Sargent to Count Hatzfeldt, February 23, 1883
Mr. Sargent to Count Hatzfeldt.
The undersigned, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of the United States of America, had the honor, in his interview on the 17th instant, with his excellency Count Hatzfeldt, imperial secretary of state for foreign affairs, to submit a telegram from the Hon. Secretary of State, Mr. Frelinghuysen, containing a request of the President of the United States, which telegram was in the following words:
“The President invites Germany to send a commission of experts to the United States to examine the raising and packing of hogs and pork products for food. He asks that the final decision on prohibitory measures be suspended until such commission adequately report.”
This proposition of the President of the United States was promptly conveyed to the imperial Government through the only possible official channel, and was also widely published in the German newspapers, where it would unofficially reach the Bundesrath. The undersigned respectfully requests that he may be furnished with an official copy of the late ordinance of the Bundesrath in the matter, so that he may notify his Government of the exact terms of the response, or constructive refusal made to this request of the President upon a matter of very much importance to the United States, and deeply affecting the trade relations of the two countries.
As the undersigned is under the impression that this ordinance can only go into force by the express approval of the imperial executive, he most respectfully asks leave to again call the attention of his excellency, the imperial secretary, to the proposal of the President contained in the telegram above cited, and to repeat what he said in his interview with his excellency on the 17th instant, that the United States view with concern this ordinance, designed to destroy an important part of their export trade to Germany; that the United States have had the whole question of the soundness of American pork, the modes of rearing hogs and preparing the products for market, carefully and impartially examined, and are convinced by the report made to them, a copy of which is herewith inclosed, that the attacks upon this great article of product are unjust and prejudiced, and not in any degree warranted by the real facts in the case. This being so, the President confidently relies upon the result that would follow the examination by a German commission of the whole matter, and invites the imperial Government to constitute such an one, and await its report, before striking down an industry that not merely furnishes all the animal food to large classes in Germany (a consideration more immediately addressing itself to the imperial Government), but causing great loss to the people of the United States, whose capital is involved and labor employed in preparing pork products for market.
His excellency’s courtesy will allow the undersigned to suggest that there is no emergency in this matter that cannot await ordinary modes of dealing with questions of such moment. There, is no apparent reason why this ordinance should be enforced this month, or year, more than last, or the next. There is no epidemic caused by German consumption of American pork; not even well authenticated instances of casual sickness. It has been stated by very high German scientific authority that the very rare cases of trichinosis found in Germany for years past have arisen from eating raw German or Hungarian pork, and that no case whatever is traceable to American pork, the mode of Curing which makes it harmless.
Where the evidences of harm done are so shadowy, and are opposed by carefully grounded statements, and the interests involved are so great, the request of the President for investigation may commend itself to the imperial Government as reasonable and statesmanlike, and consonant with the kindly relations existing between the two countries, a sense of which on the part of His Imperial and Royal Majesty has been recently conveyed to the undersigned by his serene highness the imperial chancellor, on the occasion of the generous relief extended by the citizens of the United States to the sufferers of the Rhine Valley.
The undersigned is fully aware that the imperial Government, animated by the sentiment expressed in the esteemed communications of his serene highness, would not desire that the American Government or people should rest under a sense of injustice from the execution of this measure. Yet such a consequence seems inevitable where all modes of honest investigation have been exhausted by the American Government with the result of apparently proving this product sound; where daily experience shows none of the assumed inconvenience to either German or American health, and where the imperial Government is formally and courteously asked to look into the whole subject for itself before acting upon possibly interested advice, or in the absence of anything worthy the name of evidence.
The undersigned, therefore, again calls attention to this express request of the President of the United States, and respectfully asks for the sense of the imperial Government thereupon, that investigation he had, and that meanwhile this serious blow to American interests he suspended. Inasmuch as the United States are a large and growing consumer of German manufactures, and the food they export to Germany is a principal article of exchange, the laws of trade must dictate their obtaining the goods they import elsewhere, if the equivalent which they furnish is refused. This would probably result even if the Congress did not meet the issue by legislation under the belief that another motive than the unsoundness of American pork products caused this exclusion. Such a belief, of course, could not obtain if fair investigation on the spot by German experts showed dangerous unsoundness to exist.
Expressing the hope that this many-sided question may be tested adequately, as its importance deserves, the undersigned avails, &c.,