US Presidency
1909

Collateral investigations of the opium question in this country lead me to recommend that the manufacture, sale and use of opium and its derivatives in the United States should be so far as possible more rigorously controlled by legislation. In one of the Chinese Japanese Conventions of September 4 of this year there was a provision which caused considerable public apprehension in that upon its face it was believed in some quarters to seek to establish a monopoly of mining privileges along the South Manchurian and Antung-Mukden Railroads, and thus to exclude Americans from a wide field of enterprise, to take part in which they were by treaty with China entitled. After a thorough examination of the Conventions and of the several contextual documents, the Secretary of State reached the conclusion that no such monopoly was intended or accomplished.