This therefore is the golden opportunity for other competitors to capture the large bulk of export trade which had gradually been absorbed and was in course of constantly increasing absorption in the countries under discussion by German firms.
Many Consular Reports and publications of the “Bureau of American Republics” have respectively dealt with the consequent loss of trade to Great Britain and the comparatively slow advance in that respect made by the United States and these documents have insistently pointed out the whys and wherefores of German commercial success over their chief rivals.
The writer cannot therefore lay claim to originality in the present observations, but does claim that his persistence in the reiteration of what he, and many greater than he, have continually urged on every possible occasion during the past decade has been and is in what appears to him to be the best interests of those most concerned.
Of the two nations the British still has the better opportunity to extend its commerce in both Argentina and Uruguay. The reasons (apart from the actual kaleidoscopic financial and industrial situation) for this opinion are that the English (as all people hailing from the British Isles are commonly called in South America) have already acquired in both countries a firm reputation for straightforward dealing, founded on many years’ experience and untainted by any suspicion of underlying political motives, whereas the South American Republics generally harbour a latent but constant resentment of what they rightly or wrongly consider to be the tendency of the United States to assume a dominating influence over both Americas. In fact to construe the Monroe doctrine as meaning, to cite the catch-phrase which to the innermost South American mind embodies something very closely resembling an unpleasant truth, “America for the North Americans.”
Therefore, pushing United States’ commerce is immediately met by a seemingly dull indifference to the merits of the wares it offers, praise it those wares never so loudly. And this observation suggests another of almost equal truth and importance, viz. that the loud and strenuous vaunting of an article and the hustling methods so much admired in the great Republic of the North are worse than useless in Spanish South America. “Why so much talk and so much hurry to strike a bargain if the thing is really good?” is the mental attitude of the average Spanish American towards the vociferous North American traveller who usually makes the further mistake of appearing to wish to teach his listener the latter’s own business. This, as has been said elsewhere in these pages, is a thing no Argentine or Uruguayan will stand. No one is a more severe critic of himself, his methods and Institutions, no one is most enamoured of progress and improvement than he. But he must be the discoverer and chooser of the remedies for his own defects, he and he alone must be the arbiter of his own destinies and set his own house in order. In such matters he will brook no interference. And least of all from the United States.
It is surprising that the commercial ability of the latter country should not long ago have discovered and acted in harmony with this feature of South American psychology. It seems, however, to have escaped appreciation by “Yankee” cuteness.
Accordingly, we find, in the present writer’s opinion, two existing obstacles (apart, as has been indicated above, from the present financial situation) to the extension of the trade of the United States in Argentina and Uruguay. One of these, the inappropriate method of approach usually pursued by travellers and the other a strong and jealous suspicion of the ulterior motives of the United States in endeavouring to strengthen her commercial foothold in the Southern Hemisphere. The first of these obstacles should be easily removable, unless, indeed, it be too firmly rooted in the North American mentality. The second is a matter for extremely delicate state diplomacy, and equally delicate behaviour of the United States’ delegates at each future “Congress of American Republics.”
Having thus glanced at seemingly obvious defects in United States methods we may turn to those of British manufacturers.
In their regard one can scarcely restrain the question, “Do they really want the South American trade at all?” Because, if they do, they set about getting it in the strangest possible ways. Their apparent attitude can be summed up by saying that they point-blank refuse to give a customer what he thinks he wants unless his ideas on that subject entirely coincide with what they think is best for themselves and, incidentally, it would seem, for him.