Copper & Air Man

(See front cover)

In appointing an ambassador, it is customary for the State Department to select a candidate who is persona grata to the government of the country concerned. When, last week, the U. S. Senate confirmed the appointment of Manhattan's Harry Frank Guggenheim as Ambassador to Cuba, the question of acceptability was quite ideally met. Mr. Guggenheim is well acquainted with Cuban problems. Cuban people. But there were more than personal reasons for his appointment having been welcome to "El Gallo" (The Rooster). President Gerardo Machado y Morales of Cuba. For the very fact that Mr. Guggenheim and not a more experienced professional diplomat had received the Cuban post was an indication that relations between the U. S. and Cuba were not as strained as they had last fortnight appeared.

The situation which had held up Mr. Guggenheim's confirmation while Secretary of State Stimson hurriedly consulted with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee resulted partly from an anti-Machado resolution received by the Senate and partly from a series of suits for damages brought against the Cuban government by U. S. citizens. High were the crimes and misdemeanors of "El Gallo" as recited by the aggrieved petitioners. He had violated the Cuban constitution. He had illegally manipulated the rich national lottery. His administration had been guilty of extravagance, fraud, political coercion, assassination. Furthermore, he had trampled upon the rights of U. S. citizens. So maintained the petition, which suggested invoking the Platt Amendment.

The Platt Amendment, as Candidate Alfred Emanuel Smith did not know but promised to find out during the campaign (TIME, July 23, 1928), was a rider on the Army appropriation act of 1901. It defined the terms under which Cuba might have its liberty, subject to intervention by the U. S. if and when the terms were violated. It was the possibility of Platt Amendment intervention which last fortnight was bothering "El Gallo." Doubtless Mr. Guggenheim, too, perused the Platti-tudes with close attention. In the end, however, the Senate decided that Cuban affairs, though vexed, were not critical. The situation called for the ability and popularity of a Harry Guggenheim, did not call for the long professional training of, for instance, a Hugh Gibson.

Nevertheless, it was no sinecure that the new ambassador was taking over. Even discounting the anti-Machado petition as representing a volatile temperament influenced by a political and personal bias, there still remained the injured U. S. citizens and their grievances against the Cuban state. The five chief cases, each christened for its claimant, are:

Harrah Case. U. S. Citizen Charles J. Harrah built himself a narrow-gauge railroad to haul sand into Havana. In 1917 his tracks were torn up, apparently at the order of one Manuel de La Cruz, member of the Cuban congress. The prosecution quailed before the offender's position as a national legislator. Mr. Harrah valued his road at $700,000, sued also far loss of income. Both Mr. Harrah and the Cuban government have consented to arbitrate this case.

Smith Case. U. S. Citizen Walter F. Smith owned a tract of land east of Havana. He claims that a Cuban real estate company seized his land and made it into a bathing beach and a golf course, without reimbursement to him.

Stanton Case. Mrs. Walter Stanton, U. S. citizen and widow, claims a refund on municipal bonds which she says the City of Havana repudiated.

Betancourt Case. U. S. Citizen Alfred Betancourt owned sand dredges and other equipment which he maintains were seized by the Cuban government.

Barlow Case (by far the most conspicuous). U. S. Citizen Joseph E. Barlow has for some ten years been quarreling with the Cuban government. He bought up, reputedly for $500, an old Spanish grant to land extending as far around a given point "as a dog's bark could be heard." The land now includes 32 city blocks in the heart of Havana. The Cuban government, however, considering the antiquity of Mr. Barlow's claim and the peculiar method of bounding his grant, has refused to admit his title. So for a long time Mr. Barlow has been appealing to the U. S. government and once threatened to "bust on the nose" the Hon. Frank Billings Kellogg, predecessor to Mr. Stimson as Secretary of State, for not taking enough interest in his claim. "Barlow," said Dr. Orestes Ferrara, Cuban Ambassador to the U. S., "has been for 30 years a public nuisance."

In addition to these five cases, Ambassador Guggenheim will have some perplexities concerning Cuban dissatisfaction with the U. S. tariff on sugar. There appears every possibility that the Hawley-Smoot tariff bill now being debated by the U. S. Senate (see p. 16) will carry an increase in the sugar duty. Even if the tariff is left at its present level, Cubans will be angry. They want a lower tariff. They claim that a majority of Cuba's 175 "centrals" are now operating at a loss or barely paying expenses. For some years they have been crying tariff reduction. Should Congress reply with a tariff increase, U. S. popularity in Cuba would rapidly wane, nor would Cubans be eager to trade with U. S. businessmen in Cuba.

To the solution of problems in sugar and suits, Ambassador Guggenheim brings an experience chiefly in copper, basic metal of his family's fortune, and aviation, his and his father's enthusiasm for the past decade.

Young Harry Guggenheim's first copper contact came in 1908, when, aged 17, he left Yale's Sheffield Scientific School, went to an American Smelting & Refining property at Aguas Calientes, Mexico, where he learned to study and analyze men, mules and copper ores. Then he went to England, took a chemistry degree at Cambridge, won his Blue at tennis. The next stop was South America, where he was sent to develop Chile Copper Co. He laid down water pipe-lines 40 miles long, power-lines from the sea coast 80 miles away, built in the mountainous desert a mining town with a population of 10,000, made Chile Copper Co. world's cheapest low-grade producer in the world.

With the War came Mr. Guggenheim's interest in aviation. In March 1917, while taking a holiday in Florida, he saw the U. S. was at the War's threshold. He bought a Curtiss flying boat, took private instruction, and, when War was declared, received a lieutenant's commission in the naval air forces. Sent overseas, he organized naval air stations in England, France, Italy, won from the Italian government the Brevetto Superiore. After the War came another copper interlude, also the development of Chilean nitrate and Bolivian tin. But he was now engaged in the financial and business side of mining rather than the engineering, and finance did not so much appeal to him. When Chile Copper Co. was sold to Anaconda, he came back to the U. S., built himself his fine Norman manor on Long Island, had otherwise no occupation.

From this idleness aviation rescued him. Chancellor Elmer Ellsworth Brown of New York University was trying to raise money for an aviation course. He asked Mr. Guggenheim to write a money-getting letter. Mr. Guggenheim wrote the letter, showed it to his father for any suggestions that might improve it. So effective was the appeal that it immediately "sold" Daniel Guggenheim on aviation, resulted in the elder Guggenheim himself establishing the now famed $2,500,000 Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics. It was as president of this Fund that Harry Guggenheim met Charles Augustus Lindbergh just before the latter's Atlantic flight. After Col. Lindbergh's return from Paris, the Fund made him its Technical Advisor and promoted his state-to-state cross-country junket. Current Fund activities include experimental work in fog-flying and a $100,000 competition for the safest airplane.