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Herbert Hoover Archive Concerning Haiti, 1925-1932
Herbert Hoover Archive Concerning Haiti, 1925-1932
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Hoover Herbert

Herbert Hoover Archive Concerning Haiti, 1925-1932

 

A fascinating archive of materials related to the American occupation of Haiti, and President Herbert Hoover’s determination to end it. Journalist Arthur Ruhl visited Haiti in 1925 and wrote a series of articles on the nation that brought it to the attention of thousands of Americans, and he published more on the island nation over the next several years.

 

Archive of 12 documents, on conditions in Haiti and American responses, including a letter from President Hoover to Ruhl, 1925-1932.  24 pp., 5.5" x 8.5" to 8.5" x 11"  Expected folds, some browning. Very good.

 

The United States occupation of Haiti began in 1915, after several years of political instability saw six presidents in five years. Early in 1916, the Senate ratified a treaty granting the United States security and economic oversight of Haiti for ten years, later extended to twenty years. Haitian rebels, with some support from Germany, resisted American control. In 1922, U.S. General John H. Russell Jr. (1873-1947) became High Commissioner of Haiti, and Louis Borno became president of Haiti and ruled without a legislature until 1930.

 

On February 4, 1930, President Herbert Hoover issued a statement on Haiti, announcing that since Congress had approved an appropriation for “a thorough inquiry into our problems in Haiti,” he would appoint a commission “at once.” Hoover appointed a five-member commission with investment banker and diplomat William Cameron Forbes (1870-1959) as chair. According to Hoover, the questions they were to investigate were “when and how we are to withdraw from Haiti,” and “what we shall do in the meantime.” Hoover continued, “We have an obligation to the people of Haiti, and we need to plan how we will discharge that obligation. There is need to build up a certainty of efficient and stable government in order that life and property may be protected after we withdraw.” The following day, Arthur Ruhl wrote to the President, “As one of the comparatively few Americans who have interested themselves in Haiti, and taken the trouble several times to visit that intensely interesting little country, I hope you will permit me to thank you for your statement printed in the papers this morning. During the past five years, I have written various articles, editorials, etc., on the subject of Haiti, and have felt that, for all practical purposes, they might just about as well have been dropped in a well. It is difficult to express the satisfaction which one feels to know that, under your leadership, our relations with the republic are at last going to [be brought up to date.”

 

President Hoover responded on February 6 with the letter offered here and transcribed below.  On February 7, Hoover appointed Dr. Robert R. Moton (1867-1940), the African American president of the Tuskegee Institute, to study the educational system of Haiti. On February 8, Ruhl again wrote to the President suggesting caution: “I am a little concerned about the effect the visit of the President of Tuskegee might have on the effect produced by the Commission as a whole. Contrary to what most Americans fancy, the Haitians are almost more touchy about American negroes than our own Southerners – not because they are negroes, for they themselves may be proud, or say they are proud, to be black, but simply because they know that negroes occupy a subordinate social position in our country. Secondly, however the Booker Washington theory of industrial-agricultural education may suit the negroes in the United States, and however, in theory, it might be good for the Haitian mass, the fact remains that the education of the Haitian élite and their whole sense of cultural values, is French. They simply don’t ‘see’ our theory at all, as regards themselves.... as a matter of tactics, I would suggest, if you will permit me, that Mr. Moton should, as far as possible, be disassociated from the Commission itself.” In the absence of President Hoover in Florida, his secretary George Akerson responded to Ruhl on February 11, assuring him that “The work of Dr. Moton is to be entirely independent of the Commission” and “Dr. Moton will not go to Haiti with the Commission. His inquiry will be entirely separate.”

 

In a report presented to the President on March 26, 1930, the Forbes Commission praised the material improvements American occupation had achieved, including hundreds of miles of roads and harbor improvements, but criticized the exclusion of Haitian nationals from positions of authority. United States withdrawal from Haiti was underway by 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt replaced Hoover as president. As Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt had had responsibility for drafting the most recent Haitian Constitution. The last American marines left Haiti in August 1934.

 

HERBERT HOOVER, Typed Letter Signed, to Arthur Ruhl, February 6, 1930, Washington, D.C.  1 p., 7" x 8.75".

 

Complete Transcription

THE WHITE HOUSE

washington

                                                                        February 6, 1930.

My dear Mr. Ruhl:

            It was good of you to write me as you did under date of February 5th in regard to my statement on Haiti, and I do appreciate your letting me know of your cordial approval.

                                                                        Yours faithfully,

                                                                        Herbert Hoover

Mr. Arthur B. Ruhl

New York Herald Tribune,

New York City, N. Y.

 

Other Excerpts

Arthur Ruhl to Antes S. Ruhl, March 8, 1925, Port-au-Prince, Haiti:

Losing a tooth “left me with a hole as big as a front door in my face which I had to put up with (while travelling amidst some of the loveliest scenery in the world) until I got back to the Port yesterday....  I don’t know what I think about the whole problem here. In every material way we are doing the country good now, and the Treaty officials are a good lot of men. But we are hated as the French would hate the Germans if the latter had conquered & were governing France—and for precisely the same reasons—and the whole series of acts surrounding our coming into Haiti were so dubious and un-American that I steel feel very uncomfortable about the whole matter. If we were to pull out tomorrow, on the other hand, probably there would be a revolution at once and the same sort of conditions as existed before we came. It is the old story of the English in Egypt & India—but one isn’t quite ready for America to become another Britain. The latter needs her colonies, however much she may be hated by the ‘natives.’ We don’t need Hayti, and it is an open question whether it was necessary for us to come here.”

Antes S. Ruhl (1851-1942) was Arthur Ruhl’s father. He was the secretary-treasurer and then president of the Nelson Knitting Company in Rockford, Illinois.

 

When he returned to New York, Ruhl wrote several articles, including “The New Haiti” for Collier’s Weekly, which the new editor of Collier’s thought needed to be revised.

 

William L. Chenery, Typed Letter Signed, to Arthur Ruhl, April 21, 1925, New York City:

“After talking to you this morning I tossed your article into the hopper and herewith attached is one of the hard-boiled comments. On re-consideration, I believe that this comment is sound and that we have to reckon with the fact that the average reader doesn’t care a hand about the whole business unless he is lured into it by the sheer interest of the narrative.... A vivid picture of the only negro republic in the Western Hemisphere might make a good start.... Why does Haiti concern the grocer, or housewife, in Rockford – assuming that it does.... The more I think it over, the surer I am that it will be necessary, if we are to interest our readers, to approach the subject by way of color.”

[Enclosure: “his present method produces an article that is of little interest to the general reader who is interested in himself, who cares little, if at all, about the political and economic fortunes of Haiti, and who, if he reads about Haiti at all, wants to be amused by it.... Part of the background could be a description of the benefits, real or fancied, of the American occupation, the attitude of the natives toward the Americans, the reasons for that attitude, etc.... with the necessary information rolled into not easily perceived pellets to be swallowed as one smiles.”

William L. Chenery (1884-1974) guided Collier’s Magazine, first as editor and then as publisher, from 1925 to 1949.

 

William L. Chenery, Typed Letter Signed, to Arthur Ruhl, April 28, 1925, New York City:

“If you still think that it is impossible to lighten the article on Haiti, I shall of course take it. I am not at all unmindful of the fact that we are getting a great deal for the money.... it seems to me that it is quite as necessary to take into consideration the state of mind of the people you are addressing as it is to look at the objective facts yourself.... I do hope…you can see you way clear to recognize the necessities of the audience. It’s human nature that we’re up against, and as a democrat, I cannot bring myself to quarrel with the human race.”

 

Willian L. Chenery, Typed Letter Signed, to Arthur Ruhl, May 12, 1925, New York City:

“I am sure when you see your second version of ‘The New Haiti’ in type, you will agree that all the toil and trouble I gave you was worth while. The article as it stands is a splendid performance.”

Ruhl’s article, “The New Haiti,” appeared in Collier’s later in 1925.

 

H. L. Mencken, Typed Letter Signed, to Arthur Ruhl, May 19, 1925, New York City:

“Thanks very much for ‘Muzzling Editors in Haiti.’ It goes into type at once and a proof will reach you in a week or so.”

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) was an American journalist and satirist who co-founded and edited The American Mercury from 1924 to 1933.

Ruhl’s article, “Muzzling Editors in Haiti,” appeared in the August 1925 issue of The American Mercury. He also published “What America is Doing for Haiti” in the August 1925 issue of Current History Magazine.

 

Charles S. Johnson, Typed Letter Signed, to Arthur Ruhl, June 10, 1925, New York City:

“I read with delight your article ‘The Haytian Views Us,’ which was published in the New York HERALD-TRIBUNE of June 7th. It has prompted me to venture a request that you, with your sense of values and your knowledge of the Haytian situation and of the Haytians, provide for our readers an article dealing with some such pertinent phase of this subject. We know all too little about what is going on in the little republic and about the people there, who for the most part are as remote from the American public, despite the fact that they are under our military supervision, as the Tasmanians.”

Charles S. Johnson (1893-1956) was the editor of Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life, the journal of the National Urban League, in New York City, from 1923 to 1928.

 

Louise Bourke, Typed Letter Signed, to Arthur Ruhl, February 5, 1930, Port-au-Prince, Haiti:

“nothing much is happening…except in people’s minds, the general attitude being that of watchful waiting, President Hoover being le point de mire. Heaven alone knows, however, what would have happened but for the favorable turn brought about by Senator Borah’s championing of the cause of Haiti, to which, rather than to the marine guns that paraded the streets of Port-au-Prince gallingly taunting a disarmed people, may be traced the present attitude of Haitians, and accounts for the ‘all is now quiet’ situation bragged about in official despatches....”

 

William A. White, Autograph Letter Signed, to Arthur Ruhl, March 12, 1930, USS Rochester en route to Port-au-Prince, Haiti:

“The President’s instructions were definite: to find some way out of Hayti not to study the situation and see whether we should go or stay.... We are not investigating anything except ways and means to restore stable government and take what Hoover calls ‘sequent steps’ to withdraw from Hayti. Those are ‘orders.’ If being friendly with the Haytians, securing for them the right to parade, walking in their parade, reviewing it, all to break the boycott and get their confidence for the purposes of giving them their own government—if this is a reflection on Russell and the marine then Hoover is the Bolshevik, not I.”

William A. White (1868-1944) was a journalist and editor of the Emporia Gazette and served as one of five commissioners appointed by President Hoover to study and review conditions in Haiti.

 

Louise Burke, Typed Letter Signed, to Arthur Ruhl, October 31, 1930, Port-au-Prince, Haiti:

“I surmised you would be hugely interested in what has been and is going on over here, and would have dashed off a few hectic lines giving you an apercu de la situation Générale but for the fact that I flattered Haiti to the point of imagining it had come in for more attention in the daily press than has evidently been the case.... In fact all would be perfect in the most perfect of countries but for the astounding number of candidates that have cropped up.... As things are going just now the favourites seem to be Pradel, Vincent, Sannon and, up North, Price Mars.... on the whole, a very good bunch of men were elected to the Legislature.... Nobody’s election pleased me so well as that of a man by the name of Martino, who will represent Jérémie in the Senate. The entire amount disbursed by or for him in view of his election campaign was 10 cents Haitian currency, the price of a stamp with which to mail his letter accepting his nomination as candidate for the Senate. I would make him President if I could.”

Sténio Vincent (1874-1959) won the election and served as Haiti’s president from November 18, 1930 to May 1941.

 

Dana G. Munro, Typed Letter Signed, to Arthur Ruhl, April 29, 1931, Port-au-Prince, Haiti:

“On the whole, things are going pretty well here although we have more troublesome and annoying questions than one diplomatic mission can deal with adequately. We have been working ever since my arrival on a plan for turning over the Treaty Services to complete Haitian control, and I have been spending several mornings each week with the Minister for Foreign Affairs going into the details which are exceedingly complicated. It has taken a great deal of time because we all want to carry out the process of Hatianization in such a way as to leave each Treaty Service in an efficient state and to give the Haitians a maximum opportunity of running them properly after our people get out.... This is a very interesting period if not a very pleasant one.”

Dana G. Munro (1892-1990) served as U.S. envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Haiti from 1930 to 1932.

 

“Helene,” Autograph Letter Signed, to Arthur Ruhl, ca. May 1932:

“I just finished your ‘Haitian Odds and Ends.’ It is charming, it brings up my deep hidden longing for that beloved spot. I smell the particular Haitian smell, that I love so much, I can see the blue, blue sky, all together ‘The crying is scratching my throat’ as Elsa used to say, when she was little and wanted to keep back tears—for one reason or another. Write some more you do it most beautifully, and maybe someday we may see it together again.”

Ruhl published “Haytian Odds and Ends” in the New York Herald Tribune on May 8, 1932.

 

 

Arthur Brown Ruhl (1876-1935) was born in Rockford, Illinois, and graduated from Harvard University in 1899. While at Harvard, he wrote for The Advocate and Lampoon, and ran on the track team. After he graduated, the New York Evening Sun employed him as a reporter, and he was soon published in Century Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and Collier’s Weekly.  He traveled widely and wrote on a wide variety of topics, from sports to theatre to politics. He wrote about Latin-American affairs and was an authority on international relations. He wrote about a Mexican revolution, a volcano erupting in South America, the German and Turkish lines at Gallipoli, the world heavyweight boxing match in Reno, theatres in Moscow, a George Gershwin concert, the Wright Brothers’ experiments with flight, and many other topics. He died in Queens from pneumonia, contracted ten days earlier. He married Zinaida Yakovnchikoff (1904-1952), who was born in Russia and spoke German, in 1926, in Berlin, Germany. They had one son Arthur Paul Ruhl (1929-1997).


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