Our farming machinery and tools have been largely sold, yet by some the machinery is called too light to last and an English make is preferred. An Australian machine, called a cropper, a thrasher and harvester combined, has been received with much favor. Duties generally are very high.
For successful competition in foreign markets, the highest grade of our goods must be presented and business contracts strictly carried out.
Paraguay, with a healthful sub-tropical climate, possesses splendid forests with woods similar to those of the Argentine Chaco, great plains supporting many herds of cattle, and land capable of producing excellent cotton, tobacco, fruit, and all kinds of tropical growths. The yerba mate which grows wild, but may be cultivated, is one of the chief exports, bound to increase rapidly, as the beverage, more healthful than tea or coffee, is extremely popular even with the European immigrants, and in foreign countries. Hides, quebracho extracts, and timber are exports of still greater value. The character of the imports is much the same as in the neighboring countries. Railroad building is going on, and in spite of recent war, internal development is in progress. Railway material is free of duty as is the case also with agricultural and industrial machinery, ship building material, wire fencing, etc.
Uruguay, with a fine temperate climate and a pleasant rolling country, is attractive to settlers with an eye to cattle raising or agriculture. Americans of this class, as well as business men and investors in any line, are cordially welcomed by Uruguayans, and finding the atmosphere more homelike than in some other places they are well content to stay. While agriculture and the live stock industry are the chief activities, there are local manufacturing interests which do not, however, begin to supply the market. Railway extension is in progress, and the navigable rivers are an important accessory.
By far the greatest export is animal production, including wool, skins and hides, meat and meat extracts, etc., while agricultural products are a distant second.
The imports are similar to those of Argentina, including practically everything which it does not export.
Brazil, like Peru, embraces within its borders an immense variety of resources, and a considerable though smaller diversity of climate. On the highlands of the tropics it is comfortably cool, as well as in the south. In many quarters it is temperate and even subject to frost, in a few places to snow.
The magnitude of its wealth in rubber, coffee, and all tropical and sub-tropical productions is well understood; the richness of its mineral deposits is less known. Still less perhaps is the fact that Brazil is larger than the United States proper, and that it contains six cities of 100,000 or more population, including one of 400,000, São Paulo, and Rio with approximately a million.
Everything is included within her boundaries, and whatever one’s taste in business, apart from polar exploration, there is room for its gratification here—opportunities for the settlement of colonies in delightful climate and surroundings on the richest soil, if persons care to indulge in agriculture, and locations equally favorable for entering into mining or commercial industry. Cattle raising is a growing occupation. Food stuffs in Rio being very dear, market gardening could be engaged in to excellent advantage in many spots on the highlands at no great distance by rail from the capital. A similar opportunity exists near Buenos Aires, though as land in the vicinity is held at a high price it would be necessary to go farther out on the railway, or across the river into Uruguay.
The coffee plantations of Brazil are already so extensive as to make entrance into that business undesirable if not impossible, except by the purchase of plantations already in bearing. Aside from coffee and rubber, the chief agricultural products are rice, cotton, sugar, yerba mate or Paraguay tea, mandioca, and cacao, or cocoa. Many manufactured goods are now produced, mainly of the ordinary necessities of life, leaving plenty of room for importation. It is desired to increase such industries. Inducements are offered by the Federal Government for establishing ironworks, the State of Rio has granted large privileges to the first flour mill, and a subsidy to a firm making paper from the reed papyrus which grows all along the coast. Manufactures of rubber would be very profitable on account of the 20 per cent export tax on rubber and the high tariff on imports. Steam laundries, fruit canneries, chemical works, and other industries may be inaugurated to advantage in various places.