OF THE

DIRECTOR

OF THE

BUREAU OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLICS

FOR

THE YEAR 1898.

WASHINGTON:

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.

1899.

TRANSMITTING

A communication from the Secretary of State inclosing the Annual Report of the Bureau of the American Republics, with accompanying documents.

JANUARY 6, 1899 —Read, referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations, and ordered to be printed.

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

I transmit herewith a communication from the Secretary of State inclosing the annual report of the Director of the Bureau of the American Republics, with accompanying documents.

In view of the improved condition and increasing usefulness of the Bureau, to which I have already called attention in my annual message, and the welcome assurances of greater activity on the part of the other American Republics in support of its purposes, I cordially indorse the recommendations of the Secretary of State. It will doubtless be as gratifying to Congress as it is to me to be informed that the Argentine Republic has decided to renew its relations with the Bureau, and that there are grounds for hoping that the International American Union, created by the impressive conference of the representatives of our sister Republics and those of the United States in Washington in 1889-90, will soon be perfected by the adhesion of the Republic of Chile to the compact for the support of the Bureau as the organ of the Union. The interest of the United States in giving the fullest possible effect to the laudable desire of the International Conference to promote not only trade intercourse but a closer fellowship among the various Republics of this hemisphere is so evident that I am satisfied the progress made by the Bureau as a practical agency for

attaining these objects will receive the commendation and support

of Congress.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,

Washington, January 6, 1899.

The PRESIDENT:

WILLIAM MCKINLEY.

I have the honor to transmit the annual report of the Director of the Bureau of the American Republics, covering more particularly the provisional management of the Bureau since the death of the former Director, Mr. JOSEPH P. SMITH, on the 5th of February, 1898. The report was read and approved at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the International Union of American Republics on the 17th instant. It will be observed that the efforts of the provisional Director, an officer of the Department of State, who was detailed, with the full concurrence of the Executive Committee, to take charge of the Bureau in February last, have been chiefly addressed to the work of carrying out the more important purposes of the former Director; of meeting financial difficulties, which had resulted mainly from business operations growing out of a contract entered into by the Executive Committee in November, 1896, for obtaining advertisements for the MONTHLY BULLETIN, and of reconciling the objections of publishing and other interests to the competition of a bureau supported, in part, by appropriations from the Congress of the United States, with the desire of the Executive Committee to obtain revenue for the support of the Bureau and the proper extension of its work.

It is gratifying to be able to state that the provisional management has substantially attained these objects, and that the Bureau seems to have entered upon a path of development which promises the gradual fruition of the purposes of the International American Conference of 1889-90 in creating it as an agency for promoting fraternal intercourse and trade among the various