best able to speak for the country" by means of which the custom
houses were placed under American control. United States forces
were to keep order and to protect the custom houses; United
States officials were to collect the customs dues; forty-five per
cent of the revenue was to be turned over to the Dominican
Government, and fifty-five per cent put into a sinking fund in
New York for the benefit of the creditors. The plan succeeded
famously. The Dominicans got more out of their forty-five per
cent than they had been wont to get when presumably the entire
revenue was theirs. The creditors thoroughly approved, and their
Governments had no possible pretext left for interference.
Although the plan concerned itself not at all with the internal
affairs of the Republic, its indirect influence was strong for
good and the island enjoyed a degree of peace and prosperity such
as it had not known before for at least a century. There was,
however, strong opposition in the United States Senate to the
ratification of the treaty with the Dominican Republic. The
Democrats, with one or two exceptions, voted against
ratification. A number of the more reactionary Republican
Senators, also, who were violently hostile to President Roosevelt
because of his attitude toward great corporations, lent their
opposition. The Roosevelt Plan was further attacked by certain
sections of the press, already antagonistic on other grounds, and
by some of those whom Roosevelt called the "professional
interventional philanthropists." It was two years before the
Senate was ready to ratify the treaty, but meanwhile Roosevelt
continued to carry it out "as a simple agreement on the part of
the Executive which could be converted into a treaty whenever the
Senate was ready to act."