1916–1922: (The Promised Loan That Never Came: Debt Consolidation, the Seven-Year Wait, and Millspaugh’s Verdict): A disappointing consequence of the haphaza…

1916–1922: (The Promised Loan That Never Came: Debt Consolidation, the Seven-Year Wait, and Millspaugh’s Verdict): A disappointing consequence of the haphazard way the United States exercised its responsibilities was the inability to organize the foreign loan Haiti so badly needed. Paymaster Conard’s early project, picked up in 1916 by Ruan, had been to refund and consolidate Haiti’s outstanding French debt from 1875, 1896, and 1910 — the face value was about $23.3 million, but purchasable for about $16 million. To buy in these bonds, redeem internal debt, resume service on the external debt which had lapsed since 1914, and scrape up capital for reconstruction, a U.S. loan of $30 million was needed. Despite fair words and despite extension in 1917 of the Haitian-American Treaty until May 3, 1936, Washington did not get everything together until 1922. Seven years after the Marines first landed seemed a rather long wait, and the failure embittered Haitians toward the United States. The central problem for the occupation was administrative: between 1915 and 1922 Haiti came under four senior naval officers, six Marine brigade commanders, four Gendarmerie commandants, and two financial advisers. At the State Department, the Latin American Division had six different chiefs or acting chiefs in the same period. As Dr. Arthur Millspaugh, himself a later financial adviser, fairly concluded: a more confused, disorganized, and unsatisfactory state of affairs could hardly be conceived. Nevertheless the occupation muddled ahead — as early as March 1916 the highway from the Cap to Ouanaminthe had been rebuilt, and Caperton entered Ouanaminthe in a Ford automobile, church bells ringing as they neared, a town now holding 1,200 people where a few months earlier there had been only nine. The French minister likewise noted progress: the peasants, the pure noirs, were like the tradesmen in the towns, delighted with the American occupation.