COCONUTS—SO GOOD AND SO HIGH
The Latin at his best is the racial goal of South America. Who cares to be judged by the social leavings of his own country? The South American best is intelligent, refined, and faithful to trusts. His mental processes are touched with a constructive imagination that finds high expression in his abundant art and literature. With a nervous, artistic, and sensitive temperament, he responds quickly to friendly approaches and stands ready to do his full share in social obligations.
That peons and ignorantes are not thus described is only to say that the tramps and social unacceptables of any country are not to be classed with the intellectuals and social leaders.
The personal equation is apt to be decisive in South America. Commercial travelers learn this to their profit or loss, as they adopt or disdain the ruling motives of the men with whom they deal. It may do very well in some cities of the United States for the breezy commercial traveler to display his samples, deliver his oration, and give the merchant three minutes to take or leave the best goods on earth. Such methods in Spanish countries means no business at all. Selling goods in South America is a social function in which are involved members of the family and, incidentally, some very pleasant hours. Any sort of make-believe is useless. Unless a man really likes the people he had better abandon any plans to do business with them. He may get on in Chicago, but in Bogota he will be very lonesome.
When a man sells goods on talk he may dispose of inferior qualities occasionally, and trust that he can talk enough faster next time to make up for his loss of standing; but when goods are sold on friendship a single mistake in quality means ruptured relations and the end of commercial confidence. And where friendship furnishes the basis of business the buyer will protect the seller in return for uniform good treatment on his part. Like all other racial customs, when once it is understood the system is not so unreasonable as at first appears.
An Englishman traveling in South America told me that on one occasion he sold a large bill of goods on credit to a man who proved to be a rascal. As the time for the return of the salesman and the payment for the goods drew near the buyer tried to sell out his entire stock at half price, with the intention of leaving the country with the money. But all the other merchants were friends of the salesman and refused to take advantage of the situation, to the loss of their friend. They preferred to lose their own profits.
Business in Latin-America is a personal matter. If a deal goes wrong, somebody is responsible. North American business has a large impersonal element, and the man who makes a bad bargain usually feels that he had himself largely to blame. The joke is on him, and he will exercise more shrewdness next time. But the southern merchant views the case differently, and it behooves the salesman to handle only goods that will move to the profit of the buyer.
When once this basis of friendly confidence is well set up it is easy to consummate large transactions with very little preliminary investigation. The capitalist is more interested in knowing what his trusted friend thinks than in getting data upon which to base his own conclusions.
