BRIGHTENING PROSPECTS
Two full days in Rio is hardly enough to get much idea of a foreign city of a million and a half to two million in population. One man expressed it this way. "Rio has a limited number of rich to big rich, and a world of poor to very poor. We lack a middle class. We are very short on middle class. After the war people of Brazil flocked to Rio, and, far far oftener than not, left a position and life much higher than the one they attained, or could ever attain, in Rio."
Right now, they are slowed down almost critically by reason of a shortage of American dollars. They want and badly need to buy from us, but have no stable currency to pay with. Added to this, it would appear to the average outsider, they have some unfortunate and crippling legislation that doesn't help this situation.
We went to a cocktail party at the Copacabana Hotel. And there we met some 20 to 25 men from the States in various commercial and financial activities in Rio. It was the general opinion that the financial and industrial situation is rather bad. No impending panic seems evident, but a ripple of pessimism exists. As the evening advanced and the cocktails expanded, that pessimism dissipated. By the time some of us got to where a cock's tail blended into the rest of his feathers and where the cocktail party blended into the dinner party, it appeared a boom was about to start.