Everyone of these countries is in process of development and expansion. They have in profusion the things the busy world most needs. Their mines are the richest known to man. Some have been worked for thousands of years and are still productive. Their broad fields are destined to make them the granaries of the world. Their miles of pasture lands and their extensive acreage mean that Europe and the United States will depend upon them for meat. Their vast virgin forests are capable of supplying humanity with cabinet and other woods for several centuries. Their trade and imports must therefore increase. It is apparent that they cannot diminish. We cannot as a nation afford to remain indifferent any longer to their possibilities and opportunities.
Very naturally there have been many objections on the part of our business men to going after this trade which all of Europe strained every resource to acquire and control. It was urged that we had all the business we required; that we lacked foreign banking facilities; that our merchant marine was small and inefficient; that to go abroad for trade meant learning new languages, acquiring new customs, opening new accounts, taking more risks. These conditions were equally true when the European merchant decided to enter this field. He met and overcame all these difficulties under far more adverse circumstances than exist for us, to-day. His experience in this territory has charted the path for us to follow, and if we take advantage of the beacons he has erected we shall be saved from many pitfalls.
Latin America with the things the world most requires—wheat, meat, wool, coffee, sugar, nitrates, minerals, woods—can never collapse completely through any financial crisis. Furthermore its power of reviving quickly from any unfavorable panic is truly phenomenal. I recall Venezuela, the year she terminated her bloodiest revolution under Castro, harvesting and exporting a bumper crop of coffee, which immediately cleared up her monetary depression, and this rapid convalescent condition has been duplicated time and time again after every period of internal trouble experienced by all of these countries.
Nature has been bounteous in her gifts to these favored lands of the sun. If in a given locality the soil is not fertile, it is rich in mineral wealth, or covered with luxuriant forests. Throughout Latin America large and small rivers afford easy and cheap means of transportation. Drought or excessive rainfalls are comparatively unknown. Despite the fact that a majority of the population lives primitively, epidemics of a severe nature have been few and far between. Revolutions, formerly the blight on these lands, are becoming rare and in most of these countries there have been no such uprisings or demonstrations of this character for more than twenty years.
The opportunities for successful business in almost any chosen line in Latin America are unlimited, provided one uses ordinary judgment and simple tact in the undertaking. Furthermore less capital is required to start an enterprise than in lands where competition is keener, and less energy necessary to insure success. The truth of these statements is demonstrated most completely by the fact that millions of Europeans—many of them uneducated and possessed of no great amount of ability or money—have settled throughout these lands and established themselves in prosperous occupations.
The greatest possibilities exist along the lines of general development. All these countries are new; most of them practically unexplored—many of them not even having their boundary lines definitely established. Think of what must be the opportunities in Brazil—a country larger in area than the United States, and supporting only 20,000,000 people—or of Argentine, spreading over almost as much territory as Europe, excepting Russia and Austria-Hungary, with a population slightly more than 7,000,000. It is to these countries that overcrowded Europe must come for elbow room—for a glimpse of the sun.
Once a business or a plant is established in Latin America one need not have the intense fear of bitter local competition. These people have never been manufacturing or creative in their desires, and the chances are, if we are to predicate their future from their past, that they never will become competitors in any of these fields. Climatic conditions, racial and inherited traits have made them follow the lines of least resistance and they have become cattle raisers and large farmers, while comparatively few have entered commercial life. This being true it follows that these countries are ideal for those desirous of leading an active commercial or manufacturing career.
All of Latin America is in the process of awakening. They are building railways, making vast municipal and national improvements, exploiting their natural resources, modernizing their agricultural methods. The advent of the foreigner has been potent in raising their standard of living. If these people were to raise their standard of living to that of the United States at the present time, it would be the equivalent, so far as market possibilities are concerned, to creating three new Americas. Each day sees some progress in this direction, and with it a desire for more of the comforts of modern civilization—for more of the things which go to make up the full and complete life. This means employment for their people—civic progress—and prosperity.
Their markets are easily reached, the merchants willing to buy, our producers capable of providing the things they require. Their first orders may be small, but they become enormous buyers when they find the article adapted for their needs. The European marts which might have supplied the things these nations require in their growth cannot do so for a long time to come, thus giving us an ideal opportunity to capture these markets and at the same time introduce American methods throughout the length and breadth of the land.