The State Department's unexpected leadership in the domestic antinarcotic movement originated with one of the peaks of American imperialism, the drive at the China market, and the seizure from Spain of the Philippine Islands.

THE CHINA MARKET

At the close of the nineteenth century, the Far East beckoned as a market for American investors. According to enthusiastic calcula-tion, a pair of shoes sold to each Chinese would keep American shoe factories busy for years. American financial leaders coming out of the depression of 1893 believed that expanding markets were the key to future prosperity, blaming bad times on saturation of the home market.1

China may have needed almost everything manufactured, but China was also surrounded and intimidated by the great powers of Europe. America's penetration of China so far had beeri chiefly by missionaries. Perhaps the most promising investment market was railroads, an essential part of China's modernization plan and also a source of considerable income to the foreign syndicates which financed them. China's repayment was practically guaranteed by Western control of her maritime customs service, and her enforced acquiescence to the demands of foreign powers promised a good basis on which to loan hundreds of millions of dollars.2

Understandably, Russia, France, Great Britain, Germany, and Japan did not wish to include the United States in profits from their loan agreements. The weakness of diplomatic notes without military support was clear, but Theodore Roosevelt thought that American public opinion would not sanction the use of American troops in China to protect commercial interests.3 The president therefore employed the power of words, like those frarned in Secre-tary of State Hay's "open door" messages. Hay sought equal rights for all nations in the various treaty ports and spheres of interest and a guarantee of the territorial integrity of the Chinese Empire. After the Spanish-American War, the words of the United States were reinforced by the extensive territorial possessions it had gained in the Far East.

AMERICA ACQUIRES THE PHILIPPINES AND AN OPIUM PROBLEM

An expansionist mood, stories of Spanish atrocities against defense-less Cubans, and confidence in an American mission to bring democ-racy to the world led to the United States' declaration of war on Spain on 25 April 1898. The war's otiose character did not dim American enthusiasm, and its four-month duration made effective opposition impossible. It was difficult to criticize a war in which 34i. battle casualties gave the nation Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines as well as control of Cuba for some years. The Philip-pines, received, in the words of President McKinley, as a gift from the gods, intoxicated Americans who now saw indisputable proof of their new status as a world power and an opportunity to accept the eagerly sought burden of uplifting inferior peoples.4 The financial and commercial implications of a solid foothold in the Far East were also kept in mind. The United States had in one stroke become a world power in the style of the European nations; an entreprtneur in the expanding market of the Far East. Magnificent responsibilities showered on the nation as it rushed to learn more of those faraway lands about which most Americans, Finley Peter Dunne claimed, did not know "whether they were islands or canned goods." 5
American intentions toward the natives were honorable and characteristically altruistic. Meanwhile, the Filipinos, having fought side by side with the American troops to drive out the Spanish, thought that the 'United States was going to free the islands and turn the government over to them. It was difficult to convince them that the Islands were not yet ready for self-government. The Ameri-cans also feared that the Germans would seize the Islands if they were independent. America's refusal to grant independence led to a painfully prolonged war against the insurrectionists, which was finally declared crushed in April 1.902.6 In August the first Episcopal bishop of the Philippines, Charles Henry Brent, arrived, traveling with the returning civil governor William Howard Taft. The Right Reverend Mr. Brent, who had been an assistant minister in a poor Boston parish, functioned ably as a missionary bishop, developing schools, hospitals, and often providing a moral conscience for the Philippine Commission that had responsibility under the War Department for the management of the Islands.7 His contact with the Philippine opium problem made Brent an international leader in the antiopium movement.

Annual trips home and the confidence placed in him by Presi-dents Roosevelt and Taft assured Bishop Brent of a prominent voice in Philippine affairs.8 He had no doubt about the overall wisdom of the policy of McKinley and Roosevelt, being certain of the natives' inability to govern themselves. He saw America bringing to colo-nialism a new attitude and competence that would improve on English methods and on the laissez-faire style of the French ad-ministrators.

Opium provided the Islands' government with an early test of its moral intentions.8 For more than half a century the Spanish had operated a government opium monopoly. Opium was contracted out to merchants who paid taxes on their sales to the Chinese, the only ethnic group permitted to purchase it. When Spanish control sud-denly ended, opium imports increased. A cholera epidemic in igoz reportedly made opium use widespread among the natives, because the constipating qualities of the alkaloids in opium were thought to be life-saving. A tradition of government monopoly of opium sales, supported by a sizable number of Chinese opium smokert and a growing number of natives smoking or eating opium, presented the federal government with an unprecedented problem and un-precedented latitude in the choice of a solution. The Supreme Court had decided in igoi that doctrines of states' rights were inap-plicable to the insular possessions; Congress and the Philippine Commission, therefore, had authority to take almost any action with regard to the opium question.10-

The first solution proposed was pragmatic: reinstitution of the opium monopoly, restriction of sales to Chinese, and application of the revenue to the immense task of public education.11 Commissioner of Public Instruction James Smith strongly favored this approach, and his recommendation was approved by Governor Taft. The bill started routinely through the machinery of the Philippine govern-ment, but between the second and final readings it was "electrocuted by Presidential lightning." 12 The Reverend Wilbur Crafts, leader of the International Reform Bureau in the United States, recalled that he heard almost casually of this moral outrage--a government pandering to opium craving by degenerate races. Quickly, by letter and by telegraph, he organized opposition: messages flowed into the 'White House asldng President Roosevelt to veto the bill. To profit from such ignoble trade would involve the United States in the support of indefensible vices. Bishop Brent also opposed the scheme on grounds identical with those he gave when returning donations earned through gambling." When the opposition first appeared, Secretary of War Root cabled Taft: "Hold opium monopoly bill. Further investigation. Many protests." 14 Soon opposition proved so strong that the bill was withdrawn.

The opium problem, however, remained. Taft appointed an in-vestigating committee to examine how neighboring regions of the Far East dealt with the problem." The committee, composed of Commissioner of Health Major Edward C. Carter, U.S. Army; Dr. José Albert, a prominent local physician; and Bishop Brent left Manila on 17 August 1903 to gather information in Japan, Formosa, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, Burma, and Java.

A few months later Brent wrote at length to Secretary Taft to prepare him for the committee's report and to give a personal ac-count of the investigation. Brent was disgusted that in Saigon "the French paid no attention whatever to the moral aspects of the ques-tion." But, more happily, "in the Straits Settlements we were met with that courtesy and interest that characterizes all the English officials with whom we have been brought into contact." Brent con-cluded, "the only effective laws we have met with are those enacted by Japan for the main part of the Empire, and for Formosa, and it is somewhat after the pattern of what she has done that we will mold m.y suggestions." 16 The final report was submitted to the Governor on 15 June igo4. Its conclusions were relatively simple. For three years opium sales should become a government monopoly with only males over the age of 21 licensed to smoke. After gradually reducing individual rations, opium and opiates would be totally prohibited except for medicinal purposes. The report rejected con-trol by high tariffs or licenses, local option, registration of dealers, and immediate prohibition. Provision should be made for hospital cures and instruction in the schools on the evils of opium, to dis-courage the young from forming the habit. Opium dens were to be closed and poppy cultivation prohibited. The report's authors con-sidered it in accord with contemporary medical opinion: the craving for opium is irrespressible and a habitué gradually increases his in-take until systematic intoxication leads to moral and physical de-generation. Although crimes committed under the influence of the drug were thought to be less violent than those stemming from alcohol, extreme craving caused by lack of opiates was connected with crime. Immediate prohibition, therefore, would not be wise or effective. The ultimate goal, however, should be total prohibition, as well as free treatment for habitués who wished to rid themselves of the vice. Meanwhile, to keep the opium abuse from spreading, some form of registration was needed.17

American domestic reaction to opium use in the Philippines was more drastic than the committees' recommendations. In March 1905 Congress ordered immediate opium prohibition for Filipinos except for medicinal purposes.18 In three years prohibition would apply to non-Filipinos. In the meantime, the Philippine Commission could make what provisions it wished to tide over the non-Filipino users until March 19°8. Of course, the three-year legal use of opium would apply chiefly to the Chinese. Congress thereby reinstituted an ethnic distinction which the investigating committee had opposed in the "interests of equity and justice." 19

The Philippine Commission decided on a program of expensive licenses for dealers and the registration of adult male Chinese habitual users. Beginning in October 1907, opium allotments to the registrants gradually decreased and sales ended completely in six months.20 Effectiveness of Philippine opium prohibition continued to be debated, and as late as 193o American investigators found that smoking opium was easily obtainable.21

OPIUM IN CHINA

Having resolved the opium question in the Philippines, Americans intent upon international control of narcotics now focused on the Sino-Indian opium trade. Since the late eighteenth century Indian opium had been shipped to China; from this trade India received considerable tax revenue. The moral implication of such commerce was often regretted in England as well as elsewhere. To reformers, opium smuggling was unfortunate, but to make the opium evil a revenue source was intolerable.

The British government feared that if the Indian opium trade were suspended, the great opium-producing nations of Persia and Turkey would quickly take it over or that China would merely grow more poppies. Such an event would make England moral, but the Indian government would have an unbalanced budget, and the Chinese would continue to smoke opium. Moreover, a British investigation into opium use in 1895 concluded that opium was more like the Westerner's liquor than a substance to be feared and abhorred.22

Britons who denounced the Sino-Indian traffic and Chinese who saw in opium a curse to their nation ( and a reason why China ac-cepted foreign domination ) found support in the Philippine Com-mission's view of opium as one of the gravest evils in the Orient. Shortly after the commission's findings were published, several other events accelerated the fight against the Sino-Indian opium trade. The Liberal Party won an overwhelming victory in the par-liamentary elections of January 1906. The Liberals' reform program included a long-standing recommendation to eliminate the Indian opium exports to China.23 As a result of parliamentary pressure, the British Foreign Office approached China, offering to abolish that trade to the extent that China decreased cultivation of poppies and use of opium. By the close of i906 agreement had been reached to reduce, under inspection, both the Chinese consumption and Indian shipments of opium by io percent annually, so that the whole trade could end in 1916.24 Chinese hatred of foreign domination spurred her to unexpected fulfillment of this agreement. These forces for modernization were equally antiforeign and anti-imperialist.23

The Boxer movement, which culminated in the Rebellion of i9oo, was the most violent expression of China's growing nationalistic and anti-imperialistic sentiment. The Boxers revered traditional values and reviled the new technologies, but other Chinese, many students, and some officials who coveted the scientific and military power of the West and Japan sought avenues in which China could move forward and surpass her enemies.

Simple hatred of foreign domination and yearning for techno-logical'progress united in opposition to opium addiction. Opium was accused of sapping the strength and initiative of the nation so that it lagged in education, science, technology, and military effectiveness. Students and other youth joined the antiopium campaign which had always been the official ( albeit never effectively enforced) position of the government. So many groups now combined to fight opium that a vigorous and sustained eradication program was possible for the first time.26 In 1906, strict regulations for reducing opium use were promulgated by the Dowager Empress. This popular action was in accord with the British-Chinese agreement. Although previously only the antiopium zealots had any optimism for the campaign, within a few years China's most severe critics agreed that the crusade had begun to succeed. The methods employed by the Chinese government were ruthless and could not have been carried out unless the government and Chinese society agreed that opium was an unmitigated evil. Fervent nationalism, which nominated opium as the scapegoat for a multitude of humiliations, was an effective weapon against the narcotic.

THE AMERICAN RESPONSE TO CHINESE ADDICTION

Chinese in the United States received some of their worst treatment during America's period of expansion in igo4 in the Far East. Tension between China and the United States reached a climax over the determination of Congress to exclude Chinese laborers. Brutality in the United States against Chinese travelers and immigrants of all kinds furnished ammunition to the anti-imperialists in China.27 With an inadequate army, and knowing that burning the American Embassy would only bring back the marines, Chinese merchants protested by organizing a voluntary embargo against American goods in 1905.29 Although formally disavowed by the Chinese government, the embargo was popular and in certain trading areas effective. The growth of the embargo, and a fear of what total cessa-tion of trade would mean to those who thirsted after the enaless Chinese market, agitated American traders. President Roosevelt privately admitted the justice of the Chinese protest but felt it unmanly to allow America to be pushed around: he asked Congress for $100,000 to send troops to the Far East.29

On 2.4 July 1906, after the embargo had begun to take effect and while British and Chinese opposition to opium accelerated, Bishop Brent wrote to Roosevelt urging an international meeting of the United States, other great powers with interests in the Far East, and Japan to help China with its opium struggle. Only such concerted action, he pleaded, could shut off the flood of opium into China and make effective the forthcoming opiate prohibition in the Philippines.30

Roosevelt's initial response was favorable. The proposal was well timed to ameliorate the tension between China and the 'United States, and an international meeting was one of Roosevelt's favored methods to promote the United States into the ranks of the foremost powers. Soon the Roosevelt-inspired Second Hague Peace Conference was to convene; Roosevelt had just completed negotiations at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to bring an end to the Russo-Japanese War. A humanitarian movement to ease the burden of opium in China would help his long-range goals: to mollify Chinese resentment against America, put the British in a less favorable light, and support Chinese antagonism against European entrenchment.31  A less sanguine Secretary of State Elihu Root went along with the plan.

After most nations with possessions in the Far East had accepted the American invitation, the State Department requested of Congress $20,000 for appointment of three commissioners to investigate the international opium evil and prepare for the conference.32  Who would take charge of this work for the State Department? Ideally the man should be familiar with the region and also with the problem of opium from a scientific point of view. Such a person lived in Washington, the dashing, ebullient Dr. Hamilton Wright.33 . Dr Wright had previously worked in the Far East, setting up a laboratory in the Straits Settlements to study tropical diseases. He had gained some fame by discovering (erroneously ) that beriberi was an infectious ailment. Even more than research, Wright had always enjoyed the political side of medical work. In 1899 his marriage to Elizabeth Washburn, member of a politically prominent family, opened many doors and advanced his hopes for a career.34
Wright became enthusiastically involved with opium and was dubbed the father of American narcotic laws. He later recalled that his appointment seemed casual good luck:

My first intimation that there was to be an American Opium Commission came to me from O'Loughlen [Chicago Tribune correspondent Cal O'Laughlin]. I met him on Scott Circle on the morning of May 1st (1908]. We passed the time of day and he then asked me in his usual direct way if I would like to be a member of an opium commission about to be appointed by President Roosevelt. I inquired about it, could not get much information as O'L did not have much. But I saw at a glance that it was bound to be a large and extensive bit of work and I said that certainly I would like to be a member. O'L said that he thought b that Roosevelt wanted me to serve and that I could see [presidential secretary] Loeb about it. I did so shortly thereafter at the White House offices."35

As another delegate to the commission, the President appointed Dr. Charles C. Tenney, secretary to the American Legation at Peking, a former missionary who had helped the Chinese to achieve educational reforms. Tenney strongly supported the Chinese anti-opium campaign and condemned the British for their immoral trade with China.36

The chairmanship was tendered to judge Thomas Burke, one of Seattle's most prominent citizens, but for unknown reasons he de-clined it. Then the State Department turned to the originator of the conference proposal. Bishop Brent, who was also being urged by Roosevelt and Taft to transfer to the bishopric of Washington, D.C., accepted the chairmanship in July 1908, two years after his recommendation to the President. The three delegates, although residing in Washington, Manila, and Peking, began coordinating efforts for the conference scheduled for the first day of 1909 in Shanghai.

In a short time Dr. Wright devoured what information the State Department and the Library of Congress held on the subject of opium. But his debut with the Federal bureaucracy was a grave portent of his future diplomatic career. Hearing that Bishop Brent on a midyear trip to the United States might visit the White House to discuss delegation matters, Wright sent the President a Lemo-randum on the general opium situation. This direct communication to the President reflected Wright's view of his role in government: a subordinate in the State Department because of technicalities, he was in reality independent of formalities—a distinguished scientist trying to accomplish quickly and efficiently an important political assignment.

Secretary of State Root, to whom Roosevelt turned over Wright's memorandum for comment, did not share Wright's perception. To Root, this attempt to attract the attention of the President would only confuse consideration of the subject and was a nuisance. "Dr. Wright should report to the State Department under which he is serving," admonished Root. "If Wright would go on and attend to his business the information he acquires will be used in the proper place." 37

Soon VVright launched a national survey to collect information on the use of opium and its derivatives in the United States. He sent hundreds of questionnaires to prisons, police departments, boards of health and pharmacy, and morphine manufacturers, and he visited a number of cities to examine for himself the use and control of opiates. Wright's frenetic activity was evoked by the State De-partment's request to other nations for such information. He thought the Americans should lead the way.38

Another responsibility of the convening nation was to have ex-emplary opium laws. Here there was a more serious difficulty, for while calling on other nations to aid in eliminating the opium prob-lem, the United States had no national laws limiting or prohibiting importation, use, sale, or manufacture of opium or coca leaves and their derivatives. This situation simply reflected the traditional con-stitutional reservation of police powers to the states. Nevertheless, the lack of a federal law embarrassed the commission officials, who believed that other nations would not understand the intricacies of the American Federal system.39 Wright and Root wanted federal anti-narcotic legislation before the Shanghai meeting, only a few months away.

Wright may have believed it necessary to stress the evil of opium in America in order to secure passage of domestic legislation. His statistics were usually interpreted to maximize the danger of addiction, dramatize a supposed crisis in opiate consumption, mobilize fear of minorities, and yet never waver from the exuberant patriotism which colored the crusade for the Shanghai Conference." An example of Wright's patriotic interpretation of evidence is found in a letter to Brent announcing that an enormous amount of op. ium and its derivates and cocaine was supplied to the army and navy, but that he had been assured that the drugs had been stolen by unscruimlous persons in the medical department and sold sur-reptitiously in our larger cities.41

In New England, particularly in his adopted Maine, Wright saw a close relationship between Prohibition and the use of opiates: in teetotaling states morphine sales over the previous ten years had increased 15o percent.42 Nationally, patent medicines containing opiates had decreased in sales between 25 and 50 percent since the pure food laws went into effect.43 His study also uncovered the existence "ten or fifteen years ago" of opium joints in Boston and New York operated by "Harvard students and students of our larger universities." 44

Except for a brief contretemps between Wright and Root over travel expenses, all seemed to be going well for the American delegation. The commission continued to grow into a representative group. Persia and Turkey, which produced most of the opium introduced into the Far East, were invited ( Persia accepted) and at the last moment Italy and Austria-Hungary asked to be included.

Enactment of a federal law regulating opiates was the only prob-lem that remained after the survey. But Wright and others were soon caught in a bind as they considered legislative programs• to close all loopholes meant offending pharmacists, manufacturers, and physicians by a multitude of detailed controls; easing up on the controls would provide ways for the unscrupulous dealer to continue his evil trade. And then, of course, a perennial problem continued to complicate the matter—the federal government had limited police powers. The State Department thought the most likely prohibition to gain quick congressional approval would be a ban on imported smoking opium. With smoking opium as the target, planning moved quickly forward.

Secretary of State Root, one of the ablest legal minds of his period, tried to make the prohibition as simple as possible. He proposed to Congress in 1908 a combination of the legislation pertaining to the import of opiates into the Philippines ( of March i9o5 ) and the standard statute used in the prevention of illegal imports. He modified the Philippine legislation to make it possible for citizens to import opiates other than smoking opium.45

Root made no claim that he was proposing a definitive law to deal with the opium problem in the United States. No new meihods of enforcement were proposed, and only the importation of opium for smoking was actually outlawed. A simple and broadly acceptable approach was mandatory if the United States was ,"to have legislation on this subject in time to save our face in the conference at Shanghai." 46 When the Act was approved ( 9 February 19°9), the American delegation proudly and with dramatic flourish announced the victory to the commission, then in session.47

That this first federal antinarcotic legislation was largely a matter of face-saving is demonstrated in an exchange between the head of the Agriculture Department's Bureau of Chemistry, Dr. Harvey Wiley, and the State Department in the fall of  1908. Dr. Wiley oversaw the enforcement of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and was widely considered the chief architect of that progressive legislation. The State Department requested that Wiley examine a bill proposed to outlaw smoking opium imports.48 Not realizing the propaganda purposes of the legislation, Dr. Wiley replied that a new law was unnecessary since Section 11 of the Pure Food and Drug Act made provision for the banning of any imported drug that was dangerous to the health of the people of the United States.49 A quick response from Assistant Secretary Robert Bacon informed him that banning itself was not so essential as the enactment of specific anti-opium legislation to prove the nations' sincerity in Shanghai.50

As the State Department maneuvered the legislation through Congress before the Shanghai meeting convened, Brent and Wright made their separate ways to Manila where they were to confer on plans for the meeting. After stopping in San Francisco to investigate the narcotic problem there, Wright again reminded the State Department of the importance of a bill to abolish smoking opium, although he knew the more serious problem was domestic abuse of narcotics in all forms.51 With reference to the larger issue, he asserted that manufacturers were ready to agree to the recording of drug sales by Internal Revenue Bureau tax stamps. Pharmacists would likewise be required to account for all drug dispensing. Such records would enable state officials with police powers to locate trends and areas of abuse so that current state laws could be effectiv.ely enforced or stronger ones enacted. Curiously, he made no mention of the physician's role in providing narcotics or creating addiction, although this was a concern to other reformers.

Wright spent December in the Philippines with Bishop Brent. A small problem, but typical of the situations he created, arose when he desired to confer with the Philippine government's Secretary of the Interior Department, Dean Worcester. Wright maintained his rank was equal to that of a minister and that Worcester should visit him; Worcester countered that a secretary of the Philippine De-partment had the rank of ambassador, and so Wright should come to him." It is unclear whether these men ever met. Wright and Brent moved on to Shanghai and the opening of the Shanghai Commission.

The Shanghai Opium Commission

The commission convened on the first of February, having been postponed for a month out of respect for the death of the Dowager Empress. Originally Brent had hoped for a conference, a diplomatic meeting that could lead to official action by represented govern-ments. At the request of Great Britain and the Netherlands, how-ever, the meeting was ranked as a commission, a fact-finding body which could make only recommendations and not commitments."53 Brent was chosen chairman and conducted the meeting in a conciliatory spirit, seeking to obtain unanimous support for the final resolutions. Attempting to please all nations led to less dogmatic stands than Brent desired, but this plan had the advantage of creating at least a moral commitment, so the Americans thought, to a set of resolutions. Accordingly, the resolutions were later used in the United States to pressure Congress and other groups to fulfill "America's pledges" to the rest of the world. The commission and the resolutions also helped inaugurate an American tradition in narcotic control—enactment of strict domestic legislation in the United States as an example to other nations.

Problems that still plague international control of narcotic traffic appeared at the 1909 meeting. Although thirteen nations were repre-sented, Turkey did not attend and Persia appointed a mere local merchant to represent its interests. Most nations were mildly in-terested in the subject but unwilling to exert much effort for non-medical prohibition as proposed by the United States; it was im-possible to get general agreement that the use of opium for other than medicinal purposes was evil and immoral."54The 6autious attitude of most nations increased the American delegates' deter-mination to prove their sincerity with solid legislation and dramatic action to control narcotics. Their assumption was that if other nations controlled their internal growth, manufacture, and export of narcotics, the United States would be freed from its burdens, since the poppy and the coca leaf had never been grown in sig-nificant commercial quantities in America. Later Wright told influential congressmen that when other nations took the strong stand he advocated for American domestic control of narcotics, our customs service would be cheaper, since fewer agents would be required to protect the nation from smuggling.55 The desire to show the others, to prove America's good intentions, and to provide an example all supported the new campaign for strict federal narcotic laws.

The Shanghai Opium Commission met for almost four weeks. Although initially wary, the Chinese delegates eventually expressed their country's appreciation at being treated as an equal in a con-ference dealing with a Chinese question. Apparently this was the first such meeting in which China was afforded equal status.56 Delegates who had prepared reports of conditions in their own countries presented them. Resolutions were debated. The British were unwilling to open discussion on the Sino-Indian opium agreements, since India strongly objected to any changes in the profitable trade and Britain felt that it was a matter between London and Peking. Persia, whose commercial representative contributed little to the discussion, had accepted the invitation at a late date and had not had time to prepare a national report.

The resolutions were merely recommendations; they would never be submitted for ratification to the governments represented. Given this limitation, they did articulate some of the American sentiment, though they were usually qualified. For example, Resolution Two called on each government to take measures for the gradual suppression of opium smoking with due regard to the varying circumstances of each country concerned. In the light of near unanimous agreement that opium for other than medicinal uses should be prohibited "or carefully regulated," each nation was called upon by Resolution Three to "reexamine" its own laws. Resolution Four, which Wright later boasted to Congress was the delegation's prime achievement ( although there was no significant opposition ), stated that nations could not export opium to other nations whose laws prohibit the importation. It would have been difficult to vote against this resolution but, on the other hand, no international system was established by which close control could be maintained.57

Particularly appealing to the Americans was the unanimous agreement that drastic measures should be taken by each govern-ment to control morphine and other opium derivatives. Originally a British resolution, amended slightly by the American delegation, it provided U.S. delegations and those involved in interim domestic maneuvers with ammunition for pursuing strict federal legislation: it would be humiliating for the United States to demand controls by other nations but have no exemplary laws of its own."58

UNITED STATES APPEAL FOR AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

The United States delegates had challenged themselves to prove America's sincerity. They hoped that another meeting would soon be called to design formal international cooperation to eliminate the narcotic menace; but the American proposal for a post-Shanghai conference was not accepted as one of the resolutions.59 Most other nations were not interested. Great Britain did not wish to enter a conference until trade between India and China could be brought into a more popular and defensible form. Turkey had not sent a representative to the Shanghai meeting and gave no promise of appearing at any later conference. Eventually other nations equally essential to international control, for example France and Germany, proved to have little interest in such a meeting. The prospect for quick agreement by any nation other than China to meet again on the subject of opium did not seem good.

Within a week of the Shanghai Commission's adjournment, the United States inaugurated a new president, William Howard Taft, who had strongly supported Brent's activities against opium and whose foreign policy goals were congenial to a plan for international control of narcotics.60 Taft had heartily encouraged the initial steps to call the Shanghai Commission, was familiar with the Orient, and had full confidence in Brent.

But within the State Department the wisdom of America's carrying the crusade beyond Shanghai was questioned, particularly by Huntington Wilson, chief of the newly created Far East Division and Wright's immediate superior. Another meeting had not been announced in the original planning for the commission, and it was beyond the department's purview to suggest to Congress domestic laws on drug control. Furthermore, in such a meeting America's own trade agreements with China might be brought up, and this possibility was no more attractive to the United States than discus-sion of the Sino-Indian trade agreement was to the British." Wright, angrily aware of Wilson's opposition to the United States delega-tion's moral commitment, believed that Wilson was jealous of his sudden prominence in Chinese affairs and frightened by the support given Wright's bid to be appointed minister to China the previous spring.62 Brent had written Theodore Roosevelt on Wright's behalf but was relieved when Wright lost out. His message to Wright was amicably blunt: the doctor should stick to medicine; he was not a diplomat and in a sensitive situation he was bound to "kick over the traces." "I would hate to see you enter diplomacy," concluded Brent, "without a pretty sure chance of success, which I doubt." Continuing in this vein later that year, Brent wrote to Wright, "A man who has the scientific ability that you have might continue along the lines in which he has already distinguished himself." 63 Wright chose not to take this advice.

Meanwhile, Taft's Secretary of State, Philander C. Knox, adopted a European custom and initiated aggressive diplomatic efforts to obtain financial concessidns in such areas of market expansion as China and Latin America. But this period of renewed American determination to penetrate the China market coincided with Chinese nationalism and resistance to new foreign investments, even though American offers promised the "methods and improvements of Western civilization." 64 Other nations that had hopes for large investments continued to oppose American interests.

Memories of the Chinese embargo and more recent demonstrations of resistance lo foreign investment gave Wright hope that an American call for another international meeting to assist China would be approved by the State Department. For this approval he had to go over Wilson's head and confer directly with the Secretary of State. To Wright's relief, Knox "realized in two minutes the importance of the affair and its bearing on his determined efforts to make the United States felt in the commercial life of China." Wright recalled telling the Secretary:

Our move to help China in her opium reform gave us more pre§tige in China than any of our recent friendly acts toward her. If we continue and press steadily for the Conference, China will recognize that we are sincere in her behalf, and the whole business may be used as oil to smooth the troubled water of our aggressive commercial policy there.

"Go ahead," replied the Secretary.65

During the next two years Wright rode to the high point of his diplomatic career. He carried on negotiations with Congress, drafted proposals for domestic antinarcotic laws, threatened and cajoled foreign ambassadors, and planned in intricate detail just what economic concessions to require of China in return for all the good that was being done for her.

The first step in calling the international conference, letters of invitation to the powers represented at Shanghai, were to be sent on September 1909. In the middle of August Wright rushed back to Washington from a brief vacation in Maine because he was uneasy. His concern was warranted, for Wilson, his bête noire, had mislaid the official documents. They were then found in Wilson's motorcar and sent.66 In the letters over the signature of Assistant Secretary A. A. Adee, Wright asked for a reply by 30 November. Privately he admitted he didn't see why the conference could not meet at least by the following May 1910 ). Anticipating quick re-sults at home and abroad, he belittled the fainthearted Wilson, who thought it would take two years to bring the conference into reality. Wright worked feverishly at drafting domestic legislation, kept the zealous reformers from getting too impatient, and thoroughly enjoyed himself.67 But Wilson had correctly estimated that two years would pass before the conference opened.

The program for the conference was patterned on the Brussels Convention of 1890 concerning the slave and liquor traffic in Africa. The provisions of that convention had been enforced by a permanent commission, just as Wright expected that an international board would oversee adherence to the agreements reached at the opium conference. Britain, he believed, having insisted in its treaties with China upon monitoring the diminishing Sino-Indian opium trade and China's elimination of domestic poppy growth, would make a similar demand of any other international agreement.68 Since,without British cooperation no solid results would be possible, every whisper from Whitehall was carefully examined for the divination of Great Britain's real intentions.

Dr. Wright considered American demands for currency reform in China, as well as a number of other financial improvements to strengthen the Chinese economy, as only fair requests consideling what the United States was trying to do for China."69 Economic reforms were desired by American investors and had been a prime goal of the State Department.

DOMESTIC LEGISLATION: THE FOSTER ANTINARCOTIC BILL

Wright believed that the Shanghai meeting gave the United States a moral obligation to appear with a clean slate before asking other nations to enact drastic legislation. He was quite ready to frame such laws, but he faced strong opposition even within the State Department. He had spent most of the summer of 19139 in Washing-ton trying to formulate a bill and gathering the data for a strong report to Congress when "he of the eolithic mind [Huntington Wilson] cried halt." 70 Wilson, having lost on the question of another conference, now argued that proposing domestic legislation was an unwarranted action by the State Department.

Frustrated by this block to his ambitious project, Wright saw no recourse but once again to take the question to Secretary of State Knox. The Secretary asked him to put in writing "not only its bearings on the home problem, but as it affected our foreign relations especially with China." In a week or so Knox gave his approval and Wright was back on the rails.71

By late 1909, Wright had a plan for domestic legislation. He decided to seek the control of drug traffic through federal powers of taxation. His bill would require every drug dealer to register, pay a small tax, and record all transactions. The drug container would be required to carry a revenue stamp; interstate traffic would be pro-hibited between individuals who had not paid the tax. Wright's bill spelled out heavy penal provisions, and possession of drugs other than those specified in the bill would constitute evidence for conviction. State boards of pharmacy and local and municipal authorities would have access to information about the transactions so that they might enforce "the proper relations that should exist between the physician, the dispensing druggist, [and] those who have some real need of the drugs." Significantly, in view of future trends in narcotic control, Wright believed in 19°9 that it was impossible for the fgderal government to regulate such a relationship.72

Wright submitted a draft to Representative James R. Mann of Illinois, chairman of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. Mann had shown interest in legislation to preserve or regain morality: the Supreme Court would in 1913 uphold legislation associated with his name to prevent the transporation of women across State lines for immoral purposes. Mann doubted that Wright's tax approach, with its burdensome details falling on the retail druggist, was likely to succeed, so he recommended alternative legislation based on the regulation of interstate commerce."73

The bill which Mann preferred to Wright's had been introduced by Mann in the House in May igo8, at the request of retail druggists in cooperation with the Agriculture Department, and had failed to pass.

Wright's proposed legislation was eventually introduced on 3o April 1910 by Representative David Foster of Vermont, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.74 The direct antecedent of the Harrison Act, the Foster bill was designed to uncover all traffic in opiates, cocaine, chloral hydrate, and cannabis regardless of the minute quantities that might be involved. Records would be scrupulously kept, bonds given, and reports rendered as required. Violations were to be punished by not less than $500 or more than $5,000 and for no less than one year's imprisonment or more than five. Nothing in the law stipulated any such restriction on the retail distribution of habit-forming drugs as limiting sales or prescriptions to medical needs. Nor did the bill allow any exemption for patent medicines or household remedies containing relatively small amounts of the controlled drugs. Therefore any purchase of a narcotic would require tax stamps and record keeping under very severe penalties for error or omission. Perhaps the ulterior goal was to make such retail sales more troublesome than profitable and thereby eliminate the trade.75

On 31 May 1910, when Wright had once thought that the Intenational Conference would convene, he appeared before the House Committee on Ways and Means to support the Foster bill.76 Most of the arguments presented orally were contained in the Shanghai Commission report, which had been recently sent to Congress with a message from the President recommending appropriate domestic legislation.77 The report was designed to impress Congress with the need for legislation and for an appropriation of $25,000 to finance federal "efforts to mitigate if not entirely stamp out the opium evil." 78 The Shanghai meeting was portrayed as extremely hopeful and much to the credit of the United States, but incomplete and looldng to Congress for the legislation that would permit the United States "to see the thorough solution of not only China's opprqssive opium problem, but that of other countries not so heavily burdened" (Report, p. 75 ). As proof that the country had a serious narcotic problem the report claimed that since 186o importation of crude opium had risen more rapidly than the American population ( p. 38). State legislation was unable to stem the importation of narcotics.79

The severity of the bill's penalties as compared with, for example, the District of Columbia Pharmacy Act, was explained by the fear that even such seemingly harmless opium preparations as laudanum and paregoric, sold to minors in many states, could lead to addic-tion ( p. 59). The report depicted the pharmacy and medical pro-fessions as untrustworthy: many pharmacists sold addictive drugs indiscriminately and many unscrupulous physicians dispensed habit-forming drugs in large quantities from their offices (p. 59). "It would be wise," the report recommended, "for state laws to make possession of drugs except for medicinal purposes, evidence for conviction." 80 Information gathered in Wright's national survey indicated that among physicians about 2. percent and among nurses about percent were habitués of some form of opium. Only o.7 percent of other professional classes and 0.2 percent of the general population were addicted ( p. 47). Such drugs were practically unknown in colleges and universities; opium smoking had not af-fected servicemen who had been in the Far East during the previous ten years.81 Wright expressed embarrassment at the United States' consumption of opium as compared with European nations; the abstinence of the latter was due, he felt, to their strict national laws and their "good sense" (p. 46 ).

In regard to opium smoking in the United States, Wright reported that the Chinese were the primary source of infection, but that it had then spread from white to white and from black to black. He did not want to engage in scare tactics about the spread of this habit from the Chinese to the American population, but he did observe that "one of the most unfortunate phases of the habit of smoking opium in this country [was] the large number of women who have become involved and were living as common-law wives or cohabiting with Chinese in the Chinatowns of our various cities." 82

Weight did not stress the dangers of opium smoking since Con-gress had obligingly enacted the recent law in time for the Shanghai meeting. The menace of cocaine was more serious, however, al-though it had been a national problem for only about twenty years. Wright assured Congress that cocaine was more appalling in its effects than any other drug (Report, p. 48) . Most citizens lcnew of its general harmful effects, but its identification with the Negro had not received due attention. Why Wright thought this identification had not been sufficiently publicized is unclear, but he warned of cocaine's- "encouragement . . . among the humbler ranks of the Negro population in the South." In the South the cocaine problem among Negroes greatly troubled law enforcement officers, he stated. The "lower order of working Negro [being] not willing, as a rule, to go to much trouble or send to any distance for anything," in-toxication by the drug made "it certain that it was brought directly to him from New York and other northern states where it [was] manufactured." Wright also reported that contractors gave the drug to their Negro employees to get more work out of them.83

Criminal classes everywhere were starting to use cocaine, es-pecially those concerned in the white slave traffic. Cocaine use threatened to creep into the higher social ranks of the country. Should anyone doubt the need for stricter control of this substance, the report concluded, "it has been authoritatively stated that cocaine is often the direct incentive to the crime of rape by the Negroes of the South and other sections of the country" (pp. 48-49).

The purpose of Wright's strong statements in regard to cocaine and Negroes was, of course, to encourage the legislation he sought, partly by motivating hesitant southern Democrats who feared any precedent of federal involvement in the police powers reserved to the states. But the fear of Negro cocaine users could as easily be found reported in northern and southern newspapers and in medical journals as in State Department reports and congressional hearings.84

The Foster bill's goal was to bring the "whole traffic and the use of [habit-forming] drugs into the light of day and thereby create a public opinion against the use of them." 85 The traffic was deemed so serious that "quite io percent of the retail drug stores of the United States would be put out of business if the illicit sales of the drugs were stopped." 86 Therefore, because the nation was being debauched by habit-forming drugs, and also because the Shanghai declarations resulted from American initiative, it was "the bounden duty of our government to be the first to enact [drug-control] legis-lation." 87 In spite of the report and the obligations Wright enumer-ated, no action was taken by the committee before summer adjournment.

In the elections of November igio the Democrats gained control of the House for the first time in eighteen years. A substantial interval would pass before the newly elected members took office on 4 March, but ranking Democrats, mostly from the South, quickly assumed a greater importance in the future of any legislation. Perhaps that accounts for Wright's even more open fear-mongering on the dangers of the Negro cocaine addict when hearings on the Foster bill reopened.

DEFEAT OF THE FOSTER BILL

The December sessions heard arguments in support of strict control of habit-forming drugs, and several members of the drug trades favorably inclined toward the Foster bill appeared at the hearings. After the Christmas recess the opposition was heard. A week before hearings were resumed, Wright came to New York to conciliate doubtful medical and pharmaceutical interests. The drug-trade leaders gathered at the home of Dr. William J. Schieffelin, president of the National Wholesale Druggists Association ( NWDA ) and a prominent member of various national reform movements.88 After this meeting, trade representatives hoped that modifications would be made in the bill. Druggists, however, continued their attacks. The Drug Trade Section of the New York Board of Trade came out in opposition to the Foster bill, which it now described as pleasing no one except Dr. Wright. The section also correctly predicted that no action would be taken during the last session of the 61.st Congress.89

Attitudes toward narcotic control varied considerably within the drug industry. Restrictions on small amounts of narcotics that could make a best seller out of an otherwise slow item (mainly proprietary medicines) were opposed by retail drug interests. Legislation that would permit sales of narcotics only to pharmacists was opposed by manufacturers of medicine exclusively for dispensing physicians.

On the final day of hearings, 11 January 1911, a message from the President was transmitted to Congress reiterating the obliga-tion of the United States "to see that its house is in order before the International Opium Conference ,meets in The Hague in 3.91.1." Drafted principally by Wright, this Message on the Opium Traffic declared that enactment of the Foster bill was a "pressing necessity" as a consequence of drug abuse in the United States as well as American moral responsibilities undertaken before other nations.90

The House Committee on Ways and Means devoted the day to the Foster bill, providing the opportunity for the first extended debate before Congress between interests concerned with narcotic control. Opponents spoke first, then supporters. A representative of the NWDA, Dr. Charles West, began the attack. He opposed the inclusion of any drugs other than opium, morphine, cocaine, and their derivatives. Cannabis, he said, was not what might be called a habit-forming drug. He attacked the use of stamps and labels at every turn, arguing that additional help would be needed to sep-arate orders, check inventories, and keep records; a tremendous financial burden would be placed on the jobbers and wholesalers. Proprietaries should be exempted as provided in many state laws. The word "knowingly" should be added for protection against an unintentional violation of the act. Dr. West felt the penalties were excessively severe. After a few other criticisms he endorsed the goal of the law, "but what we want is a simple law, one that can be enforced and will not inflict too much hardship on the trade." 91 At the hearings of 11 January, Dr. West was questioned by Representative Francis Burton Harrison (future sponsor of the Harrison Narcotic Act), Harrison focused on cola soda pop. "What about this material they call Coca-Cola?" he asked the NWDA representative, "Isn't it a habit-forming drink?" Dr. West agreed that it was a habit-forming drink and that perhaps Pepsi-Cola was in the same class. Rep. Harrison then stated that coca leaves should be included in the bill, since from them were made "Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola and all those things that are sold to Negroes all over the South."

Representative Henry Boutell suspected that a strict law would create bootleggers and not solve the addiction problem. Harrison countered that if less were sold, the public would develop less of a craving and thus not have much need for the bootlegger. The chair-man, Representative Sereno Payne, suggested one good result of elaborate and stringent provisions: "regulation . . . would . . . make it so unprofitable to sell the stuff [proprietaries] that whole-sale druggists might go out of that line of business." Dr. Schieffelin took a more positive view of the legislation. He wanted legitimate druggists to handle drugs with clean hands; bootleggers could have the other traffic. He made a sharp distinction between alcohol on the one hand and opiates and cocaine on the other; he considered the latter substances a great danger, leading probably to death and almost certainly to insanity. Agreeing with the critics who had spoken, he suggested that labeling requirements be replaced. by a system of registry numbers which each transactor could place on the containers. He also supported some provision exempting pro-prietaries containing limited amounts of narcotics.

Charles Woodruff, a lawyer representing six large drug manufac-turers, denied that the industry was thoughtlegs about public wel-fare: his firms had for years worked to keep morphine and later cocaine out of the hands of dope fiends and disreputable persons. Multiple regulations would just make "a goat out of the manufac-turer. The welfare of this country depends on the welfare of the manufacturer." Dr. William Muir of Brooklyn, speaking for the New York Pharmaceutical Association, showed the plight of the honest retailer. Cannabis, for example, was an ingredient of corn cures. Every time a corn cure was sold, the druggist would have to make a record of it. The druggists weren't interested in helping collect statistics for future legislation, a goal suggested for the law.

Dr. Muir warned the committee that retail druggists were now up in arms against the bill: only the day before five hundred druggists in Brooklyn had met and opposed the measure. He disputed esti-mates on prevalence of drug abuse. Declaring that education could control the problem, Muir pointed to a decline in the sale of co-caine, which he attributed to public enlightenment. Just because opium causes some harm, he argued, is no reason to stamp it out; one should think of the good it does in relieving pain. "A good many people are killed by automobiles: but there is [also] a good deal of pleasure gotten out of them," he said. Representative Payne, in response to Muir, summarized the goal of federal legislation: not to limit opium's pain-relieving uses but to eliminate the use of drugs 'prepared to satisfy a habit."

The American Pharmaceutical Association was represented by the chairman of its Committee on National Legislation, Henry B. Hynson. Amendments recommended by the association clearly illustrated its willingness to go beyond most drug-interest groups in the search for effective reforms. The association criticized the list of* uncontrolled drugs as too short; it wanted synthetic drugs to be listed and heroin to receive specific mention. Hynson pin-pointed some ambiguities in the bill's definitions and further em-phasized the association's desire to have a strong law by warning the committee that if they added the word "knowingly" it would "envalidate the whole matter." Yet, as regards the possible police pow-ers of such an act, he added, the several states should retain control of the writers of prescriptions within their borders.

Charles B. Towns, operator of a drug and alcohol hospital in New York, also defended the Foster bill. Towns attacked the veracity of the witnesses representing the wholesalers, saying he could name names and cite instances of habitués' purchases from the wholesalers. Towns opposed almost all stimulants. He greatly feared opium's effects on the mind and body. Anyone could get addicted to morphine by taking ¼ grain daily for three weeks, no matter what his character. Codeine was especially dangerous, and as for cannabis; "there is no drug in the Pharmacopoeia today that would produce the pleasurable sensations you would get from cannabis . . . and of all the drugs on earth I would certainly put that on the list." Moreover, experience had convinced him that it was a habit-forming drug. He believed that federal and state laws must cooperate and complement each other in the control of habit-forming drugs. Although he had noted a decline in the use and sale of cocaine, he figured the legitimate need for the drug to be very small compared to the amount being sold in the United States. He agreed with pharmaceutical representatives that 50 percent of the addictions resulted from overzealous physicians who prescribed habit-forming drugs.

From the Bureau of Chemistry came Dr. Wiley and his assistant Dr. L. F. Kebler, who appeared with samples of narcotic-containing proprietary medicines including addiction remedies and infants' soothing syrups. Some preparations were from physicians who operated opium-cure sanitaria or who sold bottled opium cures through the mail. Since these "cures" contained large amounts of narcotics, Dr. Kebler contested the wisdom of the druggists who wanted to exempt proprietaries from the general law.92

Dr. Wiley wanted a prohibitory law, but he would acceyt less. Caffeine should be added to the list, as well as acetanihd, anti-pyrene, and phenacetin. He belittled the contention that large firms could not keep accurate records of habit-forming drugs (p. 87).

The drug trade's chief requirements—provisions for exempt proprietaries, simple record keeping, and softer penalties—had to be met if federal laws controlling or monitoring the traffic in dangerous drugs were to be passed. Two weeks after the hearings, Representative Payne wrote to Huntington Wilson hinting that the Foster bill might not be acted upon in this last session of the 61st Congress because of the time pressure. He chided the delay caused by trying to decide who would be honored by introducing the bill—Mr. Mann or Mr. Foster.93

Wright remained optimistic, but the drug trades had won. The American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record of February 1913. headlined the decision simply "Foster Bill Killed." In his enthusiasm and political naïveté, Wright had not taken into consideration the great threat his bill posed to everyday routine and sales in the drug trades. The Foster bill's uncompromising provisions were impressive; not a milligram of a habit-forming drug would have been lost in the legitimate trade had this bill been passed and enforced. But such an altruistic bill could not be accepted by manufacturers and local druggists. Smoking opium could be denied to the Chinese, but babies were not to be protected from narcotized "Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup" or "Hooper's Anodyne, the Infant's Friend."

THE HAGUE CONFERENCE

Congress had failed Wright, and now prospects for the great inter-national conference were filled with uncertainty. Delay after delay marked planning for its opening session. Wright and some of the State Department staff began to suspect a conspiracy against the American crusade. He was tempted to push a little harder, but from the American Embassy in Paris came the warning that the other nations were tired of American insistence. Now as Ambassador to France, Robert Bacon reminded the anxious planners that "every-one else has so much more at stake than we, they cannot be driven too hard." 94

The doctor turned to publicity for support of the American proposals. He told his brother-in-law Frank Baldwin of the Outlook that he was willing to write an article on the economic aspects of the opium question, but the Outlook editors preferred something more "picturesque" on opium; for example, "selling girl babies into slavery." 95 Wright rejected that idea. Dr. Lambert's aid was enlisted to get Theodore Roosevelt, the Outlook's contributing editor, to write an article on opium."96 Nothing ever came of this, although Wright tried constantly to get at least a stirring editorial paragraph out of Roosevelt.

Even more disheartening delays by Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands suggested that these essential nations did not want an early conference if any at all. In August 191i, Wright sought out the Dutch minister to the United States, then vacationing in Maine, and threatened ( with Knox's approval) that if the Netherlands continued to procrastinate, the United States might convene the conference in Washington. This forceful action seemed to increase the rate of note-exchanging among the powers. In early September Wright was back in Maine telling the vacationing British ambassador James Bryce that the United States had received a great deal of information indicating a conspiracy to delay the conference. Bryce agreed to urge London to inform the Netherlands that Great Britain was now ready to attend the conference. Wrighes pressure tactics proved to be unnecessary in this instance because one day prior to his meeting with Bryce Great Britain had informed the Netherlands of its readiness. The German Empire was spared one of Wrighes persuasive visits, for on the day he was to embark for Berlin, Germany agreed to attend. Perhaps these experiences en-couraged Dr. Wright's style of blunt diplomacy.97

On the first day of December 191 the International Conference on Opium convened at The Hague. America sent two of its former Shanghai delegates, Bishop Brent and Dr. Wright, and added Henry J. Finger, a prominent California pharmacist who had been recom-mended by Knox's physician brother. Wright was mortified by this choice. He had hoped for an expert on international law if he could not have Professor Jeremiah Jenks ( whose economic plans Wright so admired ).

Bishop Brent, through his acquaintance with the Archbishop of Canterbury and other leaders of the antiopium movement, had smoothed British acceptance of the American-inspired conference. At one time he was so persuaded by his British friends, who thought that Wright antagonized other nations vvith his emphasis on Ameri-can righteousness and implications of foreign duplicity, that he advised Wright to quit the antinarcotic campaign for the sak'e of the international movement. Wright refused.98

Chosen to chair the conference, Bishop Brent again symbolized the American moral stewardship that brought twelve nations to The Hague to consider ways to regulate international narcotic traffic. Turkey still declined to attend, and Austria–Hungary, although present in Shanghai, chose not to return. Those assembled at The Hague had individual concerns that influenced their actions. England, proud that a new agreement with China made provision for rapid termination of the odious opium traffic with India, now pressed the conference for action against cocaine and morphine.99 Germany sought to protect its giant chemical industry from an agreement to limit production if that agreement was less than unanimous among the manufacturing nations—there was no reason to curtail a profitable business if another nation, perhaps Switzerland, were to take up the slack.

Portugal defended the opium industry in Macao, and Persia its own thriving poppy cultivation. The conference host, the Netherlands, was involved in the narcotic traffic in the Dutch East Indies. France was ambivalent; she received revenue from opium smoking in French Indochina but feared the reported increased use of potent opium derivatives in her colonial possessions. Japan assumed a position of ignorance with regard to charges of her illegal introduction of morphine and hypodermic syringes into China. Russia had a poppy-farming industry, but not of great size. Siam, on the other hand, processed a considerable amount of opium, and the problem and profits of opium were familiar.

Curiously, Italy insisted that the conference include the subject of Indian hemp as the price for her participation, but her delegation came only to the first day's session.100 Since nations other than the United States did not want to include hemp as a menacing drug, it was not thoroughly discussed. The most the American delegation was able to secure was an addendum to the Opium Convention, the "Protocol of Cloture," which read in regard to Indian hemp:

The Conference is of the unanimous opinion that it is advisable to study the question of Indian hemp from the statistical and scientific point of view, with a view to regulating its abuses, if the necessity of such a course makes itself felt, by internal legislation or by an international agreement.101

The United States delegation was disappointed that the Convention could not be put into effect upon ratification by the dozen contracting nations. The Americans were counseled to wait for adherence from the world's forty-six powers, particularly those deeply involved in the opium and cocaine traffic, such as the absent Turkey, Switzerlând, Bolivia, and Peru. The Germans protested that it was an unusual practice to frame a world convention with only twelve powers represented, that some procedure must be made for the signatures of other states: until those states took unanimous action there was no point in any one nation's acting against its own industrial or agricultural interests.

Germany then attacked the American delegation in a rather weak spot. What assurances could be given that, having signed and ratified the Convention, the United States would enact implementing legislation? Wright loftily replied that the good faith of the United States was a sufficient guarantee that Congress would pass the necessary legislation to enforce the Convention if Germany would sign and ratify it; but he knew by then that meaningful federal control would be very difficult to obtain.102 Yet here was one more instance in which enactment of exemplary domestic laws became necessary in order to avoid international embarrassment. Other nations already had more stringent domestic legislation than the United States. Even the notorious opium traffic in French Indochina was theoretically controlled by an elaborate set of rules and regulations. In Shanghai the United States delegation had ac-cepted an obligation to enact federal narcotic control. The pressure to live up to this standard of morality would be felt most heavily by the State Department and the President.

Chapter 3 of The Hague Opium Convention had a bearing on the movement for American narcotic legislation. It called for control of all phases of the preparation and distribution of medicinal opium, morphine, heroin, cocaine, and any new derivative that could be scientifically shown to offer similar dangers. Exempted from pro-posed control were preparations containing less than 0.2 percent morphine and less than percent heroin or cocaine. The contracting powers agreed to "endeavor" to control their own traffic in the above substances. The Convention placed the major burden of narcotic control on domestic legislation, and the apparent failure of this approach led in ten years to the Geneva Opium Conference, which shifted the locus of control to international restraints.103

China had a difficult role at The Hague. She wanted to protect her territorial integrity against other powers who argued that if China allowed importation of British opium she could not exclude that of other nations. They failed in this attempt to keep their opium traffic with China. Several articles of the final Convention embodied measures to aid China in her program against opium, such as closing opium divans in Chinese areas under extraterritorial control.

A mechanism was conceived for the signature and ratification of the Convention. It was agreed that all powers, not just those at the conference, must sign and ratify it before it could come into effect. The Netherlands would notify signatories of progress. If the signa-tures of all powers were not obtained by the last day of 1912, a second conference would be called for July 1913, and the Conven-tion was signed by the participating powers on 23 January 1912, and the first Hague Opium Conference ended. Efforts now were made to obtain signatures of the unrepresented nations. The United States had little difficulty in persuading the Latin American republics to sign the Convention. Even Peru with its considerable interest in coca production eventually adhered.

The Second Opium Conference met on 31 July 1913 to consider the report that thirty-four nations had signed, leaving twelve, includ-ing Turkey and Switzerland, still to be persuaded. The meeting lasted only eight days. At its close each nation that wished to deposit its ratification of the Convention before all nations had signed was permitted to do so. If at the end of 1913 the Convention remained incompletely signed, a third conference would be held at The Hague in 1914 to consider putting it into effect among those who had signed.

Since Bishop Brent did not choose to participate in the Second Conference in 1913, Hamilton Wright was chosen to head the American delegation. While the conference met, the second Balkan War, involving Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Romania, and Turkey, was being fought. All of these nations, incidentally, were among the twelve which still had not signed the Convention. The United States' Senate ratification was formally deposited at The Hague on lo December 1913, but when the year closed the Convention re-mained less than unanimously subscribed.

The United States requested and obtained postponement of the Third Conference, proposed for May 1914, in an attempt to get its own domestic legislation enacted before this perhaps final meeting. Yet, when the conference convened on 15 June, the United States still lacked domestic legislation, for the Harrison bill, having passed the House in the summer of 1913, was deadlocked in the Senate. Hamilton Wright was not selected even to attend the Third Con-ference,for reasons that will become apparent in the next chapter.

Endeavoring to salvage something tangible in spite of Germany's unwillingness to ratify unless other powers, especially Turkey, did so, the final Protocol of Cloture provided that the Convention might go into effect on 31 December 1914 among those signatory powers which had deposited ratifications. The conference closed on 25 June 1914, three days before the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Forty-four governments had signed the Convention: only Serbia and Turkey refused to do so. Less than half the signatories, however, had ratified it, and in the next five years only seven na-tions would put it into effect.104

NOTES

1 See C. Hoffman, "The Depression of the Nineties," J. Economic Hist. 16 : 137-64 (June 1956 ). The effects of the Depression, its frustrations, both economic and psychological, supported the aggressions of the Spanish-American War.

2 The China market's attractions, which proved to be almost completely illusory, have been described recently in T. McCormick's China Market (Chicago: Quandrangle, 1967). Beyond the larger goal of increasing American trade, some attention was directed specifically at opium, a Chinese import by 19oo almost solely in the hands of Great Britain. Samuel Merwin in a series of articles in Success magazine (Oct. 1907— April 1908), later published as Drugging a Nation: The Story of China and the Opium Curse (New York: Revell, 1908), claimed that immense amounts of human energy and material resources in China were absorbed by the opium habit. R. P. Chiles in predicting "The Passing of the Opium Habit" (The Forum, July 1911, pp. 36-37) noted that opium took up 7.5% of Chinese imports. Arnold H. Taylor attributes a major role to missionaries for creating and sustaining the anti-opium movement at the turn of the century: "American missionaries in the Far East . . . played the greatest part in inducing the United States to take the lead in the movement against the traffic ( American Diplomacy and the Narcotics Traffic, 1900-1939, Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1969, pp. 29-30).

3 G. E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of Modern America, 1900-1912 ( New York: Harper and Row, 1958), pp. 182, 186.

4 H. U. Faulkner, Politics, Reform, and Expansion, 1890-1900 ( New York: Harper and Row, 1959), p. 239.

5 F. P. Dunne, Mr. Dooley in Peace and War ( Boston: Small, Maynard, 1898), p. 43.

6 Mowry, Era, pp. 125, 167-69.

7 The standard biography is A. C. Zabriskie's Bishop Brent: Crusader for Christian Unity (Philadelphia: Westminister, 1948).

8 CHB to Bishops Potter, Doane, Satterlee, and Leonard, 28 Oct. .1901 ( BP, container 5). Bishop Brent saw himself in the tropics as a martyr, isolated from civilization, representing what was best in America in its most crucial sphere of activity. He insisted that the new diocese be properly outfitted, not for the bishop's vanity nor just for the Church's image, but for the good of the nation which he, in so many ways, represented. A cathedral, a substantial one, was needed because "hitherto the Filipino has estimated the value of the State through the Church." A committee of six laymen stepped forward to raise money for the Philippine Endowment Fund. J. Pierpont Morgan, whose banking services would receive the donations, headed the group which included the leading fund raiser of the Republican National Committee, Senator Marcus A. Hanna of Ohio. Morgan's committee informed potential donors that "American Christianity should be in a position to carry on such work among the natives as will convince them of the benevolent intention of the people of the United States." Other committee members were G. McC. Miller, J. I. Houghteling, W. H. Crocker, and S. Mather. The pamphlet distributed by the committee is dated March 1903 (BP, container 6).

9 The history of opium in the Philippines can be found in the Report of the Committee Appointed by the Philippine Commission to Investigate the Use of Opium and the Traffic Therein . . . , Bureau of Insular Affairs, War Dept., 1905, pp. 129-72 (hereafter cited as Philippine Opium Investigation); also see Arnold H. Taylor, Narcotics Traffic, pp. 31-45; P. D. Lowes, The Genesis of International Narcotics Control (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1966), pp. 102-06.

10 L. P. Beth, Development of the American Constitution, 1877-1917 (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), pp. 161-62.

11 A. H. Taylor, Narcotics Traffic, pp. 3-4o.

12 Rev. W. F. Crafts, Superintendent of the International Reform Bureau, Memorandum Concerning Concerted International Restraint of the Traffic in Intoxicants and Opium among Aboriginal Races, a pamphlet dated 22 Feb. 1907 (BP, container 9), p. 2.

13 One letter of refusal is CHB to Juan Preysler, Manager, Manila Jockey Club, 1 July 1903; the letter of justification and self-assurance is CHB to Bishop Hall, 20 July 1903 (BP, container 9).

14 Elihu Root to WHT, 14 June 1903, (Library of Congress: Elihu Root Papers).

15 Act of the Philippine Commission no. 800, 23 July 1903; amended by Act 812, 31 July 1903. Letter commissioning Bishop Brent, A. W. Fergusson, Executive Secretary, Government of the Philippine Islands, to CHB, 31 July 1903 (BP, container 6).

16 CHB to WHT, 6 Feb. 1904 (BP, container 6).

17 Philippine Opium Investigation, pp. 45-49.

18 Philippine Tariff Revision Act, 3 March 1905, 33 Stat. L. 944.

19 Philippine Opium Investigation, p. 47.

20 The ,commission asked Congress to reconsider its imposition of absolute prohibition after I March 1908. The commission believed that simply restricting opium use to Chinese would, because of the Exclusion Act, end the abuse of opium gradually and easilyas the smokers aged, returned to China, or reformed; but Congress did not modify its uncompromising stand (Philippine Commission Seventh Annual Report, /906, Bureau of Insular Affairs, War Dept. [GPO, 19071, part 1, p. 62). To carry out Congressional intentions, the commission enacted a system of licenses for habitual users and dealers (Act 1461 of the Philippine Commission, 8 March 1906). About 12,700 habitual users were given licenses. To the surprise of the commission, a year's search for users who wished to be cured of their habit located only ten applicants (Philippine Commission Eighth Annual Report, 1907, Bureau of Insular Affairs, War Dept. [GPO, 1907], part 2, p. 18). In 1907, for gradual reduction in opium use the commission provided for licensed opium dispensaries, and a 15% reduction of the original maintenance amount each month beginning with November 1907; on 1 March 1908, dispensing would end (Act 1761 of the Philippine Commission, 12 Oct. 1907). Both Acts specifically prohibited physicians from dispensing any form of opium to habitual users unless for a physical condition requiring it. Thus were established the earliest federal narcotic clinics, and based on the same principle of anti-maintenance as the New York City clinic of •1919. After Act 1761 the number of users volunteering or sent to hospitals for treatment increased but does not seem to have exceeded a thousand. The cure rate of opium smokers was reported as very high—"the admission of any patient a second time has been extremely unusual"—establishing, at least in print, the success of total narcotic prohibition (Philippine Commission Tenth Annual Report, 1909, Bureau of Insular Affairs, War Dept. [GPO, 1909], p. 102).
Bishop Brent proudly reported on the success of opium prohibition to the Shanghai Commission, in Report on Opium, Its Derivatives and Preparations for Presentation to the International Opium Commission Assembled at Shanghai, China, February, 1909 (Shanghai: Methodist Publishing House, n.d.), pp. 51-55, (BP, container 37). See also Taylor, Narcotics Traffic, pp. 43-45.

21 Early in opium prohibition the revenue services complained of having only one outdated revenue cutter, few customs agents, and of encountering bribery and public disinterest. In the United States the experiment was viewed more enthusiastically. Rep. James Mann, chairman of the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee of the House, announced enforcement in the Islands a success. But as time passed the ineffectiveness of prohibition was more realistically faced. In 1926, H. L. May, the American on the Permanent Central (Opium) Board of the League of Nations inspected various opium-using areas, including the Philippines, for the U.S. Foreign Policy Association. May called attention in the Philippines to the easy availability and low price of opium, commem allegations of collusion between smugglers and Island enforcement officials, low enforcement appropriations, and inadequate equipment. Other nations were becoming suspicious of American failure to provide statistics or other information, and May's frank disclosures did not allay doubts about the effectiveness of American narcotic prohibition in the site of its earliest enactment (Survey of Smoking Opium Conditions in the Far East, Opium Research Committee [New York: Foreign Policy Assoc.,
1927], pp. 15, 21L23).

22 For a history of the Indian-Chinese opium trade see D. E. Owen, British Opium Policy in China and India (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1934). Antagonism to the opium trade in the 19th century is described in Lowes, International Control, pp. 58-84. The Report of the Royal Commission on Opium, 7 vols., 1894-95, is analyzed by Owen, pp. 311-28.

23 See Lowes, International Control, pp. 76-78 for the debate in Commons: Parliamentary Debates, 4th ser., vol. 158, 30 May 1906, pp. 494– 516.

24 Taylor, Narcotics Traffic, pp. 22-23.

25 Chester C. Tan, The Boxer Catastrophe (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1967).

26 For a recent analysis of the ruthlessness with which Chinese officials rooted out poppy cultivation and opium production see R. V. DesForges, "Hsi-liang: A Portrait of a Late Ch'ing Patriot" (Ph.D. diss., Yale Univ., 1971), pp. 252-81. Also see Meribeth E. Cameron, The Reform Movement in China, 1898-1912, Stanford University Publications in History, Economics, and Political Science (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1931), vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 136-59; E. J. M. Rhoads, "Nationalism and Xenophobia in Kwangtung (1905-1906): The Canton Anti-American Boycott and the Lienchow Anti-Missionary Uprising," Papers on China (East Asian Research Center, Harvard Univ., 1962-63), vol. 16-17, pp. 154-97.

27 President Roosevelt publically denounced unfair treatment of the Chinese in the U.S. when the embargo was threatened and in a private letter admitted even more clearly, "we have behaved scandalously toward Chinamen in this country. Some of the outrages by mobs which have resulted in the deaths of Chinamen were almost as bad as anything that occurred at the hands of the Chinamen themselves in the Boxer outbreak" (TR to Secretary of the Treasury Leslie M. Shaw, 2 Aug. 1905 quoted in H. K. Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1956], p. 230). Contemporary explanations of the Chinese boycott as the natural result of American treatment of•the Chinese immigrant include Chester Holcombe, "Chinese Exclusion and the Boycott," Outlook, 30 Dec. 1905, pp. 1066-72; and John W. Foster, "The Chinese Boycott," Atlan0c Monthly, January 1906, pp. 118— 27.

28 Beale, in Theodore Roosevelt, has one of the best accounts of the embargo (pp. 191-223). Also see Mowry, Era, pp. 186-87; C. F. Remer, A Study of Chinese Boycotts with Special Reference to Their Economic Effectiveness (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1933), ch. 6, "The Anti-American Boycott of 1905." Remer and Beale agree that the actual damage to American trade was modest but that American traders and manufacturers were greatly upset by the threat and put pressure on the American government to stop the boycott. A financial leader such as J. J. Hill called the boycott "the greatest commercial disaster America has ever suffered" (Charles Chailé-Long, "Why China Boycotts Us," The World Today, March 1906, p. 314).

29 As in the imbroglio (1904) over the American China Development Company, which failed to live up to its contract to build the Hankow-Canton railroad, Roosevelt intervened on the boycott issue not because the Chinese case was unjust but because the U.S. stood to lose face and aid its competitors by acceding to Chinese demands. As he explained to the American minister, William Rockhili, "Unless I misread them entirely [the Chinese] despise weakness even more than they prize justice" (TR to W. W. Rockhill, Minister to China, 22 Aug. 1905 in Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, Elting Morison, ed., [Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 195a 4: 1301). Taft and Root appeared before the Senate Finance Committee in early 1906 to request money for a Chinese expeditionary force to be housed in the Philippines (Washington Post, 10 and 11 Feb. 1906).

30 C. H. Brent to T. Roosevelt, 24 July 1906 (BP, container 6).

31 Taft enthusiastically supported Brent's proposal. He also had placed the blame for the boycott on the Chinese Exclusion Act, "an unjustly severe law [which threatened] one of the greatest commercial prizes of the world . . the trade with the 400,000,000 Chinese" (Beale, p. 197).

32 Public Law 141 ( i9o8 ); "International Investigation of the Opium Evil: Message from the President of the United States," House Doc. no. 926, 6oth Cong., 1st Sess., ii May 1908 (GPO, i9o8).

33 See A. H. Taylor, Narcotics Traffic, pp. 54-56; National Cyclopedia of American Biography 9 : 430-31.

34 Taylor, Narcotics Traffic, pp. 302-05; Elizabeth was the daughter of industrialist William Drew Washburn of Minneapolis who had served in the House and Senate; his brothers Cadwallader, Israel, and Elihu also served in Congress. The brothers represented different states (Wisconsin, Maine, and Illinois ). Elihu B. Washburne (as he spelled it) served as minister to France and remained in Paris during the German siege of 1870-71, publishing later his personal account. Mrs. Wright was said to be the first woman to receive plenipotentiary powers as a diplomat and at the time of her death in 1952 was still active in the fight against narcotics, having recently urged the passage of the antinarcotic bill known as the Boggs Act (1951) which mandated minimum sentences on first conviction of a narcotic offense ( N.Y. Times, obit., 14 Feb. 1952).

35 Undated typewritten sheet signed Hamilton Wright, entitled "Memo in regard to White House letter April 30th 1908, signed Loeb to Root" (WP, entry 36).

36 Taylor, Narcotics Traffic, p. 54.

37 ER to William Loeb [Jr.], 7 Sept. 1908 (WP, entry 36).

38 Some of the returns from Wright's survey are contained in WP, entry 36. Those preserved reveal the spottiness and varied quality of the responses. The request to other nations to prepare a report on their domestic laws, opium production, and consumption was necessary if shipments to China from such nations as Turkey, Persia, and India were to be monitored. Lack of information or effective laws would also demonstrate the need for further international action. Turkey, as noted, did not attend the conference, and Persia made no survey. For a summary of the diplomatic correspondence, see Lowes, International Control, pp. 111-17.

39 Phillips's memorandum of 1907 ( see above, ch. 1, n. 54).

40 Wright estimated that in the general population there were °A% opium addicts. In the professional classes, the rates were higher, as noted. Since the population was about ninety million in 1909, the number of addicts would be 175,000—not far different from the APhA committee's estimate in 1902 of about 200,000. See Hamilton Wright, "Report on the International Opium Commission and on the Opium Problem as Seen within the United States and Its Possessions," contained in Opium Problem: Message from the President of the United States, Senate Doc. no. 377, 6ist Cong., 2nd Sess., 21 Feb. 1910, p. 47.

41 HW to CHB, 22 Aug. igo8 (WP, entry 51).

42 Importation and Use of Opium, Hearings before Committee on Ways and Means, House, 6ist Cong., 3rd Sess., 14 Dec. 1910 (GPO, 1910), p. 32.

43 For decrease in patent medicine sales, see above, ch. 1, n. 52. The drop in narcotic-containing compounds occurred while proprietaries in general rose 6o% in sales between 1902 and 1911, "a rate unparalleled in history," a claim made by the President Frank Cheney of the PAA in his address to the 35th Annual Meeting of the association in 1913 (stenographic typescript of proceedings, Archives of the Proprietary Association, Washington, D.C., pp. 31-32).

44 HW to CHB, 22 Aug. 19o8 ( WP, entry 51).

45 ER to Rep. James S. Sherman, 26 Dec. 19o8 ( WP, entry 36).

46 Ibid.; also see testimony of Hamilton Wright in Importation and Use of Opium, Hearings before the Committee on Ways and Means, House, 61st Cong., znd Sess., 31 May 1910 (GPO, 191o), pp. 502-03.

47 Congress was often reminded of the impressive effect the announcement that the U.S. had enacted the Smoking Opium Exclusion Act had on foreign delegates to the Shanghai Commission. For example, see Wright's testimony (ibid., p. 502). I have failed to locate any evidence in foreign accounts of the Act's psychological impact.

48 Robert Bacon to HWW, 2 Oct., and 20 Nov., i9o8 (BCR ).

49 HWW to Secretary of State, 29 Oct. 1908 (BCR ). Wiley refers to provisions in Section ii of the Pure Food and Drug Act which permitted the federal government to bar importation of harmful substances.

50 RB to HWW, 4 Nov. 1908 (BCR ). Bacon referred to the proposed law as h "sentimental" help to delegates.

51 HW to Root, 3o Oct. 19o8 (WP, entry 51).

52 Dean C. Worcester to HW, 9 and ii Dec. 19°8 (WP, entry 51).

53 For correspondence on the question of diplomatic status of the Shanghai meeting, see Lowes, International Control, pp. 112 ff. In Brent's opinion the downgrading of the meeting to a commission was at the request of Great, Britain and led him to favor another meeting which would have treaty-making powers. CHB to Bishop Lawrence, 7 May 1909, to Bishop Hall, 2 July 1909 (BP, container 8).

54 In describing the American stance at Shanghai, Wright later wrote, "We believed in prohibition for ourselves in the use of opium—except for medicinal purposes, and for the principle of prohibition for all other nations as soon as it could be accomplished." "Report of Dr. Wright," in Proc. Amer. Soc. Internat. Law 3 : 89-94 (1909). To the other nations the American representatives declared that "there is no non-medical use of opium and its derivatives that is not fraught with grave dangers, if it is not actually vicious" Report to the Department of State by the American Delegation to the International Opium Commission at Shanghai, typescript signed by the delegates contained in WP, entry 33, p. 17.

55 Hamilton Wright, "Memorandum for the Committee on Ways and Means, the House of Representatives, on . . . Bills Intended to Redeem the Pledges of the United States," io Feb. 1913 ( WP, entry 36).

56 Taylor states that this was the first international meeting dealing with Chinese problems in which China did not participate under threats (Narcotic Traffic, p. 79). See also Wright ( ch. 2, n. 54 above), p. 94. The Hague Convention is similarly described as the first conference and treaty in which China was accorded equality with other foreign states ( Taylor, p. 109).

57 Wright, "Report International Opium," in Opium Problem: Message, p. 65.

58 For Wright's claims that it was difficult to adopt this resolution, see his description of his efforts ( Wright, in Proc. Amer. Soc. Internat. Law, p. 92; see also Wright, "Report International Opium," in Opium Problem: Message, p. 70; for a discussion of both sides of the fight see Lowes, International Control, pp. 144-45.

59 A second meeting to conventionalize the Shanghai resolutions and consider other international drug issues seems not to have been adopted in advance by the State Department or the President. On his return, Wright sought the approval of the Secretary of State to urge continuation of the campaign as a responsibility of the U.S. to complete the work begun in Shanghai ( CHB to WHT, 29 Dec. 1909, and CHB to P. C. Knox, 29 Dec. 1909, WP, entry 51 ). For the opposition of Huntington Wilson to Wright's plans for another conference and domestic legislation, tee HW to C. Tenney, 1 July 1910 ( WP, entry 51).

6o Taft and his Secretary of State embarked on C. vigorous effort to increase American financial investment in various market areas, eventually known as "dollar diplomacy" and condemned as a form of economic imperialism, although there was nothing unique about such diplomatic efforts if compared to other major trading nations. See Mowry, Era, pp. .226 ff. A detailed account of foreign policy with regard to China may be found in The United States and China, 1906-1913: A Study of Finance and Diplomacy, by Charles Vevier ( New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1955). A very helpful recent study which touches on many of the diplomatic and financial involvements with China by the Roosevelt and later administrations is Jerry Israel, Progressivism and the Open Door: America and China, 1905-1921 ( Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1971).

61 Acting Secretary of State to . . . Delegates of the United States to the International Opium Conference, 18 Oct. 1911 (WP, entry 38).

62 The winner of the contest for the Chinese ministry was Chicago plumbing magnate Charles Crane. For his selection among the various candidates, his embarrassing recall and resignation before reaching China, see Israel, Progressivism, pp. 6o-82.

63 CHB to HW, 28 May, and 28 Sept. 1909 (WP, entry 51).

64 P. C. Knox to Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriations, 28 July 1909, quoted in "Memorandum Relative to American Trade Possibilities on the Far East," prepared by J. B. Osborne, Bureau of Trade Relations, Department of State, 15 Sept. 1909 (Library of Congress: P. C. Knox Papers, Box 27).

65 HW to CHB, 29 Nov. 1909 (WP, entry 33).

66 U.S. Department of State, "The Acting Secretary of State to the Diplomatic Officers of the U.S. Accredited to the Governments Which Were Represented in the Shanghai International Opium Commission, j Sept. 1909," Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the U.S. /gog (GPO, 1914), pp. 107-11.

67 HW to CHB, 12 Nov. 1909 ( WP, entry 33).

68 HW to CHB, 9 June igog ( WP, entry 33); see also Wright, "Report International Opium," Opium Problem: Message, p. 74.

69 HW to Jeremiah Jenks, 18 March 1910 (WP, entry 51). Jenks Was a leading authority on currency reform and trade in the Far East and one of the theoreticians of the Open Door policy of the State Department. Israel's study reveals the many contributions of Jenks to Far Eastern policy and the respect with which his views were held by the Taft and Roosevelt administrations.

70 HW to CHB, 12 Nov. 1909 (WP, entry 33). Wright made this estimate of the Secretary of State: "Knox who is a cold blooded little fellow is only now grasping the fact that in this opium business he has the oil to smooth any troubled waters he may meet with at Peking in his aggressive business enterprises there."

71 HW to CHB, 29 Nov. 1909 ( WP, entry 33).

72 Wright quickly realized that the federal government's powers to restrict consumption of opium and other drugs were either accepted as limited or undesirable as a precedent. The intricacies of federal-state relationships were not so well perceived by other antidrug reformers such as Joseph Remington, an eminent leader of the pharmaceutical profession in America and dean of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy; see HW to J. Remington, 26 April 1910 ( WP, entry 51). Similarly, Wright had to defebd his carefully framed bills against another reformer, Charles B. Towns, as late as 21 April 1914, on grounds that the federal government could enact an antinarcotic measure only in a tax guise in order to allay congressional fears of federal interference. The limitations of federal powers were also clearly spelled out in a letter to the Philadelphia North American (18 April igio, entry 51). As an example of congressional doubt „about federal police powers, the comment of Rep. J. H. Gaines might be adduced, made during the debate on the Smoking Opium Exclusion Act: "It takes plenary powers to stamp out [opium smoking]— if it can be suppressed at all—the full police power. Our federal government does not have it" (Cong. Rec. 43 : 1683, i Feb. 1909, 6oth Cong., 2nd Sess.). Wright complained, "it has been a difficult business. . . . The Constitution is constantly getting in the way" (Wright to Brent, 9 Feb. 1910, WP, entry 31).

73 James R. Mann to HW, 29 Dec. 1909 (WP, entry 51).

74 HW to David J. Foster, Chairman, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 28 April igio (WP, entry 51). The bill, HR 25, 241, was introduced 30 April igio and referred to the Committee on Ways and Means. In the Senate the bill was introduced as S 68/o by Senator Shelby M. Cullom on 28 Feb. 1910 and referred to the Finance Committee. There were, in fact, three Foster ( and later Harrison) antinarcotic bills submitted to Congress, although only the one regulating domestic narcotic use kept the eponym. The other two antinarcotic bills were relatively uncontroversial and were enacted almost a year before the domestic antinarcotic bill. Public Law no. 46, 63rd Cong., was approved 17 Jan. 1914, and provided penalties for smuggling opiates and cocaine into or out of the U.S.; Public Law no. 47 approved the same day, placed a prohibitive tax on any smoking opium produced in the U.S.

75 Wright always sought the prohibition of nonmedical drug use which he described as the American position in the Shanghai Commission (see above, ch. 2, n. 54). He soon discovered, however, that congressional leaders would not support a direct attack on the use of opiates and cocaine. Some thought such an approach unconstitutional; others feared it might be constitutional and could be broadened to include alcohol ( see HW to A. A. Adee, Assistant Secretary of State, 2 Feb. 1911, WP, entry 51). The issue of an antinarcotic law was complicated because all sides admitted some legitimate use of the drugs proposed for control, which led to technical and intricate consultation with the many interests in the health professions. As a result, without almost unanimous support of the trades and professions the bill would probably never be brought to a vote. Balancing his way between ineffectiveness and apparently excessive police powers and unconstitutionality, Wright explained his thinking in 1914: "If I am correct in my opinion, the Courts will construe HR 6282 [the future Harrison Act] not only as a Federal Statute but in the light of the terms of the International Opium Convention. If I am right in that opinion, the apparent defects in the Bill will not appear as defects at all except in the case of Section 6 [listing exempt amounts of narcotics in proprietaries]." HW to Charles B. Towns, 21 April 1914 (WP, entry 36).
Another attempt for severe narcotic restriction without mentionipg this as a goal in legislation would be the proposal to admit no exemptions, the promulgation of many regulations, a requirement for performance bonds for retailers, etc., thereby making trade in narcotics so cumbersome and dangerous that dealers would refuse to handle them. Such an approach was taken with the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

76 Importation and Use of Opium, Hearings before the House Committee on Ways and Means, 31 May 1910, 6ist Cong., 2nd Sess. (GPO, 191o).

77 Wright, "Report on International Opium," in Opium Problem: Message.

78 Secretary of State to the President, 18 Feb. 1910, cited in Opium Problem: Message, p. 5.

79 Secretary of State to President, cited in Opium Problem: Message, p. 2; also Importation and Use of Opium, hearings, pp. 504, 509.

8o Wright, "Report International Opium," in Opium Problem: Message, pp. 59, 61; Importation and Use of Opium, 31 May 1910, p. 505.

81 Wright, "Report International Opium," in Opium Problem: Message, p. 44. This view contradicts that of the APhA committee which was disturbed by the increased use of opium by American servicemen (see above, ch. 1, n. 46) and represents an early refusal on the grounds of patriotism to criticize any American propensity to narcotics, a trend that became dominant after World War I.

82 Wright, "Report International Opium," in Opium Problem: Message, P. 45; similarly Jacob Riis in How the Other Half Lives (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1890), pp. 72-76.

83 Wright, "Report International Opium," in Opium Problem: Message, P. 49; Importation and Use of Opium, 31 May 1910, p. 505.

84 See above, Chapter a. Commenting on the fear of Negro cocaine users and the drive for a federal law, the Chemist and Druggist reported later that year from New Orleans: "The narcotic evil has become so pronounced in the city of New Orleans, where there is a large Negro population, that the police have undertaken a vigorous campaign of prosecution. . • . It is just this condition of things which has developed a demand during the last few years for the enactment of a federal law"( 77 44,31 Dec. 1910).

85 Importation and Use of Opium, 31 May 1910, p. 503.

86 Ibid., s.v. "retail pharmacists," pp. 507, 510.

87 Importation and Use of Opium, Hearings before the House Committee on Ways and Means, 14 Dec. 1910, 6ist Cong., 3rd Sess. (GPO, 19 io ). Nonreform-minded members of the drug trades were "amazed" that representatives of such organizations as the NARD appeared in favor of the bill. See Amer. Druggist Pharmaceut. Record 58 : 19 (1911).

88 William J. Schieffelin (1866-1955) was at this time chairman of the executive committee of the "Committee of One Hundred on National flçalth," an active group of leading educators, businessmen, and reformers. He also was prominent in political reform movements in New York City. He had sought strict antinarcotic laws at least as early as 1905 from the New York legislature. He held a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Munich, served as president of the NWDA in agio—ii, and was a model of the Progressive Era's public-spirited businessman.

89 Amei.. Druggist Pharmaceut. Record 58 : 2. "The Dangers of Enthusiasm" was an editorial warning of Dr. Wright's zeal. The Record wanted a bill similar to the District of Columbia Pharmacy Act (1906 ) with the familiar exemptions and no mention of cannabis and chloral hydrate, which roughly is what Congress enacted in 1914.

90 The "pressing necessity" of antinarcotic legislation was called to the attention of Congress by both President Taft and Secretary Knox in January 1911 (Special Message of the President: The Opium Traffic, Senate Doc. no. 736, 6ist Cong., 3rd Sess., 11 Jan. 1911, pp. 2, 7). At the close of the year action to control opium in the U.S., "especially since the [Hague Opium] Conference is now in session," was urged on Congress in the "President's Message on Foreign Policy" (Cong. Rec., Senate, 48 70-75, 62nd Cong., 7 Dec. 1911, esp. p. 74). This appeal was repeated a year later in the "President's Annual Message" (3 Dec. 1912) in which Taft characterized the failure to pass legislation approved by the appropriate federal departments and backed by the "moral sentiment of the country, [and] the practical support of all the legitimate trade interests likely to be affected" as most unfortunate. The U.S. had taken the initiative and then "failed to do its share in the great work" to correct the "deplorable narcotic evil in the United States as well as to redeem international pledges" (p. 12, Cong. Rec., 49 : 8-14, 3 Dec. 1912, 63rd Cong., 3rd Sess. ).

91 Importation and Use of Opium, Hearings before the House Committee on Ways and Means, 11 Jan. 1911, 6ist Cong., 3rd Sess. ( GPO, 1911 ), PP. 49-84. Subsequent information and quotations are from the same source.

92 Importation and Use of Opium, 11 Jan. 191i, pp. 92-95; Dr. Kebler was also author of Farmer's Bulletin no. 393 on habit-forming drugs.

93 Sereno E. Payne, Chairman, House Committee on Ways and Means, to Huntington Wilson, Assistant Secretary of State, 28 Jan. 1911 (WP, entry 51).

94 Ambassador Bacon's warnings were relayed to Wright by F. Huidekoper of the Paris Embassy, 23 June 1911 ( WP, entry 51).

95 E. Frank Baldwin to HW, 14 June 1911 ( WP, entry 51).

96 Alexander Lambert to HW, 27 April 1911 ( WP, entry 51).

97 Taylor, Narcotics Traffic, pp. 93-96.

98 CHB to HW, 24 Jan. 1911 ( WP, entry 51).

99 Taylor, Narcotics Traffic, pp. 92-93; Lowes, International Control, pp. 166-67. Renewal of the ten-year treaty occurred on 8 May 1911.

100 Taylor, Narcotics Traffic, pp. 87-88.

101 Amer. J. Internat. Law 6 : 191 ( Suppl., July 1912).

102 International Opium Conference, The Hague, December 1, 1911—January 23, 1912. Summary of the minutes ( unofficial) ( The Hague: National Printing Office, 1912), p. 105.

103 Bertil A. Renborg, International Drug Control ( Washingtori, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1947), pp. 15 ff.

104 On ii Feb. 1915, the U.S., China, and the Netherlands put the Convention into force among themselves. Norway and Honduras joined them later in 1915, but no other nations took action until after World War I. Ratifications ( without implementation) continued at a modest pace, but not until the Convention was, in effect, made part of the Versailles Treaty in 1919, did almost all world governments enter into the constraints of the Hague Treaty.