348	THE AMERICAN CONTINENT	Part in
included the improvement of communications and the regulation of
sanitary restrictions.
The principal achievement of the Seventh Pan-American Con-
ference on the economic plane was the adoption of a declaration on
tariff policy which was based on proposals made by Mr. Cordell
Hull. The delegates to the Pan-American Conference from countries
other than the United States had been pleasantly surprised to find,
on their arrival at Montevideo, that Mr. Hull did not appear to
consider that he was prohibited in any way by President Roosevelt's
statement of the 9th November from entering into discussions on
economic questions. He let it be known at once that he was ready
to join in the examination of any question which any of his colleagues
wished to raise, and he was reported to have told Dr. Saavedra
Lamas that he was specially interested in facilitating the economic
work of the Conference. His popularity with his fellow delegates
was considerably increased when it became known that at a meeting
of the Steering Committee on the 5th December he had declared that
he had no interest in preventing a discussion of debts, and had
strongly criticized the policy of international bankers—who, he
pointed out, were not among the supporters of the Roosevelt Admini-
stration. Nevertheless, delegates from countries other than the
United States hardly expected that Mr. Hull would be able to make
any very constructive contribution on his own account to the
economic discussions, and their satisfaction was all the greater when
they listened to the speech which he made at a meeting of the
Economic Committee on the 12th December. On this occasion,
Mr. Hull made a strong declaration in favour of the reduction of
tariff and trade barriers to a reasonable level, either by means of a
system of bilateral commercial treaties on a reciprocal basis, or by
means of a general undertaking for a simultaneous lowering of
barriers. He suggested that a convention should be drawn up provid-
ing for the abolition of import and export prohibitions and making
obligatory the principle of unconditional most-favoured-nation treat-
ment. This part of his proposals met with some criticism, but on the
whole his declaration was very well received, and among the delegates
who strongly supported it was Dr. Saavedra Lamas, the Argentinian
Foreign Minister.
There was naturally a certain feeling of perplexity at Montevideo
when Mr. Hull enunciated this policy of low tariffs, since his initiative
appeared to run counter to the policy which the American delegation
had been instructed to follow at the World Economic Conference in
London as well as to President Roosevelt's statement of the 9th