DUTIES COMMERCIAL.
The most important of these—the one indeed which is now, as it always has been, of central importance in the consular service, is the one first mentioned—commercial duties. Owing to its importance I will quote in full from the Consular Regulations, pages 248-51, the list of subjects upon which the consul is expected to report to the State Department:
“1. Conditions of foreign commerce and internal trade, manufacturers, mechanical industries, agriculture, etc., especially—
“(a) Statistics of exports and imports, of shipping and of revenue and expenditure of the country; amount of public debts, national and local; rates of taxation, character of taxable basis, how taxation is levied and collected, amount of taxation per capita, etc.; value, actual value in exchange, and also as measured by the dollar of the United States; changes in purchasing power of the currency; banking—new systems, especially of savings banks and of banks as associations for lending money to agriculturists, mechanics, and factory operatives; public loans and the matters of finance affecting the industry or commerce of the country; commercial credits—rates and periods usually granted to foreign purchasers, and those expected from foreign shippers; trade usages and peculiarities; special demands of consumers as to demand and quality of goods or supplies already in use or capable of being introduced among them, with suggestions as to the best and most economical style of packing to conform to local requirements of sale and transportation.
“(b) Improvement of old and development of new industries, including inventions or discoveries, and the result obtained from the practical application of them.
“(c) Introduction of inventions made in the United States or imitations of them; application of business or mechanical methods employed in the United States.
“(d) Importation and use of food supplies, raw materials and manufactures from the United States, or the possibility of introducing them, and local or race requirements to make them acceptable to foreign consumers.
“2. Facilities for direct and indirect communication with the United States—establishment of new ocean or international railroad lines or agencies; development of internal transportation lines—railroads, highways and steamboat or other carriage on rivers and canals, or betterment of them; opening up of new trade routes or abandonment of old ones; changes in transportation rates, both freight and passenger, which are of general interest to commerce; bounties or subsidies to railroads and shipping.
“3. Development or decline of commercial and manufacturing centers; causes of drift of agricultural population to towns and cities; diversion of trade from one local market or district to another; projects for great manufacturing or other industrial enterprises for harbor or river improvement, for better methods of lighting, street paving, water supply, sewerage and disposal of sewage, economy of municipal taxation and expenditure; hygienic and quarantine measures; police systems, urban and rural.
“4. Changes in economic condition of producing communities, urban and rural; fluctuations in rates of wages, cost of living, prices of products, raw and manufactured, especially for food supplies, wearing apparel, agricultural and domestic implements, machinery, etc.; scarcity or glut of articles of consumption of all kinds, particularly those produced in the United States; changes in hours of labor or other conditions affecting workingmen, trades’ unions; strikes and lockouts; systems of co-operation and profit sharing; government measures (national, municipal or local) or private (organized) projects for insurance or care of infirm or superannuated laborers, for improved sanitation of factories and dwellings, for regulating the labor of women and children, and for combating usury in the lending of money; technical and commercial education; museums, exhibitions, merchants’ unions and similar organizations for promoting trade, and the functions assumed by the state in connection therewith.
“5. All changes in tariff legislation, including new rates of export, import, or transit duties, special care being taken to state whether they discriminate in favor of or against the United States as compared with other countries. When a wholly new tariff law is enacted it should be given in full with an explanatory statement of increase or decrease in duties as compared with the tariff previously existing. Prompt notice of contemplated tariff legislation should be sent to the Department. By tariff legislation are meant not only measures affecting export and import duties, but also those relating to customs administration, transit duties, octroi or municipal taxes upon supplies entering cities and towns, taxes imposed upon the import or export of articles from one political district of a country (such as a state, province, canton, arrondissement, etc.) to another, tonnage, taxes and port dues, or other taxes upon shipping, etc.
“6. Legislation or proposed legislation of interest to farmers, merchants, mechanics, inventors, etc., such as changes in patent, trade mark, and copyright laws; laws to prevent adulteration of food, or to prohibit importation or sale of adulterated or impure food; laws prohibitory of importation of diseased animals, impure seeds, etc.; measures discriminating for or against any particular class of products or against imports from any country; bounties granted to special lines of manufacture or agricultural production; changes in legislation concerning agricultural, commercial or industrial concessions, such as government land grants, railroad bonuses, special privileges, and exemptions for colonists; encouragements to or restrictions of immigration; rights of citizenship; taxation or exemption of manufacturing plants, machinery and implements; licenses to trade; taxation of commercial travelers; legislation as to bankruptcy and collection of debts, etc. Also decisions of courts or of government officers on important commercial questions; government regulations relating to law changes; changes in commercial procedure.
“7. Undertakings and enterprises of moment—the construction of public works, the opening of mines, the granting of concessions for working minerals or forests, or for other similar purposes”.
This is an admirable list for any one to study if he would learn what are the signs of a nation’s material prosperity. It deserves further comment because of its importance to the consular service, but we must pass on.