An American-Appointed Official Controlled Liberia’s Own Budget: The Financial Sovereignty Firestone’s Loan Actually Cost

A Historical In-depth Discovery of Trade in West Africa Since 1896

Here’s what you need to know:

Article VIII of the September 1, 1926 loan agreement — the same loan tied directly to Firestone’s rubber concession — required Liberia’s government to appoint a “Financial Adviser” who would be “designated by the President of the United States of America to the President of the Republic of Liberia,” with Liberia’s own president permitted only to approve, not select, this official.
The arrangement’s removal clause made this asymmetry even more explicit: the Financial Adviser could only be removed by Liberia’s president “upon the request of the President of the United States” — meaning Liberia had no independent power to dismiss the American official controlling its own finances.
The scandal: this wasn’t a passive advisory role. The first American appointed to this position, commissioned June 27, 1927, immediately installed four additional named American citizens directly into Liberia’s own government — a Supervisor of Customs, a Supervisor of Internal Revenue, an Auditor, and an Assistant Auditor — placing American nationals in direct administrative control over the collection and accounting of Liberia’s own state revenue.

As a merchant converter, Paterson Zochonis took responsibility for sourcing supplies of “greycloth,” the industry term for unbleached, unfinished cotton fabric that served as the raw material for its printed textile products. Securing reliable greycloth supply required strong relationships with Lancashire’s cotton weaving mills. This raw-material sourcing was the first stage in a carefully managed production chain the company oversaw without directly owning it.

The Legal Mechanism: What Article VIII Actually Required

It’s worth quoting the operative legal language directly, since the precise wording reveals exactly how one-sided this arrangement actually was. Article VIII of the loan agreement, preserved in State Department records, states: “As an additional guarantee of the prompt payment of the loan and to insure the efficient organization and functioning of the Liberian fiscal services, the Government covenants and agrees to appoint to its service said Financial Adviser, who shall be designated by the President of the United States of America to the President of the Republic of Liberia and, subject to his approval, appointed to the said office.”

This structure deserves precise unpacking, since the phrasing is deliberately layered. The actual selection of the individual who would hold this powerful position was made by the President of the United States — not by any process internal to Liberia’s own government. Liberia’s president retained only the power of “approval,” a formality that, in practice, offered no genuine alternative candidate selection process. The follow-on clause compounds this imbalance: the same Financial Adviser “shall at all times be subject to removal by the President of the Republic of Liberia, upon the request of the President of the United States” — meaning Liberia’s own head of state could not independently dismiss this official controlling his country’s finances. Removal required the American president’s own initiative and request.

The company then commissioned specialist cotton-printing firms to finish that greycloth into printed fabric, using designs created by its own in-house design team. Manchester-based printing firms that carried out this commissioned work for Paterson Zochonis included companies such as R. Brotherton and A. Brunnschweiler and Co. This arrangement let the company control creative and quality standards while outsourcing the capital-intensive printing process itself.

Who This Official Actually Was, and Who He Brought With Him

It’s worth documenting precisely who filled this role and what he did once appointed, since the position wasn’t simply symbolic. The first individual designated under this arrangement formally accepted his appointment in a letter preserved in State Department archives, confirming his commission was dated June 27, 1927. In that same acceptance letter, he immediately reported the names of American nominees for the specific administrative positions the loan agreement’s Article IX required him to fill.

These appointments are worth naming directly, since they represent real individuals installed into direct control of Liberia’s own government machinery. Conrad T. Bussell, of Irvington, Virginia, was named Supervisor of Customs — a position overseeing the collection of Liberia’s import and export duties. Cathey M. Berry, of San Antonio, Texas, was named Supervisor of Internal Revenue, controlling the collection of Liberia’s domestic tax revenue. Ralph H. Birkmire, of Allentown, Pennsylvania, was appointed Auditor, and Charles G. Colgrove, of Sheffield, Pennsylvania, was appointed Assistant Auditor — positions with direct authority over how Liberia’s government accounts were actually recorded and verified. All four men, the record confirms, “have been duly commissioned and have entered upon their duties.” A sovereign African nation’s customs collection, internal tax revenue, and government auditing functions were, by 1927, each directly staffed by named American citizens, reporting through a Financial Adviser the US president had personally designated.

Paterson Zochonis’s in-house designers deliberately blended traditional West African motifs with Western design influences when creating patterns for its fabrics. This fusion approach helped the fabrics resonate authentically with West African consumers while still being produced within a British industrial system. The design strategy was a key part of what made the company’s textiles commercially successful across such a wide and culturally varied region.

This Wasn’t a New Idea in 1926 — It Was an Escalation

It’s worth situating this 1926 arrangement within its full historical context, since it represents the culmination of a pattern stretching back nearly two decades rather than a sudden invention specific to Firestone’s concession. Following a 1909 investigative commission appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt, the United States, Britain, France, and Germany jointly underwrote a $1.7 million international loan to Liberia in 1912, establishing an international customs receivership administered by appointees of all four governments plus a US receiver-general. This 1912 arrangement already gave foreign powers direct control over Liberia’s customs revenue collection, well before Firestone ever entered the country.

World War I disrupted this earlier arrangement considerably — Liberian government revenue, heavily dependent on trade with Germany, collapsed to less than half its prewar level once German trade was cut off. In the war’s aftermath, Germany was formally stripped of its role entirely: peace settlement provisions specifically required Germany to renounce “all rights and privileges arising from the arrangements of 1911 and 1912 regarding Liberia, and particularly the right to nominate a German Receiver in Liberia.” By 1926, Britain and France had also formally agreed to withdraw from the customs receivership administration entirely, specifically in exchange for the United States assuming sole financial oversight through the new Firestone-linked loan arrangement — meaning the 1926 deal didn’t simply add American financial control to Liberia’s government, it consolidated financial control that had previously been shared among four foreign powers into American hands alone.

There is a further, genuinely striking dimension to this broader reorganization worth including, since it extended beyond finance into Liberia’s own domestic security apparatus. Separate State Department documentation from this same reorganization effort specifies that “an effective military police or constabulary is to be maintained by Liberia under American military officers designated and appointed in like manner” — meaning the same broader framework that installed American officials over Liberia’s customs and revenue also placed American military officers in command of Liberia’s own internal police force.

It’s worth including how Liberia’s own government publicly characterized this arrangement at the time, since the framing reveals something about how thoroughly the loss of sovereignty was reframed as friendship. One historical account records that “calling the United States ‘Liberia’s best friend,’ the Monrovia government consented to having its revenues placed in receivership to the United States” — a formulation that recast what was, in structural terms, a direct cession of fiscal control as an act of trusting partnership.

The finished fabrics carried real cultural weight in West Africa: British wax-printed cloth functioned as a genuine status symbol, particularly favored and worn by wealthier West African consumers as a marker of taste and means. Alongside this premium line, the company also sold cheaper “fancy prints” — roller-printed cotton fabrics — aimed at broader, less affluent markets. This tiered product strategy allowed Paterson Zochonis to capture demand across different income levels simultaneously.

The Direct Connection to Firestone

It’s worth stating plainly how this financial receivership arrangement connects to the rubber concession this blog has already documented in detail. The September 1, 1926 loan agreement establishing this Financial Adviser role was the same agreement providing the $5 million loan tied directly to Firestone’s concession — the loan this blog’s earlier coverage has already shown was inserted at the last minute by Harvey Firestone himself, after three prior draft agreements had contained no loan provision at all. The loan’s stated purpose was explicitly to “adjust its outstanding indebtedness, including payment of the Liberian debt to the United States and the bonds issued under the 1912 loan agreement” — meaning this new American financial receivership was directly, contractually bound to the exact same loan that financed and secured Firestone’s rubber plantation.

Once finished, the fabrics were stored and packed for export at the company’s own dedicated warehouse facilities, giving it direct control over the final stages of the supply chain before goods left for West Africa. Owning this storage and packing infrastructure reduced the company’s reliance on third parties for the most sensitive final steps of the process. It reflected the firm’s broader tendency to control what it could of the value chain even while outsourcing manufacturing itself.

Close

Liberia’s own government spending, customs collection, tax administration, and financial auditing were placed under the direct authority of American officials — appointed by the American president, removable only at his request, and staffed by named American citizens installed in each key administrative role — as a direct, legally binding condition of the same 1926 loan agreement that financed Firestone’s rubber concession. This wasn’t a new imposition invented specifically for Firestone’s benefit; it consolidated and extended a pattern of foreign financial control over Liberia stretching back to 1912, ultimately concentrating in American hands alone what had once been shared among four separate foreign powers. A nation founded in 1847 specifically as a republic for free Black settlers, explicitly conceived as an assertion of Black self-governance, found its own national budget requiring the sign-off of an American official its own president had no independent power to remove — a direct, documented cost of the arrangement that made Firestone’s plantation possible.