles E. Mitchell,"
Barran 's 3: 10 (March 5 1923), pg. 11; "Testimony of Charles E. Mitchell," Stock
Exchange Practices, 1772

133
 As National City's investment portfolio expanded, so too did the profile of

their investors. In part, Mitchell and other bankers attributed the success of their bond

sales to the impact of World War 1 on popular understanding of ideas of thrift and

economy. The US government had initiated an extensive education, publicity, and

advertisings campaign to conscript people into the war effort through the Liberty

Loan and Victory Loans. The purchase of the loans turned hoarded cash into capital

activated by the Iife-giving breath of patriotism through the purchase of bonds issued

by the federal government and marketed through the nation 's financia! institutions.

"These great Liberty loan drives developed a great understanding among the people

asto what thrift and investment mean," wrote Mitchell. "The business that developed

there from is small in volume, but what we are finding is that the number of orders,

the number of people served, is constantly increasing. "70 The notion of thrift was

nothing new to Americans. Thrift had had celebrated proponents like Benjamin

Franklin (whom the National City Bank described as the Father of Thrift). 71 However,

70
"Testimony of Richard Whitney, President New York Stock Exchange, New
York, N.Y .," United States. Senate. Seventy-Second Congress. First Session. S.
Res. 84. Hearings Befare the Committee on Banking and Currency. Stock
Exchange Practices. Part l. Aprilll, 12, 18, 21 and 22, 1932. (Washington:
GPO, 1932), 26; John Donald Wilson, The Chase: The Chase Manhattan Bank,
N.A., 1945-1985 (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1986), 1O; Charles
Cortez Abbot, The New York Bond Market, 1920-1930 (Cambridge: Harvard
U ni versity Pres, 1937), 46-55
71
"Benjamin Franklin: Father ofThrift," No. 8 18.1 (January 1923), pp. The
efforts by bankers to encourage and teach savings were paralleled by similar
educational work by Federal Reserve System and the American Bankers
Association. Meanwhile, journals such as Bankers Monthly offered articles on the
"tendency to save" amongst different nationalities, women, and children. See, for
instance, H.W. Jordan, "Getting Factory Workers to Save Regularly," Bankers
Monthly: The Magazine of Better Banking, XXXVII: (3, March 1920) 13;

134
the pathological embrace of an acetic and pietistic austerity and self-discipline found

in the repression of the body and the renunciation of excess and ostentation, was

translated from an individual concern into a collective duty tied to national defense

and the financing of total war. The incredible success of the Liberty Loan campaigns

alerted bankers to the fact that such martial intensity and fiscal discipline could be

mobilized for peace-time profitability and accumulation. "[The bond] prometes the

projects of peace and nationallife," National City wrote in the publication Bonds &

Bankers "as the Liberty Bonds served the country in time of war." 72

The War taught Americans the "investing habit," as the Guaranty Trust

Company's Albert Breton put it. 73 Butjust as important as this education in the ways

of savings and thrift was a shift in both public perceptions of banking and finance-

and in bankers' perceptions of themselves. Under Mitchell, the National City

Company's mission was to recast a stigma attached to bond retailing. According to

Mitchell, it was "almost unethical" for bankers to actively seek out retail business.

Lawrence Dalton, "Children the Best Publicity Agents," Bankers Monthly: The
Magazine of Better Banking, XXXVII: (4, April, 1920) 2; Jackson Heywood,
"Vocational Appeals that Stimulate Savings," Bankers Monthly: The Magazine of
Better Banking, XXXVII: 5, 15; Henry J. Burton, "Making the Foreigner a
Profitable Customer," Bankers Monthly: The Magazine of Better Banking,
XXXVII: 12 (December, 1920) 15. Marx offers an opposing, much less optimistic
view of the role of savings in the economy. While he and Conant argue that the
time- and labour-saving innovations of machine production ha ve made savings
possible, the growth of investment capital was "filched" from the savings of
workers, while the worker, in order to save must "maintain themselves as pure
labouring machines." The worker is saving "in every way for capital, not for
himself." See Capital, Volume 111: A Critique of Political Economy, Ben Fowkes,
Trans. (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), 347.
72
Bonds & Bankers (New York: The National City Company, 1922), 4
73
Albert Breton, "Protection of Foreign Investments," The Guaranty News VII: 1
(March 1918), 34-52

135
He argued that there was a "veil of mystery and false dignity" that shrouded

investment banking based on the pretense of a distinction between the elegant,

discreet and gentleman! y world of high finance and the brash and vulgar hucksterism

of the barker, the salesman, and the bond retailer. Mitchell sought to change that:

We thought that if we could tear from the investment banking business the
veil of mystery and false dignity that surrounded it; if we could keep thrift and
investment ideas constantly before them so that they might obtain a better idea
of what a large part these actors might play in their success; if we could
spread through a big organization the gospel of economic independence to be
achieved by saving and investing, we could build up a large volume of
business and at the same time accomplish something very desirable for the
national welfare. 74

Mitchell wanted to overturn common wisdom concerning banking practice.

Where he saw a retail potential in banking, it was generally held that bankers, in order

to maintain their good name and public confidence, should maintain conservative and

sound banking practices, avoiding stock speculation, leaving trust management to the

trust companies and bond retailing to the bond retailers. 75 Nonetheless, Mitchell both

expanded the financia! business of the bank while engaging in a sort of investor

populism, what he described as a "theory of getting closer to the people." In sorne

cases, this was quite literal: National City made sure their offices were in accessible

street leve! locations. They also embarked on an advertising campaign that dispensed

with the "staid and unappealing" promotional materials used by bankers and bond

houses up to that point. They expanded their research department, making it into a

means became more aggressively entrepreneurial in their approach to securities

74
Charles E. Mitchell, "National City Company," No. 8 XIV: 5 (May, 1919)
75
Peach, The Securities Affiliates, 10-12

136
management. They kept an eye out for underperforming companies potentially

needing refinancing. They sent out a monthly list of bond offerings, hired a stable of

financia! experts who advised customers on the creation of the portfolios and

constantly monitored overseas political, financia! and industrial conditions. 76

The success of Mitchell 's work, alongside that of other N ew York bankers at

the time, in creating not only a market for bonds but a culture of investing in the

United States can perhaps be seen in the fact that, by the end of the 1920s, the bond

market and foreign investment would become water cooler talk for an increasing

number of Americans. An editorial in the Equitable Trust Company's The Equitable

Envoy asked if "Every worker [was] becoming a Capitalist?" suggesting the

increasingly quotidian nature of forms of finance. "A big fundamental change is

taking place in the type of person able to invest money," they noted, arguing that the

average middle class person was becoming involved in the stock market while the

capitalist -"the corpulent, florid individual with the big cigar whose patent leather

boots were usually depicted resting on the necks of severa! laboring men and their

families"- was being replaced by those laboring men and their families themselves. 77

Investing was almost a national past time. Americans kept a constant eye on the stock

market ticker while once-exotic locales like Bolivia and the Dominican Republic

76
Bonds & Bankers (New York: The National City Company, 1922) 29
77
"Is every worker becoming a capitalist?" The Equitable Envoy IV: 8 (February
1925) 18-19.

137
would seem as familiar as the names of domestic corporations Radio, General Motors

and American Can. 78

Foreign Trade Corporations: The MBA and AFBC

Despite the work of National City in the years following the establishment of the

Federal Reserve System sorne observers complained that few bankers had taken

advantage of the provisions allowing foreign branch banks and, as such, were doing

little to capitalize on the enormous trade opportunities offered by the war. 79 Other

than National City, only two other banks had opened foreign branches. Washington's

Commercial National Bank opened branches in Panama City and Colon and Boston's

First National Bank opened a branch in Buenos Aires. 80 Sorne institutions were

reluctant to establish branch banks overseas. The Irving National Bank, for instance,

while actively engaged in foreign trade argued against encroaching on territory where

local banks were already present. 81 Instead, the lrving preferred working with already

78
Frederick Lewis ABen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History ofthe 1920s (New
York: Harper Brothers, 1931), 290-319.
79
"Branch Banks Abroad," The Washington Post (March 3, 1915), pg. 6; H.
Parker Willis, "What the Federal Reserve System Has Done," The American
Economic Review 7: 2 (Jun. 1917) 269-288.
80
"Foreign Branches of National Banks," Report ofthe Comptroller ofthe
Currency (3 December 1917) 57.
81
Related to this reluctance on the part of the lrving National, bankers also
expressed concern that foreign branches were not permitted to set up branches in
the United States could cause resentment. They argued for reciprocity and in
sorne cases, encouraged opening the domestic market to foreign banks. See Frank
O'Malley, "Our Awakening to the possibilities of South American Trade," The
Americas 7: 8 (May 1921), 12; Leopold Grahame, "American banks abroad," The
Equitable Envoy (1.4 (October 1921), 20-22, 39. Also see the editorial,

138
established institutions. They cited their correspondent relationships with London's

Barclay's Company and Company and Paris' Irving Cox & Company. 82

Part of the problem was that no other bank had the resources of National City.

Despite the growth of American "banking power," the combined capital resources of

American financial institutions, it was widely recognized that the resources of any

other single American bank were insufficient to enter the foreign field. Instead of

establishing overseas branches, many bankers established "foreign banking

corporations"- financia) institutions operating under the jurisdiction of the Federal

Reserve whose primary purpose was the enlargement of the American export trade.

These corporations were consortiums of national banking associations capitalized at

$1 mi Ilion or more each permitted to invest a maximum of ten percent of their capital

in the new institution. They were usually headed by a well-known trust company,

national banking association, or private bank who maintained a majority share in the

corporation while inviting participation from other banks throughout the United

States and, in sorne cases, Canada and Cuba. The Guaranty Trust Company, for

instance, organized the Asia Banking Corporation in 1918 for trade with China,

Siberia, and the US insular territories in the Pacific. They opened branches in

Shanghai, Harbin, Hankow, Tientsin, Peking, and Vladivostock. Other banks

participating in the ABC included the National Bank of Portland, Oregon; the

National Shawmut Bank, Boston; the National Bank of Commerce of Seattle; the

"Reciprocity in International Banking," The Bankers Magazine XCV: 2 (August

1917), 163-167
82
On the lrving National Bank's approach to American international banking, see
"Foreign Banking Development," Federal Reserve Bulletin (January 1, 1919), 23.

139
Mercantile Bank of the Americas; the Anglo and London Paris National Bank of San

Francisco; the Guardian Savings and Trust Company, Cleveland; the Bankers Trust

Company; and the Continental and the Commercial National Bank of Chicago. 83

The largest, most ambitious of these corporations - the Mercantile Bank of the

Americas and the American Foreign Banking Corporation - focused on US foreign

trade in the Caribbean and Central and South America. The Mercantile Bank of the

Americas (MBA) was organized in 1915 by James Brown of Brown Brothers and

Company and Albert Strauss of J.W. Seligman. It was inspired by the Pan American

Financia) conference held in Washington that year and the renewed calls for a Pan-

American commercial bank that carne out of it. 84 Its capital stock quickly doubled,

growing from $1 to 2 million dollars, as additional banks joined, including the

National Shawmut Bank of Boston; the Anglo London Paris National Bank of San

83
On the organization of the Asia Banking Corporation see: "Foreign Banking
Development," Federal Reserve Bulletin (September 1, 1918), p. 818; "Asia
Banking Corporation's Progress," Guaranty News VII: 1 (March 1918) 118-119;
Asia Banking Corporation: An American Bankfor Trade with the Orient (New
York: Asia Banking Corporation, 1920); and "May Buy Stock in Five Foreign
Banking Concerns," Wall Street Journal, (Feb 21, 1919) pg. 10. Others foreign
banking corporations organized for US trade with Asia included the Equitable-
Eastern Banking Corporation, organized in 1920 by the Equitable Trust Company
and the Park-Union Foreign Banking Corporation, organized by New York's
National Park Bank and the Union Bank of Canada. The Equitable-Eastern
maintained branches in Shanghai, London and Paris. The Park-Union in Paris,
Shanghai, Tokyo, Y okohama and offices in San Francisco and Seattle, in addition
to its head offices in New York City. See: "We celebrate our Fiftieth
Anniversary," The Equitable Envoy 1.1 (July 1921), 8; "Linking the Equitable
with the Far East," The Equitable Envoy VI: 9 (March 1926), 13; and "Foreign
Trade Corporations Operating Successfully," Wall Street Journal (March 4,
1921), 8.
84
"Foreign Branches of American Banks," Federal Reserve Bulletin (August 1,
1918), 736; "James Brown," The Compass 1.4 (April 1920), 99.

140
Francisco, the Hibernia Bank and Trust Company of New Orleans, and the Guaranty

Trust Company. 85 The MBA entered the foreign field less through branches- its only

foreign branches were in New Orleans, París, Madrid, Barcelona, and Hamburg-

than by the establishment of foreign "affiliates." These affiliates, while partially

capitalized by the Wall Street parent, drew on the intellectual and capital resources of

local capitalists and planters. 86

The Mercantile's expansion was stunning. They took over operational control

of the National Bank of Nicaragua, the bank of issue organized by Seligman and

Brown Brothers in 1911, along with its branches in Managua, Bluefields, León and

Granada. They opened the Banco Mercantil Americano de Cuba with branches in

Havana and Ciego de Avila to take advantage of the financing of Cuba's increasingly

lucrative sugar industry. 87 In Costa Rica they established the Banco Mercantil de

Costa Rica, headquartered at San José. In Colombia the Banco Mercantil Americano

de Colombia was organized with branches in Bogotá, Barranquilla, Cartagena,

Medellín, Cali, Girardot, Manizales, Honda, Armenia, Bucaramanga, and Cúcuta. In

Peru, they organized the Banco Mercantil Americano del Peru with branches in Lima,

85
"Mercantile Bank of the Americas," Wall Street Journal, (May 18, 1917) pg. 8,
"Mercantile Bank of the Americas," Wall Street Journal (Aug 14, 1917) pg. 8
86
"Mercantil e Bank of the Americas: Something More than a Bank," Barran' s 1:
17 (August29, 1921), 11
87
"How an American Bank is Pushing Ahead in the Foreign Field," Bankers
Monthly 100:1 (January 1920), 97; F.J. Oehmichen, "New Offices of Banco
Mercantil Americano de Cuba Opens," The Guaranty News VIII: 8 (October,
1919), 246-7; Manuel Landaeta Rosales, La gran casa de la esquina de Camejo,
hoy "Banco mercantil Americano de Caracas." (Caracas: Banco mercantil
Americano de Caracas, 1918); "Banco Mercantil del Peru at Lima Moves into
New Quarters," The Compass 1.7 (July 1920), 203

141
Arequipa, Chiclayo, Callao, Trujillo. The Banco Mercantil Americano de Caracas

was organized in Venezuela, with branches in Caracas, La Guayvra, Maracaibo,

Puerto Cabello, and Valencia. The American Mercantile Bank of Brazil was

organized for that country, with branches in Pará and Pernambuco, the centers of the

coffee and sugar trade, respectively. In Argentina they formed the Banco Mercantil y

Agricola de Buenos Aires. The Banco Atlantida was organized for Honduras, with

branches in La Ceiba, Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, Puerto Cortez, Tela, and

Amapola. They took over the Banco de Guatemala, an institution established in 1895

and partly controlled through the German-American merchant Adolph Stahl, along

with its agencies at Antigua, Coban, Coatepeque, Escuintia, Juliapa, Mazatenagno,

Pocuhuta, Quexaltenagngo, Rtalholey, Saleros, Zacapa. 88

In addition to this network of affiliates, the Mercantile organized agencies in

Panama, Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Paraguay, China, Japan, the Philippines, the

Canary Islands, England, Belgium, and Russia. 89 The Mercantile's operations moved

beyond the traditional role of a bank in financing trade and expanded its commercial

operations, offering credits to planters for the harvest, production, and marketing

agricultura! goods, and actively trading in local commodities markets. They organized

88
See the Banco de Guatemala advertisement in The Times) (London), (January
23, 1920), 57; "Mercantile Bank Hit By Falling Commodity Markets," Wall Street
Journal (August 24, 1921)
89
See "The MBA enters the Argentine," The Compass 1.4 (April, 1920), 102-3;
E.J. Lubo, "Ciego de A vila," The Compass 1.4 (April 1920), 115-6, the
Mercantil e Bank of the Americas advertisements in Bamericuba: Banca,
Comercio, Agricultura, Industria, Cubana I: 11 (Octubre 1919), 19 and various
issues of The Compass.

142
the Mercantile Overseas Corporation for precisely this purpose: for buying and

marketing Latín American commodities in the United States market. 90

The other foreign banking corporation with a major interest in the Caribbean

was the American Foreign Banking Corporation (AFBC), organized by New York's

Chase National Bank. The Chase, a rapidly growing national banking association

chartered in 1877 and named after the former US Treasury Secretary Salomon P.

Chase, wanted to compete with both the Mercantile Bank of the Americas and

National City's lnternational Banking Corporation. 91 Chase President Albert H.

Wiggin organized it for that purpose. Like the Mercantile Bank of the Americas, the

AFBC underwent an almost constant increase in capitalization as the delirium of

profits from the post war boom infected financiers around the country. lts member

banks quickly grew to thirty-four, including banks in Canada and Cuba. Stockholders

90
"Foreign Branches of American Banks," Federal Reserve Bulletin (A ugust 1,
1918), 736; "Mercantile Bank Hit by Falling Commodity Markets," Wall Street
Journal (August 24, 1921) pg. 1 The history of the Mercantile Overseas
Corporation pre-dates the organization of the Mercantil e Bank. Its initial ancestor
was the trading firm of H. Fogg & Co., organized in the 1850s for US trade with
Japan. By the end of the century H. Fogg was reorganized as the China & Japan
Trading Co., Ltd and had, by 1908, offices in Yokohama, Kobe, Osaka, Nagasaki,
Shanghai and London. See Cleona Lewis, American' s Stake in International
Investments (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1938) 176-7
91
0n the history of the Chase, see: Chase National Bank ofthe City of New York,
1877-1922 (New York: De Vinne Press, 1922); "The Story ofthe Chase
National," The Bankers Monthly 119: 6 (December 1929), 6; John Donald
Wilson, The Chase: The Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A., 1945-1985 (Boston:
Harvard Business School Press, 1986). On the longer history of Chase 's overseas
expansion, see Gino Cattani and Adrian E. Tschoegl, An Evolutionary View of
Internationalization: Chase Manhattan Bank, 1917 to 1996, (Philadelphia:
Wharton Financia) Institutions Center, 2002) and S.B. Prasad, "The
Metamorphosis of City and Chase as Multinational Banks," Business and
Economic History, 28(2), (1999), 201-209

143
included the Merchants National Bank of Boston, the First National Bank of

Cleveland, the Philadelphia National Bank of Philadelphia, the Canal bank and Trust

Company of New Orleans, the National Bank of Commerce in St. Louis, the Corn

Exchange National Bank of Chicago, the First and Security National Bank of

Minneapolis, the Fifth-Third National Bank of Cincinnati, the Anglo and London

Paris National Bank of San Francisco, the First National Bank of Milwaukee, the

Trust Company of Cuba in Havana and the Standard Bank of Canada. 92

The AFBC's expansion was neither as rapid nor as broad as that of the MBA;

nonetheless, they managed to create an impressive global network of branches within

a short period of time. In 1918, they acquired the Panama City and Cristobal branches

of the Commercial National Bank of Washington, giving them a share of the lucrative

transit toll accounts. Two years later, the AFBC had set up branches in Havana, Cuba;

Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; San Pedro Sula, Honduras; Cali,

Colombia; Buenos Aires, Argentina; as well as in Brussels, Harbin, and Manila. The

AFBC also took over the Banco Nacional de Santo Domingo, the institution formed

by Samuel M. Jarvis and Henry C. Niese to compete with the Santiago

Michelena/National City interests. The purchase gave the AFBC seven branches in

the Dominican Republic- in Santo Domingo City, San Francisco de Macoris,

92
See the American Foreign Banking Corporation advertisement in The Times of
Cuba (July 1920), 143

144
Santiago de Los Cabelleras, San Pedro de Macoris, La Vega, Sanchez, and Puerto

Plata. 93

***
Within a few years of the signing of the Federal Reserve Act, National City, the

Mercantil e Bank of the Americas, and the American Foreign Banking Corporation

had created a financial infrastructure arching across the Americas, practically out of

nothing. They hada means through which the surplus capital accumulating in

thousands of local banks dispersed across the country and the deposits of the

country's great industrialists gathering in Wall Street's vaults could be mobilized,

funneled through Wall Street, and spread through the Caribbean and Latin America

for regional development and American gain. In this sense, the foreign expansion of

American banks took place on a mirrored plane. On one hand there was the extensive

overseas network of branches, affiliates and correspondents present, it seemed, in

every port, in every manufacturing center, in every agricultural region in the

Americas. On the other, there was an internal network of banks: a web of US

correspondents and affiliates who directed local capital from throughout the United

States to Wall Street and on to the Caribbean and Latin America. The scope of these

internal network can be seen in the list of participants in the AFBC's $3 million

acceptance credit to the Cuban sugar factor L.R. Munoz, made in the fall of 1920, and

successively renewed over the coming year. Participants in the credit included

93
"Foreign Branches," Federal Reserve Bulletin (December, 1920) 1298;
Archibald Kains, "Foreign Trade and Foreign Banking," The Chase: A Monthly
Magazine 1: 3 (May 1918); 83-7; Melvin M. Knight, The Americans in Santo
Domingo (1928; New York: Arnold Press, 1970), 136-7

145
powerful national banking associations like the AFBC's parent, the Chase National,

and the Anglo, London Paris National Bank of San Francisco. But smaller, regional

institutions from throughout the country joined as well, from Grand Rapids,

Michigan's Cedar Rapids National Bank, to Portland, Oregon's United States

National Bank to Toledo, Ohio's Commerce Guardian Trust and Savings Bank, to

Mobile, Alabama's People's Bank. 94

However, the economic ti es linking this di verse group of financia! institutions

- let alone binding a Midwestern farmer ora Northeastern worker, toa Cuban sugar

plantation, a Costa Rican railroad, ora Uruguayan water-works project- were not

immediately visible. The ties, like the branch network, had to be built from the

ground up. This labor was of the imagination, of representation: a set of stories had to

be told through which Americans could visualize themselves as part of an

international economic system. The economy had to be narrated. The experience of

this new globalized American economy was mediated through representation. The

work of the imagination was as important to the expansion of American commercial

power, the rise of New York in global finance, and the extension of an imperial

presence in the Caribbean and Latin America, as was the extension of branch banks.

lt is to this work of imagination that 1 will now turn.

11.

94
Por a complete list, see Appendix C.

146
 Banking Expansion and the Enterprise of Knowledge

Despite their proclamations heralding a new cosmopolitanism and the necessity for a

new international thinking on the part of Americans, New York bankers still faced a

country that was deeply provincial, skeptical of foreign engagement, and generally

convinced of the rightness of the American way of insularity. While bankers

demanded American internationalism, they complained of American provincialism. 95

National City's John E. Gardin, for example, lauded the new virility and strength of

"American manhood" on account of its recent trade balances and position as a global

creditor while complaining that Americans had no "vision beyond the confines of our

country, and [did not] realize that there are other worlds and other peoples with whom

we are just so closely allied by the ties of blood as well as humanity." 96 Bankers

chided their countrymen for their "national ignorance" of their neighbors in the

Caribbean and Latin America. 97 They complained that American schools spent too

much time teaching children to believe "that this is the greatest country in the world"

while ignoring the rest of the globe. 98 "Our school histories have magnified our

national progress and ha ve justified all of our national acts- all our battles were

95
"How Nationality Still Counts in Foreign Trade," 4.
96
Gardin, "Financing Foreign Trade," 11.
97
William S. Kies, The Commercial and Industrial Outlook (New York: National
City Bank of New York, 1915). Also see Ames Higgins, "A New Era in
Banking," No. 8 IX: 7-10 (October 1914) 1-7; George M. Smith, "The American
and the European in South America," No. 8 11 (November 1914), 5; and William
J. Omerod, "A Study of South America," The Chase IV: 3 (May 1915), 36.
98
William S. Kies, The Commercial and Industrial Outlook (New York: National
City Bank of New York, 1915); See also Ames Higgins, "A New Era in
Banking," No. 8 IX: 7-10 (October 1914) 1-7; George M. Smith, "The American
and the European in South America," No. 8 11 (November 1914), 5; See William
J. Omerod, "A Study of South America," The Chase IV: 3 (May 1915), 36, 156

147
glorious victories, and in every international dispute, we were always in the right,"

National City's William S. Kies stated in a 1916 address to Y ale:

This may ha ve been a proper method to ... teach patriotism, but it results in
the development of a narrow viewpoint, and in a species of international
snobbery. Our young men have had practically no preparation for a real
international commercial career. They know little of the history of South
American countries, or of the customs, characteristics and habits of peoples
with whom we would enjoy commercial relations. The ideals and national
ambitions have received little sympathetic consideration, and toward countries
whose civilization extends over a period of centuries, we have adopted too
frequently an air of tolerant condescension. 99

The effects of this national ignorance were felt most acutely in American

business practices overseas. Unlike the European banker and merchant, to whom

many New York bankers looked to for a model of international banking, Americans

were stubborn, arrogant, unwilling to adapt to foreign demands, dismissive of the

need to speak any language but English. They enumerated a series of complaints

voiced by their Latin American customers when dealing with American merchants.

Americans were callous and rude, "common courtesy [was] surprisingly scarce." 100

The packaging of goods and the filling out of invoices was often incomplete and

slovenly. They felt that Americans "view[ed] foreign markets as a dumping ground in

times of over-production, to be forgotten when the demands of the domestic market

were sufficient to absorb the production." 101

99
William S. Kies, Opportunitiesfor Young Men in the Foreign Field (New York:
National City Bank of New York, 1916) 9-10.
100
William S. Kies, The Commercial and Industrial Outlook (New York: National
City Bank of New York, 1915), pp. 8.
101
William S. Kies, The Commercial and Industrial Outlook (New York: National
City Bank of New York, 1915); Irving M. Barnard, "Five Years in Jungle Land,"

148
 When it carne to American bankers in the foreign field, they were no different

than businessmen - except for the fact that in 1914, as a class they really didn 't exist.

Otto Kahn, of the prívate bankers Kuhn and Loeb, asserted that the idea of the

American international banker was a joke, saying that it had about as much currency

as the idea of an "American international farmer." 102 "How many young men have we

in the entire country," asked Lewis E. Pierson of the lrving National Bank, "who, in

knowledge of foreign banking, foreign business methods, foreign language, foreign

point of view, are up to the demands of this service?" Pierson continued:

Will the present tendencies, even fully developed, enable us to compete with
the banking personne; which Europe is producing by such a variety of means?
What sort of product is being turned out by our commercial colleges, our
schools of arts and trades, our new vocational schools? How does it compare
with the school products of continental Europe, where the business school
forms the center of the business community, where education aims directly at
the benefit of business, and where the manager of the bank, the factory, the
business houses, recognizes in the student finishing his course an actual and
immediately available effective addition to the business assets of the
community. 103

For its part, National City initially poached employees from the European and

Canadian banks in the Caribbean, Latín America, and Asia, luring them away with

No. 8 12: 3(April, 1917), 24. "How Nationality Counts in Foreign Trade," The
Ame ricas 1:7 (April 191S), pp George M. Smith, "The American and the
European in South America," No. 8 11 (November 1914), S; See William J.
Omerod, "A Study of South America," The Chase IV: 3 (May 191S), 36, 1S6;
"Untitled," American Goods and Foreign Markets (December 1, 1920), 2.;
"Present Conditions in Cuba," The Compass 1.2 (February 1920), 36; "Foreign
Trade Foundations," The Compass 1.12 (December 1920), 380
102
"Mr. Otto H. Kahn on the 'International Banker," The Guaranty News11.8
(February, 1923), Also, Lewis E. Pierson, American Banking in Foreign Trade;
Address at the Fourth National Foreign Trade Convention, Pittsburgh, PA, 1917.
(New York: National Foreign Trade Council, 1917) 8.
103
Pierson, S.

149
absurdly high salaries and provoking grumbles from their rivals that Americans were

breaching the gentlemanly etiquette of business. 104 The Caribbean regional so acted as

a Iaboratory for National City. The small group of homegrown international bankers

who gained on-the-ground training with their Caribbean correspondents supervised

the establishment of the wave of branches established throughout the hemisphere

after 1914. John H. Allen, for instance, who had worked with the Banque Nationale

de la Republique d'Haiti in Port-au-Prince, set up the bank's Argentinian branch. JC

Martine, manager of the Banco de la Habana since 1906, helped opened branches in

Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and Santiago de Chile. 105

104
See Neil C. Quigley, "The Bank of Nova Scotia in the Caribbean, 1889-1940,"
Business History Review 63 (Winter 89): 797-838.
105
"Five new officers are appointed at Annual Meeting," No. 8 16: 2 (February
1921), 3. The Jarvis-Conklin-North American Trust Company-Banco Nacional de
Cuba organization al so turned out to be a training ground for a number of bankers
who would emerge to prominence in 1920s. Joseph H. Durrell, the National City
Vice President who took t charge of National City's branches in the Caribbean
and Latin America during the 1920s, while hailing from Boone County, lowa. He
got his start in banking with the First National Bank of Dayton at age 14, went to
Oklahoma, where he bought a controlling interest in the Farmers State Bank of
Enid. He sold his interests in the Oklahoma bank in 1902 and two years Iater
joined the Banco Nacional de Cuba as an inspector and later, auditor and
superintendent. He stayed with the BNC until 1918, when he joined National City
Bank in Cuba. Four years later he was appointed manager of the Caribbean
Division; in 1930 he was made head of all of the banks overseas operations. John
S. Durland left the New York Life Insurance Company and joined the North
American Trust Company in Cuba and organized and managed the Matanzas
branch of the Banco Nacional de Cuba. In 1905, he left the Banco Nacional to
join the new Banco de la Habana, staying with it while it was absorbed by the
National City Company. He left National City and returned to New York where
he managed the New York branch of the Banca Commerciale Italiana. Frank W.
Black, who became a Vice President of the Equitable Trust Company, anda
director of the Equitable Eastern Banking Corporation, began with Jarvis and
Conlin in Kansas City, followed them to Cuba, and helped established the Banco
Nacional's branches in Havana and Santiago. See "Around the Bank: Joseph H.

150
 However, this small group of Caribbean-based bankers was not enough to

fulfill the needs of the bank overseas and Vanderlip and National City realized that

they would have to "invent" an American international banker. Vanderlip appointed a

vice president to develop a comprehensive educational program for training staff in

international banking. They developed courses on the mechanics of international

exchange and on the use of the new instruments of foreign trade. They offered lessons

in Spanish, French, and Portuguese. They offered scholarships that included paid

internships in foreign branches and partnered with institutions such as New York

University's School of Commerce, Finance and Accounting to organize graduate

programs in international banking and finance. 106

Durrell Appointed Assistant Vice-President," No. 8 16: 2 (February 1921), 24;

"Manager Overseas Division is J.H. Durrell's added title," No. 8 (December 1930,
3-4; "Modern Financia! Institutions and their Equipment," Banker's Magazine
91:2 (August 1915), 242; and "A Résumé of Mr. Black's Business Career," The
Equitable Envoy V: 7 (January 1926) 3.
106
NYU's School of Commerce al so opened a Wall Street Division at 90 Trinity
Place. See "The University ofWall Street," No. 817:2 (February 1922), 15. On
National City's in-house education schemes see, Ferdinand C. Schwedtman, "The
Making of Better Trained Men," The Americas 2:3 (May 1915), 5-8; "City Bank
Students get rigid Training," New York Times (Aug 15, 1915), pg. XX9; William
S. Kies, Opportunitiesfor Young Men in the Foreign Field (New York: National
City Bank of New York, 1916), 12-17. The Banking Apprenticeship Plan (New
York: National City Bank of New York, 1917) "Training its Mento do the
Work," Nation's Business 4.9 (September 1916), p. See various issue of No. 8
between 1905 and 1913 on their interna! lectures, essays, and correspondent
courses designed for in-house education. The entire issue September 1916 issue
(11:3) was devoted to the educational programs of the bank. On New York
University's School of Commerce, Edward Marshall. "A College of Commerce to
Train men for Business," New York Times (Nov 23, 1913); Foreign Exchange and
lnternational Banking (New York: National City Bank of New York); L. Arnold,
"Foreign Service Developments," The Compass 1.1 (January 1920), 26-8;
William Todd, "The Personnel Question in Foreign Branch Banking," The
Compass l. 12 (December 1920), 361.

151
 "The nation must muster its trained thinkers to reorganize the financia) and

industrial machinery," wrote Ferdinand W. Schwedtman, the National City Vice

President appointed to oversee the bank's educational programs, "as well asto remold

the thought of the people in order that the rapid growth of commerce and the

necessary adjustments may be facilitated." 107 In addition to their pioneering

international education programs, National City also began a program of publishing

that revolutionized the relationship of American banks to the American public- while

helping to remold, to use Schwedtman's phrase, American popular thinking.

Although bond retailers had long issued prospectuses, circulars, and pamphlets

describing their securities issues, these were generally either purely informational,

little more than statements of potential profits, or amateurish occasional publications.

Where the goal of these circulars and the text-dense advertisements in the columns of

the financia) pages announcing bond issues was to prompt a quick, direct sale,

National City had a much broader project in mind, a project of reform, of building a

culture of investment alongside an international consciousness. National City built a

comprehensive system of foreign publicity and representation that included writing

on fiscal policy and banking reform, as well as reports on crop movements, consumer

demand, manufacturing output and labor conditions. These texts attempted to help

107
F.C. Schwedtman, "Lending Our Financia) Machinery to Latin-America," The
American Political Science Review, 11:2 (May, 1917).

152
both business people and the wider American public to conceptualize the United

S tates economy as part of a global system. 108

National City's first foray into the field of publicity carne as something of a

lapse in judgment. Before Frank Vanderlip moved from the Treasury Department to

assume a post at the bank, Scribner's magazine had commissioned him to write an

article on the growing US foreign trade with Europe. Knowing the culture of extreme

silence in the banking community, he was concerned that the article would have an

unfavorable reception- especially from the notoriously taciturn, if not pathological,

James A. Stillman, President of National City, and Vanderlip's mentor and patron at

the bank. "Without having formed the thought in words 1 had become aware that

banks officers, especially officers of the great National City Bank, were not supposed

to make public utterances," Vanderlip recalled. "Writing magazine articles just was

not done." 109 However, the article was widely read and it reflected favorably on the

banks influence. Stillman suggested printing and distributing it under the National

City banner and in 1902 it carne out under the National City imprint as The American

"Commerciallnvasion" of Europe. 110

108
My sense of the function of this literature is influenced by Mary Poovey's
reading of the financia! press in Victorian England and its role in educating
readers to see the "the financia! system as a system." See Mary Poovey, "Writing
about Finance in Victorian England: Disclosure and Secrecy in the Culture of
Investment," Victorian Studies 45.1 (Autumn 2002) 17-41.
109
Vanderlip, From Farmboy to Financier, 105.
110
See Frank A. Vanderlip, The American "Commerciallnvasion" of Europe
(New York: National City Bank, 1902); "The American "Commercial lnvasion'
of Europe," Scribner's 31 (January 1902).

153
 The success of The American "Commercial Invasion" of Europe prompted

Vanderlip and National City to create a system of publicity for the bank on domestic

economic and financial issues. Vanderlip began by writing and distributing a four-

page Monthly Letter beginning in 1904. 111 Written in an open and accessible style that

belied the specialized cant of bankers, the Monthly Letter provided a large public

readership with information on Treasury policy, movements in the bond and money

markets, and on the various factors effecting economic conditions. 112 Under the

stewardship of George E. Roberts, a former director of the US Mint who went on to

produce The Monthly Letter's content for the next twenty-five years, its circulation

grew to 200,000. It was distributed to almost four hundred of National City's

correspondent banks throughout the United States, and translated into Spanish and

Portuguese for National City's South American customers and affiliates. 113 It was

read, according to Vanderlip, by "depositers, alert businessmen, bankers, editors and

students of economics" while local newspaper throughout the United States drew on

it for content. 114

After 1914, National City stretched and expanded this domestic work to cover

the new extra-continental territories where they were building a branch bank network

and financing foreign trade. They began producing journals, news reports, circulars,

111
The title has varied over the years and includes United States securities,
government finance, and Federal Reserve system; Economic conditions,
governmental finance, United States securities; Monthly letter on business and
economic conditions; and Monthly letter: business and economic conditions.
112
Vanderlip, From Farmboy to Financier, 117.
113
J.J. McNamee, "The National City Bank's Economic Bulletin," No. 8, 18: 8
(August 1923), 3-5.
114
Vanderlip, From Farmboy to Financier, 118.

154
monographs and trade manuals on foreign trade and the international market while

initiating a coordinated pedagogical program that educated American investors and

merchants, as well as their own staff, in the protocols and etiquette of international

trade and finance. They expanded their Foreign Trade Department and expanded their

financiallibrary, creating an archive of governmental reports, foreign newspapers,

and commercial publications. 115 They created a statistical department, headed by

Osear Phelps Austin, formerly the Chief of the Bureau of Statistics of the Treasury

Department, that gathered, presented and interpreted data on price trends and business

cycles. The National City Company's research department fed their sales

representatives continuous, up-to-date information on foreign conditions and bond

yields, while publishing a raft of circulars, and monographs on domestic and foreign

security issues. 116 The branch banks began sending regular dispatches back to 55 Wall

Street where they were compiled and released to National City's correspondent

banks, prívate investors, and the press, and used in The Monthly Letter. Within its

115
"Osear Phelps Austin: Statistician, The National City Bank of New York," No.
8 12:2 (February 1917), np.
116
See the National City Company's following publications: A Progressive
Railroad in the growing South: The Seaboard Air Line, its Earnings, Condition
and Prospects (New York: National City Company, 1917); The Virginian
Railway: Traffic Development and Operating Economies (New York: National
City Company, 1917); "Burlington Joints": A Study ofthe Financing, Business
and Property ofthe Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Great Northern and Northern
Pacific Railroad Systems (New York: National City Company, 1921); The Illinois
Central Railroad Company: A Graphic Study ofthis Standard Trunk Line (New
York: National City Company,1919); Cuba and the Cuba Railroad (New York:
National City Company, 1919); Sugar (New York: National City Company, 1922)

155
first year of operation the Buenos Aires branch produced nearly four hundred

reports. 117

Since its inception in 1905 No. 8, the National City house organ, had been

used by the bank for internal education. After 1914, its pages increasingly

documented the activities of its foreign branches. 118 Through No.8 the bank's staff

was able to visualize the bank as an international entity - or to see the bank not only

as a New York-based institution but as John H. AIIen trumpeted, as "the National

City Bank of the Western Hemisphere." 119 They also launched The Americas, a

monthly periodical distributed free to investors and business people aiming "to create

a medium which wiii be of assistance in bringing the business men of the United

States and South America closer together, and to provide an instrument for the

interchange of ideas regarding the aims and projects of pan American commerce." 120

The Americas contained articles on local economic and political conditions, on trade

117
For examples of these dispatches, see John H. AIIen, The Trends of Business
and Credits in Argentina (New York: The National City Bank of New York,
1915); The market for coal in Argentina; advance sheets of a report made by the
commercial representative attached to the Buenos Aires Branch of the National
City Bank ofNew York. (New York: The National City Bank ofNew York, 1915);
and Cotton Textiles in Argentina (New York: National City Bank of New York,
1915).
118
"South American Night," No. 8 7-10 (October 1914), 42. The Chemical
National Bank staged similar screenings for their staff, though organized around
specific foreign commodities and industries. See "Cigars for Kings and
Miiiionaires," The Chemical Bulletin 111.5 (July 31, 1920); "Rubber," The
Chemical Bulletin III.7 (February 7, 1920); "Copper," The Chemical Bulletin 11. 8
(February 21, 1920); "Cocoa," The Chemical Bulletin 11.9 (February 28, 1920).
On the history ofthe Chemical, see History ofthe Chemical Bank, 1823-1913
(New York: Chemical National Bank, 1913).
119
"The National City Bank of the Western Hemisphere," No. 8, 9: 7-10 (October
1914), 7-10.
120
"Untitled," The Americas, 1:1 (1914) np.

156
and customs protocols and on regional commodities and industries. It was joined by

publications like Joseph T. Cosby's Latín American Monetary and Exchange

Conditions, with its mapping of the financiallandscape of Latin America since the

beginning of World War 1, the business guide A Handbook of Finance and Trade with

South America, the six-hundred plus page National City Guía Comerciallisting

merchants in different countries, 121 and a Foreign Commerce Series, a set of

monographs on regional trade. The first issue in the series was Osear Phelps Austin's

Trading with Our Neighbors in the Caribbean. 122

Other financia! institutions followed National City' s lead. Established trust

companies like the Farmers Loan, the Equitable, and the Guaranty increasingly

marketed foreign government bonds and industrial securities to American investors.

National banking associations like the Chase expanded their bond departments, often

through the establishment of securities affiliates, like Chase Securities Corporation,

organized in 1917, the same year as the American Foreign Banking Corporation.

121
See Joseph T. Cosby, Latín American Monetary Systems and Exchange
Conditions (New York: National City Bank of New York, 1915); Guía Comercial
(New York: National City Bank of New York, 1920), A Handbook of Finance
and Trade with South Ame rica (New York: The National City Bank of New York,
1919).
122
Osear P. Austin, Trading with the New Countries ofCentral Europe (New
York: National City Bank of New York, 1921); Ferdinand C. Schwedtman, The
Development of Scandinavian-American Trade (New York: The National City
Bank of New York, 1921); Frank O. Malley, Our South American Trade and its
financing (New York: National City Bank of New York: 1920); Osear P. Austin,
Trading with our Neighbors in the Caribbean (New York: The National City
Bank of New York, 1920); Osear P. Austin, Trading with the Far East (New
York: The National City Bank of New York, 1920); George E. Roberts, The
Function of lmports in our Foreign Trade (New York: The National City Bank of
New York, 1920).

157
Banks created interna! educational programs that trained their employees in foreign

languages and the mechanics of foreign exchange. 123 A raft of house organs, similar

to National City's No. 8, sprang up, representing other banks, trust companies, and

foreign banking corporations. The Equitable Trust Company began publishing The

Equitable Envoy. The National Bank of Commerce launched Commerce Monthly.

The Chemical National Bank started the Chemical Bulletin. The Chase National

released The Chase. The Guaranty Trust Company issued the Guaranty News. 124

Like No. 8 these journals published items on the social affairs of their

employees- accounts of picnics, basketball tournaments, births, and the like- while

devoting considerable space to foreign trade conditions, dispatches from overseas

branches, and travelogues written by staff members stationed or visiting abroad. The

Mercantile Bank of the Americas' The Compass was devoted entirely to reporting on

foreign trade conditions, as were El Oro and Platino, the Spanish-language house

journals of the Mercantile's Cuban and Peruvian affiliates. 125 These interna!

publications were also joined by a series of pamphlets and journals with a broader,

public readership such as the Banco Mercantil Americano de Cuba's Bamericuba:

Banca, Comercio, Agricultura, Industria, Cubana and the Bulletin issued by the

Banco Mercantil Americano del Peru. The Guaranty Trust Company started

123
For examples of the educational work of the Mercantil e Bank of the Americas,
see L. Arnold, "Foreign Service Developments" The Compass 1.1 (January 1920),
26
124
The National City Company also published the National City Company News.
It was folded into No. 8. There are no publicly available copies. See "National
City Company News merges with Number Eight," No. 8 15: 7 (July 1920), 12
125
There appear to be no holdings of El Oro in either US or Cuban libraries or
archives.

158
American Goods and Foreign Markets, a regular circularon foreign trade conditions

while issuing volumes on trade and investment opportunities in Cuba, Argentina,

Mexico, China, Rus si a, and Canada. 126 Like National City, both the Guaranty and the

Irving National published guídes to foreign trade such as Guaranty Trust's Essentials

of Trading with Latin Ame rica and the Irving N atíonal 's Trading with Latin

Ame rica. 127

126
The Argentine Republic (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of New York,
1916); Canada: Economic Position and Plansfor Development (New York:
Guaranty Trust Company of New York, 1919); Cuba (New York: Guaranty Trust
Company of New York, 1916); China (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of
New York, 1916); The Industrial Development of India (New York: Guaranty
Trust Company of New York, 1918); Russia (New York: Guaranty Trust
Company of New York, 1916); Trading with Australasia (New York: Guaranty
Trust Company of New York, 1919); Trading with the Near East: Present
Conditions and Future Prospects (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of New
York, 1919); Trading with Mexico to-day (New York: Guaranty Trust Company
ofNew York, 1919);
127
Ernest B. Filsinger, Trading with Latin America (New York: Irving National
Bank, 1919); Irving National Bank, Trading with the Far East. (New York: Irving
National Bank, 1920). Pamphlets published by the Irvíng Natíonal Bank include,
The Trade Acceptance a National Asset; Federal Tax Laws (New York: Irvíng
Natíonal Bank, 1917); The lnfluence ofWar on Trade- Domestic Foreign (New
York: Irving National Bank, 1917); The trade Acceptance in National
Preparadeness (New York: Irving Natíonal Bank, 1917); American Banking in
Foreign Trade (New York: Irvíng Natíonal Bank, 1917); War Time
Finances(New York: Irvíng Natíonal Bank, 1917); The Trade Acceptance
Nationally Launched (New York: Irving National Bank, 1917); Government Price
Fixing and Profit Taxation (New York: Irvíng National Bank, 1917); The
Financia! Aspect ofCotton(New York: Irvíng Natíonal Bank, 1917); Practica!
Questions and Answers on the Trade Acceptance Method (New York: Irving
National Bank, 1917); The Relations oflndustrial Chemistry to Banking; Trade
Acceptance Progress (New York: Irving Natíonal Bank, 1917); Federal Reserve
Actas Amended with Regulations and Analysis (New York: Irvíng Natíonal Bank,
1917); The Efficiency ofWar and Peace (New York: Irvíng National Bank, 1917);
Government Loans and Inflation (New York: Irving National Bank, 1917); A
trade acceptance review (New York: Irving National Bank, 1917); Trade and the
war (New York: Irving National Bank, 1917).

159
The Four Genres of Imperialism

It is impossible to fully account for the entire scope of the writing produced by

bankers during these years. However, they can be separated into four overlapping

categories. The first category contains those articles and monographs whose editorial

voice was detached, and rational; an explicit political stance displaced by the quiet

authority that was, in sorne sense, the embodiment of a given bank- indeed, they

spoke as the voice of the bank. These articles presented knowledge of the Caribbean

and Central and South America not as anecdotes but as fact; as truth, not

interpretation. They included discussions of wool production in Peru. Cocoa in

Ecuador. Coffee cultivation in Haití. Asphalt extraction from Trinidad's famous,

seemingly limitless, pitch lake. The building of port facilities in Colombia. Labor

strife in Venezuela. Inflation and housing shortages in Cuba. 128 Many provided

128
For geographic scope and range see, for instance, "Costa Rica," The Compass
1.1 (January 1920), 13-16; Raul Ribeiro da Silva, "Sugar lndustry in Brazil," The
Compass 1.11 (November 1920), 340-44; W.G. Meader, "Trade with Costa Rica,"
The Compass 1.12 (December 1920), 359; Carl Schafer, "Economic Development
of Brazil," The Compass 11.1 (January 1921), 15-22; Alba A. Mohr, "The Stock
Raising Industry of Venezuela," The Compass 11.2 (February 1921 ), 44; "The
Peruvian Wool Industry and its Possible Development," The Compass 11.2
(February 1921), 33-42; C.H. Steward, "The Maracaibo Oil Basin," The Compass
11. 5 (May 1921), 143-155; "Danish West lndies," The Chase V: 12 (February
1917), 4; "Colombia Seeks Self Development," The Equitable Envoy 11.8
(February 1923 ), 23; Al ex Brown, "Morocco - the Gate to the East," The
Equitable Envoy IV.1 (July 1924), 24-5; A.Buchanan-Miekle, "Rubber Planting
in Burma," The Equitable Envoy IV.1 (July 1924), 24-5; "Mr. Jarvis ofthe Bond
Department puts in a Good Word for South Africa," The Equitable Envoy VI: 5-6
(November-December, 1926), 17-19; "Cura9ao, the Hongkong of New York,"
The Americas 5:4 (January 1919), pp.; Frank O'Malley, "Our Awakening to the
possibilities of South American Trade," The Americas 7: 8 (May 1921), 12; "Six

160
technical descriptions of the new instruments and technologies for American foreign

trade- from the facilities offered to American merchants abroad, to instructions on

the use of acceptances and foreign bilis of exchange, to details on the organization of

Federal Reserve System and the regulations of the Edge Amendment. 129

The second category of writing told an explicit story of the history of a

country a region, an industry, ora commodity, writing it into a progressive,

developmentalist narrative whose ultimate conclusion was in the inevitable return on

a reader's investment. History, here, was used to build value into a bond or security;

the anatomizing of an industry or commodity provided potential investors with a

deciphered text that, instead of the presentation of a reified object, offered a vision of

its interior life. In many cases, they inserted a break into the narrative: if a country

like Cuba or Haiti had a history marred by seemingly incessant revolution and

instability, a threshold of redemption had been reached through the encounter with

US protection, US capital, and US technical know-how. Thus, the National Bank of

Commerce's pamphlet on the US Virgin Islands, published soon after they were

purchased from Denmark, sees in its past nothing but unfulfilled potential, now ready

to fuliy bloom. The prospectus that the National City Company issued promoting

bond sales for the Vertientes Sugar Mili in Cuba' s Santa Clara province told a story

More Branches of the National City Bank opened in the Caribbean Territory," No.
8 14: 7 (July 1919), 15; "The Bank opens new branches in Brazil and Cuba: IBC
Announces a New branch in San Domingo," No. 8 14: 9 (September 1919), 22-4
129
Essentials ofTrading with Latin America (New York: Guaranty Trust
Company of New York, 1920); Banking Service for Foreign Trade (New York:
Guaranty Trust Company of New York, 1919); How Business with Foreign
Countries is Financed (New York: Guaranty Trust Company, 1919, 1921)

161
of an exuberant futurity born through the combination of rich soil, perfect weather,

and American investment capital. 130 The monographs on sugar published by the

National City Company and the National Bank of Commerce offer a cultural history

of that commodity from ancient times to the present, describing in detail the

differences between can e and beet, the managerial structure of the industry, and the

ways of harvesting and processing. Notably, despite the details of production, they

both avoid the question of labor- and of race. 131

But race appears in the third category of writing produced by the banks. This

third genre of empire told a story that in many ways was less about the territories of

foreign trade than about America itself. In large part, these articles and essays

responded to America's "national ignorance," as well asto the behavior and attitudes

of Americans overseas. They offered a corrective to American perceptions of the

tropics. Well aware that "distance [lends] enchantment," asan editorial in The

Ame ricas put it, bankers tried to debunk the scurrilous representations of foreign

countries that circulated in the United States. 132 They realized they had to counter the

representations of the Caribbean and Latín America circulating in travel writing,

yellow journalism, and lurid romances that offered up the global south asan

irreconcilably foreign space, a space marked by backward customs, racial

130
"Vertientes Sugar Company/Compania Azucarera Vertientes: National City
Company preliminary proof," Vertientes Sugar Co 151 Mortgage Sinking Fund
7112 Bonds, 1942, J.P. Morgan Syndicate Book 8, p. 97 Morgan Library and
Museum.
131
See Sugar (New York: The National City Company, 1922); The World's Sugar
Supply: lts Sources and Distribution (New York: The National Bank of
Commerce, 1917).
132
"How Nationality Still Counts in Foreign Trade," 4

162
degeneracy, and tendencies towards incessant revolution and de-civilizing barbarity.

National City's J. H. Carter referred to these representations as "absolute clap-trap,"

recognizing that the circulation of such representations detracted from the eventual

build up of a foreign trade. 133 "One of the things that we must look out for is the

cultivation of judgment about the practica! value of information," Carter continued,

"including so-called information which will be given us about foreign trade- sorne of

it highly colored descriptions of the difficulties and strange ways that could well be

classified along with Gulliver's travels and Baron Munchausen's ventures." 134

As such, many articles tried to temper American perceptions of the world.

Before leaving for Peru, the Mercantile Bank of the Americas' Osgood Hardy chided

his compatriots in New York who wondered how he would be able to survive in a

country they viewed as backwards and barely civilized. "My friends have sometimes

wondered asto how 1 shall fare amidst the disease and miasmic fevers which are

supposed to abound in the tropics," he writes, "but they known not whereof they

speak." 135 Writing on Haiti, a country that was the victim of more misrepresentation

than any in the hemisphere, National City's John H. Allen argued that "the stories

occasionally heard of recent-year cannibalism and of infant sacrifices are not founded

on fact, nor are the stories of attacks upon foreigners." 136 Sometimes bankers stressed

133
J.H. Carter, "Why Bankers Should Study Foreign Trade," No. 8 13:10
(December 1918),
134
ibid.
135
Osgood Hardy, "We who are about to lea ve salute you," The Compass 1.1
(January 1920), 9
136
John H. Allen, "American Co-operation Assures A Better Era for Haiti," The
Americas 6: 8 (May 1920), pp. 8

163
the essential similarities between Americans and the rest of the world. "Making

allowances for differences in temperament and customs," wrote W.G. Meader of the

Mercantile Bank of the Americas, echoing a sentiment made by the Irving National's

Ernest B. Filsinger on Latin America as a whole, "a Costa Rican merchant is much

like an American merchant; there are good, bad, and indifferent." 137

In "Five Years in Jungle Land," National City's lrving M. Barnard, despite

presenting a set of racist representations of West Indians and lndians in Panama,

warns his readers that the norms of social standing, race, and caste in Panama, and by

extension the rest of the Caribbean and South America, are not the same as in the

United States. Barnard recounts an incident that for him summarizes the attitude of

the American abroad and, in the process, demonstrates how perceptions of racial and

cultural difference could be reformed and turned to nuanced and instrumental

knowledges for both the staffs of New York bankers, as well as potential American

merchants, financiers, and traders who might be considering entering into foreign

trade. The governor of the Panamanian province of Chiriqui, Barnard writes, like

much of the Central American elite was a mestizo, mixed with "both Spanish and

Indian blood." 138 One day, he needed ice for refreshments for a party he had

organized for one of his daughters. Though the da y of the party fell on a legal

holiday, he asked the American ice manufacturers ifthey would make an exception,

open their factory, and supply him with the ice. "The American refused," wrote

137
W.G. Meader, "Trade with Costa Rica," The Compass 1.12 (December 1920),
359; Ernest B. Filsinger, Trading with Latin America (New York: Irving National
Bank, 1919) 48
138

164
Barnard, "and sent back word to the Governor that he looked like any other Indian to

him." 139 For Barnard, the attitude of the ice manufacturer was typical of Americans.

But it threatened to disrupt the up-building of American foreign trade. Americans,

unlike their European counterparts, did not understand regional racial difference and

appeared tocare little that the received racial categories in the United States had to be

suspended in the Caribbean and South America. For as Barnard notes, "Indian blood

is not objectionable" in the world of international trade and in the pursuit of profit.

Bankers recognized that they would have to educate American business into

learning the nuanced, calibrated racial perception of the Europeans. They would have

to explain that the foreign traders they would encounter included, as the Irving

National Bank pointed out, all the "natives of each of the republics, all the Europeans,

particularly British, German, Spanish, Italian and French, sorne Americans an

Orientals, such as Chinese, Japanese, and Syrians, Turks, etc." 140 They prepped their

clients on recognizing the lower castes of mulattos, negroes, Indians, West Indians,

and "Wild Forest Indians" that constituted the laboring population. 141 And they had to

turn the knowledge of racial difference from a mere fact of categorization toan

evaluative criteria, but one not overburdened with American racial presumptions, into

something practica! for American foreign trade.

139
Barnard, "Five Years," 24
140
Essentials of Trading with Latin America (New York: Guaranty Trust
Company of New York, 1920) 22; Ernest B. Filsinger, Trading with Latin
America (New York: Irving National Bank, 1919) 151
141
Essentials ofTrading with Latin America (New York: Guaranty Trust
Company of New York, 1920) 22; Ernest B. Filsinger, Trading with Latin
America (New York: Irving National Bank, 1919) 151

165
 Sometimes this pedagogical work would take a form as simple as the list of

'"Don't's' About Latín American Trade," a list of dictums providing a user-friendly

approach to foreign trade, offered in the Irving National 's Trading with Latin

America:

Don 't think that all Latín American countries are alike- they differ as night
from day.
Don 't think that all the republics ha ve a tropical climate- remember that
latitude and altitude make a big difference.
Don 't forget that Latín American produces all the products of the temperate
zone.
Don'tjudge the possibilities of Latín America by the map- the population is
not in proportion to area.
Don't classify Latín Americans as savages- great numbers of the people are
highly civilized and cultured.
Don 't judge buying power by size- sorne of the small republics are the largest
buyers.
Don't think that "anything is good enough" for the Latín Americans-you'll
find such idea very costly.
Don 't neglect to learn the Latín American' s viewpoint- always put yourself
in his place.
Don't expect amanto know your language when you don't know his- use
Spanish or Portuguese.
Don't senda catalog in English toa Spanish speaking country-consider how
much you would like one in Russian. 142

But the pedagogical work of banker's was not that simple. It was a larger

cultural project concerning the creation of markets and the peforming of the

economy. "We are going to meet with frequent embarrassment if all we know

about banking in connection with a foreign transaction is the banking process -

the making out of drafts, discounting, collection procedures, etc.," wrote National

City's J.H. Carter. "We will have to know enough about the commercial part of

142
Ernest B. Filsinger, Trading with Latin America (New York: Irving National
Bank, 1919) 164

166
the business we are doing to have a clear picture in our mind of what our technical

service to the exporter or the importer is for, what it means to him." 143 If banks

have been viewed as financia) intermediaries, directing inactive capital to places

where it can be mobilized, National City recognized that this process of

intermediation was also one of translation: of getting the individuals engaged in

trade, to speak to each other, or translating the different cultural terms through

which communities understood the meanings of the market.

In this sense, despite Vanderlip's assertion of the universalizing power of

capital- "the language talked by money," Vanderlip wrote, "is a universal

tongue"- money did not necessarily speak a universal tongue, at least, not at that

point early in the twentieth century. The market did not provide an already

constituted lingua franca through which different nations could communicate.

lnstead, bankers had to translate regional dialects into a common lingua franca

that left untranslated terms. There was no assumption of commensurability, no

shared meanings of the market, of value, of the process of accumulation, of the

style of consumption, production, and trade, no agreed upon set of values that

explained the moment of transaction. There was a wide interpretive range within

each moment of exchange. While business could be reduced to a dollar amount,

143
J.H. Carter, "Why Bankers Should Study Foreign Trade," No. 8 13:10
(December 1918), Italics added.

167
these figures did not account for the sets of racial and cultural meanings in which

transactions were embedded. 144

Bankers attempted to educate their staff and American merchants into an

instrumental knowledge of cultural and racial difference. They tried to get American

businessmen and financiers to draw from those categories a set of knowable,

predictable racial and cultural traits, and to extrapolate from those traits a series of

lessons for the practice of foreign trade. They wanted to turn racist perception into

ethnic inclinations and ethnic inclinations into usable facts to bridge seemingly

incommensurable ideas of difference in order for trade to function smoothly. Asan

editorial in National City's The Americas put it, "in the decorum of trade,

'nationality"'- a term that referred to ethnicity, racial, cultural, anda more strictly

narrow version of national identity - "is to be remembered and intelligently made to

count." 145 But also that in recognizing this difference was critica) for Americans

because a racial and national and cultural affinity would always make the European

trader and banker more attractive to Latin American clientele. "While all of us hope

that a mutually sympathetic understanding is growing between the peoples of the

northern and southern continents of the Western Hemisphere," wrote the Guaranty

Trust Company,

this sympathy has by no means yet reached a point that would imply any
position of trade advantage for our exporters. In fact, by racial origin, customs
and historical development, these countries are much more closely bound to

144
Jane l. Guyer, Marginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic A.frica
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 172.
145
"How Nationality Still Counts in Foreign Trade," 5

168
 the European nations, and we can overcome this handicap only by showing
special skill and understanding in every detail of the handling of our trade
relations with them. 146

Bankers were urged to understand the various "traits," gleaned from the racial

and cultural background and the geographical and historical circumstances of

Caribbean and Latin American business people: their extraordinary formality and

politeness, an etiquette that was rarely relaxed. The Latin American was "more

formal and far less hurried." 147 He had a "softer side" that Americans were urged not

to overlook, a tendency towards sentiment, ostentation, and formality. 148 They were

told to avoid the use of colloquialisms and slang in correspondence while mastering

the effusiveness and baroque stylization that seemed ostentatious and effete to

Americans, but was absolutely crucial to master because of the problem of distance

and the speed of travel. 149

Despite the fact that many Caribbean and Latin American merchants were

modern, forward thinking and, in many ways more cosmopolitan than their American

counterparts, they had a series of tendencies that, to Americans appeared

anachronistic. 150 The aesthetics and rhetorics of correspondence was one of these

146
Essentials ofTradíng wíth Latín America (New York: Guaranty Trust
Company of New York, 1920) 5
147
Es sentíais of Trading with Latín Ameríca (N ew York: Guaranty Trust
Company ofNew York, 1920) 8
148
"How Nationality Still Counts in Foreign Trade," 5
149
Essentíals ofTradíng with Latín Ameríca (New York: Guaranty Trust
Company of New York, 1920) 8
150
J.S. Gibbons, survey of New York City banking and finance, attempts to
illustrate the various procedures employed during a bank's working day by
fictionalizing its interior labors. Gibbons' bankers are affable and curmudgeonly,

169
things. Credit was another. There were vast differences between the United States and

the southern republics in the terms through which credit was extended, in the social

meanings of confidence and reputation. In the first instance the thirty or sixty or

ninety day credits that Americans were used to were insufficient; credits were often

extended from six months to an entire year. 151 Furthermore, gathering credit

information was difficult. In part, this was a problem of developing local ties; in the

case of National City their shot-gun rush into the region meant it took time to build up

credit histories, getting them from other corporations already established, and

sometimes from institutions like the Royal Bank of Canada who, in places like Cuba,

had built up almost two decades worth of banking experience before American

bankers made a significant incursion. Either way, Latin Americans were seen as

furtive and protective concerning their own credit standing, though more than willing

to soil the good name of a rival. 152 They hadan idea of reputation and social standing

joking, doodling, more often than not wandering from their current duties into
gossip- or, in sorne cases, sleep. Their approach to business is personal,
inefficient and disorganized; the character and credit worthiness of the presenter
of a bill for discount is determined by hearsay and whim. See J.S. Gibbons The
Banks ofNew-York, Their Dealers, The Clearing House, and the Panic of 1857
(New York: D. Appleton, 1859), 9-10. Henry Wysham Lanier, A Century of
Banking in New York, 1822-1922 (New York: The Gillis Press, 1922). For
another fictional account of these reports and how they work, in the context of the
mid-nineteenth century New York business world, see Richard B. Kimball,
Undercurrents of Wall-Street: The Romance of Business (New York: G.P.
Putnam's 1862); Naomi Lamoureaux, lnsider Lending: Banks, Personal
Connections, and Economic Development in Industrial New England (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1994)
151
"Commercial Relations with South America," National City Monthly Letter
(August 1914) 7
152
A. H. Titus, "Establishment of Branches by National Banks in Foreign
Countries," Journal ofthe American Bankers Association 7: 8 (February 1915),

170
that Americans had to sorne degree given up through the rationalization of credit

reporting and collection. "Reputation is their capital," wrote National City, "and one

lapse means discredit. " 153 "There is nothing wrong," National City emphasized, "with

South American credit. " 154

***
The fourth category of writing contradicts the calculated, instrumental, progressive

vision of race and the tropics put forth by bankers. Despite their calls for a

cosmopolitan vision on the part of Americans, bankers were as much bound by the

racial and cultural logics of the period as their countrymen. They often fell back on

the same racial categories they were ostensibly trying to debunk. Thus, to return to

Barnard's "Five Years in Jungle Land," while he preaches a progressive, if

instrumental, view of race in the Americas he also relies on stereotypes of African

Americans for his rendering of West Indies. National City's John H. Allen does

something similar. Whille he dismisses representations of Haitian cannibalism and

voodoo, he al so introduced a new representation of the Haitian to American

audiences, one through which the Haitian is grafted on to the African American, and

for that matter, Barnard's West Indians in Panama. "Humorous incidents were of

almost daily occurrences," he writes of Haiti, "and showed the naivete and also the

restricted mentality of the people, which latter was plainly noticeable even among the

616. Al so see Essentials of Trading with Latín Ame rica (New York: Guaranty
Trust Company of N ew York, 1920) 4.
153
"How Nationality Still Counts in Foreign Trade," 5.
154
"How Nationality Still Counts in Foreign Trade," 4.

171
more highly educated." 155 He recounts one such incident. lt shares the setting of

Barnard's West lndian pantomime in "Five Years in Jungle Land," and could,

perhaps, be taken from the National City minstrel show:

Our cook went to market daily and one morning was told to buy three pounds
of filet of beef. She carne home with a filet so small that she was asked why
she did not get the three pounds and after the usual discussion she indignantly
said, "don't you know that here are big cows and small cows; three pounds of
filet form a small cow is of course less than three pounds form a big one. And
this piece is from a small cow. S he was satisfied and we had to be. 156

Often, this fourth category of writing represented the Caribbean and Latin

American in terms of its exotic difference- what National City's Harriet G. Brown,

in an account of Havana, described as "picturesqueness": Brown's essay is full of

descriptions of the ices and coffees and of black women smoking cigars and wearing

"very brilliant colors, bright yellows and orange being their favorites, which all adds

to the of the." 157 These essays depicted local culture, customs, and color through

155
John H. Allen, "American Co-operation Assures A Better Era for Haiti," The
Americas 6: 8 (May 1920), 8.
!.56 lbid. 8.
157
Harriet G. Brown, "Havana- the fascinating- to those who are not looking for
New York and its advantages in the Tropics," No. 8 13:4 (April 1918), 1-9. Also
see "First Impressions of China and Highlights of the Trip," The Equitable Envoy
1.5 (November, 1921), 13; Angela Rodriguez, B. "The Romance ofChapultepec,"
The Equitable Envoy 2.1 (July 1922), 19-21; A.H. Clark, "Peruvian Jottings,"
Equitable Envoy 11.9 (March 1923), 18-25;"Feasting in the Far East," The
Equitable Envoy 11.8 (February 1923), 23; "Around the World With Mr.
Reddington," The Equitable Envoy IV.1 (July 1924), 12-16; C.V. Sheehan, "A
Short Call at Bahia," No. 8 10: 11 (November 1915), 20-27; "A Letter form the
Isle of Guam," No. 812: 1 (January 1917), np; Harriet G. Brown, "Havana- the
fascinating- to those who are not looking for New York and its advantages in the
Tropics," No. 8 (13: 4 (April 1918), 1-9; G.W. Curtis, "First Impressions in
Brazil," No. 8 13: 5/617 (May/June/July 1918), np.; A.W. McCain, "A Trip
Across the Andes," No. 8 14: 1 (January 1919); Chas Jenkinson, "Mexico: As it is

172
amateurish ethnological descriptions. They were written in a flippant, jovial tone.

They maintained a distinct writerly voice. Unlike the voice of the bank that appeared

in the more technical publications, you gain a sense of the writer as a person, rather

than the bureaucratic intonation of a bank.

These depictions tended to mould their subjects into easy and accessible

caricatures. "Havana and manana [sic] do not quite rhyme," a member of the

Chemical National Bank's staff to the Chemical Bulletin, "but are synonymous." 158

His observation echoed those that of W.A. Williams on the laziness of the "colored"

staff of the Banque Nationale de la Republique d'Haiti. But these representations can

be seen as offering their readership a perspective on what the resol ve and work of

American power might bring to the region. Places like Panama and the Dominican

Republic and Haiti were seen as regions with "futures"- especially as the litany of

their pasts were well known- incessant revolution, instability, mongrel populations,

tropical geographies- all of helped to build an argument that their future meant

bringing them into the time of the American present and their present lagged in

civilization's past. Or, as Osear Phelps Austin writes in Trading with our Neighbors

in the Caribbean:

The reason for [the] slow development of the Caribbean area is dueto climatic
conditions. Labor in the tropics is difficult to obtain, difficult to develop as to
its producing power, and therefore, difficult to utilize as a factor in producing
the natural products of the land or forests or mines. The enervating conditions
in the tropical climate and the ease with which a comparatively small amount

Today," No. 8 14: 6 (June 1919); W.H. Williams, "The Banque Nationale de la
Republique d'Haiti," No. 8 VIII:2 (February, 1913) pp. 9
158
"A Glimpse of Havana" From a Letter from Mr. McAIIister," The Chemical
Bulletin V .6 (March 1922), np

173
 of labor will produce the actual requirements of an individual minimize the
activities of the average tropical man and thus retard the development of the
producing power of the land in agriculture, forest and mining. 159

On the other hand, these representations were also explicitly about white

American identity - though the best examples of this are not in the articles, but in

many of the advertisements that the National City Bank and the National City

Company used to promote investments. Here, the United States was represented as

the inheritor of a legacy of Anglo-Saxonism that saw the development of the

American economy, the strength of American banking power, the complexity of its

159
Osear Phelps Austin, Trading with our Neighbors in the Caribbean (New
York: National City Bank, 1920): 13. In sorne sense the development of trade
with Asia was of even more difficult than with the Caribbean and Latin America.
For, des pite the Indian and African populations, in the case of the Americas, as
the Irving National noted, they were American civilization, especially its elites.
But with Asia, they vacillated between expressing a sense that there was an
immutable difference between Asians and "Westerns" and challenging North
American perceptions of the East. "The Asian- the Oriental -elite, and the bank
both reinforced and debunked stereotypes. See lrving National Bank, Trading
with the Far East. Second Revised and Enlarged Edition. (New York: Irving
National Bank, 1919, 1920). Also see George Kjellberg, "Impressions of India,"
The Equitable Envoy 1.4 (October 1921), 13-17; Osear P. Austin, Trading with
the Far East (New York: The National City Bank of New York, 1920); Lawrence
M. Jacobs "Orient Holds no Mystery for IBC," No. 8 17: 4 (April 1922).
Lawrence Merton Jacobs, "The International Banking Corporation," No. 8 14: 6
(June 1919), 5-12. The National City Company hired its first Chinese staff
representative, the Shanghai born K.L. Yui, who "speaks English with the ease of
a gentleman and the accuracy of a scholar," in 1926, almost twenty years after
they first established themselves in Asia. Yui graduated from St. John's
University and NYU. See "K.L. Yui Becomes a City Company representative in
Shanghai," No. 8 21: 10-11(0ctober-November 1926). To add to this, H.T.S.
Green, President of the IBC, described himself as a "China-man" - to which the
Wall Street Journal responded, "American banks need more such 'Chinamen' in
the foreign field." Will Nassau, "In and Out of the Banks," Wall Street Journal
(January 12, 1924) 8.

174
social and political organization in terms of the highest ideals of whitesupremacy. We

ha ve already seen this through John E. Gardin 's exultation of the masculinity and

virility of the United States since the start of the war, in the discussion of

developmental stages of countries in the work of Louis E. Pearson, and in what

amounts to a constant, envious look towards English and German economic

organization. Y et in these advertisements, advertisements that contained a semiotic

link to the neoclassicism that was the preferred architectural style of early twentieth

century and whose most esteemed example was National City's 55 Wall Street

headquarters, the power of a bond, the power of American investing, the power of

New York's racial capital, was depicted through illustrations of Greek gods and

Roman gods overseas scenes of modern development. 160

***
But all the powers of whitesupremacy, all the gods of Greece and Ro me couldn 't

prevent the crash following the post-war boom and their was a period of decline that

was justas short and rapid as their expansion. By the summer of 1920, signs began

appearing that the tremendous economic boom following the War was coming toan

end, and the optimistic editorials appearing in journals like The Compass soon

became increasingly dire assessments of a slump in commodity prices, returns to

bartering, withdrawal of savings. 161 Unsold goods piled up on wharves, left rotting.

World wide, commodity prices began to drop from the inflated levels of the boom

years and South American currencies plummeted in value in relation to the US dollar,

160
See Appendix D.
161
See the various country reports in The Compass in 1921.

175
making the purchase of American goods prohibitively expensive. With so many loans

secured by warehouse receipts on over valued commodities, or on overvalued

plantation mortgages, or on overvalued future harvests, bankers saw the rapidly built

credit structure, linking the continental US to the tropics through Wall Street,

collapse. The expansion overseas had been too rapid and reckless. "The extraordinary

expansion, or at least a good part of it, was not simply rapid," wrote Clyde William

Phelps, "it was wild and unwarranted." 162 There was not enough knowledge of local

conditions and credit histories. Many banks sent under-qualified staff overseas. The

MBA, who had already engendered resentment from both local bankers and European

traders for their brash expansion anda perception that they were not contributing to

local develop, instead, only sending money out of the country. Its agencies in

Ecuador, much to the dismay of the British Foreign office, entered into an agreement

with the local association of cocoa growers and marketed eighty percent of the crop-

an agreement that was seen as "typical of US grasping methods in South America

which are so much in evidence at present. " 163 When the crash carne, cocoa growers in

Ecuador refused to pay off their debts to the bank, freezing its liquidity. 164 Many

162
Clyde William Phelps, "The American Banker Sets up Shop Abroad," The
Bankers' Magazine 120:1 (January 1930), 24
163
Qtd. in Paul Henderson, "Cocoa, Finance and the State in Ecuador, 1895-
1925," Bulletin of Latín American Research, 16: 2 (1997), p. 184. fn. 19
164
See "Claim of the Mercantil e Bank of the Americas against Ecuador for the
debt of the Cocoa Growers Association," United States. Foreign Relations.
CITATION. 701; Jordan H. Stabler, El Mercantile Bank ofthe Americas, Inc. y la
Asociatión de Agricultores (Quito: Manuel Rivadeneira, 1924); Exposión de los
motives en que la Asociación de Agricultores del Ecuador funda su rechazo a la
cuenta del Mercantile Bank ofthe Americas (Guayaquil: Papelería e Imprenta
Cultura, 1924).

176
banks, like the Mercantile Bank of the Americas, went beyond their basic role of

loaning money, and became in volved in the distribution and marketing of many of the

commodities, often competing with their own customers. They had purchased sugar,

coffee, and other commodities at the inflated prices of the boom years and filled

storehouses with high-priced American merchandise for sale in Latín America on a

falling market. Both local banks, and the newly formed American banking

corporations failed, the confidence that locals had in banks was severely weakened,

and Wall Street had to engage in a series of emergency loan negotiations to keep

protect their own interests and soften the effects of the crash.

Market conditions were compounded by questions of mismanagement, gross

incompetence and suggestions of graft. As a result of mismanagement and

overextension of credit, the many foreign banking corporations organized during the

post-war period collapsed. The AFBC's branches in Honduras, the Dominican

Republic, Haití, and Belgium were closed in 1921, those in Argentine in 1922, taken

over by the First National Bank of Boston. Branches in Havana, Panama, Cristobal

were purchased by the Chase National in 1925. 165 1ts assets frozen for the previous

165
"The Chase Bank in Latín America," The Chase VII: 10 (January 1925), pp.
415; "Chase National Buys 3 foreign branches," New York Times (Jan 13, 1925)
pg. 26 For a detailed record of the transfer of the assets and liabilities of the
American Foreign Banking Corporation to the Chase National Bank of New
York, see: Schedules /, 11, and 111, Being Schedules Referred to in Agreement for
Transfer and Pledge Between American Foreign Banking Corporation and the
Chase National Bank ofthe City of New York, et al. Dated, December 19, 1924.
(New York: Chase National Bank, 1924)American Foreign Banking Corporation.
Record Group 2: Chase National Bank. Affiliates. JPMorganChase Archives.
New York.

177
five years, it was finally dissolved in 1929. 166 But the AFBC was not the only banking

corporation organized for foreign trade to disappear from the scene after the period of

rapid expansion. The Foreign Credit Corporation was dissolved in August 1921. The

Park-Union Foreign Banking Corporation was taken over by the Asia Banking

Corporation in 1922. But the Asia Banking Corporation, itself overextended, was

only able to stay afloat because of an injection of cash from J.P. Morgan and Thomas

F. Ryan. In 1924 it went into liquidation, its assets absorbed the lnternational Banking

Corporation in 1924. 167 The Mercantil e Bank of the America' s staff were laid off

around the world. Its Paris, Barcelona, and Madrid branches were closed in 1922. 168 It

sold its Argentine affiliate, the Banco Mercantil y Agricola de Buenos Aires, to

Boston's First National. 169 In September 1921, the Cuban branch was closed- its

losses were rumored to have been between $20 and $80 million. National City

purchased its assets the following month. 170 Two months later, J.P. Morgan stepped in

an attempted to stave off further losses. He mobilized a syndicate that providing $35

million in credits to the Mercantile in an attempt to keep it afloat and then organized,

the following August, the Bank of Central and South America to liquidate the

MBA. 171 The new bank took over the MBA's Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador,

166
"Banking Concern to Dissolve," New York Times (October 27, 1929).
167
"Asia Banking Corporation, ARC Syndicate Books, 10: 101, J.P. Morgan and
Co. Library; "IBC absorbs Asia Banking Corporation," No. 8 19: 1 (January
1924), 7
168
"Bank of Americas to Close Branches," New York Times Sep 30, 1921; pg. 29
169
"Mercantile Reduces Overhead," Wall Street Journal (Sep 20, 1921)pg. 9
170
"Cubans See Hope for Loan," New York Times (Oct 4, 1921). pg. 24
171
The other institutions in the syndicate behind the Bank of Central and South
America included the Corn Exchange Bank, the Mechanics and Metals National

178
Nicaragua and Costa Rica. 172 A month following its incorporation, it would sell its

fifty-one percent share of the National Bank of Nicaragua to the Nicaraguan

government for $300,000. Affiliated institutions in Peru, Colombia, Venezuela and

Costa Rica, including seventeen branches, were sold to the Royal Bank of Canada in

1925. The National City Bank was not unaffected by the retrenchment. The National

City-organized American International Corporation, after its rapid rise, soon grew

unprofitable and unwieldy, and its investors withdrew while the companies it held

were spun off. In Cuba, it closed a number of branches in an attempt to consolidate

while its Port of Spain branch was sold an its network in Colombia were shut down in

August, 1921. 173

By the middle of the twenties, the experiment in foreign branch banking was

over. While powerful banks like National City and the Chase would open a handful of

branches overseas over the Jatter half of the decade, increasingly, as 1 demonstrate in

Bank, the Columbia Trust Company, Hard & Rand, WR Grace, and lnternational
General Electric Company, as well as the three original organizers of the MBA,
institution, the Guaranty Trust, Brown Brothers, and J & W Seligman. See "Bank
of Central and South America Succeeds Mercantile," Wall Street Journal (August
101h, 1922), 4
172
"Bank Needs Met, Says Morgan Firm," New York Times (August 13, 1921). pg.
14 "To Close Cuban Branch," New York Times (September 17, 1921); pg. 21
"Bank Sells lnterest in Nicaragua Bank," Wall Street Journal (September 12,
1924), p. 8; "Bank of Canada adds to Holdings," New York Times (February 4,
1925),p. 33
173
"National City Bank Closes Colombia Branches," Wall Street Journal (August
20, 1921), pg. 1

179
the next chapter on Cuba, the work of empire was performed through savings - and

through the disastrous foreign loans that preceded the Great Crash. 174

174
National City opened branches in Colombia and Mexico at the end of the
decade. See "National City Enters Colombia with Branch at Bogota," No. 8 24: 2
(January 1929), "Bank opens branch in Mexico and two in New York Area, No. 8
24: 2-7 (July 1929). For a critica! appraisal of the effects of the opening of the
National City Bank in Mexico, see Miguel A Quintana, El imperialism de la
mercancía Americana y el establecimiento en Mexico de The National City Bank
ofNew York (Villahermosa, Tabasco: Ediciones de "Redencion", 1931).

180
 CHAPTER4

Mongrel Systems, Savage Writing, Anglo-Saxon Stability:

New York Bankers, American Empire, and Cuba, 1898-1933

But now,
Against a pirate called
THE NATIONAL CITY BANK
What can yo u do alone?

-Langston Hughes

When Joseph Hergesheimer visited Havana in the early spring of 1920 he found a

baroque city, a city composed of fa~ades, folds, and veils. "Havana was artificial,"

Hergesheimer wrote in the travelogue San Cristóbal de la Habana, "exotic: Spain

touched everywhere by the tropics, the tropics- without a tradition- built into a

semblance of the baroque." 1 Hergesheimer's Ha vana was insubstantial, a romantic

mirage, a replica of an imagined city, a "haunting dream turned into fact," 2 an

impossible "etherealized spectacle" 3 whose architecture was of an imitative "pseudo-

classic" 4 order, "more abstract than any other imaginable;" 5 its defining fea tu re a

"totality of marble fa~ades inadmissible architecturally" 6 cast in a whiteness that,

under a relentless sun, created the illusion of a city of light buttressed above its

1
Joseph Hergesheimer, San Cristóbal de la Habana (New York: Knopf, 1920,
1927), 13.
2
.ibid, 13.
3
.ibid, 249.
4
.ibid, 250.
5
.ibid, 15.
6
.ibid, 42.

181
material form. The shimmering play of surfaces that Hergesheimer encountered in

Cuba was undoubtedly enhanced by the daiquiris and mojitos he discovered in the

bars of the Inglaterra and the Sevilla Hotels. Y et San Cristóbal al so conjured the

vision and experience of a city that had become a dream world for American capital:

it offered a representation of the iridescent imagination of la danza de los millones -

the seemingly endless economic boom following the First World War, driven by the

price of and demand for Cuban sugar on world markets, fed by a limitless fount of

American capital dispersed through Wall Street's manic largesse.

But by San Cristóbal's concluding pages the burnished glow of Havana fades,

the illuminated city plunges into darkness, and Hergesheimer's immaterial

assemblage of surfaces collapses. So too the sugar boom. On May 20, 1920, shortly

after Hergesheimer's return to the United States, Cuban raw sugar reached twenty-

two and one-half cents per pound on the New York Sugar and Coffee Exchange- its

highest price in history and a figure far surpassing the five or six cents most

commentators believed was necessary to sustain the Cuban economy. 7 By the end of

the summer, while sorne Cuban bankers were still on their European vacations, the

price of sugar began a precipitous drop and rumors began circulating that Cuba's

banks were having difficulties meeting their obligations. On October 11, a month

before San Cristóbal's release, a run on the Banco Internacional de Cuba, one of the

7
See the comments of Ramon Mendoza of the Banco Nacional de Cuba in
"Banco Nacional de Cuba suspends," The New York Times (April 10th, 1921).

182
"mushroom" 8 banks that had sprouted during the boom, precipitated a banking panic

that eventually lead to the closure the following year of three hundred branches of

various banks throughout the country and the loss of close to two hundred million

dollars in assets. In addition to the Banco Internacional, the private Banco Nacional

de Cuba, contracted as the government's depositar; the Banco Español de la Isla de

Cuba, formerly Spain's colonial agent but reorganized as a private concern during the

US occupation; and the merchant house and well-known cigar manufacturer H.

Upmann-all apparently stalwart institutions-failed. "As the visitor rides about

Havana or makes trips through the interior of Cuba his eye will be assailed every little

while by a dreary-looking building with the name of sorne bank painted over the

door," the National City Bank of New York's Frank Plachy, Jr. wrote of the Cuban

institutions after a trip to the island in 1921, "but with dust and cobwebs mutely

testifying to the fate that has befallen the parent institution [in Havana]."9

Y et North American banks were not immune to the effects of the crisis. The

Guaranty Trust Company's Banco Mercantíl de Cuba was ruined, as was the Chase

Manhattan's American Foreign Banking Corporation. Frank Plachy's National City,

which by 1920 had more branches in Cuba than anywhere else in the world andan

estimated eighty percent of its capital tied up in Cuban sugar, was only saved by a

8
"Banking Conditions in Cuba Unsettled," Christian Science Monitor (October
12, 1920), 10.
9
Frank Plachy, Jr., "What the City Bank Means to Cuba," No. 8, 17: 1O (October
1921), 2-3.

183
massive injection of outside funds. 10 However, overall the strength of the North

American banks' reserves inspired a confidence that saw their share of Cuba's

deposits increase from thirty-eight to sixty per cent almost overnight. By the time the

second edition of San Cristóbal was published in 1927, after absorbing the assets of

the liquidated Cuban banks, American institutions effectively controlled Cuba's

finances and industries, the United States Federal Reserve system was extended over

the country, and the ti es between the Cuban state and American capital had become

conspicuous- gratuitous, to sorne observers, who saw the foreign control of the

banking system asan assault on the republic's sovereignty. By the first years of the

1930s, when Hergesheimer's last, mediocre novels were published, branches of

foreign banks in Havana were threatened with bomb attacks while in the United

States, National City and the Chase were accused in Congressional hearings of

propping up the Machado regime.

Though now largely forgotten, Hergesheimer was a popular, remarkably

prolific American novelist. He published almost two-dozen fictional works over his

career beginning with 1914's Lay Anthony. 11 He was serialized in the Saturday

10
Harold Cleveland and Thomas Huertas, Citibank, 1812-1970 (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1985), 106.
11
Hergesheimer's (1880-1954) fictions include Three Black Pennies (1917), Gold
and /ron (1918), The Happy End (1919), The Lay Anthony: A Romance (1919),
Linda Condon (1919), Mountain Blood (1919), The Bright Shawl (1922),
Cytherea (1922), Tuba! Cain (1922), Wild Oranges (1922), Java Head (1923 ),
The Presbyterian Child (1923), Balisand (1924), From an Old House (1925),
Tampico ( 1926), Quiet Cities ( 1928), Swords & Roses ( 1929), The Party Dress
( 1930), Tol 'able David ( 1930), The Limestone Tree ( 1931 ), Tropical Winter
(1933), The Foolscap Rose(l934). Of these, The Bright Shawl, Cytherea, and
Quiet Cities draw upon his time in Cuba. There are no full-length published

184
Evening Post and voted ahead of Eugene O'Neill as the most popular writer in the US

in a 1922 Literary Digest poli. He did not, however, attain a similar critical

endorsement. While San Cristóbal was lauded by the Times of Cuba, the monthly

news digest for Havana's expatriate commercial community, for its accurate portrayal

of Havana's "delicious life," 12 Hergesheimer was viewed asan esthete obsessed with

surfaces whose style was overly ornate and ultimately insubstantial. "The fact is oo.

that when he gives usan eighteenth-century story, we do not see that century and

enter its life," one reviewer wrote of Hergesheimer's Java Head, "but merely see

Joseph Hergesheimer, in a wig and satin breeches, dreaming in an Adam roomo" 13

Hergesheimer acknowledged the criticismo He admitted that he was viewed as "a

bright cork floating thoughtlessly over the opaque depths of lifeo" 14 And certainly,

San Cristóbal is written in a much different register than John Dos Passos' The Big

Money, the third volume of his U.S.A. trilogy, which contains a section set against the

backdrop of the sugar boom - not to mention the writing of contemporaries such as

Cuba's Agostin Acosta or the Venezuelan expatriate Rafael Antonio Cisneros, both of

studies of Hergesheimer's writing, though four dissertations have been written

about his work- the last in 1974, the best in 1961: Judith Lee Lampert, Joseph
Hergesheimer and Popular Taste, 1917-1924 (Phd Diss: University ofTexas at
Austin, 1974); Ronald Edward Martin, The Achievement of Joseph Hergesheimer
in the Art of Fiction (Phd Diss: Boston University Graduate School, 1963);
Richard Spalding Leever, Joseph Hergesheimer: Historical Romancer (Phd Diss:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1961); James Joseph Napier, Joseph
Hergesheimer: A Critica/ Study (Phd Diss: University of Pennsylvania, 1959).
12
The Times ofCuba 18 (January, 1921), 87-90
13
"The Rapid Rise of a New American Novelist," Current Opinion, LXVI: 3
(March 1919), 1840
14
Hergesheimer, San Cristobal 980

185
whom treated the same period in their work. 15 Yet Hergesheimer's style matched the

ostentation and delirium and vapid dazzle of Cuba 's boom years and the vision of

those American speculators and promoters who flocked there seeking fortune.

Hergesheimer appeared asan Americanflaneur in San Cristóbal, wandering through

a meridional netherworld, mapping Havana's licit and illicit pleasures- from the

racetracks and jai alai frontons to the brothels and porn theatres - imagining the city

as a maze of alíen diversions designed for American consumers. He traverses the city

with a confidence and aloofness, surveying it with a cool, distant, but proprietary

gaze. He conjures Ha vana through a gauzy and romantic lens tinted by fantasy,

expectation, and narcissistic desire. "lt was impossible to determine what 1 had seen

of Havana and what was merely my reflected self," Hergesheimer writes in the

book's concluding pages, "even harder to decide if 1 had seen Havana objectively at

all, since my attitude toward it had been so purely personal." San Cristóbal quipped

the New York Times, "is about one-tenth Havana and nine-tenths Hergesheimer." 16

Yet despite the solipsism, Hergesheimer was not uncritical of the United

States' neocolonial reach over Cuba. While he describes his Havana experience as

"sensations rather than facts," he would also disparage those American merchants and

financiers who "[speak] of Cuba asan estancia of which they were absentee

15
See John Dos Passos' U.S.A. (New York: The Library of America, 1996) 967-
981; Agostin Acosta, La Zafra: Poema de combate (Habana, Editorial Minerva,
1926); Rafael Antonio Cisneros, La danza de los millones: Novela historia de
Cuba (Hamburg: Herman's Erben, 1923).
16
"With Mr. Hergesheimer in Havana," New York Times, (December 12, 1920).

186
owners. " 17 In the preface to the 1927 edition of San Cristóbal, he lamented that the

Havana of but a few years before had lost its charm, its romance. Cuba's hybrid,

nineteenth-century Spanish Victorian and Afro-Latin culture had been corrupted by

an era of northern commercialism, Anglo-Saxon frigidity and sterility, and "American

sanitary improvements." 18 But while San Cristóbal critiques the effects of US

expansion into the island republic, Hergesheimer uses the same embroidered

languages of race, nation, and economy structuring the ideological and cultural

rationalizations initially validating US political and economic policy in the region.

His critique rests on a historicist premise that regulates Cuba to an exotic, pre-

Independence past outside of a modernity defined by the United States. The

Caribbean space that Hergesheimer narrates in San Cristóbal projects an American

imperial imaginary even as it questions its foundations. His dream of Spanish

imperialism is the refracted vision of American neo-colonialism.

A personal fantasy, an aesthetic event, a warped and world-weary critique of

Caribbean modernity, San Cristóbal is also an allegory of American empire wherein

the immaterial registers of finance capital assume narrative form. In this sense, the

difference between the real and the artificial Havana in San Cristóbal can be read as a

parallel between the dissimulated nature of the two money forms used by bankers:

money as a circulating means of payment and the "negative money" 19 and fictitious

17
Hergesheimer, San Cristobal, 254.
18
ibid. 254.
19
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, Robert Hurley et al, Trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1983) 229-230.

187
capital, the drafts and bilis of exchange passing between merchants and bankers,

whose over-extension would contribute to the estado ficticio de prosperidad and the

regimen artificial, as it was later described, of the dance of millions. 20 But the facades

and otherworldly white exteriors of Hergesheimer's baroque city- the representation

of a purely economic arder of finance capital - are constituted by a blackness that, as

labor, was the key to Cuba's prosperity but, because of its inherent inassimilablity

and instability, unleashed a racial terror, an imperial dread, that threatened to

contaminate the American imperial project and destroy the smooth, white system of

surfaces of both the American vision of Cuba and the Caribbean and Hergesheimer's

own text. In San Cristóbal this dread would emerge through Hergesheimer's

encounter with two phenomena. First, with the black sounds, as Frederico Garcia

Larca once called them, of the danzón a ballroom dance (the other, shadow dance of

the dance of millions) generally believed to have originated amongst the African

populations of Matanzas. 21 Second, with the secret societies of the Abakwá and the

ñáñigo, whose presence in the first decades of the Republic was seen as a constant

threat to Cuba's racial and national development.

This knotted narrative of racial capitalism was dramatized in the November

1920 edition ofthe more saber, more objective text ofthe Times ofCuba. Though the

2
°Cuba. Comisión Temporal Liquidación Bancaria, Compendio de los trabajos
(Habana: Julio Arroyo, 1928) 27; Alberto Arredondo, Cuba: Tierra indefensa.
(Habana: Editorial Lex, 1945) 318.
21
Frederico Garcia Larca, Deep Song and Other Prose, Edited and translated by
Christopher Maurer, (New York: New Directions, 1980). On the origins of
danzan, see Robín Moore, Nationalizing Blackness: A.frocubanismo and Artistic
Revolution in Havana, 1920-1940. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
1997.

188
ñáñigo were thought to have been outlawed and abolished during the first US

occupation, 22 the Times, following accounts in Diario de la Marina, reported the

unfolding of the first days of the banking crisis alongside the resurgence of clashes

between rival ñáñigos in Havana. On October 5, 1920 with sugar having fallen from

its summer heights of twenty-two and one half to seven cents, ñáñigos were

reportedly engaged in gun battles at Penal ver and Manrique streets. On the sixth

"three negroes" suspected of being involved in the previous day's shootings were

arrested at Mision and Florida Streets, while "rumors that certain banks [were] in

difficulty" began to spread. On the eighth, with sugar at six and a half cents, and a

reported increase in brujería in the countryside beyond Havana, the police arrested

ten ñáñigos- and the run on the Banco Internacional de Cuba began. 23

***
1920 serves as a fulcrum balancing two periods in the history of American

neocolonialism in Cuba, two periods through which New York City's private banks,

trust companies, and national banking associations struggled to find the proper form

and practice for extending their operations in Cuba, and the wider Caribbean, as part

of the expansion of US hegemony in the region. Despite calls for Cuba's "commercial

annexation," the first period, from 1898 to the end of World War I, especially

compared to the post-World War I years, appears rather mild, tentative, and

haphazard- the expansion of American bankers into the Caribbean was hampered by

legal restrictions of branch banking, the lack of a staff trained in international banking

22
Irene Wright, Cuba (New York: Macmillan, 1910) 149.
23
The Times ofCuba (November, 1920) 61-63

189
and knowledgeable about the world beyond the US, and the relative shortage of

domestic capital available for export. The entrance of American banking into Cuba

occurred largely under cover of military occupation and colonial administration. New

York both competed and collaborated with the financia! communities of London,

Hamburg, Paris, Boston, New Orleans, Montreal, and Ha vana; and many New York

banking institutions were financed by European, not American, capital.

The effects of the War and the post-War commodities boom on global trade

and international capital markets would change this- perhaps more than anywhere, in

Cuba, where the demand for its sugar spurred unprecedented levels of investment and

rapid, inflationary growth. Both moments accelerated the rate of American

investment in Cuba while spurring the broad, though eventually doomed, expansion

of American branch banks overseas. Following the post-war boom, US banking

practice abroad underwent a shift from the use of branch banks to the rise, in its stead,

of the direct and indirect investment resulting in the speculati ve fe ver of the 1920s.

New York bankers turned to the accumulated savings of American workers for

financing foreign trade- turning savings from a patriotic duty accompanying the war

effort toa peace-time technology for continued economic expansion- and the New

York bond market increasingly became both the engine of American economic

growth and the space through which the practice of American imperialism

increasingly took place.

As such, while the question of foreign monopolization of the sugar and

banking industries in Cuba constituted an important, if well known, fact of American

190
empire in Cuba, as a practice, rather than a static, pre-constituted form, empire in

Cuba was created from the intimacies of everyday moments of exchange, imperial

governance was enacted through financia! discipline: through the encouragement of

saving instead of hoarding, through the rationalization of credit reporting, through the

depersonalization of ideas of confidence and trust, through the bending of time to

meet the needs of the American market, from the recalibration of forms of value and

ideas of the market. 24 All of these ideas and reforms were racially and culturally

coded, but race here - and the ideological rationalizations that used race to explain

American expansion- was recast within an instrumental register: as a set of financia!

practices shaped through the intimate transactions making up a bank's daily

operations.

Americans noted with dismay the "mixed" or "mongrel" character of Cuban' s

monetary system: until the monetary reforms of 1914 introduced a Cuban peso at par

with the US dollar, a range of foreign currencies circulated, creating an unwieldy and

unstable monetary system that impeded market expansion and promoted inefficiency

24
The classic, unsurpassed study of American ownership of control is Leland
Hamilton Jenks, Our Cuban Colony: A Study in Sugar (New York: Vanguard
Press, 1928). Also see Arrendando, Ramiro Guerra y Sanchez, Fernando Ortiz,
Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, Harriet de Onis, trans. (1947, rpt.
Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 65, 193; Carleton Beals, The Crime of
Cuba (Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott, 1933); Osear Pino-Santos, El asalto a cuba
por la oligarquia financieera yanqui (La Habana: Casa de las Américas, 1973 );
Antonio Vázquez Galego, La consolidacion de los monopliies en Camagüey, en
la década del viente (La Habana: Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1975); Alejandro
Garcia Álvarez, La gran burguesia comercial en Cuba, 1899-1920 (La habana:
Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1990); César J. Ayala, American Sugar Kingdom:
The Plantation Economy ofthe Spanish Caribbean, 1898-1934 (Chape! Hill
University of North Carolina Press, 1999)

191
in exchange and commercial transactions. 25 And while the terms "mixed and

"mongrel" were used to describe the monetary system, they can perhaps be used to

think about the character of the Cuban financia! system as Americans saw it more

generally. Indeed, like the "wild-cat" and "red-dog" banks of the postbellum United

States, or the Argentine "gaucho" banks, as they were called, that were marked by a

"fragility that results from the mix of two ingredients" 26 and contributed, according to

sorne, to that country's late nineteenth-century economic collapse, the idea of a mixed

or mongrel system contains and implied notion of the economy as a natural,

biological extension of the racial make-up of the Cuban nation. The task for

American bankers was to institute a series of financia! reforms that would weed out-

or, as to continue with the biological-com-eocnomic metaphors, remove from

circulation- the sullen taints of backward racial-economic forms while promoting a

system that was notable for its Protestant rationality and "Anglo-Saxon stability."27

This combination of racial formation and financia! organization, political

economy and culture, was mediated through writing. Bankers had to "invent" Cuba,

to produce a representation of Cuba as part of the marketing of Cuban securities for

25
Charles M. Pepper, "Not enough of the coin," Chicago Daily (June 20, 1897)
15; A. Hyatt Verrill, Cuba: Past and Present (New York: Dodd, Mead, and
Company, 1914) 60
26
Gerardo della Paolera and Alan M. Taylor, Gaucho Ranking Redux (NBER
Working Paper 9457) (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research,
January, 2003) Avail: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9457. My understanding of
the link between biological and monetary discourses is also influenced by
Michael O'Malley, "Species and Specie: Race and the Money Question in
Nineteenth-Century America," The American Historical Review, 99:2 (April,
1994): 269-295;
27
G.R. Stevens, "The Economic Reawakening of Cuba," The Economic Bulletin
ofCuba, 11: 4(December, 1922) 158

192
American investors, to perform it into being through a form of writing that Michel de

Certeau has called a writing that "conquers," a "savage" writing that "[transforms] the

space of the other into a field for the expansion for a system of production. " 28 And

here we return to Hergesheimer- for the same semiotics of accumulation and

racialization, property and possession, appearing in New York City banker's

promotional materials of Cuba appear in the work of Hergesheimer.

From the nineteenth century to 1914

During the nineteenth century, those New York, Boston, and Philadelphia merchants

financing the American sugar trade with Cuba also offered banking services to their

clients. They advanced money on sugar crops, provided loans for the purchase of

slaves and the upgrade of sugar milis, and financed the export of North American

goods to the country. The most prominent among them was Moses Taylor, President

of the National City Bank from 1856 (when it was still called the City Bank) to his

death in 1882. Taylor's Moses Taylor and Co., whose offices were in the back of the

National City headquarters at 55 Wall Street, was thought to have made sorne $3

mi Ilion re-investing the money of Cuban planters in US government securities. Moses

Taylor and Co. was taken over by his long-time partner, Lawrence Turnure, and

assumed the name Lawrence Turnure and Co. Turnure had been a director of the

bank, turning down an offer of the Presidency upon Taylor's demise to concentrate on

his own business activities, including the marketing of Cuban securities in the United

28
Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, Tom Con ley, trans. (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1988), p. xxv-xxvi

193
States. 29 Along with August Belmont (who represented the House of Rothschild in

Cuba until he carne to New York to establish his own firm), Turnure was among the

signatories of a petition to President McKinley, endorsed by the Cuban Junta in New

York, asking for US intervention into the struggle against Spain. 30 Other American

bankers included Knoth, Muller, Schall and Company, the Farmers Loan and Trust

Company, the first trust company incorporated in 1822 who had tiesto Zaldo y Hijos,

and Juan M. Cebellos a Cuban-American merchant and private banker with offices at

27 William Street who had extensive interests in banking, breweries, construction,

sugar and shipping in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the United States. J.P. Morgan

represented the Banco Español de Cuba, Spain's fiscal agent, in New York City,

while participating in European syndicates contracting Cuban exterior debt.

The beginnings of a significant American banking presence in Cuba began at

the conclusion of the Spanish-American-Cuban War. The US military occupation

needed institutions for the fiscal support of a standing army in Cuba (as well as in

Puerto Rico and the Philippines) while, additionally, creating the infrastructure for

administering tax reform. At the same time, American financiers and merchants

wanted to finance Cuban-American trade and to encourage American investment in

Cuban industries. These two demands, military and commercial, were often

intertwined, and were part of what Samuel Miller Jarvis, the financier and founder of

29
0n Turnure, see Lawrence Turnure and Co.: A Short History, 1832-1942(New
York: Lawrence Turnure and Co, 1942) and advertisements for the company in
various issues of The Cuba Bulletin between 1903 and 1907.
30
See "Colonial Banks and Bankers," The Bankers Directory and Collection
Guide. (New York: Bradford Rhodes & Co.: 1898-1914).

194
the Banco Nacional de Cuba, referred toas the United States' "missionary work" in

Cuba. 31

Yet despite the plans for currency and banking reform in the Philippines

undertaken by the Treasury Department's International Monetary Commission, and

the calls from various quarters in Havana's business community to settle the currency

issue, when it carne to banking and monetary policy in Cuba, the US authorities did

little to either standardize the circulating currency or establish the country on

American ideas of sound banking practice. The many different standards circulating

in earlier eras of Cuban history had been demonetized. No longer did United States

dollars circulate alongside Spanish pillars, pesos, or piastras, from Mexico, Chile,

and Venezuela; various fractional divisions of the pound, franc, Dutch marks, or

doubloons from the South American republics. But while Cuba had no national

currency, US, Spanish, and French currency circulated. 32 Hundreds of curbside

money changers profited from the daily differences in exchange rates through shaving

and arbitrage, and from the ignorance of a public unable to keep up with the daily

fluctuations in values whose relations to each other seemed governed by their own

31
Samuel M. Jarvis qtd in "Three years to upbuild Cuba," Chicago Daily Tribune
(March 5, 1899).
32
Henry C. Niese, "Cuban Banking," Bulletin ofthe American Institute of Bank
Clerks. III: 10 (March1908), 261-2; T. Philip Terry, Terry's Guide to Cuba
(Cambridge MA: The Riverside Press, 1929), 7-8; Charles A. Conant, A History
of Modern Banks of Jssue with an Account ofthe Economic Crises ofthe
Nineteenth Century and the Crisis of 1907. (New York: GP Putnam's Sons,
1927), 526; Robert P. Porter, Industrial Cuba: Being a Study of Present
Commercial and Industrial Conditions, with Suggestions asto the Opportunities
presented in the /stand for American Capital, Enterprise, and Labour (New York:
GP Putnam's Sons, 1899)

195
occult science. Merchants based exchange upon Spanish gold, while retailers used

silver. Payments were made in species but change was given in depreciated paper

currency. Book-keepers painstakingly transcribed their accounts in triplicate to

account for the various currencies that accounts were kept in. 33 Henry C. Niese, the

Haitian-born clerk of the Banco Nacional de Cuba, described the "trials" suffered by

Cuba's bank tellers at the end of the business day when they had to balance their

accounts. Niese writes:

[the teller] places on one side of his cage packages of gold pieces representing
100 "centenes" or 125 "luises" and then again along these packages he piles up
"centenes" pieces, twenty in each piJe; and on the other side leaves a certain
number of loose "centenes" or "luises;" andina separate place Spanish silver and
copper. In order to pay $1,000 he grabs one package of 100 "centenes" or for that
matter, of 125 luises because it is necessary to work on the basis that four
centenes are equal to five luises. This amount equals $530 in Spanish gold. He
then takes four piles of twenty centenes each, equal to $424; this gives him $954,
Spanish gold. To this he adds seven loose centenes which equals $37,10, and then
gives two luises equal to $8.48, after which he has $999.58, Spanish gold.
Therefore, to complete the amount required, all he ahs to do is to hand out 42
cents in Spanish sil ver and copper, upon which the operation is completed making
a total of $1000. 34

Only in the eastern half of the island was there a unitary monetary system,

based solely on the US dollar. The difference between the two parts of the island

emerging from the two administrative units put in place by the Americans during the

Occupation. During a visit to Cuba in 1909, Jamaican writer Herbert de Lisser found

33
J.C. Martine, "Cuban Financia) Methods," No. 8 11. 4 (January 1907), np.;
"Money System of Cuba Comes Under Criticism," Christian Science Monitor
(December 1, 1914); pg. 8
34
Henry C. Niese, "Trials of Cuban Paying Tellers," The Cuba Bulletin, VI:9
(August 1908), np.

196
that in Santiago de Cuba, locals didn't even recognize the Spanish coins still in use in

Havana, let alone accept them for purchase. 35

Despite the presence of numerous Cuban, Spanish, French and German

merchant bankers, the culture of banking, as Americans knew it, was practically non-

existent. 36 There were no banking laws. The banks of the island were governed by the

general business regulations of the Spanish commercial code, allowing forms of

speculation and the reckless use of funds while avoiding reserve requirements,

inspections and other forms of oversight. When American banks began operating in

the country, they were simply notarized by a Cuban lawyer. Their charters were

extended from the State of incorporation - though, of course, no US state had any

form of jurisdiction in Cuba.

35
H.G. de Lisser, In Cuba and Jamaica, (Kingston: The Gleaner Company,
191 0), pp. 60; Henry C. Ni ese, "Cuban Banking," Bulletin of the American
lnstitute of Bank Clerks. III: 10 (March, 1908), 261-2
36
William J. Clark, in Commercial Cuba: A Bookfor Business Men (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898), lists the following Havana-based merchant-
bankers, many of which continued operations through the twenties: J. Balcells,
and Co., J.A. Bances, Banco del Comercio, Banco Espanol de la Isla de Cuba,
J.M. Boge, Bridat Mont'ros and Co., Loychate Codes, and Co., Credito Territorial
Hipotecaria, N. Gelats, and Co., Hidalgo and Co., Lawton Brothers. B. Pinon and
Co., J.A. Rafecas, and Co., R. Romero, and Co., L.A. Ruis, and Co., H. Upmann
and Co., C.L. Wickes, and Co. (478). A more extensive list is given, three years
later, in Official Commercial Directory of Cuba, Porto Rico and the entire West
lndies with Bermudafor 1901 containing complete commerciallists and
descriptions of the various islands and colonies their customs tariffs statistical
information etc. (New York: Spanish-American Directories Company, 1901), 54-
55. On the character of these merchant banks, see José Ramón García López,
"Los comerciantes-banqueros en el sistema bancario Cubana, 1880-1910," La
nación soñada: Cuba, Puerto Rico y Filipinas ante el 98, Naranjo Orovio et al
(Madrid: Doce Calles: 1996).

197
 Americans pointed out that there were no savings banks in the island, no

place were workers could place their money expecting reasonable rates of return.

"Savings banks must ... be established," wrote Robert S. Porter, the US government's

special envoy to the island, "for no people can become permanently prosperous where

thrift is unknown, and where there are no opportunities for saving the surplus

earnings of the population.'m The only savings bank had suspended in 1884 after the

manager shot himself in the head and an audit revealed unpaid debts dating back to

the bank's establishment in 1856?8 Since then the Monte de Piedad, a Church-run

institution similar toa pawnshop that offered low interest loans secured by pledges of

personal possessions and household items was the only credit institution available to

workers. 39 When deposits were made at Cuban banks they did not generate any

interest and the funds were rarely loaned out, the bankers only loaning their own

prívate capital. 40 Instead of using banks, the average person preferred hoarding their

savings. The custom of hoarding, one writer claimed, was "as old as Spain itself.''41

According to one report, people used anyplace but a bank to keep their money: a bird

37
Robert P. Porter. Appendix to the Report on the Commercial and Industrial
Condition ofthe /stand ofCuba (Washington: GPO, 1899) 214.
38
See "Banking in Cuba," The Bankers Magazine, (June 1884) 921-923. The
comprehensive history of the Banco Espanol is in S usan J. Fernandez,
Encumbered Cuba: Capital Markets and Revolt, 1878-1895 (Gainsesville:
University Press of Florida, 2002).
39
On the history of the Monte de Piede in Cuba see Jose Antonio Pulido
Ledesma, El monte de piedad: Comercio y usura (La Habana: Editorial de
Ciencias Sociales, 1996).
40
J.F. Rivera, "Banking in Cuba," No. 8, 14: 10-11 (October-November 1919) 16-
18.
41
Edwin F Atkins, Sixty Years in Cuba: Reminiscences of Edwin F. Atkins
(Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1926) 52-53.

198
house in a tree, hollowed out stones in a building's wall, a shelf under the eaves of a

roof near a hornet's nest, inside atable leg, in the base of a light stand. 42

While sorne observers saw the outflow of gold at the end of the nineteenth

century, as well as the problem of illiquidity beca use of the mortgages held on non-

productive plantations, as the causes for the general depression in Cuba's circulation

and wealth, other saw it in this problem of hoarding. The per capita wealth of the

island was substantial, but circulation was greatly reduced because people tended to

hold their money in private safes instead of banks. 43 "The Cuban banks have

amounted to practically nothing," Jarvis claimed, "because every man has preferred

to be his own banker, and to keep what cash he had on hand. The result of this has

been that the banking business of Cuba has furnished no idea of the financia!

transactions of the island."44 Cuban merchants used cash, not checks, for transactions,

lending enormous sums carried directly from their vaults, bank messengers hauling

the species by hand from one institution to another instead of using a check for bank

clearances. 45

42
"Where Cubans Hide Money ," The Washington Post, (April 18, 1909). Al so:
Edwin F. Atkins, Sixty Years in Cuba: Reminiscences of Edwin F. Atkins.
(Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1926) 52-53; A. Hyatt Verrill, Cuba: Past and
Present (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1914) 204.
43
Robert P. Porter, Industrial Cuba: Being a Study of Present Commercial and
Industrial Conditions, with Suggestions as to the Opportunities presented in the
lslandfor American Capital, Enterprise, and Labour (New York: G.P. Putnam's
Sons, 1899); E. F. Ladd, "Report of Major E. F. Ladd, Treasurer of the Island of
Cuba," Civil Report of Majar General Leonard Wood, Military Governor of
Cuba. Volume V: Finance, (Washington: GPO 1900) 13.
44
"Three years to upbuild Cuba," Chicago Daily Tribune (March 5, 1899).
45
lbid.; J.C. Martine, "Cuban Financia! Methods," No. 811. 4 (January 1907), np.

199
 Furthermore, it was next to impossible for American merchants to obtain

credit information from their Cuban customers. At the time of the occupation,

mercantile agencies such as Dun's didn't exist in Cuba. A mercantile register was set

up only after repeated complaints of wholesale merchants losing money from retailers

who accepted cash or goods on credit but, when payment was due, found that their

claims had been given to third parties who then denied any involvement in the

affair. 46 Confidence was based on family ties, personal knowledge, and the patrician,

gentlemanly codes of honor among merchants that governed nineteenth-century

financia! relations in the United States before the "managerial revolution" rationalized

and transformed American business practice. According to Jarvis, emotionalism,

vanity and pride, more than anything else, hampered the development of the credit

system. The Cuban, according to Jarvis, saw such systemized inquiry and collecting

asan affront toa man's word and honor. He claimed that many Cuban merchants

resisted inquiries while misrepresenting the credit of their rivals, especially if there

was sorne longstanding personal vendetta between merchants. lf American merchants

wanted to use Cuban retailers to sell their goods, they would have to conduct their

own personal investigations to figure out which businesses were sound. 47

"Beware of the Cuban middleman," warned Jarvis. "1 do not say that he is

dishonest, but his sympathies are with the people he lives among, those he has known

for many years. Even if he wishes to act in the interest of his American connections

46
United States. Justice Department. Order from Military Governor ofCuba in
regard to credit ofmerchants and manufacturers, (Havana, 1900).
47
"Three years to upbuild Cuba," Chicago Daily Tribune (March 5, 1899).

200
and against his local associates, he will unconsciously be biased in local favor." 48 On

the other hand, Spanish business people were lauded for their honesty, cunning, their

developed business acumen; the Asturianos and the Galicians were seen as "at once

the brains, sinews and backbone of many Cuban enterprises," responsible for Cuba's

economic development in the early twentieth century. "1 heard them jest at the

money-mad Yankee and his 'almighty dallar,"' Irene Wright wrote ofthe Spanish

merchants in Havana, "and saw them drive bargains so sharp no Wall Street Jew

could equal them for edge." 49 "One seldom sees Jews in business in Cuba," wrote A.

Hyatt Verrill, "and the reason is simply, although the Hebrew is the shrewdest of

businessmen in the North, yet he cannot succeed in Cuba, for the Cuban-Spaniard

will beat him at this own game. There is a saying that 'it takes two Jews to beata

Greek and two Greeks to beat a Gallego. "' 50

But while the Spanish was but a Jew who was better than a Jew, to use the

anti-Semitic vocabulary circulating at the time, there was sorne confusion asto who,

racially, ethnically, the Cubans actually were. One Cuban diplomat, when asked by an

American journalist of American perceptions of Cubans, claimed that many

Americans had "a queer idea of the native Cuban." He continued:

They seem to think [the Cuban] is a savage ora negro. An exhibition of this
feeling occurred while 1 was at the world's fair, where 1 had todo with the
Cuban exhibit, 1 was sitting in our pavilion when a party of Americans who
had just visited the Filipino village carne in. They had watched your half
naked cousins in their straw huts, and had noticed their color and light attire.

48
"Three years to upbuild Cuba," Chicago Daily Tribune (March 5, 1899).
49
Irene Wright, Cuba. (New York: Macmillan, 1910) 143.
50
A. Hyatt Verrill, Cuba: Past and Present, (New York: Dodd, Mead, and
Company, 1914).

201
 As they carne into the pavilion one of them said to me, "1 want to see a real
Cuban." Whereupon 1 pointed to one of our commissioners, a fair-faced, rosy-
cheeked gentleman of about sixty years of age, and said. There is one. The
man replied, "Why, that man looks and dresses just like an American." 1 could
hardly make him believe that we Cubans are not like the savages of the
mountains of Luzon. 51

***
Despite American criticism of Spain's colonial economics and Cuba's economic

ineptitude, their own policy towards the island was itself mixed. While sorne of the

circulating foreign currency was demonetized, Spanish and French currency still

circulated and there was no attempt at reforming banking laws. Local attempts at

establishing banks or credit associations were blocked using the Foraker

Amendment' s prohi bition on the Occupation government' s awarding of franchises

and concessions. Petitions for the formation of agricultural banks fell on deaf ears.

Large businesses like Sir William Van Horne's New Jersey-chartered Cuba Company

gained vast railway concessions through a combination of guile, coercion, and open

interpretations of the Platt Amendment, and intensifying the process of transferring

small properties to large, mainly foreign institutions. 52 The Cuba Company's near-

monopoly of the island's railways was increased when, after the transition to Cuban

independence on January 1, 1902 saw Cuban stocks fall in value as they were

51
Frank G. Carpenter, "Big Banks of Cuban Republic are Backed by Americans,"
Atlanta Constitution (September 17, 1905), 3
52
Philip S. Foner, The Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American
Imperialism, 1895-1902, Volume 11:1898-1902, (New York and London:
Monthly Review Press, 1972), 480; Louis A. Pérez, "lnsurrection, Intervention,
and the Transformation of Land Tenure Systems in Cuba, 1895-1902," Hispanic
American Historical Review 65: 2 (May 1985), 235.

202
shunned by investor anxiety concerning the transition to Cuban national governance.

In the meantime, the Company quickly bought the depreciated stock. 53

As one of the first acts of the military government, United States War

Secretary Russell Alger gave the Banco Español de la Isla de Cuba the contract for

the collection of back taxes, remunerated ata rate of five-percent of total monies

collected. But Alger's order was greeted by a storm of protest. Cubans viewed the

Banco Español as an agent and symbol of Spanish colonialism. Through the bank the

Spanish government emitted "Weyler's scrip"- the heavily discounted paper

currency used to finance the counterinsurgency while undermining Cuba's business.

At least once Cuban nationalists made plans to burn down the offices of the Banco

Español alongside other Spanish controlled banks "and hang their officials from light

posts." 54 Rather than granting the concession to Cuban bankers, General Brooke

rescinded the contract, returned the posted bond to the Banco Español, and awarded it

to the North American Trust Company.

The North American Trust Company (NA TC) was organized by Samuel M.

Jarvis and Roland R. Conklin. Under the guise of the Jarvis-Conklin Mortgage

Company, the duo operated a successful, though perennially-scandal ridden,

operation in the 1880s that funneled English capital into midwestern real-estate

development. The crash of 1893 forced the company into receivership- or, at least,

they used the crash as a cover for liquidating the company. Jarvis and Conklin went to

New York City, auctioned off the company and, much to the anger of English

53
"Cuban Stocks Down," Washington Post (September 30, 1902) 11.
54
"Cuban Affairs," New York Times, (June 8, 1872) pg. 2.

203
creditors who claimed that the pair had siphoned off profits while operating a series

of real es tate scams, bought the severely depreciated assets through the NATC, a trust

company that, while originally chartered in 1885, was inactive until Jarvis and

Conklin became involved with it. In 1898, Jarvis went to Cuba where he was

appointed to the War Department's Finance Commission, responsible for

reorganizing the revenue and taxation of Havana. 55 He resigned soon after, and, about

the same time, President McKinley granted him a concession to act as the fiscal agent

for both the Treasury and War Departments in Cuba through the NATC. As financia)

agent, the NA TC received Treasury Department funds in New York and paid them

out in Havana, Santiago, and other locations throughout the island. At the same time

it was used as depository for Cuban revenues collected through taxation. The

Company was paid a percentage commission on all money received and disbursed. 56

In 1901, Jarvis and Conklin sold their shares in the NATC, dissolved its

Cuban operations, and reconstituted the bank as the Banco Nacional de Cuba. The

Banco Nacional became the Cuban government's depository while expanding the

commercial services that the North American Trust Company had already

55
Annual Report of Brigadier-General William Ludlow, United States Army,
Military Governor of Habana, and Commanding Department of Habana, for the
period July 1, 1899, to May 1, 1900. (Wash: GPO, 1900) 36.
56
See: United States. Senate. 56th Congress, 1st Session. Document No. 440. Letter
from the Secretary of War, In response to Resolution of the Senate of M ay 22,
1900, Relative to the North American Trust Company, A Corporation organized
under the laws ofthe state of New York, having its principal office in the city of
New York, and Branch offices at Havana, Santiago, Cienfuegos, and Matanzas, in
the /stand ofCuba (Washington: GPO, 1900).

204
established. 57 It established a savings bank that paid three percent interest on deposits,

while promoting investment in sugar and tobacco plantation, real estate, and electric

plants and railroads. 58 Morgan, Harjes, the London affiliate of Wall Street's J.P.

Morgan, owned for a time, twenty percent of the shares of the bank. The bank's

directors were invested in companies including the Cuban Telephone Company, the

Central Cuba Sugar Company, the Havana Gas and Electric Company, the Havana

Telephone Company, and the Cuban Railroad. 59 The bank's President, Jarvis' son in

law, Edward G. Vaughan, was a founding member of the American Chamber of

57
"Las Relaciones del Banco Nacional de Cuba con el Tesoro de la Republica,"
en Cuba. Comisión Temporal de Liquidación Bancaria. Compendio de los
trabajos realizados desde 17 de Febrero de 1921, hasta 4 de Agosto de 1914
(Habana: Hermes, 1924) 50-53.
58
"National Bank of Cuba's Officers," New York Times (Jul 3, 1901); pg. 9;
"National Bank of Cuba," Wall Street Journal (July 2, 1901) 2; "Letter from H.
Harjes to Vivian Smith dated April 22, 1908," Morgan & Co. Cuba. Box 32.
Carrosso Papers. Morgan Library. New York; Roland R. Conklin, Appellant, v.
United Construction and Supply Company and William J. Patterson and Hugh S.
Jarvis, as Executors of and Trustees under the Last Will and Testament of Samuel
M. Jarvis, Deceased, Respondent, Supreme Court of New York, Appellate
Division, First Department, 166 A.D. 284; 151 N.Y.S. 624; 1915 N. Y. App. Div.
Lexis 6568, February 5th, 1915; "The Cuban Telephone Company," The Times
(London)(January 26, 1911), 13
59
E. F. Ladd, "Report of Major E. F. Ladd, Treasurer of the Island of Cuba," Civil
Report of Major General Leonard Wood, Military Governor of Cuba. Volume V:
Finance, (Washington: GPO 1900). 13; "Americans Going into Cuba to Settle"
Chicago Daily Tribune (August 1, 1898); "New Investment Fields" New York
Times, (August 4th, 1898); "Fiscal Agents at Santiago," New York Times, (August
12th, 1898); "Revenue Agent in Cuba," New York Times (August 15, 1889); "Tells
of Cuba' s Bank," Chicago Daily (August 31, 1898); "Depository for Cuban
Funds," Washington Post (May 11, 1899); "Depository of Cuban Revenues,"
Washington Post, (May 7, 1899). One so urce claims that President McKinley
owed Jarvis for "invaluable favors" the banker lent the President during the War
though 1 have not been able to substantiate this. See Franklin Matthews, The New
Born Cuba (New York: Harper and Brothers: 1899) 200. See the interview with
Vice President Roland R. Conklin in the New York Times (August 14, 1898), for
an early example of their pro-Cuba promotional junkets.

205
Commerce in Cuba and the Cuban representative of the American Bankers

Association. 60

The Banco Nacional and its principals were continually dogged by scandal.

Back in Kansas, Jarvis and Conkin had had their representatives attacked by Iocals

defending their territory against the company's development schemes, and Farmer's

Alliances posses forcibly repossessed properties that the Jarvis-Conklin had taken

over through bankruptcy proceedings against western farmers in the 1890s. In

Havana, in 1900, they were accused of violating the Foraker Amendment's clauses

against American concessions and monopolies during the occupation, though nothing

carne of the charges. In 1905, they created an uproar after issuing currency imprinted

with the faces of Cuban President Tomás Estrada Palma and his Treasury Secretary

apparently exceeding the limits of its charter. 61 One associate later described Jarvis

and Conklin as a "gang of crooks," whose higher aims in the island were to "rob,

steal, and plunder." 62 Norman H. Davis of the Trust Company of Cuba claimed that

the reputations of Jarvis and Conklin were such that no American businessperson

60
Commercial Directory ofthe American Club of Havana (Havana: American
Club, 1905). The actual ownership of the bank was impossible to determine, as
Morgan, Harjes, discovered when they attempted to purchase the bank. W.H.
Morales claimed that its stock was held "in fourteen different countries and
twenty-eight states of the union and seldom comes on the market." W.H. Morales,
"Cuban Banking and Finance," Bulletin ofthe American Institute of Bank Clerks
3:3 (August 1910) 121
61
José A. Pulido Ledesma, Apuntes sobre el antiguo banco nacional de cuba y su
emisíon de billetes de 1905 (la Habana: Banco Nacional de Cuba, 1980)
62
"Conference with Charles M. Lewis, Cuban Representative, Fire Insurance
Company, Hartford, CT, February 10, 1926," Leland Hamilton Jenks Collection
on the Cuban Sugar Industry 1925-1934. Special Collections, Princeton
University, Princeton New Jersey

206
would join the board of the bank until they resigned and that director Pedro Gomez

Mena offered unsecured loans to customers in return for substantial pay-offs. 63

Y et Da vis admitted that despite the unethical nature of its business, the Banco

Nacional was still profitable. lf its published statements can be trusted, it underwent

steady growth in its first decade of operation. lts capital increased from $1 million to

$5 million between its opening in 1901 and 1907. They paid a three percent dividend

to share holders after its first six months in existence increasing the dividend to eight

percent annually by 1907. lts account holders swelled from 6,000 to more than 11,000

-16,000 by 1908, 21,670 by 1910. "One of the most favorable signs of the times in

Cuba," noted Vice President W.A. Merchant, "is that the working classes are slowly

acquiring a greater habit of thrift, which is evidenced by the fact that the deposits of

the savings department of the National Bank of Cuba have doubled in the past two

years." 64 But in part, this greater habit carne about because of the collaborations

between the bank and the Secretary of Public instruction. Together they tried "to

develop and promete ha bits of thrift in the young generation" by establishing savings

accounts for school-age children in cities across the country. 65 Meanwhile, the Banco

Nacional opened a Wall Street agency that, in 1913, was incorporated under New

York State banking law, as the National Bank of Cuba in New Y orkand its original

63
Letter from Vivian Smith to Herman Harjes, July 1, 1910. Box 32. Morgan &
Co. Cuba. Vincent P. Carosso Papers. J.P. Morgan Museum and Library.
64
"Cuba Situation," Wall Street Journal (December 21, 1909), pg. 6
65
"Children Taught to Save," The Cuba Bulletin IX:4 (March 1911) 8

207
four branches in Havana, Santiago, Matanzas and Cárdenas increased to fourteen -

and, by 1914, thirty-four. 66

***
No other bank matched the growth of the Banco Nacional de Cuba in the first years of

the twentieth century. But it was joined by other domestic and foreign banks whose

presence represented the expansion of sugar production and the growth and

circulation of personal wealth. The once-vilified Banco Español de la Isla of Cuba

was reorganized as a private concern following the war. In 1911, it was granted a

sixty-year concession to operate a mortgage bank, the Banco Territorial de Cuba,

loaning money for property development and promoting the residential and

commercial of Havana and lesser cities in the counry. 67 The Royal Bank of Canada

opened a branch in Havana in 1898 after manager E.L. Pease visited the country at

the conclusion of the war. 68 1t expanded after purchasing the assets of the Banco

d'Oriente in Santiago in 1903 continuing to grow under the leadership of sometime

66
Charter, Bylaws, and Notice of Incorporation. National Bank of Cuba in New
York. 1913-1917. Legal Division. Banking Department State ofNew York. New
York.
67
The Banco Territorial was also backed by Marcelino Díaz de Villegas, formerly
Secretary of Hacienda, Hamburg banker George Behrens, Frank Steinhart of New
York's Speyer and Company, and severa! other Cuban and French bankers. "A
New Cuban Bank," Banker's Magazine 82:4 (April 1911) 542; "Cuban Territorial
Bank," The New York Times (September 15, 1910), pg 20; Cuban Investments: An
Intimate Statement of Investment Facts Existing in the Republic, with sorne
Comparisons on Securities in the United States (New Orleans, Louisiana:
Bankers' Loan and Security Company, 1916).
68
"Growth of Royal Bank of Canada," Wall Street Journal (August, 21, 1926) 6

208
poet Francis Sherman, opening branches in Camaguey, Matanzas, and Cárdenas. 69

The Centro Asturiano and Centro Gallego in Havana organized savings associations

for their members while institutions like the Banco Industrial de Santiago and the Isle

of Pines Bank were incorporated for regional credit needs.

More often than not, the development of North American banking in early-

twentieth-century Cuba followed a pattern established by the North American/Banco

Nacional de Cuba: they straddled commercial and military functions, and used public

funds for private operations. The North American banking community valued the

security that the presence of US military brought to the country and, thus, there was a

spurt in growth of North American banking operations in the Republic accompanying

successive interventions. 70 While, in 1898, only the North American Trust Company

had applied for a position of depositar, during the second occupation, from 1906 to

1909, both the Royal Bank of Canada and the National City Bank, through the Banco

de la Habana, offered US Military Governor Charles Magoon their services, with the

Iatter receiving the contractas a depository and dispersing agent for the US military? 1

In 1906, the Bank of Nova Scotia, which had opened its first branch in the Caribbean,

69
James Muir, "Hace 60 Años," The Royal Bank of Canada en Cuba, (Habana:
The Royal Bank of Canada, 1958); Sherman, Francis, The Complete Poems of
Francis Sherman, Lome Pierce, Ed. (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1935).
70
"US Secretary of War Taft in Havana," The Cuba Bulletin, V.5 (April 7,8,9.
1907)13.
71
Circular dirigida a Charles E. Magoon relativa a la consitucion del Banco de la
Habana, comunicacione ingles al respect. La Habana, Agosto, octubre 12 y 15 de
1906. Secretaria de la Presidencia 19:57. Archivo Nacional de Cuba; "Cuban
Banks to Actas Depositors," Wall Street Journal (October 29, 1906), 4; On the
second intervention see Allan Reed Millett, The Politics of Intervention: the
Military Occupation ofCuba, /906-1909, (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1968).

209
in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1899 opened a branch in Havana,72 as did the Trust Company

of Cuba, headed by Norman H. Davis and tied to J.P. Morgan, and other American,

Cuban, and Canadian capitalists. 73 The same year, the National City Bank was part of

a consortium of European and American bankers, including Kuhn, Loeb & Co.,

Belmont and Company, the Farmers Loan and Trust Company, the Comptoir

Nationale de Escompte, the Societe Generale, the Banque Fran<;aise pour le

commerce et )'industrie; the London Bank of Mexico and South America, Warburg

and Co., and Henry Schroeder of London, that formed the Banco de la Habana. 74

Yet the expansion of the banking industry was not totally unhindered and

marked by inevitable success. In 1906, the Cuban-American firm Ceballos and

Company, founded in 1850 by an immigrant from Santander and withoffices at 27

William Street in New York, crashed after Juan Ceballos' partner, Manuel Silveira, a

man known as the J.P. Morgan of Cuba for his extensive interests in sugar, cattle,

shipping, and other industries, liquidated all of the bank's assets- taking $1 million

72
"Nova Scotia Branch Bank in Havana," The Washington Post, (December 20,
1898), pg. 3 Joseph Schull and J. Douglas Gibson. The Scotiabank Story: A
History ofthe Bank of Nova Scotia, 1832-1982 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1982); Bank
of Nova Scotia, Bank of Nova Scotia: One Hundredth Anniversary, 1832-1932
(Toronto: Bank of Nova Scotia, 1932); Neil C. Quigley, "The Bank of Nova
Scotia in the Caribbean, 1889-1940," Business History Review 63 (Winter 89):
797-838.
73
Clay Herrick, "Trust Companies," Bankers' Magazine (December 1907) 75:6
817.
74
"Havana Bank Liquidating," New York Times (Jan 25, 1909) pg. 13; "Colonial
Banks and Bankers," The Bankers Directory and Collection Guide. (New York:
Bradford Rhodes & Co., 1911) page. "The Bank of Havana will open next
month," New York Times Jun 30, 1906, pg. 7

210
and leaving a couple thousand dollars behind- and absconded to Venezuela. 75 In the

waning days of the Second lntervention, three years after it was organized, the Banco

de la Habana, underwent a partial Iiquidation, reducing its capital by more than half.

The liquidacion followed weeks of press speculation suggesting that Carlos de Zaldo,

manager of the Banco de la Habana, had been authorized by J. P. Morgan to begin

negotiates with Edward G. Vaughn, of the Banco Nacional de Cuba to have the

National City Bank assume practica) control of the BNC's operations. Nothing

amounted to the discussions, however, and, instead of a merger, liquidation was

suggested. 76 1t was suggested that the merger talks and the liquidation emerged from a

realization that there simply wasn't enough banking business in Cuba to sustain both

institutions and warrant the extent of the bank's capitalization.

Ironically, especially in light of the fact that Banco de la Habana was

controlled by New York and París interests, Wall Street viewed its Iiquidation as a

failed test of the Republic's sovereignty and of Cuba's preparation for self-

government. Y et the reorganization al so became a sign, repeated sin ce the beginning

of the century, of the need for the establishment of modern banking laws and sound

75
Atherton Brownell, "Critica) Episode in Life of Cuban Republic Happily
Ended," New York Times (March 25, 1906); "Bankers fail for $3,500,000," New
York Times (October 11, 1906); "Silveira's Many lnterests," New York Times
(October 11, 1906); "Run on Silveira's Bank," New York Times (Oct 12, 1906)
pg. 4. Ceballos was a director of the Western National Bank and the International
Banking Corporation, among many other companies, and was represented by
Sullivan and Cromwell.
76
"Havana Bank Liquidating," New York Times, (Jan 25, 1909), pg. 13; "National
Bank of Cuba absorbs the Banco de la Habana," The Cuba Bulletin, VII.1
(December 1908), 19; "Banco de la Havana," The Cuba Bulletin, VII.2 (January
1909), np.; "Bank of Havana's Future," The Cuba Bulletin VII.3 (February 1909)

211
banking practices as a means to encourage investment, but also to demonstrate

Cuba's maturity and modernity. 77 "The success of the experiment of self-government

in Cuba," wrote the Wall Street Journal:

requires as a first condition the speediest possible development of a sound

national credit, and the foundation of that credit must be laid in laws to create
a banking system which shall be safe, responsible and capable of meeting the
legitimate needs of the business community. Lacking this fundamental
essential of stability and civil progress, Cuban self-rule will end in utter
failure, no matter how promising its operations in other directions. 78

In many ways the Journal was prescient. The lack of adequate banking regulations

was a major cause of the banking failures of 1920-1 and the failures, in turn,

prompted the fourth US intervention in the Republic's short existence.

***
In the meantime, while banking remained unregulated, Cuban President Mario García

Menocal enacted currency reforms that did away with the previous "mixed" or

"mongrel" system then in existence. 79 The Economic Defense Law, as it was called,

passed on October 29, 1914. lt demonetized all foreign currencies except that of the

US well establishing a Cuban national currency at par with the US dollar, breaking

77
See, for instance, Charles A. Conant, "Our Duty in Cuba," The North American
Review 185: DCXV (May 17, 1907), 141-7
78
"Cuba's Needs of Bank Laws," Wall Street Journal (January 28, 1909),1
79
Calls were heard after the crash of 1907 and in conjunction with the US
Occupation, cf Arredondo op. Cit. 195; "Want American Money in Havana
instead of Spanish," The Cuba Bulletin IV: 10, (September 1906) IV: 1;
"Financia]," The Cuba Bulletin V.2 (January 1907), 14; "To Use American
Money" The Cuba Bulletin, VIII.1 (December 1909); "Cuba Wants Her Own
Money," The Cuba Bulletin, VIII.2 (January 1910).

212
the government's reliance on the French and Spanish bullion that had become

prohibitively expensive as a result of the war. 80 The new law helped rationalize many

of Cuba's daily commercial transactions. 81 Sugar and tobacco acceptances were

exclusively paid either in the new national currency or the US dollar while quotations

on the Havana Stock and Produce exchanged were made in Cuban gold instead of

Spanish gold. Meanwhile, the old, complicated custom of keeping multiple accounts

was done away with and the hundred of money-changers in the streets of Havana

were forced out of business, doing away with what had been seen as part of Havana's

unique charm. 82

The availability and cost of American credit during the war years spurred the

rapid expansion of the banking industry alongside that of the sugar industry. The

proximity to its largest trading partner, the United States, the ease of business

80
W.H. Morales, "Money Legislation in Cuba," Bankers' Magazine 90: 6 (June
1915) 730 and reprinted in Cuban lnvestments: An lntimate Statement of
lnvestment Facts Existing in the Republic, with sorne Comparisons on Securities
in the United States (New Orleans, Louisiana: Bankers' Loan and Security
Company, 1916), T. Philip Terry, Terry's Guide to Cuba, Cambridge MA: The
Riverside Press, 1926, 1929,6. A. Hyatt Verrill, Cuba: Past and Present (New
York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1914), "Cuba to Have own Coinage," Wall
Street Journal, (January 14, 1915), pg. 5; "Gold for the Cuban Currency
Conversion," Wall Street Journal (December 28, 1915) pg. 8; "Cuba Now Using
Own and American Currency," Wall Street Journal, (July 7, 1915), pg. 8; "New
Monetary System in Cuba is Established," Christian Science Monitor, (December
9, 1915); page; "Cuba at Last has National Money System," Christian Science
Monitor (April 20, 1915), 9; Manuel Moreno Fraginals and José A. Pulido
Ledesma, Cuba: A través de su moneda (Habana: Banco Nacional de Cuba,
1987), 144-146.
81
See, for instance, Edouardo C. Lens y Diaz, La unidad monetaria en Cuba.
(Habana: Imp. De Lloredo y Ca., 1916).
82
Henry Christopher Wallich, Monetary Problems of an Export Economy: The
Cuban Experience, 1914-1947 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1950).

213
transactions and exchange through the Economic defense laws, the fact that the

European beet fields were destroyed by war and that production in East Asia was a

non-factor beca use of the difficult in navigating shipping lanes made Cuba the most

important sugar producing country in the world, all helped to bolster the Cuban

83
economy. The United States Sugar Equalization Board purchased and marketed the

en tire 1917-18 crop at a fixed 5 1/2 cents per pound, stabilizing, if temporarily, the

market, while guaranteeing Cuba's economic success.

The war years saw a rapid expansion in the Cuban banking industry with both

Cuban and Spanish institutions expanding their branch networks throughout the

country and extending credits to sugar planters, as well as encouraging real estate

development and financing the imports of the emerging nouveau riche profiting form

the boom years. The Banco Nacional de Cuba still led the way here, though it

increasing had competition from upstarts like the Banco Internacional de Cuba, as

well as established banks like the Banco Espanol, Upmann, and N. Gelats. And

increasingly, North American banks carne into the field. The already established

Canadian banks - the Royal Bank of Canada, the Standard Bank of Canada, the Bank

of Nova Scotia, and the Bank of Commerce- maintained a steady presence in the

country, financing sugar, though seemingly unaffected by the speculation and

competitive spirit that would reign by 1920.

As for the American banks, the National City Bank, as always, led the way. In

1914, they absorbed the Banco de la Habana made it the center of a Caribbean

83
"Economic and Financial Conditions in Cuba," Federal Reserve Bulletin
(November 1920), 1162.

214
network whose purview included the Caribbean ports of Central and South America. 84

Initially, National City opened branches in Havana, Santiago, Matanzas, Cienfuegos,

Guantánamo, Camaguey, Cárdenas, and Manzanillo. By 1920 they had twenty-four

sub-branches throughout the island besides its main branch in Havana. 85 They

attempted to corral local deposits, financed plantation mortgages and the purchase of

new materials, advanced money before the harvest, and increasingly became involved

in the national credits for the purchase of sugar during the war years as well as the

flotation of the exterior debt. The Mercantile Bank of the Americas opened a Cuban

affiliate, the Banco Mercantil de Cuba, that quickly became involved in sugar

financing, as did the American and Foreign Banking Corporation both entered the

Cuban field, the TK of its largest. 86 Overall, between 1914 and 1920; the number of

bank branches in the country almost doubled, expanding from 148 to 294. 87 From

1916 to 1920 deposits in domestic banks increased $109M to $325M; in foreign

84
"Por Carlos Ignacio Parraza y Fernandez, sobre la protocolizacion de estatutos
del 'The National City Bank of New York' y otros documentos relacionados con
el misma, 11 de Agosta de 1915," Banco Nacional de Cuba. Cuentas Corrientes:
9, N: 12. Archivo Nacionale de Cuba, Havana, Cuba; "National City Bank's
Operations in Cuba," Wall Street Journal (November 20, 1915), pg. 2. "Bank's
West Indian Branch," Wall Street Journal, (August 23, 1915), pg. 2; "Six More
Branches of the National City Bank opened in the Caribbean Territory," No. 8 14:
7 (July 1919), 15.
85
"City Bank Service now has Seventy Foreign Branches," The Americas 6:12
(September, 1920), 13; "Foreign Branches of National Bank," Report ofthe
Comptroller ofthe Currency (1918), 57.
86
"How an American Bank is Pushing Ahead in the Foreign Field," Bankers
Monthly lOO: 1 (January 1920), 97; F.J. Oehmichen, "New Offices of Banco
Mercantil Americano de Cuba Opens," The Guaranty News VIII: 8 (October,
1919), 246-7;
87
Alberto Arredondo, Cuba: Tierra Indefensa( La Habana: Editorial Lex, 1945),
318;

215
banks they underwent a similar growth, going from $30.7 M to $88. By 1920 US

investment in Cuban sugar reached $400 million, between fifty and sixty percent of

Cuban sugar production with most of the 200 or so milis in operation using American

machinery. 88

The coming of peace destabilized the Cuban economy. In the fall of 1919

Sugar Equalization Board made a late decision not to purchase the Cuban sugar crop,

unleashing the price of sugar to the vagaries of the market and the machinations of

speculators who had hoarded Cuba. The increasing demand of sugar sent prices

skyrocketing; the new-found wealth of the island transferred into extravagant

purchases of consumer goods and speculation in real esta te. 89 By M ay of 1920, sugar

reached a peak of 22.5 cents per pound. Cuba seemed flush with wealth an unlimited

wealth. "As an illustration of the A rabian Nights nature of the quick rise to wealth by

Cubans and Americans in Cuba," one bank manager described the story of "a clerk in

the Bank of Cuba in Havana, who, a little more than ayear ago was earning $20 a

week. A few days ago he carne into the bank in NY and asked Mr. M to cash a check

for $20,0000. 1t developed that he had made $1 mil in sugar speculation in Havana." 90

"The sugar millions," wrote Basil Woon, "were dancing." 91

88
Louis A. Perez, Jr., lntervention, Revolution, and Politics in Cuba, 1913-1921
(Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh Press 1978) 130;_"Cuba will quickly recover from its
Present Economic Embarrassment," The Americas 7: 1 (October 1920) 10-11.
89
"Economic and Financia! Conditions in Cuba," Federal Reserve Bulletin
(November 1920), 1162.
90
"Readujustment of Values in Cuba," Christian Science Monitor (November 1,
1920) 9.
91
Basil Woon, When lt's Cocktail Time in Cuba, (New York: Horace Liveright,
1928)

216
 ***
The spatial effects of the radical expansion of sugar financing, the steady increase in

US investments in Cuba, and the emergence of finance capital in the early decades of

the twentieth century could be seen throughout the country. In the sugar producing

provinces of Oriente and Camagüey, the influx of foreign capital and the

development of the massive centrales saw massive deforestation and the conversion

of practically all available land to the cultivation of cane. The culture of free holding

coffee growers existing since the early 1800s was destroyed. A sixty percent increase

in the population by the 1920s, including the influx of more than 180,000 Haitian and

Jamaican migrant workers, purportedly disrupted the region 's somnambulate, racially

homogenous pastoral. 92 While touring the island in 1909, Herbert De Lisser, the

Jamaican novelist and Gleaner columnist, saw in eastern Cuba a decrepit region

suffering through a severe depression whose future could be seen either in the

reclamation of the land through a nature that seemed to be encroaching at every

moment or, more probably, in the ceding of the land to sugar corporations as foreign

land speculators eagerly bought from desperate property owners seeking better

futures in Havana. 93 In Cytherea, Hergesheimer's Lee Randon would travel to his

brother's plantation in Camagüey, finding De Lisser's future in the "supreme

92
Robert B. Hoernel, "Sugar and Social Change in Oriente, Cuba, 1898-1946,"
Journal of Latin American Studies 8:2 (Nov, 1976), 215-249; Louis A. Pérez,
lntervention, Revolution, and Politics in Cuba, 1913-1921, (Pittsburgh: U of
Pittsburgh Press) 72. For a general critique of this view of the past, see Raymond
Williams, The Country and the City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).
93
H. G. De Lisser, InCuban and Jamaica (Kingston: The Gleaner Company,
1910); Also: Albert G. Robinson, Cuba: Old and New (New York: Longmans,
Green, and Co, 1915), 554-561.

217
ugliness" of tropical industrialization: the brutal iron forms of the centrales

swallowing the landscape, the air fetid with fermented cane, the stillness of the

nineteenth century broken by thrashing milis, and the shoddy, boom-town

architecture of banks, brothels, spartan hotels and canteens filled with Haitian

workers. 94

In Havana, streets were widened and august landmarks were razed to make

way for multistory bank buildings, offices, and commercial spaces. 95 The old Spanish

commercial and administrative quarter was transformed into a "tropical imitation of

Wall Street." 96 The city expanded past the former frontiers of Vedado and across the

Almendares River into Miramar where merchants and financiers built expansive

suburban estates. Rolls-Royces, Isotta-Fraschinis, and Packards competed for space

on the Prado and Malecon with taxicabs, guaguas and electric trams, and Havana's

nouveau riche turned to the leisure forms of the US bourgeoisie. This is the Havana

that Hergesheimer found in 1920 and descri bed in San Cristobal: a city transformed

into an immaterial structure by the velocity of circulation and the wizardy of finance,

a boom town given life by the dreams and desires and energies of speculation, new

found wealth and the self-making possibilities of capital. Hergesheimer obsessively

94
Joseph Hergesheimer, Cythrea (New York: Knopf, 1922) 328
95
0n Havana's transformation during this period, see Lilian Llanes, 1898-1921:
La Transformacion de la Habana a Traves de la Arquitectura, La Habana (Cuba:
Editorial Letras Cubanas, 2000); La Habana y Sus Grandes Edificios Modernos:
Obra Conmemorativa del !V Centenario de su Fundacion, Habana: Pernas y
Figueroa, 1919; and Carlos Venegas Fornias, "Havana between Two Centuries,"
Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, 22, (1996) 13-35
96
Joseph L. Scarpaci, Roberto Segre, Mario Coyula, Havana: Two Faces ofthe
Antillean Metropolis, Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina
Press, 2002, 126.

218
details the modes of consumption and forms of leisure available to the city's visitors

and invariably contributed to the image of a tourist paradise and "pleasure island" that

would emerge later in the decade and still circulates in North America and Europe

today. 97 San Cristóbal meticulously describes the proper amounts to tip, the perfect

dress and table for dinner, the taste of a mojito, a daquiri, a pina colado, or a

naranjada, the right colour of shrimps, the best choices in cigarettes and cigars, the

correct behavior at Oriente Park, the Jai Alai fronton, the cockfights, the Tacon

Theatre balls, and the brothels.

But behind the fa9ade of prosperity, another city was becoming visible. The

cost of labour and machinery had increased one hundred percent over the past few

years, of transportation between thirty and forty percent, contributing toan inflation

that was felt in all aspects of life. 98 Housing became all but unaffordable to anyone

who couldn't build a mansion in Vedado or Marianao as property speculation

increased alongside speculation in sugar. Frustrated tenants staged rent strikes and

President Menocal complained of the "outrageous profiteering by landlords" though

97
On the history of Cuban tourism see Rosalie Schwartz, Pleasure /sland:
Tourism and Temptation in Cuba, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
On its contemporary manifestations, Alma Guillermoprieta, "Love and Misery in
Cuba." In Looking for History: Dispatches from Latín Ame rica. New York:
Pantheon Books, 2001 andAna Maria Dopico, "Picturing Havana: Vision,
History, and the Scramble for Cuba," Neplanta: Viewsfrom the South, 3.3 (2002),
452-TK
98
"Sugar Property Deals More Alarming thatn crop Credits," The Annalist
(October 25, 1920), 519

219
he claimed he was powerless todo anything about it. 99 Even the National City Bank

people had to economize their living quarters, moving into shared accommodations

for bachelors while married couples jointly rented flats. Strikes were held by street

car workers and stevedores demanding pay raises. Havana was subjected to almost

daily bomb attacks by anarchists.

And by the summer of 1920, there was a sense that all was not well in the

Cuban economy. The price of sugar began a slow downward movement from its

heights in May while sugar companies and plantations Iike Cuban Cane Sugar and

Punta Alegre steadily declined in value. Credit became increasingly constricted as

bankers no longer lentas freely as before, while the circulation and movement of

goods slowed toa crawl as buyers found they could not afford many of the American

and European goods they had ordered during the boom years, collections lagged, and

the port of Havana became congested, partly because of an inefficient lightering

system, partly because importers could no longer afford their orders. In September,

The Times of Cuba reported a rumor that a young businessman had withdrawn all his

assets from various banks and placed them in a safe deposit box. "They say," wrote

the Times of Cuba, "that he must expect a panic or something."HJO

***

99
"Present Conditions in Cuba," The Compass 1.9 (September 1920), 257-263;
The Times ofCuba (September 1920) 3; "What the Branch Bank Folk are doing:
Havana Branch News," No. 8 15: lO(October 1920) 27
100
The Times ofCuba (September 1920) 127-8

220
lt carne on October 11 merchant Pedro Gomez Mena presented a check, rumored to

be over $2,000,000, to the Banco Internacional. They were unable to redeem it,

causing a run that lasted two days until it was finally forced to suspend payments, that

quickly spread to other banks. After consulting with the banking community and local

merchants, President Menocal declared a fifty-day moratorium limiting withdrawals

and the country hoped the crisis was contained. 101 The North American banking

community sent shipments of species to cover their reserves, refusing to take part in

the moratorium in an attempt to withstand the panic and maintain the confidence in

their institutions. Meanwhile, the Cuban government faced a crisis. 102 The remaining

sugar crop was left unsold, purchasers refusing to buy even ata price hovering around

five cents per pound. And because of the state of their affairs, the planters were

unable to generate credits from the banks for the coming crop. Menocal began

petition Wall Street for a $50 Million dollar loan to shore up the price of sugar and

maintain the government, the banking industry, and the Cuban economy.

Wall Street refused. While the bankers offered credits to their own business to

remain solvent, they argued that they could not lend financia! support to sugar

growers given that American cotton and wheat growers were facing the same

depressed prices on their own crops and had been denied relief. The State Department

recommended lawyer Albert J. Rathbone as a financia! advisor to the Cuban

government to sort out their affairs. After much ceremony, he arrived in Cuba in

101
The Times of Cuba (October, 1920) 60; "Sugar Property Deals More Alarming
than crop Credits," The Annalist (October 25, 1920), 519.
102
"Economic and Financia! Conditions in Cuba," Federal Reserve Bulletin
(November 1920), 1162.

221
December, spend a few days there, and produced a report saying little that the

Cuban 's did airead y know - suggesting that the Cuban 's should immediately try to

103
sell the previous years crops to allow sorne liquidity to the banks.

By the coming year, President Wilson, fearing that the effects of the severe

depression in Cuba would impact the upcoming election, forcing a repeat of the

congressional indecision of 1906 that prompted the intervention of William Howard

Taft and Leonard Wood's three year administration, sent General Enoch Crowder as

an envoy, effectively starting the fourth intervention. But while the elections would

go smoothly, bringing Alfredo Zayas to power, the banking industry remained a

worry. The moratorium had been twice extended, but by the spring of 1921, New

York bankers rescinded their support for it, arguing that it was doing more harm to

the solvent banks then the insolvent institutions whose lives were being prolonged.

By April, the banks began to fail, beginning with the Banco Nacional de Cuba. Over

the next two years, the Cuban banking industry that had grown up over the past

decade was practically wiped out and the banking industry moved into the hands of

the American and Canadian institutions. 104 However, the North American institutions

were not immune to the crisis. Banks such as National City and the Royal Bank of

103
For the correspondence between Menocal and the other agents involved in
trying to shore up the Cuban state and the sugar industry through means of a New
York loan, as well as on the public reaction and response to the collapse, see the
correspondence in "Cuatro expedients mecanografiados en Ingles y Espanol
relativos a la crisis de la instiuciones bancaris de la Republica de Cuba a
consecuenciea de la baja de precios del azucar en Jos enos 1920-21. October 1920
to 11 February 1921. Secretaria de la Presidencia, 12: 1-4: Archivo Nacionale de
Cuba. Havana, Cuba.
104
See Appendix E "Failures ofCuban Banks, 1921-23."

222
Canada lost close to lost $25 million each; the Mercantile Bank of Americas, $80

mi Ilion and was destroyed. 105

In the process, the unregulated and often corrupt nature of the banking

industry was revealed. Businessman Frank Steinhard claimed that the Chase

National's Edward F. Atkins at and the Guaranty Trust's Charles A. Sabin, President

of the Guaranty Trust Company and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the

Mercantile Bank of the Americas, "were running a race to see who could lend the

most money on the least security." 106 Planters were offered loans far above their

needs. The syndicate organized by the American Foreign Banking Corporation to

finance L.R. Munoz and Company, Cuban sugar factors, provides a case in point. It

illustrated the effects of the speculative delirium and the problem of mismanagement,

but al so the difficulties of imperial control. In the fall of 1920, the New York offices

of the AFBC solicited participations from its member bank in extending a credit of to

Munoz, for the coming sugar harvest. The Havana branch had been granted a

maximum credit of $3M by New York but D.G. Black, the Havana manager, was

reportedly intimated by Munoz. Without alerting New York, he had extended the

credit to $9.2 million dollars. Additionally, it appeared that most of the collateral

behind it was no good. The deeds of mortgage used as collateral had previously been

pledged to secure loans from the Royal Bank of Canada. The warehouse receipts for

105
"Conference w. Judge Otto Schonrich, January 13, 1925," Leland Hamilton
Jenks Collection on the Cuban Sugar Industry, 1925-1934. Special Collections,
Princeton University, Princeton New Jersey.
106
Conference with Frank Steinhard, February 10, 1926, Leland Hamilton Jenks
Collection on the Cuban Sugar Industry, Special Collections, Princeton
University.

223
sugar were falsified and sometimes used repeatedly as collateral. Occasionally the

sugar supposedly securing the loans, while it was claimed was sitting in warehouses

in Havana, did not in fact exist, or the sugar pledged as collateral was the same sugar

that the credit was supposed to finan ce. The AFBC' s Ha vana branch asked for

repeated thirty day extensions on the acceptance until frustrated and alarmed member

banks began inquiring into the nature of the pledged collateral and the actual financia!

status of the AFBC. The Ha vana branch, it turned out, had offered, "nothing more nor

less than an open book credit without security" to Munoz. 107 Meanwhile the AFBC's

stockholding banks- almost forty in number- who had participated in the acceptance

in amounts ranging from the $2,760 of Mobile, Alabama's Peoples Bank to the more

than $2 million of the Chase Nationallost much of their investments. 108 Meanwhile, it

was rumoured that Menocal and his cronies used the moratorium to pilfer funds from

the Banco Nacional de Cuba.

In the wake the collapse two things engaged Wall Street: one governmental,

the other in the prívate world. "This crisis is principally dueto two causes,"

commented banker James Speyer, "First, to the very great extravagance and

wastefulness with which public affairs have been managed during the last few years

107
This section is based on the Report of E.J. Mudd, Vice President, and L.S.
Mitchell, Speciall Representaive in regards to the American Foreign Bankcing
Corporation and Acceptance of L.R. Munoz and Company which was purchased
thorugh the American Foreign Banking Corporation, St. Louis Missouri, May 16,
1921. American Foreign Banking Corporation. Record Group 2: Chase National
Bank. Affiliates. JPMorganChase Archives. New York.
108
For a list of participants and the amount of participation, see "Exhibit A.
Proposed Participation in $9,200,000.000 Credit," in Report of E.J. Mudd.
American Foreign Banking Corporation. Record Group 2: Chase National Bank.
Affiliates. JPMorganChase Archives. New York.

224
... But we must not forget that the Cubans ha ve not yet been taught to save, and ha ve

only had self government for a Iittle while. lt takes more than one generation to create

and maintain efficient self-government especially under the conditions prevailing

there. " 109 In he first instance, J. P. Morgan's Dwight Morgan arrived in the country

and attempted to sort out the government's finances, and prepare for the coming sugar

crop. Morrow, it was said, found that Cuba's record keeping was practically non-

existent, while, anticipating contemporary neo-liberal reforms, he criticized the

bloated nature of the government payroll, the high salaries. "Morrow set himself,"

writes his biographer, "with gentle persistence, to inspire the Cubans with at least the

rudiments of efficiency and self- respect. " 110 The loan he eventually negotiated,

for$1 00 M, was tied to fiscal reforms in the government.

Meanwhile, prívate bankers had to re-evaluate their strategies in the island.

Confidence in banking institutions had been almost entirely destroyed. The efforts

that various banks had made to instill ideas of savings and thrift were wasted, if they

had ever been learned. After visit Cuba in 1921, National City's Frank Plachy, Jr.,.

argued that while hard cash was available, it was kept out of general circulation.

People buried their money, in the ground, or deposited with the safe deposit

companies, returning to the same conditions of hoarding that observers had seen in

the nineteenth century. Plachy wrote,

109
"Mr. Speyer on Cuban Finances and Reserve Bank," The Economic Bulletin of
Cuba 1: 1 (January 1922) 36.
110
Harold Nicolson, Dwight Morrow (New York. Harcourt, Brace and Company,
1935) 264-5.

225
 Every safe deposit box in Cuba is rented and is overflowing with gold and
currency. While 1 was visiting a prívate banker who rents safe deposit boxes, a
box holder carne in, opened a safe deposit box crammed with thousand dollar
bilis, took out a bill and asked the cashier to change it and after getting the
change put nine hundred dollars back into the safe deposit box. 1 was told that
before the collapse of the native banks, this man had been a good banking
customer but the smash had been so thorough and he had seen so many of his
friends wiped out that he had determined not to trust a bank again with his
money. 111

Plachy argued for a "gradual process of economic education" that

demonstrated to their Cuban customers the strength of the institution. lmmediately

after the bank runs in October, the National City Bank had advertised in The Times of

Cuba, stressing that its New York headquarters were ultimately responsible to the

customers of its Cuban branches in an attempt to reassure its Cuban depositors as to

the strength of their institution. 112 But this advertising expanded in the Spring of 1921

as confidence in Cuban's banking institutions had not been restored- andas rumors

frequently surfaced that North American banking institutions were insolvent. At one

point, National City and other bank's threatened to withdraw from the island entirely

if the attacks against them in sorne newspapers didn 't stop. Confidence and security

of deposit became a mantra repeated endlessly by the bank's directors. National City

President Charles A. Mitchell further emphasized the bank's strength during a speech

toa group of Cuban businessmen at Havana's Midday Club ayear after the crash.

111
Frank Plachy, Jr. "What the City Bank Means to Cuba," No. 8, 17:10 (October
1921), 2-3.
112
"The National City Bank of New York," The Times ofCuba (November 1920)
134. Both the Banco Nacional de Cuba and the Banco lnterncional de Cuba also
advertised, commenting on their strength in the same issue.

226
"lt's obvious," he commented, after noting that National City's Cuban funds only

amounted to three per cent of the bank's total deposits,

that the only possible effect of withdrawal of funds here as a result of this
temporary lack of confidence was merely to cause us sorne mechanical
inconveniences incidental to the transfer of cash .... The financia! strength of
the National City Bank was not affected and could not be affected if every
Cuban depositors were to withdraw his funds. The full resources of our world
position stand behind each Cuban deposit that is lodged in any of our
branches. 113

When a run on the North American banks occurred in 1926, attributed to

disgruntled employees and thrill-seeking newspaper editors, President Machado and

Minister of Public works Cespedes made ostentatious displays of depositing their

personal holdings in the banks to demonstrate their confidence. 114

In response to the public's lost confidence in the banks following the crash

and the return to old practices of hoarding, National City organized an advertising

campaign encouraging people to deposit their savings in the bank's vaults. They

explained the importance of deposits toa country's wealth, attempted to demonstrate

their strength by pointing out every peso deposited with the bank was backed by

reserve funds in New York, and assured the public as to the impartiality of their

accounting by noting that the Federal Reserve itself gave the bank regular,

113
Charles E. Mitchell, "Speech by Mr. Charles E. Mitchell at the Banquet in his
Honour at the Midday Club, Havana, on the 26th of January, 1922," The Economic
Bulletin ofCuba, 1:2 (Feburary, 1922), 69-70.
114
"Banks to Defend Cuban Business," The New York Times (May 30, 1921)
pg. 1"President Machado and the Banks," American Chamber of Commerce of
Cuba, Monthly Bulletin V.4 (April 1926) 13.

227
unannounced inspections. 115 They also began publishing Spanish and English

advertisements in many of the country's more important dailies and business journals.

These advertisements were simple: usually just box of text exorting the reader to

save, save save. But they drew on a rhetoric of modernity and civilization that was

tied to notions of discipline, frugality, and thrift and they appeared to link these traits

to the Cuban nation as a whole- and its readiness for self government. "Ability to

save money is a test of character," they wrote. "Independence comes not from what

you earn, but from what you don 't spend." "Start a savings account. Remember that

your dollars can work as well as play." 116

The bank developed and expanded a Compound Interest Department to teach

the virtue of savings and increase their individual deposits. They formed a Century

Club made up of employees who reached one-hundred new accounts and organized

well as regular contests between the various overseas branch banks for new

customers, offering an all expensive paid trip to New York for their winner. They

instituted "thrift weeks" alongside other contests. 117 By the middle of the decade the

115
See, for instance, The N ational City Bank of New York, "What is Credit? ,"
Economic Bulletin ofCuba (April, 1922) np and various issues of The Times of
Cuba and Diario de la Marina from 1921-2.
116
See Appendix F'Examples of National City Advertisements inCuban papers,
1921-1929."
117
"Benjamin Franklin Father ofThrift," No. 8 18: 1 (October 1922); George E.
Roberts, "Why do we Save? No. 8 18: 1 (October 1922); "Automatic saving at
work," No. 8 18: 1 (October 1922); "Following Franklin's Footsteps," No. 8 18: 1
(October 1922); "The CID Curtain Rises," No. 8 18: 4 (April 1923); "AII colors
flying high as CID contest nears close," No. 8 (May 1923) 18: 5; "CID Contest
Builds thrift city of 45, 226 new depositors," No. 8, June 1923 18: 6; "Extend
CID Services to Branches," No. 8 18: 11 (November 1923), 13; "Five more past
century mark," No. 8 25: 1 (January 195); "CID Leaders confer," No. 8 20: 3

228
Cuban branch bank had in-house contests to inspire their staff to reach a goal of

20,000 new compound interests accounts. Miss Klender, secretary of Vice President

Joseph H. Durrell, managed to secure accounts from Cuban President Gerardo

Machado along with his wife and daughter. 118

Yet by the end of the 1920s, all of this work seemed for naught. In 1926,

Machado, despite and earlier pledge not to contract more debt, entered upon an

ambitious public works program that included a new capital modeled after the US

capital, sewering in Cuba's major cities, andan extensive road building program.

With unemployment high, it was supposed to bring jobs and prosperity to the

(March 1925); "CID pace grows faster," No. 8 20: 4 (April 1925); "Century Club
organizes for continued co-operative effort," No. 8 20: 7-8 (July-August 1925);
"Manila Branch makes fine Start in Savings Contest," No. 8 20: 26: 12
(December 1926) 16 "Second half of Great CID Contest opens with $5,00,000
mark near," No. 8 22: 1 (January 1927) "Goal of 45,267 new accounts setas CID
contest nears close," No. 8 22: 2 (February 1927); "Rosario Savings Contest
brings in 1,397 new accounts and 435,000 pesos," No. 8 22: 2 (February 1917);
"Woman wins first prize in manila savings essay contest," No. 8 22: 4 (April
1927); "Savings contest marks opening of new home of Rosario Branch," No. 8
22: 4 (April 1927); "Rosario Savings Contest brings in 1,397 new accounts and
435,000 pesos," No. 8 22: 2 (February 1917); "Contestants Reap Rewards of
World CID Record, No. 8 22: 3(March 1927); "Savings contest marks opening of
new home of Rosario Branch," No. 8 22: 4 (April 1927); "Woman wins first prize
in manila savings essay contest," No. 8 22: 4 (April 1927); "Porto Rico Holds
Record for Number of CID Accounts per contestant" No. 8 22: 7 (July 927), 5;
"Century Club launches 9-months campaign for CID Accounts," No. 8 22:9
(September 1927); "Buenos Aires Again makes fine record in savings contest,"
No. 8 22: 10 & 11(November 1927) 13; "Our fist world-wide contest opens with
40 branches competing," No. 8 23: 3 (March 1928), "First Half of world contest
nets more than $4 M in deposits," No. 8 23: 4 & 5 (April-May, 1928) 26; "World
Contest tops all records with $10,226,884 in 74,082 accounts." No. 8 23: 8
(August 1928); "Rangoon Staff sets record in CID contest," No. 8 25: 5 (March
1930), 20; "Rangoon Savings Contest Winners," No. 8 25: 6 (April 1930)
118
"Cuba and Porto Rico Staffs in Stirring C.I.D. Contest," Number Eight,
November, 1925, 6.

229
republic. An initial $10M dollar credit was expanded to $80 M and the immediate

and projected amortization of the loan for exceeded the government's projected

revenue over the coming year. Instead, it was a source of graft that overburdened the

country with debt as the depressed sugar prices could not generate enough revenue to

cover the loan's amortization. By the 1930s Cuba, like many other Latin American

countries, would default. 119

119
Chase National Bank of the City of New York. Cuban Public Works
Financing: Memoranda of Facts submitted toa Commission Appointed by the
Cuban Government under the Decree-Law Dated April 16, 1934 (New York:
Chase N ational Bank of the City of New York, 1934).

230
 CHAPTER5

Financia) Wizards, Occult Economies, Monetary Slavery:

National City and American Empire in Haití, 1914-1933

Hayti 's dar k millions can be a decided me nace to the United States but under wise

and thoughtful guidance can be developed into a self-respecting and dignified nation.

John H. Allen, Vice President, the National City Bank of New York

lntroduction

Blackness. Tom-toms. Voodoo. Zombies. Cannibal rites. Child sacrifice. "The whole

African outfit," as a character in Robert Beale Davis' novel The Goat Without Horns

described it. 1 All are elements that have circulated in North American and European

accounts of Haití since the 1804 Revolution destroyed the French colony of Saint-

Domingue and established the first independent black republic in the world and the

second republic in the Americas. 2 The incendiary flash of black revolution and the

overthrow of white supremacy sent shock waves of dread throughout the white

Atlantic world. Visions of black vengeance haunted the Caribbean region 's

1
Robert Beale Davis, The Goat Without Horns (New York: Brentano's, 1925), 2.
2
The classic study of the Revolution is, of course, C. L. R. James, The Black
Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. Second
Edition, Revised. (New York: Vintage 1963). More recent interpretations of the
Revolution include Carolyn Fick, The Making of Haiti: the Saint Domingue
Revolution from Below (Knoxville, U of Tennessee Press, 1990) and Lauren
Dubois, Avengers ofthe New World: The Story ofthe Haitian Revolution
(Harvard University Press, 2004).

231
plantocracies, a vision embodied by Jean Jacques Dessalines, the First Emperor of

Haiti: a black exterminating angel, "a barbarian," as C.L.R. James described him,

"who thought the best Frenchman was a dead Frenchman,"3 of all of Haiti 's

revolutionary leaders, the only one who emerged as a lwa, Ogou Dessalines, in the

pantheon of vodun. 4 "Y es, we have rendered to these true cannibals war for war,

crime for crime, outrage for outrage," Dessalines proclaimed before the massacre of

the white population at Cap Haitien. "Y es, 1 ha ve saved my country; 1 ha ve avenged

Ame rica. " 5

Por Africans in the diaspora, Haiti inflamed the imagination. Alongside

Liberia and Ethiopia, Haiti was a "symbolic state" of pan-Africanism. 6 "Dream

Haiti," to borrow Kamau Brathwaite's phrase, became a repository of black

insurrectionary hope and black freedom. But for those whites who saw in Haiti only

the destruction of whitesupremacy, the obliteration of a system of accumulation

3
C.L.R. James qtd in lan Munro and Reinhard Sander, eds. Kas-Kas: Interviews
with Three Caribbean Writers in Texas (Austin, Texas: African and Afro-
American Research lnstitute, University ofTexas at Austin, 1972) 72.
4
On the apotheosis of Dessalines, see Joan Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 26-29.
5
Jean Jacques Dessalines, "Proclamation." Balance and Columbian Repository
(19 June 1804) 197. Less remarked upon is the concluding sentence of this
speech: "As it is derogatory to my character and my dignity to punish the innocent
for the crimes of the guilty, a handful of whites, commendable by the religion
they have always professed, and who have besides taken the oath to live with us
in the woods, have experience my clemency. 1 order that the sword respect them,
and that they be unmolested. 1 recommend anew and order to all the generals to
grant succors, encouragement, and protection to all neutral and friendly nations
who may wish to establish commercial relations in this island."
6
The phrase "symbolic state" comes from lmmanuel Geiss, The Pan-African
Movement: A History of Pan-Africanism in America, Europe and Africa, Ann
Keep, trans. (New York: Africana Publishing Co., 1974); Kamau Brathwaite.
"Dream Haiti," Hambone 12 (Fall1995): 174-175.

232
whose operations were perfectly calibrated according to race, it was a nightmare

persisting well into the twentieth century. 7 The Revolution was not the heroic stage

where, as Aime Cesaire once put it, Negritude stood up for the first time. 8 Instead, as

T. Lothrop Stoddard wrote, the Revolution was "the first great shock between the

ideals of whitesupremacy and race equality."9 In The French Revolution in San-

Domingo- a book whose very title cannot admit to the fact of African agency-

Stoddard, the Harvard-educated race theorist and popular joumalist whose work

includes a treatise on the growing threat of Islam to the West anda sympathetic

account of Nazi Germany, described the Haitian revolution as a "grim tragedy," 10 a

tragedy whose final act closes with the world tumed horribly upside down, the

forward march of historical time bent backwards to its forgotten, primal origins, the

7
On the influence of the Haitian Revolution on the Atlantic world in the
nineteenth century see Eugene Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-
American S lave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana S tate UP, 1979); David P. Geggus, ed. The Impact of the Haitian
Revolution in the Atlantic World. (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina
Press, 2001); Sibylle Fischer, Modernity Disavowed: Haiti an the Cultures of
Slavery in the Age of Revolution (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004); Michael
Zuckerman, "The Power of Blackness: Thomas Jefferson and the Revolution in
St. Domingue," Almost Chosen People: Oblique Biographies in the American
Grain (Berkeley, 1993), pp. 175-218; Tim Matthewson, "Jefferson and Haití,"
The Jo urna! of Southern History 61: 2 (May, 1995) 2-9-248; Alfred N. Hunt,
Haiti's lnfluence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State, 1988); Rayford Logan, The Diplomatic Relations
ofthe United States with Haiti, 1776-1891 (Chape! Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1941).
8
Rene Depestre, "Truer the Biography: Aime Cesaire Interviewed by Rene
Depestre." Savacou, 5 (June 1971), 77.
9
Stoddard, The French Revolution in San-Domingo (New York: Houghton
Mifflin, 1914) viii.
10
Ibid., viii; The New World oflslam (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1921);
Stoddard, lnto the Darkness: Nazi Germany Today (New York: Duell, Sloan &
Pearce, 1940).

233
slowly-evolved civilizational and racial orders of whitesupremacy in the Caribbean

extinguished in a short fourteen years, culminating, in 1804, with the "complete

annihilation of the last remnants of the white population, the subordination of the

mulatto caste to the negrees, and the destruction ofthe island's economic

prosperity. " 11

In this version, Haiti 's post-emancipation history begins as murderous farce.

lts long nineteenth century is an extended sequen ce of freedom' s follies. Stoddard

described Haitian politicallife during these years asan "absurd burlesque of

France." 12 The Haitian state was seen a pantomine, its leaders overgrown children

engaged in a tropical minstrel show, Africans play-acting the dramas of the French

court, each scene's denouement an orgy of bloodshed marking the transitions between

governments. 13 But if the actions of the elite proved that blacks were incapable of self-

government, the practices of the peasants demonstrated that without the pallid,

guiding hand of a higher civilization, they faced a quick slip into degeneracy.

Freedom's "decivilizing" 14 lull was seen in the baffling stupidity and darkness of the

African peasant, "happy-go-lucky children of nature" 15 - or in the regular eruptions of

the primal violence and savagery associated with cannibalism, snake worship,

11
Stoddar, The French Revolution, viii.
12
T. Lothrop Stoddard, "The American Empire, 11: Santo Domingo: The Isle of
Unrest," The Youth's Companion 96: 13 (March 30, 1922), 181.
13
Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods, 10-13.
14
Francis Trevelyan Miller, "Haiti, the Prey of Modern Finance," Independent 47
1904: 557-560.
15
William D. Boyce, United States Colonies and Dependencies, Illustrated: The
Travels and Investigations of a Chicago Publisher in the Colonial Possessions
and Dependencies ofthe United States, with 600 Photographs of Interesting
People and Scenes (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1914) 604.

234
"voodism," and the adulation of "fetiches" that accompanied, according to American

writers, the recurrent insurgencies removing Haiti 's leaders from power. Children,

savages. In either guise Haiti needed help and the proliferation of these

representations created a context through which European or American intervention

seemed an inevitable necessity. 16 Thus, by 1915, Haiti' s "ceaseless battering from

foreign pens," as CLR James wrote, "was reinforced by the bayonets of American

Marines. " 17 They would remain for the next nineteen years.

The usual fare of black atavism and African degeneracy, the oscillation of the

Haitian peasant between an innocent child and an uncontained savage, appears in

Robert Beale Davis's The Goat without Horns. lt contributes to the "intertextual

relation[s] of dependence," as one critic has called it, through which representations

of Haiti were recycled, passed down over time, and used to marginalize the republic

within the international community by depicting itas outside of the realm of civilized

nations. 18 Once the Occupation occurred these representations justified the

continuing presence of US marines while legitimating their repression of the Haitian

peasantry. 19 Yet while The Goat is as lurid as any of the other American novels,

16
J. Michael Dash, Haiti and the United States: National Stereotypes and the
Literary lmagination (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997).
17
James, The Black Jacobins, 394. James gets the date of US intervention wrong;
he states 1914, not 1915.
18
Chris Bongie, "Bug-Jargal, 1791: Language and History in Translation," in
Victor Hugo, Bug-Jargal, Chris Bongie, trans and ed., (Peterborough, Ontario:
Broadview Press, 2004): 41. Also see Joseph J. Williams, Voodoos and Obeahs:
Phases ofWest India Witchcraft (Dial Press, 1932, rpt. New York: AMS Press
1970) xiii.
19
On the links between representation and repression in the Haitian context, 1 am
drawing on Michael Laguerre, "The Place of Voodoo in the Social Structure of

235
memoirs, and travelogues of early twentieth century Haiti, it stands out from its peers.

Not because of the writing. "One reads this book against one's better judgment," The

/ndependent wrote in a brief notice when the novel was first released. "lt is badly

written, the characters are stilted and unreal, the atmosphere artificial." 20 Instead, The

Goat Without Horns is distinguished for two features: the first ties it to the early days

of the intervention in Haiti; the second, to the questions of racialization and

accumulation, imagination and economy, enacted through American banking and

empire in the Caribbean that have been at the heart of this dissertation.

First. Davis was not merely another sojourning journalist, travel writer, or

ethnologist penning tales of Haiti for American audiences. Instead, as the United

States chargé d'a.ffaires in Port-au-Prince, Davis was a witness to the interna!

political conflict including the mob dismemberment of Haitian President Vilbrun Sam

in July 1915 that was used as the immediate pretext for US intervention. He

negotiated and signed the 1915 treaty through w hich the finan ces of the country were

placed into an American-controlled receivership modeled after both the Platt

Amendment and the 1907 Dominican convention. The document announces its

purposes as having been written with the intention of preventing forces that might

Haiti." Caribbean Quarterly 19:3 (September 1973) 36-50; Joan Dayan,

"Vodoun, or the V o ice of the Gods." in Sacred Possessions: Vodou, Santeria,
Obeah, and the Caribbean, Margarite Fernández Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-
Gebert, Eds. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1999) pp. 14; Hurbon Laennec,
"American Fantasy and Haitin Vodou," Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, Donald J.
Cosentino, ed. (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural history, 1995),
181-197.
20
"New Books in Brief Review ," The Independent 115: 3932 (October 10, 1925),
424. Da vis wrote one other book, One Way Street (New York: Bretano' s, 1924) .

236
"impair or tend to impair the independence of Haiti," but it extinguished the

Republic's sovereignty, effectively ceding power toa foreign government for the first

time since 1804. 21

Second. Felix Blaine, Davis' protagonist in The Goat without Horns, is a

banker.

The proprietor of the Wall Street investment firm Blaine & Grant, Blaine

comes to Haiti after having just negotiated the US loans to the Allies at the beginning

of World War l. He is described as a "boy wizard of finance," 22 a label that has a

heightened significance in light of the casting of Haiti as an island of necromancy and

magic dwelling outside of modernity and festering on the far fringes of American

capitalism. lndeed, this chapter approaches the Occupation through a similar spatial

and conceptual dialectic: through the encounter between those two seemingly

incommensurable spaces, between the space of American high finance and Haiti's

primitive rituals, between "finance and tom-toms," 23 between neocolonial control and

returns to racial slavery. Or, through the making of Haiti within an "occult economy,"

an economy in which magic and ritual are used towards material ends, and by which

the abstractions of finance capital exist in a tight interplay with corporeal forms of

21
United States. 67 1h Congress 2nd Session. Senate Document No. 136. Treaty with
Haiti. Treaty Between the United States and Haiti. Economic Development and
Tranquility of Haiti (Washington: GPO, 1916).
22
Davis, The Goat, 5.
23
William Almon Wolff, "Finance and Tom-Toms," Colliers 63: 22 (May 31,
1919).

237
violence. 24 Furthermore, the occult economy in Haiti' s case, magic and materialism,

violence and abstraction are connected across a dual axis of representation and

poli ti cal economy, race and finan ce.

In American encounters with Haiti, the experience of an occult economy is

perhaps most visible in William Seabrook's infamous ethnology-cum-fantasy The

Magic !stand. In the chapter "Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields," Seabrook is

told of a brigade of zombies conscripted to work for the profits of the individual who

raised them from the dead in the cane fields of Cul-de-Sac owned by HASCO, the

Haitian-American Sugar Company. Seabrook describes the acronym as "American-

commercial-synthetic" and their factory in Port-au-Prince 's eastern suburbs is

described as "a chunk of Hoboken," 25 harsh, industrial, grotesquely modern, dropped

into the enchanted world of Haiti. Seabrook suggests something of the overlap

between different modes of production- the plantation and factory, slavery and free

labor- and their experiential continuities. The zombie-workers, writes Seabrook,

were "like brutes, like automatons" 26 or, he might have added, like slaves, working in

an American colony.

But what I'm interested here is not labor per se, but the connections between

post-emancipation labor discourses and modes of imperial governance that tie the

labouring body to the colonial state through the tethers of debt peonage, "monetary

24
Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, "Occult Economies and the Violence of
Abstraction: Notes from the South African Postcolony," American Ethnotogist
26(2): 279-303.
25
W.B. Seabrook, The Magic /stand. (New York: The Literary Guild of America,
1929) 92.
26
Ibid. 101.

238
slavery," banking and finance. 27 In this Iight Felix Blaine's real-world doppelgangers

are found within the group of National City vice president and clerks- W.H.

Williams, Walter Voorhies, Samuel McRoberts, John H. Allen, and, especially, Roger

Leslie Farnham, an individual who James Weldon Johnson described as "effectively

instrumental in bringing about American intervention in Haiti" 28 -who, through the

policies of the privately-owned Banque Nationale de la Republique of Haití,

fomented the US intervention and aided the administration of the occupation. 29 As an

officer of the Banque Nationale, Farnham's signature appears on the Haitian gourde,

the second Ieg on the "n" Iike a devil's tale curling across the currency's bottom

border. It is a small, the cursi ve sign of political-economy of Haitian sovereignty and

the methods of imperial governmentality?0 But Farnham's endorsement is replicated

in The Goat without Horns where, at the center of the story, Iinking the twin

27
Francis Trevelyan Miller, "Haití, the Prey of Modern Finance," lndependent 47
1904: 557-560.
28
James Weldon Johnson, "Self Determining Haití: Government of, by, and for
the National City Bank," The Nation, 11 (Sept. 11, 1920), 20.
29
Farnham's role asan agent of American empire dates back to the turn of the
century when hew worked as the "Man Friday" of William Nelson Cromwell
during Cromwell 's attempt to push through the Panama Canal route. See Nancy
Lisagor and Frank Lipsius, A Law Unto Itself: The Untold Story ofthe Law Firm
Sullivan & Cromwell (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1988) 39-52; Charles
D. Ameringer, "The Panama Canal Lobby of Philippe Bunau-Varilla and William
Nelson Cromweii,"The American Historical Review, 68: 2. (Jan., 1963), pp. 346-
363; Ovidio Diaz Espino, How Wall Street Created a Nation: J. P. Margan,
Teddy Roosevelt, and the Panama Canal (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows,
2001).
3
°For examples of the Haitian gourdes issued by the National City Bank, see
Appendix G. The other signatures belong to Charles E. Mitchell, President of the
National City Bank, and Osear Lascarpa, a lawyer and manager of the Banque
Nationale.

239
narratives of white romance and black violence, of American love and Haitian

atavism, that constitute the novel, is a check. 31

There is a long history here, predating the US Occupation and the arrival of

National City. Haiti 's postemancipation history was shaped, in part, by the

relationship between its attempts to establish its credit internationally, the struggles

over the issue and amortization of the republic's exterior and interior debts, and the

formation and control of a national bank that could serve as a treasury and bank of

issue and regulate the impact of fluctuating rates of exchange in the international

currency markets. The debt burden dates back to the double dette taken contracted by

President Jean Pierre Boyer in 1826. Boyer agreed to pay France a 150 million franc

indemnity for damages incurred as a result of the Revolution and in recognition of

Haiti 's sovereignty while contracting a 24,000,000 francs loan to pay off the first

installment. Subsequent debt flotations occurred in 1875, 1896, 1910, and, 1922, the

latter floated by National City. While in many cases, the loans were costly and the

amortization drained the treasury and crippled the Haitian state, despite frequent

re gime changes, Haiti 's governments scrupulously made payments, only defaulting

once National City was in control of the treasury. 32

31
Mary Renda, in Taking Haiti briefly discusses this twin narrative but comes to
different conclusions as to their structural and ideological work in the novel.
32
The section draws on "Memoir on the Political, Economic, and Financia!
Conditions Existing in the Republic of Haiti Under the American Occupation by
the Delegates to the United States of the Union Patriotique d'Haiti," lnquiry; J.N.
Leger, Haiti: Her History and Her Detractors (1907, rpt. Westport, Connecticut:
Negro Universities Press, 1970) 184.

240
 There were failed attempts by various Haitian government to establish a bank

of issue in 1826 and 1859. 33 In 1874, the government of Michel Domingue granted a

concession to American financer Adolph H. Lazare to open a bank, though the

concesion was rescinded when Lazare couldn't come up with the stipulated capital.

He later charged the government with arbitrarily canceling the concession and

petitioned the US State Department for a claim against the Haitian government. His

claim was eventually dismissed by the United States. 34 President Lysius Salomon

oversaw the organization of a national bank in 1880, though, as Perceval Thoby has

noted, the idea of "national" here was in many ways ironic. The Banque Nationale de

la Republic de Haiti was a French Société Anonyme, though granted the rights of a

Haitian citizen. Its headquarters were in Paris. Its ten million franc capitalization was

all of French capital. Either way, the bank was given a fifty-year concession to actas

the treasury and granted the privilege of note issuance, adopting the gourde as the

national currency, circulating the fixed rate of five gourdes to the franc. 35

33
Joseph Chatelain, La banque Nationale: Son histoire- Ses Problemes (Port-au-
Prince, 1954) 26.
34
J.N. Leger, Haití: Her History and Her Detractors (1907, rpt. Westport,
Connecticut: Negro Universities, Press, 1970) 230-232; Perceval Thoby, Nos
crises économiques et financieres: nos contrats de banque, nos émissions de
monnaies, nos emprunts et la réforme monétaire, 1880 a 1888 (s.p.: Port-au-
Prince, 1955) 36-8. Por one Haitian official 's defense, see Emanuel Monsanto
Caspar, Ma defénse devant le public impartía! et la chambre des députés de la
république d'Haiti. (n.p.: Cura9ao, 1879).
35
Frédéric Marcelin, La Banque Nationale d'Haiti: Une Page d'Histoire (1890,
rpt., Port-au-Prince: Les Editions Fardin, 1985); Charles A. Conant, A History of
Modern Banks of Issue with an Account ofthe Economic Crises ofthe Nineteenth
Century and the Crisis of 1907. (New York: GP Putnam's Sons 1909) 529-30.

241
 The Haitian government forced the Banque Nationale to issue paper currency

in an attempt to sustain itself, while the foreign clerks were often accused of illegal

bond issues and forgery. In sorne cases, like during the1902 and 1908 insurrections

plotted by Antenor Firmin, currency was issued in anticipation of a change in

government. The success of Firmin's attempt to overthrow Alexis Nord depended on

the shipment of a cache of rifles, and $800,000 of counterfeit Haitian bilis, sent by

aBrooklyn-based Corsican philatelist and mercenary. But he was arrested by the US

Secret Service in New York before the shipment could lea ve the port and the

rebellion failed. Firmin went into exile and Charles Miot, a Haitian banker and the US

consul at St. Marc, was dismissed from his position for his involvement. However,

perhaps the best known and most spectacular instance of the financia! plunder of the

treasury the carne through the "consolidation scandal" of 1902 when President Alexis

Nord accused the directors of the Banque Nationale of taking exorbitant, and illegal,

profits from a bond issue authorized by the previous government threw the directors

in Haiti. Nord, in the midst of Haiti 's centennial evoked the spectre of Dessalines,

suggesting that a similar massacre might be the best way to free the country from the

new bondage of speculation and finance- what one observer described as "monetary

slavery." 36

National City became involved in Haiti under the re gime of President Antoine

Simon Sam and through both the National Railroad and the Banque Nationale. The

36
Francis Trevelyan Miller, "Haiti, the Prey of Modern Finance," lndependent 47
(1904): 557-560; Suzy Castor, La ocupación norteamericana de Haití y sus
consecuencias (1915-1934) (Mexico: Siglo vientiuno, 1971) 3.

242
bank carne into possession of the National Railroad after its creditors refused to

forward any more cash, leaving a few sections of half-built lines throughout the

country. Farnham was appointed the receiver, drawing a salary of $25,000 ayear

while spending but little time in Haití. In 1910, Sam rescinded the contract ofthe old

Banque Nationale de Haití in 1910 and granted a new concession for the Banque

Natioanle de la Republic d'Haiti to the Banque de 1'Union Parisienne. and negotiated

a 65 M franc foreign loan (very little of which the government actually saw), with the

according the bank's officials, at the request of the State Department, they, along with

the New York banking firms Speyer and Co., Halgarten & Co., and Ladenburg

Thalmann & Co., took up shares in the bank, partly as a way of neutralizing European

influence in the region. National City eventually bought out the other American

interests while the bank's headquarters were removed from París to 55 Wall Street. lt

also maintained a central branch in Port-au-Prince, branches in Cap-Ha'itien, Port-de-

Paix, Gona'ives, Saint-Marc, Petit-Goave, Jérémie, Les Cayes, and Jacmel, and

agencies in Fort-Liberté, Mole-Saint-Nicolas, Miragoane, and Aquin. 37 But Farnham

and the bank had long wanted to establish the kind of profitable financia) receivership

already in place in the Dominican Republic. After months of unsuccessful

negotiations with the Haitian government, the bank initiated a crisis in the

37
"Bank of Haití," The Bankers Magazine 93: 3 (Sepember 1916) 265; "Bank of
Haití," National City Monthly Letter (August 1916), 11; Banque nationale de la
République d 'Ha'iti, Renseignements financiers statistiques et économiques sur la
République d'Hai'ti 1 Banque nationale de la République d'Hai'ti. (París: E.
Cassegrain, 1915); "Bank of Haití is Ours," No. 8 17: 10 (October 1922) 5; Guy
Pierre, "L'implantation et l'éviction de la banque fran9aise dans la Cara'ibe entre
la fin du XIXe siecle et le début du XXe. Un coup d'ceil sur les archives publiques
et les fonds de trois banques d'affaires," Unpublished Manuscript.

243
government by refusing to pay civil salaries and release treasury funds, effectively

crippling the government. At the close of 1914 they removed $500,000 in gold from

the Haitian treasury to Wall Street, where it sat for the next few years, collecting

interest at below-market rates. Their receivership would finally come through the

interna) political strife in the Republic, especially the killing of Vilbrun Sam, and the

arrival of US troops, and the signing by Robert Beale Davis and provisional President

Louis Borne of the treaty that created the financial receivership that the bank had long

desired. In 1922, they assumed complete control of the bank. They sold it to the

Haitian government in 1934.

***
My interest here, however, is less the causes of the Occupation, or the forms of its

administration, even where National City was involved. 38 Instead, 1 want to explore

how Haiti exists within an the imaginary of an occult economy, constituted through

the connections between monetary and racial modes of circulation, between forms of

racial knowledge and organization of modes of accumulation, between the

38
See Suzy Castor, La ocupación norteamericana de Haití y sus consecuencias
( 1915-1934) (Mexico: Siglo vientiuno editors, 1971); Hans Schmidt, The United
States Occupation of Haití, 1915-1934 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1971);
Roger Gaillard, Les blancs débarquent, Vols. 1-8. (Port-au-Prince: Le Natal,
1973-1987; David Healy, Gunboat Diplomacy in the Wilson Era: The U.S. Navy
in Haití, 1915-1916 (Madison: University ofWisconsin Press, 1976); Kelthy
Millett, Les Paysans hai'tiens et 1' occupation Américain 1915-1930. (La Salle,
Quebec: Collectif Paroles, 1978); Brenda Gayle Plummer, Haití and the United
States: The Psychological Moment,(Athens, GA: U of Georgia Press, 1992);
Francois Blancpain, Hai'ti et les Etats-Unis, 1915-1934: Histoire d'une
occupation (Montréal: L'Harmattan, 1999); Mary A. Renda, Taking Haití:
Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. /mperialism, 1915-1940. (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

244
relationship between political economy and representational practice, and, finally,

between knowledge and violence especially through the work of Wall Street and New

York banking in maintaining American empire in the Caribbean.

As such what follows considers Haiti through three figures: that of number, as

the calculative and scalar representation of value; of time, temporality, and history as

they are used to locate Haiti in relation to modern American registers racial

capitalism; and of ideas of gender as they articulate and demonstrate the former

points. 39 1 then offer a brief reading Robert Beale Davis' The Goat without Horn,

demonstrating both the intersection of a white romantic and black atavistic narrative,

but also the ways in which these are cross cut by a narrative of military intervention,

while facilitated by the technologies of finan ce. And finally, 1 suggest how the forms

of ritualized violence on the part of Haitian' s in the novel, through the ritual sacrifices

of a caricatured vodun and a base form of political violence, have a necessary analog

in the foundational violence of the Occupation - a violence necessary for the work of

Wall Street.

l.

39
This sense of number comes from Jane Guyer, Marginal Gains: Monetary
Transactions in Atlantic Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) 51-
67; of time from Walter Johnson, "Time and Revolution in African America:
Temporality and the History of the Atlantic Slavery," Black Renaissance Naire,
3:3, (Summer/Fall 2001) 88. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe:
Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University
Pres, 2000). 47-71; and gender from Jennifer Morgan, Laboring Women:
Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2004); and Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard, Libidinal Economy, lain
Hamilton Grant, trans. (London: The Athlone Press, 1993).

245
lt is not that Wall Street believed that Haitians had no conception of markets or

economy. lndeed, many American observers were impressed by the great market in

Port-au-Prince, while noting that most of the transactions occurred outside of it. But

this sense of the market was one of a primitive remnant, the living archaeological

diorama of the history of the modern market. The Haitian, especially the Haitian

peasant, was not seen as outside of the market, but lost in its past, engaged in

"primitive selling methods."40 In this the scale at which transactions occurred were

seen as both pitiful and pathetic, indicative of the extreme poverty of the country, and

entirely anachronistic. There was a constant demand for the smallest fractional

currency,41 often pewter coins worth less than a penny. 42 The actual measure of the

goods sold was surprising in its smallness: a bundle of six wooden American-made

safety-matches. A single orange. A single banana. A measure of mea! that wouldn't

fill a shot glass. Small piles of unroasted coffee. Fists of red beans. 43

One writer described the transit of specie from the Banque Nationale along the road

from Jacmel to Port-au-Prince as a way of describing this sense of scale and measure

and its meaning in the lives of Haitians. The money, upwards of $30,000 ata time,

was carried by a Haitian peasant via mule. Only once, remarked the writer, was the

money stolen - and he suggests that, considering the poverty of the Haitian, this was

no mean feat. The reason? On one hand, according to the writer, wealth, for the

40
"Our Banking and Bonds Follow the Flag in Haiti," No. 8 (November 1922) 12
41
"Currency Changes in Haiti," Bankers' Magazine 77: 6 (December 1908), 926
42
Franck, Roaming, 110.
43
Franck, Roaming, 110-111; "Extent of American power in Haiti seen at
Capital," Christian Science Monitor (October 1, 1923).

246
Haitian, consisted in fighting cocks, not specie. On the other hand, it was surmised

that the Haitian could not imagine a number as large as thirty-thousand: if he was

entrusted with a small sum, say fifty dollars, he might have been tempted to steal the

money. lndeed, reportedly, the only time the specie was stolen, was when made

arrangements to hand it off to a group of brigands along the way, pocketing a mere

fifty dollars for his troubles. In another instance, the courier made the trip, turned

o ver the currency, but then stole thirty cents and a penknife form an office. 44

At the same time, this sense of scale and size was complemented by a notion

of number and value that, for Americans, appeared to be of a different order than they

knew. For example, in chapter three, 1 recounted National City's John H. Allen's

story about his Haitian cook who argued over measure and weight, claiming that

"three pounds of filet form a small cow is of course less than three pounds form a big

one." 45 Allen pairs this anecdote with another demonstrating as he put it, the "naivete

and restricted mentality" of the population. The second instance involves an

encounter with one of the Haitian employees of the Banque Nationale. Allen writes:

One da y [the employee] stated that after careful thought he was convinced that
if he continued working as previously he would not survive the strain many
months longer. That he had a large family who would be left penniless and
therefore he was not justified any longer in running the risk. lf, however, his
salary were increased he would be warranted in continuing the risk. 1 told him
that 1 was sure he was mistaken and suggested he continue as before as no
salary increase was possible; that if he tried it and it proved to be fatal, he
would have the satisfaction of knowing he was right. lf, however, he did not
die, he would know his apprehension was unfounded and therefore the

44
Hesketh Prichard, Where Black Rules White: A Journey Across Hayti. (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1900) 306-308.
45
lbid. 8

247
 in crease requested not warranted. He carne back the next da y, saying that he
had thought it over and concluded my suggestion was a fair one. 46

Occassionally, though, these notions of the economy would ha ve disastrous

effects, and were used by Americans, not simply for humor, but for gain. When the

BNRH entered into a contract with the government as a depository there was no

clause stating that the Banque Nationale would pay interest on government deposits-

a clause typical in such contracts and natural, considering that the government, while

contracting from the Banque fiscal services, was also effectively, allowing its

surpluses to be used for profit by the Banque in its commercial operations. According

toa contemporary the Haitian finance ministers, J.C. Pressoir and Louis Etheard,

claimed responsibility for the oversight. "They justify their action on the ground that

if the bank paid it would then loan out the deposits again to borrowers," writes the

author, "whereas if no interest were paid, the bank would impound the money and

keep it in a vault so that the Haitian official would be able to call for it at any time

that they wished!" 47 He continues:

This misapprehension of the principies of modern banking seems almost

inexcusable. lt is in part explained, however, by the difficultywhich the
Haitians feel they had in securing possession in 1914-15 of their customs
receipts and of the funds which were earmarked for the redemption of paper
money. The desire to be able to !ay their hands on the money at any moment
led these two ministers of finance to regard the modern bank as analogous to a
safety-deposit vault and to misunderstand the way in which banks, by keeping
their assets Iiquid, can meet the demands of their depositors. 48

46
John H. Allen, "American Co-operation Assures A Better Era for Haiti," The
Americas 6: 8 (May 1920) 8.
47
Paul H. Douglas, "The American Occupation of Haiti 11," Political Science
Quarterly 42: 3 (September 1927), 368-396
48
ibid. 375.

248
 This misapprehension appears as a temporal lag; of the kind of gap between

modern and primitive financia! systems that Wall Street had been attempting to

reform throughout the Caribbean- through monetary and currency reform, by

establishing banking legislation, and by trying to develop habits of thrift and practices

of savings. In all cases, part of the work of finance, banking and empire was an

attempt to mark, contain, control, and recalibrate the "contending temporalities" of

foreign markets. 49 In the case of Haiti, it was more than simply aligning the vectors of

credit temporality with that of the United States, bringing Ha vana into the time of

New York, where the gap in time was of a matter of weeks or months. The temporal

chasm separating the United States from Haiti was much more vast, or, more

precisely, it was of one hundred years, of a lost nineteenth century, "a century of

negro rule by emperors, kings, and presidents, with not infrequent revolution and

massacre," 50 where the work of the French needed to be regained. Indeed, the staff of

the National City Bank marveled at the remnants of the French colonial past

throughout Haiti, the ruins of a once thriving civilization hidden in the Haitian bush.

"In the old French colonial days, Haiti must have been a garden," writes John H.

Allen, "Records tell of, and ruins show, irrigation work, drainage, boulevards and

other developments, all of which has been allowed to fall into decay, and one cannot

49
Walter Johnson, "Time and Revolution in African America: Temporality and
the History of the Atlantic Slavery," Black Renaissance Naire, 3:3, (Summer/Fall
2001), 88.
50
J. Allen Palmer, "The Turning Point of Haiti," The Americas 3: 9 (June 1917),
19-22.

249
help but think what a waste the past hundred or more years have been for that

country." lmplicit in these observations was a sense of the failed project of black

freedom. "Wide roads from coast to coast became overgrown until nothing but a mere

trail remained," Allen continues. "Plantations highly cultivated disappeared, and

everything that was produced was without cultivation." 51

Following this, Haitians were represented, unsurprisingly, like the kinds of

lazy, good natured coons that one finds in the National City minstrel shows and

throughout the pages of No. 8 and, of course, in other sources of American popular

culture of the time. They are indistinguishable, besides their French, from African

Americans. "The [Banque Nationale staff] consists of about sixty men of all

nationalities with, as might be expected, the negro and mulatto predominating," wrote

WH "Bank" Williams of National City's Haitian affiliate. "However, most, in fact 1

might say all, important and responsible positions are held by foreigners, thus

showing the "push" of the white man. The general idea among the natives is to do the

work allotted and no more." 52 In The Americas John H. Allen captioned an image of a

Haitian man sleeping "The Favorite Attitude of Haiti's Citizens." 53 If shooting craps

was the national past time of the African American, it was no surprise that his Haitian

cousin had a predilection towards gambling, more so, even than the Cuban. "Cock-

fighting and card playing are the national pastimes," write Allen "and these, together

51
John H. Allen, "American Co-Operation Assures a Better Era for Haiti," The
Americas 6:8 (May 1920), 6.
52
W.H. Williams, "The Banque Nationale de la Republique d'Haiti," No. 8 VIII:2
(February, 1913) 9.
53
Ibid. 8

250
with a supply of Haitian rum, are all hat is necessary for a Haitian citizen's perfect

day." 54 He mentions fornication in similar terms in a later paragraph.

For American' s, the "malingering" character of the Haitian was not, as Milo

Rigaud suggested of Africans during the colonial period, a deliberate attempt to

disrupt the temporalities of labour discipline. 55 But it had the same effect: decreasing

productivity. Here, the racial time of the black body stood in for and was

synchronized with the racial time of the black state. National City's Roger Farnham

highlight these synchronicities during his remarkable testimony during the

Congressional hearings on Haiti and the Dominican Republic in 1922. While most

historians have used the hearings to reconstruct the historical narrative of the bank's

involvement with the country, they also provide the most sustained account of one

banker's vision of Haiti and the Haitian people. In the Hearings, Farnham argues that,

left alone, the Haitian is "as peaceful as a child." "In fact, he continues, "they are

nothing but grown-up-children, ignorant of all agricultural methods, and they know

54
John H. Allen, "American Co-Operation Assures a Better Era for Haiti," The
Americas 6:8 (May 1920), 6.
55
Milos Rigaud. Secrets of Voodoo. Robert B. Cross, Trans. New York: Pocket
Books, 1970, 8. In the context of the Haitian Revolution, Milos Rigaud argues,
albeit speculatively, that once Africans realized that their bondage was of a
permanent nature, they consulted the priests for advice on how to regain the
control of their time. It was at this moment of realization, he argues, that slave
resistance began. Rigaud also argues, as does Johnson, that the everyday modes of
resistance through labour slow-downs were also of a temporal nature. "The
colonial system itself suffered terribly ," he writes, "as a sort of imperceptible
malingering encouraged by the Voodoo gods slowed the forced work of the slaves
and retarded the economy proportionately.

251
nothing of machinery." 56 He also describes his experience in Cuba during the zafra,

where he was able to compare the labors of the thousands of Haitians who went to

that country with that of the Jamaican and Galician migrants. "If you sit on your horse

in the cane fields in the cane season, as 1 have done," Farnham stated,

and watch two Gallegos working together and two Jamaican Negroes and two
Haitians, you will see the piles of cane cut by the two Gallegos and the two
Jamaicans grow almost twice as fast as the piJe cut and thrown by the
Haitians. They seem to lack the muscular strength. 1 know that in the
construction of this railroad in Haiti, where we had them as laborers, the
American foremen, who had previously been on railroad construction in
Mexico and all up and down South America and in the US, told me - and 1
saw myself, too - that they reckoned four Haitians were necessary to do the
work of one good Irish track hand. 57

In all senses, the Haitian "must be taught," comments Farnham. 58

Farnham's description of the Haitian also pays close attention to the gender

division of Haitian society. His analysis continues with the connections between race,

national identity, the market and masculinity asserted by other Wall Street bankers. In

many cases, this slips into the clichéd language of colonialism and sexual conquest.

Thus, for instance, where John H. Allen, saw a shift from American emasculation to

American virility over the course of World War 1, in Haiti, the American mission is

that of a sexual conquest. "Scarcely any plantations or orchards exist today- all is

56
Roger Farnham, "Testimony," lnquiry into Occupation and Administration of
Haiti and Santo Domingo: Hearings Before a Select Committee on Haiti and
Santo Domingo, (Washington: United States Senate, 1922), 108.
57
lbid. 108.
58
Roger Farnham, "Testimony ," Inquiry into Occupation and Administration of
Haití and Santo Domingo: Hearings Before a Select Committee on Haití and
Santo Domingo (Washington: United States Senate, 1922). 124; see also John H.
Allen, "American Co-Operation Assures a Better Era for Haiti." The Americas.
6:8 (May 1920): 8.

252
grown wild," Allen writes of Haití, "truly a virgin territory ready for the white man's

guiding mind to help it to get back to the conditions existing when, as history tell us,

Haití was the richest of all of the colonies of France. " 59

For Farnham, feminization of Haitian men works to create a racial hierarchy

within the community of nations. Though Haitian men were preferred as labours on

the American owned plantations in Cuba (Basil Woon facetiously referred to

Haitian's as the best cane cutters in the world), they were also seen as barely capable

of working. 60 Farnham describes the Haitian menas "rather light and small, underfed"

and "lacking in stamina," unable to "stand up under hard work." On the other hand,

Haitian women were robust- "all strong, big, husky persons."61 "On the whole, 1

think they are actually stronger," Farnham states of Haitian women,

The women perform the labor in the gardens; they do all the marketing; they
think nothing of tramping fifty miles to market, carrying on their heads almost
unbelievable loads. You will see a woman driving two or three burros, and she
will be carrying on top of her own had more than any one of the burros. They
will walk all night, many of them very fast. They will walk as fast as a good
horse will walk and carry that heavy load over the island. They come into the
market place at Port-au-Prince to three times a week, particularly on Saturday,
probably 5,000 or 6,000 women, who have come in forma all directions. You
will see sorne at the other principal towns like Cape Haitien and St. Marc.
Fifty percent of them ha ve carried on their own heads what they bring to
market.. .. 62

59
John H. Allen, "American Co-Operation Assures a Better Era for Haití," The
Americas 6:8 (May 1920), 6.
60
Basil Woon, When lt's Cocktail Time in Cuba, (New York: Horace Liveright,
1928).
61
Roger Farnham, "Testimony," 109.
62
lbid.

253
And critica) here is a sense of the divisions of labour in Haitian society. While women

tend to garden plots, small coffee and cotton holdings, and participate in the markets

-in activities free from an outside order- the work of Haitian men, if they are at all

working, is in the forms of conscript labor building roads and cutting sugar cane. In

this sense, bankers recognized, if they did not necessarily understand, the space of a

woman's economy as a space not wholly consumed with abstract forms of economic

reproduction. Instead, it was a social space. 63

One observer argued that the Haitian market women would refuse to sell their

produce at double what it would fetch in the market outside the market, preferring to

wait until the transactions could take on a social meaning beyond its monetary

calibration. 64 Another described the market as a theatre:

The Haitian market place is theatre, social circle, gossip exchange, quarreling
ground, movie and day nursery for more than a million Haitian women. lf you
met her ten miles out on the road leading to the market town, and offered her
for her pitiful array of fruits and vegetables twice as much as she receives at
the market, she would refuse your offer, telling you that it would leave her
nothing to sell at the market. Then she would resume her long march
townwards, her basket poised on her head her gait that of an Ethiopic princess.
She is happy. She is one her way to her drama of the day and by nightfall she
will have played in a dozen volcanic scenes ... 65

11.

63
For discussions of the Haitian market, see Melville J. Herskovits Lije in a
Haitian Valley (New York: Knopf, 1932); George Eaton Simpson, "Haitian
Peasant Economy," Journal of Negro History 25: 4 (October, 1940), 498-519;
Sydney W. Mintz, "Standards of Value and Units of Measure in the Fond-des-
Negres Market Place, Haiti," The Journal ofthe Royal Anthropological Institute
of Great Britain and Ireland, 91: l. (Jan.- Jun., 1961), 23-38.
64
Jane Guyer, Marginal Gains, 51-67.
65
"What American Occupation is Doing for the Republic of Haiti," Chicago
Daily Tribune (December 7, 1920), 3.

254
In The Goat without Horns, Robert Beale Davis also notes, if in passing, the Haitian

market women, drawing attention to the gendered division of labour in Haitian

society and making an indirect comment on the lack of men partipating in the

econony. At one point, Felix Blaine comes across a "straggling procession of market

women were descending from the hills." He is impressed:

Those on foot walked beautifully erect, balancing on their heads great shallow
baskets of fruit and vegetables. Others, atop little mouse-colored donkeys,
airead y overload under bulging pannier-saddles . . . The women were all
dressed alike in single, one piece garments, hanging loose from shoulder to
ankle. Native-woven, wide-brimmed straw hats covered bandanna-bound
heads They greeted Blaine with sullen nods and an occasional "bon jou' ,
blanc," varied now and then by an experimental demand for ten cents.
Children were everywhere, more often than not, quite naked. Men- there
were none. 66

lndeed, underlying the text of racial capitalism in the novel, and the organization of

an occult economy within its narrative, is a claim to the possession and role of the

female body.

In The Goat without Horns Felix Blaine travels to Haití seeking a respite

from his work on the Allied loans. He wants a sort of generic tropical paradise, a

place that was "all palms and flowers and laughing natives,"67 but when he arrives in

Haití he is quickly disappointed by the poverty, the blackness, the general

decrepitude. His vision quickly dissipates. 68 "Haití- the Haití of reality- possessed

none of the allure or fascination with which his imagination had invested it."69

66
Davis, The Goat, 78.
67
lbid. 12.
68
lbid. 13.
69
Ibid. 13.

255
Financia! wizard that he is, he is able to find ways of making a return on his

investment, though it is transferred toa libidinal economy: while attending an

officer's ball in Port-au-Prince, he falls smitten with the beautiful, vivacious but

racially ambiguous Thérese Simone. Despite the mutual attraction, their !ove can not

be consummated, creating the romantic pursuit that propels the story forward, at first,

the basic fact of Simone 's race and Da vis' worry that their children will be part of an

experiment in eugenics: is she a mulatto? "The descendant of an African slave"? 70 A

half-breed with "traces of the tar"? 71 Once that question is resolved (she is Haitian

born, white, the descendant of French coffee planters) a larger problem emerges.

When she was a child, her Haitian nanny, Ida pledged her life to Haiti 's angry

"voodoo gods," devoting her to the u! ti mate phase of their ritual cycle:

The sacrifice of the Goat Without Horns is the supreme devotional act of their
cult. Nothing else can stay the wrath of their deity- their god too is a god of
vengeance. The supremacy of the whites, slavery, every misfortune is a result
of his anger. But a day when the blacks will be supreme is promised. That day
dawns when a white child, a baby boy, is brought to the altar anda knife
plunged into his heart by a white woman. 72

Thérese is that woman. A small tattoo on the inside of her wrist signifies her bondage.

Only she can break the chains of Haitian servitude and prevent the reenactment of

slavery through an Ethiopianist redemption that will complete the full turn of

history's wheel placing Africans, again, on top. Ida drugs Simone at night and,

unknowingly, she walks to the moonlight clearing and participates in the lusty dances

70
lbid. 11.
71
lbid. 103.
72
lbid. The Goat, 229-230.

256
and voodoo rituals, voodoo rituals, her body called by the drums, performing the rites

for which she was marked asan infant.

Simone keeps the fact of her dedication away from Blaine, ashamed of her

secret involvement in voodoo, worried that Blaine will never !ove her, and apparently

waiting to go through with the final ceremony, disappears into the Haitian hills.

Blaine sets out on a fruitless search for her, riding his pony aimlessly through the

hills, haunted by the constant beat of tom-toms. One night, upon returning to his

hotel, he overhears a conversation between Larsen, the hotel 's proprietor, and Colonel

David Enright, an English ex-pat, a veteran of the Boer War, who spends his hours

drinking and scanning the obituary columns for notices of the passing of the remnants

of his regiment. Enright has lot all his cash gambling and, wanting to stay in the

game, offers Larsen a check as collateral in return for ready cash. Larsen, somewhat

dubious, accepts the check, but when Blaine enters the hotel, he asks him if he thinks

its endorsement is authentic. The signature on it is Simone's.

With the hope that Enright's knowledge of the check's origins willlead him to

Simone, Blaine take the check off Larsen's hands, offering one of his own as

collateral. For a moment, the novel stages a thinly veiled scene of imperial

succession. The competing claims to hegemony in the Caribbean region, and the

competing modalities of imperial control, appear in the figures of Enright and Blaine:

the two white men, one a one a soldier, the other a banker, one the representative of

an emerging power, the other of a declining empire. The morning after the discovery

of the check, Blaine and Enright encounter each other in the hotel 's swimming pool.

257
Both are naked. To Blaine, the Brit is repulsive, his body that of a corpse. Enright

enviously eyes Blaine's body, comparing the robust American's to his own wasted

corpse while reminiscing on his own former strength. 73 But they collaborate, albeit

reluctantly, as Enright, for a usurous fee, agrees to lead Blaine toa spot where he will

come across his beloved.

As a narrative device, the check acts an instrument of conversion and

exchange, shifting the plot towards its conclusion while allowing Blaine entrance into

a Haitian netherworld inhabited by voodoo and Thérese Simon, where he sees her

engaged in a voodoo ceremony, dancing furiously, sacrificing two roosters. But

despite Blaine's horrified witness of Simone's participation in the ritual, he gets over

his fears and renews his commitment to her. But when they try to escape the island,

they are thwarted by - literally - the entire black population.

The internal politics of the island provide a means for Simone's escape. In

July 1915, in a desperate bid to hold on to power, Haitian President Vilbrun

Guillaume Sam, jailed and then ordered the massacre of almost two hundred of his

political opponents. He sought refuge in the French legation, but was eventually

tracked down by his assailants, dragged into the street, and dismembered by a mob.

This event was the immediate cause of the landing of US troops in the island. Blaine,

Simone, and the other white characters in the novel - hold the legation over night.

Their stand is aided by a sudden thunderstorm that repels the potential invaders. By

the morning, they think the siege is over, but, with the incoming arrival of American

73
lbid., 133.

258
marines, cabled by the American minister during the night, the Haitian's attempt a

last-gasp siege of the Legation, where they find the President, and tear his body to

shreds, reprising Des salines' dismemberment in 1806. 74

Davis' notice to Washington from the American Legation at Port-au-Prince

describing this event was brief, succinct: "At 10.30 mob invaded French Legation,

took out President, killed and dismembered him before Legation gates. Hysterical

crowds parading streets with portions of his body on poles." 75 His retelling of it in

The Goat without Horns verges on a sort of macabre pornography. Blaine leaves the

French legation to go to Port-au-Prince. On his way back, he hears a cry, realizing the

mob has succeeded in getting to the Haitian President, and comes across a crowd. In

what amounts toa premonition of surrealist painter René Magritte's famous

"Trahison des Images" (1929), is accosted by a Haiti who is consumed in the frenzy

of violence until he sees Blaine. For a moment, he turns his back on the killing.

"'Gardez, blanc," he shouts at Blaine, "Look at my new pipe." Davis continues:

The pipe was one of the President's hands, the thumb held tight between the
soldier's strong, white teeth. Blood from the severed wrist dripped in a
trickling stream on his sweating, naked chest. Other men followed. One bore
aloft an arm, another a foot. The President' s head, a mask of animal terror,
was stuck on a bayonet and held high over the crowd. When nothing was left
to be hacked away from the body, the women - harridans from the water-front
grass-market- ripped it open, and looping the wet entrails around their necks,
raced glassy-eyed through the town. Once more Port au Prince was blood
drunk. 76

74
See Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods, 16-54, on Dessalines'
dismemberment.
75
Foreign Relations, 475.
76
Davis, The Goat, 311.

259
 The incident prompts intervention from the United States, perpetuating Haiti's

bondage to les blancs while allowing Blaine and Simone to return to New York.

111.

Yet there was another form of violence in Haiti. The attempts to reform the Haitian

labourer, to bring him or her onto the temporalities of American capitalism and shape

their bodies into docile subjects willing to work in chain gangs on road-building

programs were subject to a form of violence as gruesome and as ritualistic as

anything that could be dreamed up by American observers:

7. Near Mirin, at Colier, district of Mierbalais, the same band cut the head off
a blind man named Néis, 25 years old, and did the same thing to a child who
was with him, named Jules Louisville.

9. In January, 1919, at Noailles sorne marines and gendarmes coming from

Beaurepos killed Jean Luc, an invalid. Torn from his house, firearms were
emptied into his body. His borne was robbed and burned.

1O. On the same da y the same band of marines and gendarmes surprised Esca
Estinfil in his house at Caye-Beau with his young sons. They shot all three,
father and children. Then they robbed his house and burned it.

12. On January 30 sorne marines and gendarmes, led by spies named Neis
(des Orangers) and Auré Aeury (du Carefour grand-mat), killed a pregnant
woman in a place called Thomaus. The cottage was robbed.

17. Bodily tortures were inflicted by the American captain of gendarmerie,

Fitzgerald Brown, upon M. Polydor St. Pierre, clerk of the St. Marc police
court, in the prison of that town. He was arrested on January 3, 1919, on a
false charge of theft, and was imprisoned for six months. Brown administered

260
 the 'water cure'to him and burned his body with a red-hot iron; to say nothing
of the beatings and other tortures which he inflicted upon him. 77

Were these ritual also necessary for the work of Wall Street?

77
H. Pauléus Sannon, Sténio Vincent, Perceval Thoby, "Memoir on the Political,
Economic, and Financia! Conditions Existing in the Republic of Haiti under the
American Occupation by the Delegates to the Untied States of the Union
Patriotique d'Haiti," lnquiry into Occupation and Administration of Haiti and
Santo Domingo: Hearings Befare a Select Committee on Haiti and Santo
Domingo, United States Senate (Washington: United States Senate, 1922) 31-32.
The water cure was used first used by the Americans to obtain information from
Filipino nationalists. A person's mouth and throat would be held open and water
would be slowly poured into them until they revealed whatever information was
wanted - or drowned.

261
 CODA

Sometime early in 1919, perhaps around the same time as Armand Tellier was singing

"Dixie Moon" on Wall Street, Charlemagne Péralte proclaimed himself the President of

Haiti and set up a provisional government. Peralte, a former school teacher from Hinche,

had been conscripted by the US Marine's to work in the road building program. He

escaped, and Jed the most sustained guerrilla warfare campaign of the Occupation years.

Late in 1919 he plotted to seize the town of Grande Riviere. He assembled severa!

thousand troops and planned to attack Grande Riviere on two fronts with a third, Jed by

Péralte, coming in as back up or if the attack was defeated, defending the retreat. But a

Haitian informant who had gained Péralte's trust revealed everything to the Marines and

foiled the plot and the Marines staged a counter attack the night befo re Péralte' s planned

assault. And on the night of October 31/November 1 1919, a contingent of Marines the

slipped in to Péralte's camp and assassinated him.

But there's another link between Péralte's death, forms of dissembling and

historical movement of the minstrel show and both the politics of banking and finance

and the nature of American empire during the Coon Age. Sometimes, the line between

representation and reality, caricature and truth would be blurred so thoroughly asto

render it indistinguishable. Sometimes the surreal forms of the minstrel show would

escape the seemingly closed world of the stage and bounce into the world.'

1
Harry A. Franck, Roaming through the West lndies (New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1920) 65.

262
 In 1910 Armand Tellier, who worked for the National City at the Banque

Nationale in Port-au-Prince, returned from the Black Republic and performed "Stop,

Stop, Stop" in the minstrel show - trying (but failing) "to bring a flush to the swarthy

cheeks" of "Mistah Tim," Tim Connellan, the National City Club's long-time

interlocuter. 2 In 1919, Tellier would sing "Dixie Moon" to general fanfare. 3

Péralte's was martyred in death. The Marine's posted images of his dead,

seemingly crucified, body, attempting to prove to the Haitian public that he had

been defeated, but the images only served to turn Péralte into a prophet. lt was

said that the Marines had to stage five fake burials in order to discourage those

who would ritually disinter his body. On the other hand, the soldiers that killed

him were treated as heroes by the US military- in part, because of the tactics they

used to infiltrate Péralte's compound and kili him: they were disguised as Haitians

and, like the National City minstrels performing during that same year in New

York, appeared in Péralte's camp in black face.

2
"The Minstrels as seen by Bill," No. 8, V: 12, (December, 1910), 16.
3
"City Bank Club's Annual Minstrel Show Won Unmeasured Approval of 2,000 who saw it." No.
814:1 (March, 1919), 3.

263
 Issuer and class Date Syndicate/ Total Issue American Rate Maturity Price
ofsecurity Trustee Share
Francisco Sugar Company 1900 -- -- 5,909,00 -- -- --
(Cuba)
United Fruit Company (Cuba) 1900 -- -- 1,123,000 - -- --
Development Company of Cuba 1901 -- -- 200,000 -- -- --
Cuban-American Sugar 1901 Central Trust 500,000 500,000 6 1910 92
Company Company 112 !

American Cigar Company 1901 -- 4,000,000 4,000,000 4 --- --

(Cuba) 1

Havana Electric Railway 1901 Edward Street 7,500,000 2,500,000 5 1952 98

N Company (Cuba)
0'1
~
Habana and Jaimanitas Railroad 1903 -- Never -- -- -- --
ofCuba issued
Republic of Cuba Loan of 1904 1904 Speyer 35,000,000 15,000,000 5 1944 96
112
Nipe Bay Company (Cuba) 1905 Lee, Higginson 2,000,000 7 -- 95
Unit~d Fruit C()l!l~ny (Cuba)__ 1905 -------
1,503,000 1,253,000 --
- -- -- -- --
--
--------

Participations by US Bankers in Flotations of Caribbean Securities before 1914

 Issuer and class Date Syndicate/Trustee Total American Rate Maturity Price
ofsecurity Issue Share
Cuba/Havana Electric 1905 -- -- 5,000,0000 5 1915 100
Railway Company
Northeastern Cuba 1905 -- -- 900,000 5 1955 97
Railroad Company
Nipe Bay Company 1905 -- -- 2,750,000 6 1909 97
(Cuba)
National Railroad 1906 -- -- 100,000 6
Company (Haiti),
Spanish-American Iron 1908 Girard Trust Company $5,000,000 1,500,000 6 1927 98/2
Company (Cuba)
Republic of Santo 1908 -- 14,000,000 12,000,000 5 1918-1958
Domingo, Customs
Administration of 1908
N
United States Panama 2% 1908 National City, J.P Morgan, -- 30,000,000 2 1918-38 102
0\
Vl Bonds First National, Kuhn and
Loeb (?)
Nipe Bay Company 1909 -- -- 3,500,00 6 1914 100
(Cuba)
Central Railroad of Haiti 1909 Wollenberger & Co. 800,000 400,000 6 1919 -
Republic of Cuba Exterior 1909 -- 5,500,000 4,000,000 4 1949 95
Loan of 1909 1112

Participations by US Bankers in Flotations of Caribbean Securities before 1914

 Issuer and class Date Syndicateffrustee Total American Rate Maturity Price
ofsecurity Issue Share
Republic of Cuba Exterior 1909 -- 5,500,000 3,000,000 5 1939 90
Loan of 1909
Cuban-American Sugar 1910 -- 3,658,000 2,000,000 6 1918 98
Company
Republic of Cuba Exterior 1911 -- 5,500,000 3,000,000? 4 1949 98
Loan of 1909 112 3/4
Cuban-American Sugar 1911 -- 3,750,000 1,750,000 6 1918 -
Cuban American Sugar 1912 -- -- 1,750,000 6 1918 -
Republic of Santo Domingo 1913 National City, J.P. 1,500,000 1,500,000 6 1919 97
6% Treasury Notes Morgan 112
Cuban American Sugar 1913 -- -- 850,000 6 1948 84
Republic of Nicaragua 1913 Brown Brothers, J. & W. -- 1,060,000 6 1913 100
Treasury Bilis Seligman
Pacific Railways Nicaragua 1913 Brown Brothers, J & W. -- 1,650,000 6 -- --
N
0\
Seligman 1

0\

Participations by US Bankers in Flotations of Caribbean Securities before 1914

 Issuer and Date Syndicateffrustee Total American Rate Maturity Price
class Issue Share
ofsecurity
Republic of 1913 J.P. Morgan, Kuhn Loeb & co., First $1.5M $1.5 M 6 -- 100
Cuba 6% Notes National Bank, National City Bank ... - - -------

Participations by US Bankers in Flotations of Caribbean Securities before 1914

Source: Paul D. Dickens, The Transition Period in American Financing: 1897-1914 (Unpublished Phd Dissertation,
George Washington University, 1933)

N
0'\
-.)
 Appendix B

The Speyer 1904 Cuban Loan Syndicate

The 1904 Speyer demonstrates how these loans operated. The percentage of the

par value of the loan through which bonds were initially bought by a syndicate-

the cost of the loan, or the spread - depended on both the availability of money

from willing creditors and the political and economic conditions within the

country seeking credit. Of course, while the formation of syndicates allowed

bankers to distribute the risk and reward of the loans amongst themselves, it also

minimized competition amongst lenders, giving borrowers fewer options and little

leverage when negotiating. The 1904 four percent Cuban loan was underwritten at

89. That is, the bankers bought the bonds at eighty-nine percent of the par value

of the issue. In this case, eighty-nine percent of $35 mili ion, or $31,150,000,

minus any additional commissions or fees. The Cuban Government had to

account for the rest. Speyer used the financia! stringency generated by the threat

of war between Russia and Japan over Manchuria to offer a relatively low bid.

Their representative reportedly told Cuban President Tomas Estrada Palma that if

he did not accept the terms of the issue, it would be postponed indefinitely. The

President was given but twenty-four hours to make up his mind as the

representative would be returning by steamer to New York City the following

day. The bonds were then sold twice. First they were offered internally to the

network of banks and insurances companies that were clients of the initial

268
underwriters. This group was offered the option of purchasing the loans in two

lots. The purchase of the first, $20 million worth at 91 plus interest, provided for

an option on the second, the remaining $15 million at 92 112 and interest. Those

purchasers could then either hold on to their bonds, or re-sell them to the general

public atan additional discount determined by what the market would bear. By

1909, the Cuban bonds were selling at 103 112 plus interest in the bond market.

And again, the difference between purchase and selling price constituted a profit

over and above interests. By 1909, the Cuban bonds were selling at 103 112 plus

interest in the bond market. 1 Payment of the bonds generally carne out of a

sinking fund - a separa te pool of cash that the treasury set too k out of the state' s

revenues and put aside precisely for this reason- and generated from tax revenues

gleaned from specific commodities. In the case of the 1904 Speyer loan, through

taxes on alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, matches, and other drinks. Depositing

fifteen percent of the customs receipts as a guaranty of the payment of interest

with Upmann in Havana.

1
"The Bond Market," Wall Street Journal (Jun 14, 1909) 5

269
 APPENDIXC

List of Stockholders in Proposed Participation in $9,200,0000 credit from the

American Foreign Banking Corporation to L.R. Munoz- May 91h, 1921

Name ofBank Amount Location Sbares

Chase National Bank $2,078.280 New York, NY 11,296

Corn Exchange National Bank 595,240 Chicago, 11 3,238

Union Trust Company 595,240 Cleveland, OH 3,238

Philadelphia National Bank 579,600 Philadelphia PA 3150

Harris, HB 519,800 New York, NY 2,826

First Wisconsin National Bank of 432.400 Milwaukee, Wl 2,350

Milwaukee

Merchants National Bank 405,720 Boston, MA 2,205

Fifth-Third National Bank 396,520 Cincinnati, OH 2,159

National Bank of Commerce, St. Louis 347,760 St. Louis, Mo 1,889

First National Bank 277,840 Minneapolis, MN 1,511

Anglo, London París National Bank 277,840 San Francisco, CA 1,511

Peoples State Bank 269,560 Detroit, MI 1,468

Northwestern National Bank 198,720 Minneapolis, MN 1,080

Merchants National Bank 198,720 Baltimore, MD 1,079

National Newark & Essex Banking Co. 198,720 Newark, NJ 1.079

270
Name ofBank Amount Location S bares

Canal Commercial Trading 198,720 New Orleans, LA 1,079

& Savings Bank

Bank of Pittsburgh, NA 184,000 Pittsburgh, PA 1,000

Seattle National Bank 134,220 Seattle WA 732

Merchants National Bank 100,280 Richmond, V A 541

Merchants National Bank 100,280 Los Angeles, CA 540

Industrial Trust Company 100,280 Providence, RI 540

Merchants National Bank 100,280 St. Paul, MN 540

Standard Bank of Canada 100,280 Toronto, Canada 540

Merchants National Bank 100,280 Worchester, MA 540

Denver National Bank 99,360 Denver, CO 539

Smith and Gallatin 90,160 New York NY 489

Davis, Norman H. 69,000 Havana, Cuba 377

Springfield National Bank 68,080 Springfield, MA 370

Fletcher American National Bank 66,240 Indianapolis, IN 360

Commercial National Bank 57,040 Washington, DC 308

Cedar Rapids National City Bank 49,680 Grand Rapids, MI 269

First National Bank 37,720 Utica NY 206

Indiana National Bank 27,600 lndianapolis, IN 154

Security National Bank 26,680 Dalias, Texas 147

271
Name ofBank Amount Location S bares

United States National Bank 26,680 Portland, OR 147

Commerce Guardian Trust & Savings Ba 26,680 Toledo, OH 146

Robinson, Francis H. 18,400 New York, NY 103

National Bank of Tacoma 18,400 Tacoma, WA 103

Mackenzie, CA 11,040 New York NY 62

Black, D.G. 11,040 New York NY 61

Kains, A. 1,840 New York NY 14

The Peoples Bank 2,760 Mobile, AL 14

TOTAL 9,198,980 50,000

Source: Exhibit A: Proposed Participation in $9,200,0000 Credit

List of Stockholders- May 91\ 1921 American Foreign Banking Corporation- Chase

National Bank. Record Group 2. Chase National Bank. Affiliates, Subsidiaries. J.P.

MorganChase Archives.

272
 APPENDIXD

Examples of National City advertisements

• =·

,, i
.~·':: ·. -:- ,, .
'¡

{.,
~· 1 •

,•,
...
1:. '• ··~ 1

i:.

1 •

',':1 ,.: ,, ~­
1 ...... t
...
~ ;- .'. ,~ ·..
~, .:· . • !'•: ...
' '' ' ' ·~ 1 ', '' ~·· ', ,' r , • •,

';_;~·uj:;,, ',,-;~e:;,;. , '·. . ...

Electric i\nlcrica-Fon-\lard!
f n"vln·I(IS~ ...~~mf.'<"l\((,.r, h~"'n"t<"q; ,..;¡~~q rt'H'!Ifi¡j'h .J'~J1t1ia, l.'!¡¡: 1t.' aaz•mic. ki t h~·
r~u.::•dy •,1 ""·Jir. L~n.· .. v ,~h1Li ·uf t tn:it ,~.,.;H~~ u~fil r-~i;::h~ni m~n ~nd wom..::-11.
tlH ¡¡ir l·i:h~ :~no u•!t·plh m~·
!1 ~~~ 'Nt~'!•,)U~ ~~'ht~ ~h:_,jJ mr;n.--,~
I'HI IJI·'"''·!.'lhf ~I.>IIIIJ!U!li~W?J lll<W \¡~ lfl '.'L\~I.¡¡J Q~,..'l-.1iQ L•tliiH ih~h . t't•..:>
~~::k ~~:. Ul'llf•: rh-:r ;~n !vi !H'"' ,::-f rnTt'" n1~r, ,~_·~r~. b r.·t;P:.: lab-..:f ,;.,1 nLh.. .: th.o..r !y
d::'¡¡.:Í .:,·n~t":ln ,!¡' 1f•·JriP,hih ~!ét.l fu::: .,.'1'H J !'ni 111 u·HY'tiÍ1iJ< l·nw·iJw;. ~'
funr'l."
\\' ,r,-n '\'fui n"¡T":::~1 .ifL~J "'-'di ..·h~i~l it
.\ n'lf.•rli';~ "' jqJw; 1t !' , 1 id .. ÍP;..-: ·1.·' · F'uh~~.:~ V. ~t·ühy Rund, :r':.ur t:nrv.;-.-t!t· Y¡, !w.'j,'; ~"iilf /ll /,.¡1'''''\t>'./ •:, ,1

wJ:d ¡¡~, i·.¡¡ !?ru~r Ji:i•.:O:H""J.\', r1n·._ r.·,.r;:~ ~~~ lol V U6tl5•fi d:a~n ti:..i11;1 ,...f '"'' 1 L:~:..a,) i~.<J' ·~~·n-..·,.··; '¡é•... '·"'
·'n\t"·~~r! ,- '1ú 1 iL.• t\""" w¡k~"H ;ll!J li ·.~·· f.._H &. t. ruu .uw•.il .1h.'.
l:'iri'i'(.: ~wh.:t'irt-,\" fH'•WJ'f,
\ ..., •• r ,:;.v.· V'!i'V>hl¡;t .;.,! :tiJI•• h .f'Ku1-j ~
}..,. _. ~ .. !¡' I'Vq 1 >~" , ¡ •' ¡.t•
T ··~ we~·it;JN¡.: :;}:l<:t.l> .•1 •·ko:n i;• ~u~¡:.tL.& 'j•,"•tlt' ~liHH! ~: í- \'i;"~l~rl 1~ ti Í~''H;t~ da,-;••,..h"1'f"l:<IV.,''l'o' ¡'•!s',,.~ll,,¡ ~;,.d
11.rtt("t>:."';; n.:iH hr· m.~r h·v A rt~1f-l'"h"Jill l.,' a'•~• h"".:l ,,.m ... m rfl.e (o;o'•f'w u~ itt1&-'rr~1.

:,nifi~¡n·~. J'hey 'lh 111 ~~ lhi ¡, ,.,,,¡ Yf il~ÍÍII11VL\ ~-:~ !1•11 111'1 íml ;¡
:Ar:u! l'~t4•H•t~'.
~,-.V ~J.,..;., )..!1~'0'
H~" 11.,,.,~! J ('1 :-',

Thc ~-.'::i e:iomd Clty Company ~·''"fi.!ll J

fH);-.J[t~
~~H ~/'l"f':"'.
~~~~i;:,n;~l C·~y Jirmk ~~~h~ r~. ";1w l'~wll
":t..:t..:t:rrt,i'.a: ;:,

273
 APPENDIX D Cont.

Forward-into the wonderful future!

1MAGl N E
·
an America wi th no light
to swilch on, no telephMe at ihl
America will MW lcap foi'WIU'd. Thc
public as bond•holdeN wiü! ag11in
?·.~ '!Di/1 j11tl " Ntlli(}118/ Cily
C••f'•$y C~mf'l•brit Offiu
<# ,],] .¡ tkt lt1Pii11g lilitJ .¡tht
m•r at !he eoruer 1
ell)r,lw, 11<1 ot,.eet. finan ce our pubtie utilítiet, · those greQI
quickeners ol American spirit. <01/JjJTj.
' Amene>an vitrion, backed by ínvClited
capital, h1U brought the:R eve:ryday A public utilhy is a public ne~-euity. &Nh .¡ rhu< •lfiw ú <flliff<l
mirDclll$ into your lile. ••' t<IHÚT '"'""',} "''Vi; e t•
Their developr:nent, halted by war,
The i<Dundncn of your publie utilil)'
hond is permanelltly rootcd i.n eltpandiog,
;,....,!Ir,
gt~~trflll), """" ¡,.,,¿
Sa¡tN '" 14rrit,.¡¡,,
,apio hu right of wuy. pllbli" need.
BOl'! OS
SHOJI.T TERM NOTES
The National Qty Company ACCJi;n'III'ICES
Nalit>Dlll Clty Bank Building, NcwYork

274
 APPENDIXE

Failures of Cuban Banks, 1921-1922

l. Banco Federal De Cuba. Cinfuegos. 1 March 1921 (thirteen branches)

2. Banco Nacional de Cuba. Habana. 11 April, 1921 (121 branches)
3. Banco Trillo y Hermano. Moron. 9 May 1921 (Six branches)
4. Penabad, A reces y Compania. Habana. 1O M ay 1921
5. Banco Demetrio Cordova y Compania. 12 May 1921 (2 branches)
6. Banco Digon y Hermanos. Habana. 12 May 1921 (1 branche)
7. Banco D. Fernandez y Hermanos. Cardenas. 17 May 1921
8. Banco Agapito Garcia Llano. Guira Melena. 17 May 1921
9. Banco Internacional de Cuba. Habana. 23 May 21 (105 branches)
10. Banco Franciso Diaz Vega. Ciego de Avila. 30 May 1921
11. JA Bances y Compania. Havana. 1 June 1921
12. Banco Espanol de la Isla de Cuba. Havana. 6 June 1921 (86 branches)
13. Banco de Propietarios, Industriales y Arrendatarios. Habana 14June 1921
14. Banco Victor E. Escartin. Moron. 18 July 1921
15. Banco Hispano Cubano de Oriente. Santiago de Cuba. 11 October 1921
16. Alonso Exposito y Compania. Moron. 7 November 1921
17. J. Silverio y Hermanos. Placetas. 6 December 1921
18. H. Upmann y Cia. Habana. 11 May 1922

Source: Republic de Cuba. Comision Temporal de Liquidacion Bancaria.

Compendio de los trabajos realizados desde 17 de Febrero de 1921, hasta 4 de
Agosto de 1924 (Havana: 1924)

275
 APPENDIXF

Examples of National City Advertisements inCuban papers, 1921-29

Ability to save money

is a test of char~cter.

An account with us will en-

courage and strengthen )'OU.

The National City Sank

of New York

! Don't spend it all.

Regularit)' of deposit is the secret
of financial independence.

THE NATIONAL CITY BANK

1 OF NEW YORK
1-

lndependence comes not from wha~

you earn, but from what you don't 1

spend.
Save somethlng during your
productive years.

THE NATIONAL CITY BANK

OF NEW YORK

L . . . .·····--···

276
 APPENDIXF

Examples of National City Advertisements inCuban papers, 1921-29

"KNOWLFDGE IS POWER"
The ma!f: remuner.,tivc inve.•lmtnl Ítl a mlln·, lirr: ¡, th11.l d hi~ and hi~
cl1i!drcn'~ r.ch!r.r.tion.
ltJ. hcnrht& ha\'e no limil 11nd it pay$ dividend!
thrcuchout life.
Thr: r.r~dit <:nlric." in )"OIJr u .... ings p<m bo"'k makc po~~Jb!e tn.. o\Ct"¡uisíti(m
of hnoh ;uid mc.i/:ns of .~tudy.
ONE DOLJ.AR OPENS AN ACCOUNT
The National City Bank of New York
Htad CU\cc: Maba Olfic.t in Cuba:
H W~U St. tl mY YOR!C, "'";cl@t Z.,.u c-oMttT
Co~pc~ul•
U. S, A.
RIIVo\NA
TMBI A~t!l~
111 MrlN.hCI ul 2d Cnnn!Tlfll {h11~ Ot1e hflli~ll fí~e h\l;wlrd
~.ooo~elltli ~~·~~~~ a(>:t1r1 U. S. C\u""""''1

Havana Cit:r Bnn.chca:

OA!,IAN'O PLAZA DE 1.11 PRATHRNl!.lAO
(!h<t.<l~l·~li•I~Q) (lo'.doMulil:lll
LONJA EIElLA!I.COA1N
¡o¡;,; ... ~ LQ~ 11', 'lttt~l'l U}
lnte.rlt>r Hranehe~:

MAKE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE

What would lifc be without lhe hope of to-morrow-with·
Ot1tthe goiden futur~ f~r whkh overy~ne yearns)
Your ~ean1s ~nd llmb1tions rnay be more quickly con·
verted mto reahty by means of a savings Rccouot with the
National City Bunk. ONE DOLLAR OPENS AN ACCOUNT.
The National City Bank of New York
ffe¡¡(j Olfice: Moln OUi" ln Cuba:
U W1\l el•. NEW Y'Oii'X:,
1
1"1-uhle"·' z,.,_. CCI'IJCI
11.8"' C'""'""""Til•
HAVAHA

1H Prono~ ... !r ~J Cwtn:ln 'l'no~/;-!1,

o ..... o,..billi~nflnllc¡,oclftl(!
f,n~ CIYr=¡wutfa.u lliii1W..d,.U-A111\J,l!.Cilm..qo
HltVMil Ciry Branch-:
CUo'.TR~ CAMINOS
(11! ot><~~.UHOI IA•·~?t.lí~i~~Wi ?LAZA ~:.J;Ar.:i~llirlli.NIUAIJ
!.ONJA f1Bl.A$.COATN
(0Uc4NU) (1' Ve.-.!• U:)

PARA CONOCER EL MUNDO

$eg\lrllmentll alvCI.n d{a Q>.~etr4 IJMtd ver enftJI"':ar!U' en el ¡,nJ1,.otlte la siluet;
dl'l MQrro, dnde In c.ub!eli:ll dt un !\are.<'> ttttt le lleve a Al)fún rincón 'kl
mundcl co-n tlc:ual hn 11"ñ.adb.
u~red puedt aproz:imnr la rech~ Je ll.l partidll, Jevo~iro~nrto me:ódJ<,:.;~,;:ncnlé
¡;"ra ~u.; fondo~ dr. vh,itt en t! fJe~1rtflrHC'ILICO ,:~ AnGf'T<'>ll ti~l N~tir.>t'~J Cny l:hnk
UN PESO ABRE SU CUENTA
The National City Bank of New York
Qjo~o~ l'n~~i.,11 on Cvblo·
~~ W4(,!.. ST., N\11>\\1,\ 'tQi\1, C~l)o f''"hl•m" T..1yu
co)t"~>Ct.tcl.o.
u ..... ,,. ..
t:.\;,A, J,,f, IU~AJ1.-\

A"u"" i11u•J,
Mu <!t rni1 'll'i~·~<>in\ :>l\1':""'""
<lo 7'tn< 0'1'~ l~•r:HI"io.>

f"lj \T!<•,) ('U'llN()~ G'll.lt\100 í>,t,,;'A DE l.i\ f'~II'!'RfHéfi'\1,0

:M. 0~-=" llt1 (In.,. ''•1~~¡;.. 1e'1o CP rlo ~h·:i ;?.A)
t.CN.',\ ~.(:,l.,.,:H'Oo'.l~
.O!\ a~• :~ ( ;.> V ~r<'l~ ! '1

277
 APPENDIXF

Examples of National City Advertisements inCuban papers, 1921-29

.
SAVE VOUR
MONEY.
THR/f'T /S '-1\!Pf.E
COMM0\1 SENSE
APPLJED TO
SPEND!NG

The Na.tional City Bank

of New York

1
.
"""·-·- ...... ·---~· """

Saving money is a habit.

i You can a.cquire it if
you wish.

The National City Bank

of New York

--
·-· -·· -- • ·~w•• •
-

Se embarca Vd?
A quién deja de apoderado?
Nombn.u1do apodNado a este Baneo para que admi·
nist.rc S\ls bienes oodrá disfrutar de su viaje y estará
libre de preocupadnncs.
Nuestro departamento de T rWJl· está a su disposiei6n
para [oH informes que dr.~ee sobre .rste servicio.

The National City Bank of New York

A ooJidtu!l cnvianmos por oorno nuestro folleto ''Adtninl•tr.ru:ifln
de Bíenes" y '"Modelo <le Poder nombrJtndo apod4!tad<~ al
TlTE NATlONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK"

278
 APPENDIXF

Examples of National City Advertisements in Cub~J! papers, 1921-29

So far-
!'ve worked ---years
l've earned $, _ _ _ __
! l've saved $ - - - - -

?
THE NATIONAL CITY BANK
OF ~BW YORK
' ..!

.. - -

Stl.\rt a savings account~ -·li ,

Remember that your dollars can ¡1·.¡

work as well as play. i!

!1
ij

The National Cit:r Benk

of New York

- !1

-1
""" -·~- .. ·········-·

.. ~he~ op~~rtun~ty knocks

have your bank book ·,1
about you '1

The National Cit:r Bank

of New York

279
 APPENDIXG

Examples of the Haitian Gourde

280
 WORKSCITED

Archival and Manuscript Collections

Secretaria de la Presidencia. Archivo Nacional de Cuba. Havana.

Banco Nacional de Cuba. Archivo Nacional de Cuba. Havana.

Secretaria de la Hacienda Archivo Nacional de Cuba. Havana.

Secretaria de la Presidencia: Archivo Nacional de Cuba. Havana.

Vincent Carosso Papers. Morgan Library and Museum. New York.

J.P. Morgan Syndicate Books. Morgan Library and Museum New York.

American Foreign Banking Corporation. J.P. Morgan-Chase Manhattan Archives.

New York.

Leland Hamilton Jenks Collection on the Cuban Sugar Industry. Princeton

University. Princeton, New Jersey.

Government Documents and Publications

Annual Report of Brigadier-General William Ludlow, United States Army,

Military Governor of Habana, and Commanding Department of Habana,
for the period July 1, 1899, to May 1, 1900. (Washington: GPO, 1900).

Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of the Finances for
the Fiscal year ended June 30, 1910 (Washington GPO, 1910).

281
Bolivia, Republic of with the National City Bank and Messrs. Speyer and Co.,
Supplements to Contract and concession of the construction and
operations railways (np: 1906).

Contract and concessionfor the construction and operation ofrailways: The

Republic of Bolivia with the National City Bank and Messrs. Speyer &
Co., May 22, 1906 (New York: Speyer and Company, 1906).

Cuba. Comisión Temporal de Liquidación Bancaria. Compendio de los trabajos

realizados desde 17 de Febrero de 1921, hasta 4 de Agosto de 1914
(Habana: Hermes, 1924).

Cuba. Comisión Temporal Liquidación Bancaria, Compendio de los Trabajos

(Habana: Julio Arroyo, 1928)

E. F. Ladd, "Report of Major E. F. Ladd, Treasurer of the Island of Cuba," Civil

Report of Majar General Leonard Wood, Military Governor of Cuba.
Volume V: Finance, (Washington: GPO, 1900).

Harden, W. Report on the financia! and industrial conditions of the Philippine

Islands (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1898).

Honduras y J.P. Morgan & Co., Kuhn, Loeb & Co., National City Bank of New
York and First National Bank of New York. Convenio. Celebrado en
febrero 15 de 1911. (np.: 1911)

Honduras. The republic of Honduras and J.P. Margan & Co., Kuhn, Loeb & Co.,
National City Bank of New York and First National Bank of New York.
Agreement dated February 15, 1911. (np.: 1911)

lnternational American Conference. "International American Bank." Report of

the Majority of the Committee on Banking. Reports of Committees and

282
 Discussions Thereon. Volume 1/ (Washington: Government Printing
Office, 1890).

International American Conference. Organization of the conference, projects,

reports, motions, debates and resolution (Mexico: Government Printing
Office, 1902).

Mexico. Contratos celebrados entre los Estatos Unidos Mexicanos y Speyer y

Cia., por su mismos y por Speyer brothers, Lazard Speyere-Elllissen,
Deutsche Bank y Teixeira de Mattoos brothers, y Banco nacional de
Mexico. En 31 de octubre de 1904, y en 29 de noviembre de 1904.
(Mexico: n. p., 1904)

Porter, Robert P. Appendix to the Report on the Commercial and Industrial

Condition ofthe /stand ofCuba (Washington: GPO, 1899).

Porter, Robert P. Report on the Commercial and Industrial Condition ofthe

lsland ofCuba. (Washington GPO, 1898).

Porter, Robert P. Report on the Currency Question of Porto Rico (Washington,

GPO, 1899).

Republica Dominicana. Secretaria de Estado y Comercio. Contrato de Emprestito

enre la Republica Dominicana y The National City Bank of New York. De
fecha 22 de Febrero de 1913. (Santo Domingo: El Tiempo, 1913).

The Story of Panama: Hearings on the Rainey Resolution befare the Committee
on Foreign Affairs ofthe House of Representatives (Washington: GPO,
1913)

United States. 561h Congress, 1st Session. Depositaries of Public Moneys in

lslands Under Administration of United States. Letter from the Secretary
of the Treasury, in Relation to Establishing Depositaries of Public Money

283
 in /slands Under Administration ofthe United States. December 14, 1899.
(Washington: GPO: 1899).

United States. 56 1h Congress, 1'1 Session. Report No. 712. Safe-Keeping and
Disbursement of Public Moneys in the Philippines, Etc. March 19, 1900.
(Washington: GPO, 1900).

United States. 62nd Congress, 3rd Session. Report ofthe Committee Appointed
Pursuant to House Resolutions 429 and 504 to Investigare the
Concentration ofControl ofmoney and Credit. (Washington: GPO, 1913).

United States. 62nd Congress, 3rd Session. Report ofthe Committee Appointed
Pursuant to House Resolutions 429 and 504 to Investigare the
Concentration ofControl ofmoney and Credit. (Washington: GPO, 1913).

United States. 67 1h Congress 2nd Session. Senate Document No. 136. Treaty with
Haiti. Treaty Between the United States and Haiti. Economic
Development and Tranquility of Haiti (Washington: GPO, 1916).

United States. Bureau of Insular Affairs. Report ofthe Chief ofthe Bureau of
Insular Affairs to the Secretary ofWar. (Washington, GPO, 1904).

United States. Commission on lnternational Exchange (Hugh. H. Hanna, Charles

A. Conant, Jeremiah W. Jenks, Commissioners) Report on the
lntroduction of the Gold-Exchange Standard into China, the Philippine
lslands, Panama, and Other Silver-Using Countries and on the Stability of
Exchange. (Washington: GPO, 1904).

United States. Congress. 57 1h, 151 Session. Second lnternational Conference of

American States. Message from the President of the United States,
Transmitting A Communication from the Secretary of State Submitting the
Report, with Accompanying Papers, ofthe Delegares ofthe United States
to the Second lnternational Conference of American States, held at the

284
 City of Mexico from October 22, 1901, to January 22, 1902 (Washington:
GPO, 1902).

United States. Congress. House Committee on Banking and Currency. Somefacts

and lnformation about the Proposed International American Bank
(Washington: GPO, 1897-8).

United States. Department of the Treasury. Comptroller of the Currency. Annual

Report of the Comptroller of the Currency to the Third Session of the
Fifty-Fifth Congress ofthe United States. December 5, 1898. Volume l.
(Washington: GPO, 1898).

United States. Justice Department. Order from Military Governor ofCuba in

regard to credit ofmerchants and manufacturers, (Havana, 1900).

United States. Santo Domingo Investigation: Copy ofthe Report, Findings, and
Opinion of James D. Phelan, Commissioner named by the Secretary of
State, with the approval ofthe President, to investigate charges against
the United States Minister to the Dominican Republic. (Washington:
Gibson Brothers, 1916).

United States. Senate. 49th Congress. 2nd Session. Ex. Doc. No. 64. Messagefrom
the United States, transmitting, in response to the resolutions of the Senate
of the 181h and 191h ofFebruary, 1896, a report of the Secretary of State in
regard to the claim of A.H. Lazare against the Government of Haití,
(Washington: GPO 1897).

United States. Senate. 56th Congress, 1st Session. Document No. 440. Letter from
the Secretary ofWar, In response to Resolution ofthe Senate of May 22,
1900, Relative to the North American Trust Company, A Corporation
organized under the laws ofthe state of New York, having its principal
office in the city of New York, and Branch offices at Havana, Santiago,

285
 Cienfuegos, and Matanzas, in the /stand ofCuba (Washington: GPO,
1900).

United States. Senate. 56th Congress, 1st Session. Document No. 440. Letter from
the Secretary of War, In response to Resolution of the Senate of May 22,
1900, Relative to the North American Trust Company, A Corporation
organized under the laws ofthe state of New York, having its principal
o.ffice in the city of New York, and Branch o.ffices at Havana, Santiago,
Cienfuegos, and Matanzas, in the /stand ofCuba. (Washington: GPO,
1900).

United States. Senate. 56th Congress. The Spanish Bank of Puerto Rico. February
26, 1900. (Washington: GPO, 1900).

United States. Senate. 67th Congress, 2"d Session. Report No. 794. Inquiry into
Occupation and Administration of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
(GPO: Washington, 1922).

United States. Senate. 72"d Congress. 1st Session. S. Res. 84. Hearings Before the
Committee on Banking and Currency. Stock Exchange Practices. Part 1-
7. (Washington: GPO, 1932-1933).

United States. Treasury Department. Annual Report ofthe Secretary ofthe

Treasury on the State of the Finances for the Fiscal year ended June 30,
1910. (Washington GPO, 1910). 6

United States. Treasury Department. Report ofthe Comptroller ofthe Currency

(Washington: GPO, 1897-1929).

United States. War Department. "Report for 1901." Five Years ofthe War
Departmentfollowing the War with Spin, 1899-1903, as Shown in the
Reports ofthe Secretary ofWar. (Washigton: GPO, 1904)

286
 Banking Publications

"Burlington Joints ":A Study of the Financing, Business and Property of the
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Great Northern and Northern Pacific
Railroad Systems (New York: National City Company, 1921)

A Centennial: Lehman Brothers, 1850-1950 (New York: Lehman Brothers,

1950).

A Handbook of Finance and Trade with South America (New York: The National
City Bank of New York, 1919).

A Progressive Railroad in the growing South: The Seaboard Air Line, its
Earnings, Condition and Prospects (New York: National City Company,
1917).

Addison, James. "Our Foreign Branehes and their Development," 135 Years of
Banking. (New York: National City Bank of New York, 1947).

Allen, John H. The Trends of Business and Credits in Argentina (New York: The
National City Bank of New York, 1915).

American Banking in Foreign Trade (New York: Irving National Bank, 1917).

Asia Banking Corporation: An American Bankfor Trade with the Orient (New
York: Asia Banking Corporation, 1920).

Austin, Osear P. Trading with our Neighbors in the Caribbean (New York: The
National City Bank of New York, 1920).

Austin, Osear P. Trading with the Far East (New York: The National City Bank
of N ew York, 1920).

287
Austin, Osear P. Trading with the New Countries ofCentral Europe (New York:
National City Bank of New York, 1921).

Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Nova Scotia: One Hundredth Anniversary, 1832-
1932 (Toronto: Bank of Nova Scotia, 1932).

Banking Apprenticeship Plan (New York: National City Bank of New York,
1917).

Banking Service for Foreign Trade (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of New
York, 1919).

Banküne, Summary of Findings: JPMorgan Chase and Bank One (New York:
JPMorgan Chase-Bank One, 2005).

Banque nationale de la République d'Ha'iti, Renseignements financiers

statistiques et économiques sur la République d'Ha'iti 1 Banque nationale
de la République d'Ha'iti. (Paris: E. Cassegrain, 1915).

Banque Nationale de la Republique d'Haiti. Loi de Sanction. Contrat de

Transfert. Act de Constitution. Status. (Port-au-Prince: Banque Nationale
de la Republique d'Haiti, 1922).

Bonds & Bankers (New York: The National City Company, 1922).

Booth, Willis H. Foreign Trade and the Interior Bank, (New York: Guaranty
Trust Company of New York, 1920).

Brown Brothers and Co., Experiences ofa Century, 1818-1918 (Philadelphia:

Brown Brothers and Co., 1918).

Canada: Economic Position and Plans for Development (New York: Guaranty
Trust Company of New York, 1919).

288
Chase National Bank in the Caribbean Area (New York: Chase National Bank of
New York, 1944),

Chase National Bank ofthe City ofNew York, 1877-1922 (New York: De Vinne
Press, 1922).

Chase National Bank of the City of New York. Cuban Public Works Financing:
Memoranda of Facts submitted to a Commission Appointed by the Cuban
Government under the Decree-Law Dated April16, 1934 (New York:
Chase National Bank ofthe City ofNew York, 1934).

China (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of New York, 1916).

Combination in Export Trade Permitted by the Webb law, approved April10,

1918 (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of New York, 1918).

Combining for Foreign Trade: Plans and Methods of Operation (New York:
Guaranty Trust Company of New York, 1920).

Commercial Map of Latín America (New York: Irving National Bank, 1918).

Conant, Charles A. and F.C. Harrison, Monetary Reformfor Nicaragua. Report

Presenting a Plan of Monetary Reform for Nicaragua, submitted to
Messrs. Brown Brothers & Company and Messrs. J& W Seligman &
Company, by Messrs. F.C. Harrison and Charles A. Conant, April 23,
1912. (New York: W. R. Ficke 1912).

Cosby, Joseph T. Latín American Monetary Systems and Exchange Conditions

(New York: National City Bank of New York, 1915).

Cotton textiles in Argentina (New York: National City Bank of New York, 1915).

Cuba (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of New York, 1916).

289
Cuba and the Cuba Railroad (N ew York: National City Company, 1919); Sugar
(New York: National City Company, 1922).

Cuban Investments: An lntimate Statement of lnvestment Facts Existing in the

Republic, with sorne Comparisons on Securities in the United States (New
Orleans, Louisiana: Bankers' Loan and Security Company, 1916).

Ernest B. Filsinger, Trading with Latin America (New York: Irving National
Bank, 1919); Irving National Bank, Trading with the Far East. (New
York: Irving National Bank, 1920).

Essentials ofTrading with Latin America (New York: Guaranty Trust Company
of New York, 1920).

Federal Reserve Actas Amended with Regulations and Analysis(New York:

Irving National Bank, 1917).

Federal Tax Laws(New York: Irving National Bank, 1917).

Foreign Exchange and lnternational Banking (New York: National City Bank of
New York 1919).

Government Price Fixing and Profit Taxation (New York: Irving National Bank,
1917).

Groff, E.A. American Banks in Foreign Trade, (New York: The National City
Bank of New York, 1920).

Guaranty Trust Company of New York, One Hundred Years of Banking Service,
1839-1939, (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of New York, 1939).

Guía Comercial (New York: National City Bank of New York, 1920).

Harris, Beverly D. Branch Banks and Foreign Trade (New York: The National
City Bank of New York, 1916).

290
How Business with Foreign Countries is Financed (New York: Guaranty Trust
Company, 1919, 1921).

lnternational Banking Corporation, Charter and by-laws, (New York:

lnternational Banking Corporation, 1902).

Irving National Bank, Trading with the Far East, (New York: Irving National
Bank, 1920).

Kies, W.S. "Branch Banking and South American Trade," Journal ofthe
American Bankers Association 8:3 (September 1915), 278-281

Kies, William S. Opportunities for Young Men in the Foreign Field (New York:
National City Bank of New York, 1916) 9-10

Kies, William S. The Commercial and Industrial Outlook (New York: National
City Bank of New York, 1915)

Kuhn, Loeb & Co., Mexican Central Railway Company agreement dated May 12,
1904, Kuhn, Loeb & Co., Speyer & Co., New York, Speyer Brothers,
London. (New York: Kuhn Loeb & Co., 1904)

Lawrence Turnure and Co.: A Short History, 1832-1942(New York: Lawrence

Turnure and Co, 1942)

Malley, Frank O. Our South American Trade and its financing (New York:
National City Bank of New York: 1920)

National Banking under the Federal Reserve System (New York: The National
City Bank of New York, 1927).

New York Banks and Trust Companies (New York: The Seaboard Bank of the
City of New York, 1928).

291
Patterson, Stuart H. A Bank Catechism (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of
New York, 1925).

Pierson, Lewis E. American Banking in Foreign Trade (New York: National

Foreign Trade Council, 1917).

Practica! Questions and Answers on the Trade Acceptance Method(New York:

Irving National Bank, 1917).

Roberts, George E. The Function of Imports in our Foreign Trade (New York:
The National City Bank of New York, 1920).

Rosales, Manuel Landaeta. La gran casa de la esquina de Camejo, hoy "Banco

mercantil Americano de Caracas." (Caracas: Banco mercantil Americano
de Caracas, 1918).

Russia (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of New York, 1916).

Schwedtman, Ferdinand C. The Development of Scandinavian-American Trade

(New York: The National City Bank of New York, 1921).

Sugar (New York: The National City Company, 1922).

The Argentine Republic (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of New York,
1916).

The Efficiency of War and Peace; Government Loans and Inflation; A trade
acceptance review (New York: Irving National Bank, 1917).

The Financia! Aspect ofCotton(New York: lrving National Bank, 1917).

The Illinois Central Railroad Company: A Graphic Study ofthis Standard Trunk
Line (New York: National City Company,1919).

The Industrial Development of India (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of

New York, 1918).

292
The lnfluence of War on Trade- Dornestic Foreign (New York: Irving National
Bank, 1917).

The rnarket for coa! in Argentina; advance sheets of a report rnade by the
cornrnercial representative attached to the Buenos Aires Branch of the
National City Bank of New York. (New York: The National City Bank of
New York, 1915).

The Relations of Industrial Chernistry to Banking(New York: Irving National

Bank, 1917).

The Trade Acceptance as a National Asset(New York: lrving National Bank,

1917).

The trade Acceptance in National Preparadeness (New York: Irving Natíonal

Bank, 1917).

The Trade Acceptance Nationally Launched(New York: Irving National Bank,

1917).

The Virginian Railway: Traffic Developrnent and Operating Econornies (New

York: N ational City Company, 1917).

Trade Acceptance Progress(New York: Irving National Bank, 1917).

Trade and the war. (New York: Irving National Bank, 1917).

Trading with Australasia (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of New York,
1919).

Trading with Mexico to-day (New York: Guaranty Trust Company of New York,
1919).

Trading with the Near East: Present Conditions and Future Prospects (New
York: Guaranty Trust Company of New York, 1919).

293
Vanderlip, Frank A. Sorne Elements of National Foreign Trade Policy (New
York: The National City Bank of New York, 1916).

Virgin /slands: A Description ofthe Commercial Value ofthe Danish West Indies
(New York: National Bank ofCommerce Commerce, 1917).

War Time Finances (New York: Irving National Bank, 1917).

World's Sugar Supply: Its Sources and Distribution (New York: The National
Bank of Commerce, 1917).

Periodicals

American Goods and Foreign Markets

Ame ricas

Annalist

Atlanta Constitution

Bamericuba: Banca, Comercio, Agricultura, Industria, Cubana

Bankers Magazine and Statistical Register

Bankers Monthly: The Magazine of Better Ranking

Barron's

Bulletin of American International Corporation

Bulletin ofthe American Institute of Bank Clerks

Chase

294
Chemical Bulletin

Chicago Daily

Chicago Daily Tribune

Chicago Tribune

Christian Science Monitor

Commerce Monthly

Compass

Cuba Bulletin

Cuba Review

Current Literature

Current History

Diario de la Marina

Economic Bulletin of Cuba

Economista y Revista Comercial

Equitable Envoy

Federal Reserve Bulletin

Guaranty News

Havana Post

Journal of the American Bankers Association

Los Angeles Times

295
Monthly Bulletin of the American Chamber of Commerce of Cuba

Monthly Bulletin ofthe American Chamber ofCommerce of Haiti

Monthly Bulletin ofthe American Club, Havana

Nation 's Business

National City Monthly Letter

National Geographic

New World Quarterly

New York Journal ofCommerce

New York Times

New York Tribune

No. 8: A Journal by andfor the National City Bank Club

North American Review

Platino

Reforma Social

Report of the Comptroller of the Currency

Review of Reviews

The Banker's Magazine and Statistical Register

Times (London)

Times of Cuba

Wall Street Journal

296
Washington Post

World's Work

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