Show OUR PERIAN MARKETS copyrighted 1898 by frank G carpenter lima peru may 31 1898 one of the most moat important parts of my vre present sent mission to south america is molook to look into the projects for american trade there is a big market tor for our goods in these theae countries but it is one which we will have to cultivate much more than we are now doing if we detour get our share so far I 1 have met but three commercial trIm travelers elerS from the united states one of these was a mr Sult sullivan ivan who was taking orders for lubrA lubricating cating oils WO we traveled together togi ether from ecuador to pa casmay peru and he told me he be was on his way to chile and the argentine I 1 oame came from new mew york to Pan panama afta with an american named herzig who was on his way down the west cot coat to buy cocoa hides a and feathers tor tar several new york firms and I 1 am uld told that the agent of the carnegie steel cora company pany is now taking orders in peru on the other hand band I 1 find english and german drummers everywhere krupps IC agent has just left here there are tw two english dry dit goods men on the same floor with ne ane in toy tay hotel they have large sample rooms and have long tables covered cov aped with every variety of cotton and woolen goods one of these drummers Is from manchester and the other Is from they have haive both been for weeks going through central america on an mules and they are now working their way down this coast they stop at every large port and 8 d work the trade one of them will so 90 from here to bolivia and will visits visit the interior cities of that country carrying his samples for or hundreds hund reft of miles on an mules these aaen have a big bg stock with them the manchester man inan tells me he carries about two tons of samples from port to port and that he be has to load about a dozen mules when he goes into the interiors inter iori the nottingham man on an and pays his own expenses which ike tells me are about 10 sold agold a day he says that hie houses have three me men ak to work the west indies and spanish america he takes in mexico central america and the pacific coasts coast another salesman has the west ladles and the coast of the caribbean gap and a third brazil uruguay and the argentine this is the usual arrangement of the european houses for working this trade all of these european drummers speak spanish they know the countries well and are posted as to the finan financial elal standing of the various buyers the united states should not think that it can get these markets without I 1 a hard light fight and a long light fight the business has been studied for years by the european nations andi and 1 will show later on some of the underhand meth os by which they attempt to crowd themselves in and the americans out the business to is naturally ours and it will pay to fight it this continent contains square miles and it has more than people all of whom are am consumers though the of the majority axe are few the resources of the continent contine att all told are ace great beyond conception the products will steadily increase and we already buy about worth of them a year our ales on the other hand amount to only OM and our purchases are said to increase five times as fast as our sales and add this notwithstanding stan Aing we are now the greatest man nation of the he world there Js Is no nation that has so large a stake in the battle for foreign commerce as om ours we now have more than OM ml invested in manufacturing an and d we turn out a net product ot or worth of goods every year and it iff is estimated that our fae factories bories can in six months maike edke all of the goods that home markets marke its can use we have workmen engaged in our mr factories and if we would keep them lousy we must ecce didome our way InI ottto bOthe the foreign markets we need nee our own ships here on he ake west coast of south america freights are cheaper chea goer to london and nd hamburg than they are to new york and you can 1 31 am told sen doods goods to liverpool laverpool and thence to new york more cheaply twan than to new yock direct either elif flier via panama hansana or the straits of magellan today there are two lines of steamers which ply between the united halted states and pacific south souci america the clevn of W tt grace co have four or live five ships of awo 5 M tons each which make monthly voyages via the tahe straits between callao and ana new york and flint eddy co have what is called the merchants Mere hants line which dispatches a steamer every two months or oftener as tie the demands of Ittia trade lle require even these lines have materially increased our trade the grace line which was started in 1892 to take the place of the salling sailing ships cwi owned tw by the company had fr h 1896 1895 fremed the em carrying trying trade of this firm arm and anda P L crosby of lima who represents flint eddy co here belte beds me there is a decided increase in imports since the merchants Merd hants line has been put 0 chwe two new york firms W it grace co and flint eddy co do the great bulk of our trade with south america until recently flint flin edd eddy co have to a large extent confined themselves to the atlantic coast but they have now combined with or absorbed ba orbed the old firms of hemenway brown I 1 rown and brown beeche beech e co and have their houses in the chief ports of the pacific as well I 1 found them at panama and guayaquil Gu ayaquil and they have also houses here and at valparaiso the graces have for years been one of the great powers in peru and mile chile and today they handle perhaps more valuable property than any other firm on the west coast they have carried through some of the biggest enterprises ever attempted in south america and their profits are said to have amounted to millions today there is hardly any big thing in peru in which they have not an interest they have sugar estates amounting to thousands of acres and on one plantation which they control near ChIm chimbole chimbote bote north of her bere they have acres in cane and as much more which is not under cultivation ti the capital invested in this estate is and the property and machinery on it probably cost more than that sum it was M P grace of new york now the head of the english banking house of M P grace co who brought about the settlement of the peruvian debt by the organization of the peruvian corporation this corporation was an english syndicate which assumed the foreign debt of peru amounting to almost and in return peru gave the CAW ca Ibn all of its railways the right tomine guano on the peruvian govern ment territory to the amount of tons and a large area of coffee lanai on the other obber side of the andes anch iff now being developed of course no one except mr orace grace knows just what the profits of tats deal were but I 1 nave have heard it WT here bere that be alme made no less than a million dollars out of tt this was not a a large sum considering the of iba interests involved and the he dip diplomatic hopta tia and busi business skill okill required to handle them in competition with Drey dreyda fa itco co and others of the largest capitalists of europe today the graces do cill 0 of abr loading and shipping of the guano abr the peruvian corporation po por atlon ration employing hundreds of men for the purpose they also own cotta cotton plantations A tu southern peru and have the management of the vitarte cotton mills above lima which are the largest cloth mills of peru the chief business of the firm is however as commission merchants as im importers of american goods in their houses here heft and at callao you will find samples of nearly everything made in america which is likely to be in demand in peru they import everything from toothpicks to steel plates and from nails to locomotives they take orders tor for alt all kinds of Amer american tean goods and engage in contracts to almost any amount they have their salesmen who travel through 1 the country and are anxious to traduce anything that will sell As far as american trade is cone the house of flint eddy OD do ar axe ing here the same class of busin grace a co they have sew sample M I 1 almost everything and are push pus pj sorts of american manufacture Z of the best beat posted men on such te Is mr P F I 1 crosby the hea head 0 eddy co of lima ad metot MeT Vt handling nothing but amdal american for the past twenty five years a thorough american and afisu f t same time a good knowl knowledge Peruvian character arid an the people and countr country 1 nip talk with him this r which he gave some points tilts wt lean ican shippers said S ald he 11 trouble with our af they will not stud study the wants customers and t try to salt litfy I 1 I 1 they dont pack t heft mark thern them plainly TA alt goods good goodsil sik be south america should be tep abw e boxes boxel then you eon an tell it if tamy hawy cwm been opened on olt the acty f it ig they ggs W t put in secondhand second hand box boxes and remake they are sure to come here with something missing it is easy to open an old oad box the steamers specify the condition of each case and do not hold themselves responsible if the cases are secondhand second hand if goods are not stolen on the ships they may be stolen at the custom houses the marking of the boxes should be with letters from six to ten inches long the germans art arb the beat shippers in this regard they use letters ten inches long and mhd two inches wide and put them on so plainly that it is impossible to mistake the directions our shippers will use letters of not over two inches in length their marks often rub oft off and the boxes boles axe are lost jairt they are careless also in billing the goods properly and especially ly so in pack irig goods are handled roughly on the ships and the strongest cates cases arfe needed another important thing is to pack so that the duties here win will be as small as possible many classes of goods are taxed by weight and I 1 have had stuff sent to me in such mch heavy cases came that the duties amounted to fifty times the value of the goods samples should always bb shipped as samples and every factory should have a copy of the tariff laws of the ole countries to which they ship and study to pack so as to cause the least cost to their customers goods 1 that atu go into small cases should not be put but into nto large ones as freight Is charged for by measurement every german house hauae has a copy of the tariff of every country to which it sends goods and packs accordingly according ky you speak of the GwiT nans mr crosby sald said 1 I do th ahr T do much business in peru yes tea they are are fast monopolizing the trade everywhere when I 1 came here over twenty ye years s ago a there the were no german houses and yran frn wenty twenty to thirty big english row irow there are more than a adore of mg ig german establishments and only que one or tw two 0 large english ones tl tb germans are driving out the flery everywhere where they are as VS methods and will do anything to get aa trade ade they ate are in fact the pirates odthe commercial world the amerian sells hl goods and is proud to fall them american he will not mike make a poor article because he does not think it fairno fair to do so this is also the case with the english and french but the german cares tor for nothing but to sell he will call his goods american ir frenca rench or english according as goods good i are the most in demand bernd and by putt putting ingin in poor material will make a cheap article which looks like that thal he daix claims to sell the germans make rogers knives which will not cut butter without they are heated they label rogers sheffield and use th the rogers trade marks they make moldings mol dings smashed with gilt and mark them from the united states and they imitate but wall viall papers pacers and mark them american I 1 wish ash I 1 could show you some at w the oe building blocks which th they seu wider r the name of Cran dalls th the t loof as though they had been cut cui out w watfa vi 9 hatchet they used to imitate the toniea tc and singer sewing machines and labeled them with live the he american trade marks but they 1 nave stopped that hit and now call thein the eliger style saito of Mae machine hine etc tats the people who canno cannot tread read Ehg teh ees th same arboine p they nex key cheap falt pf af freno french ano and english stockings IV lak under pirated trade marks il the copell pall havana ganann cigars made in hamburg Ham burc and at buchea aro from I 1 1 labeled imad in n tm ia ad tate 10 lo not coxe care 13 goods i ire are honest or not alt ill wey OW k to self what do we sell in PC FE mr tr crosby T if aarel oiw total batese are biow aho abut qt three quarter ar a i mint aall P ei ear and as peru buys more than eleven millions annually you will see that more than nine tenth s of the peruvian trade is with europe before the war with chile when peru was rich she bought almost three times as much american goods as she does now the trouble is that we do not buy a great deal of peru trade is reciprocal and people buy where they sell if the reciprocity treaty which the peruvian minister at washington is now trying to arrange can be carried through it will increase our trade one hundred per cent at present the chief articles shipped here from the united states are petroleum lard hardware machinery and lumber the best beat of the american petroleum that of the test to is sold in peru the cheaper oils come from the native fields and the peruvian article will not refine so well as ours all peruvian families use lard for cooking and american lard sells in lima for seven cents gold per pound then all ot of the pitch rosin and turpentine used here comes from our southern states american ware made with natural gas beats the world and quite a lot of it is now being sent to peru from pittsburg and johnstown we are acknowledged to haye have the best beat carpenters tools and axes these come in large quantities from hartford conn that city has a monopoly of the farming tools sold on this coast of south america among the new mew importations are steel plates from ff burg and also iron pipes from the national tube works the americans have the best of the peruvian watch trade and the waltham watch has swept the field we do a large business in american sewing machines and we are beginning to sell american bicycles we sell considerable oregon and california lumber and not a little white pine from new york some american furniture is imported chiefly cane seated chairs we are importing some printing inks and a large part of the furniture and machinery for the new post office at lima is american the boxes were imported by us and the postage stamps of peru are made by the american bank note company of new york the most of the rolling stock and bridges for the railroads of peru have until now come from america but as the roads have gone into the hands of an english syndicate in the future such articles will probably be shipped from england mr crosby says that the commercial travelers sent down here by some of the american houses do more harm than good theado they do not understand the spanish language nor the people they cut prices prace and often make statements which cannot be relied upon it Is in useless to send a man ow here who does not no under understand sta n d the language and until spanish speaking drummers can be educated as as far as selling to is concerned I 1 should think that dealing through h such firms as the granes graces and filat flint addy co would be most moist profi profitable tabi these companies will handle anything ar arid id they charge a commission on their sail sailes e a every manufacturing establishment in the united states should look upon this territory as aa a part of its legitimate helo |