The_Open_Door_deel1

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equal to 4 per cent of the country's territory and nearly 10 per
cent of what was considered the arable land in the country. One
could say that the only rights which Firestone were denied were
the rights of legal ownership. The Liberian Constitution excludes
non-citizens from ownership of real estate while restricting
citizenship to persons of negro descent. The granting of a 99 year
lease was thus a violation of the Constitution. The arbitration
clause interfered with Liberia's rights as a sovereign nation, and
the exemption of existing and future taxes limited the powers of
the National Legislature, The appointment of American supervisors,
under the Loan Agreement, was a violation of the constitutional
right of the President of the Republic to appoint persons whereas
the powers of these foreigners almost turned Liberia into an
American protectorate. The provision of the Loan Agreement that
the Government of Liberia could contract no other loan without the
approval of the Finance Corporation of America tied the Liberian
Government completely to the rubber company. In addition, the
agreements had many shortcomings, notably the Planting Agreement,
A serious omission was that no provision had been made for a
renegotiation of the agreement, after a certain period, while
adequate sanctions in case of non-fulfillment were also lacking.
The Firestone company was not obliged under the terms of the
Planting Agreement regularly to submit financial and technical
reports and without the proper information on the company's
behaviour the Government was to find itself seriously handicapped
later on in its decisions and actions. The agreement did not
provide any means to protect the rights of the indigenous population
in the plantation area apart from Article IV-f ("Tribal
reserves of land set aside for the communal use of any tribe
within the Republic are excluded from the operation of this
agreement.") and whereas no official records exist of the chasing
away of people from their villages and farm lands as a result
of the start of Firestone's operations in Liberia the destruction
was reported of farms and villages, followed in some
cases by compensation (20). For an area to be termed "tribal reserve"
a collective deed had to be acquired from the Government,
and although some town and clan chiefs rushed to Monrovia to hav_e
their lands registered as "tribal reserves", many others failed to
do so, and lacking the legal documents entitling them to the lands
they sometimes had occupied for centuries, they were ordered by
the Government to leave the area which was subsequently turned
over to the Firestone Plantation Company (21).
The 1 per cent export tax which the company had to pay compared
very favourably with the regulation in force until 1923 when the
effective duty payable on exported rubber was 6 cents per pound
(22), whereas other export products were taxed much heavier than
Firestone's product. E.g., the export duty on palm kernels in the
early 1930's was 1 3/8 per cent, those on palm oil varied from 4.3
per cent to 25.6 per cent and on piassava was 14.2 per cent (23).
It is not well possible to evaluate the Planting Agreement and the
Loan Agreement separately. Based upon a productive area of 50,000
acres with an average yield of 400 lbs. per acre, - an optimistic
assumption - and fixing the price of rubber arbitrarily at 20
cents per pound, the Government would receive $ 40,320 through the