These and many more heart-breaking conditions will confront you every day of your trip through Mañaña land. Be a philosopher. Don’t grumble. You came for business. These delays and deprivations are only incidents in the game; they make the reaching of the goal all the more of a victory. Grit your teeth and forge ahead. If fleas and mosquitoes and bedbugs bite, don’t revenge yourself on your possible customer, by telling him what you think of his country and countrymen. Learn to smile. It helps more here than elsewhere.
Be a student from the day that you sail from America to the day that you hand in your last expense account. It will improve you mentally and help your firm financially. Study the needs of the various countries through which you pass. Observe what the people require. Listen to suggestions from all sources. European successes in these markets were greatly advanced by giving the people just what they wanted. Yours will come in the same manner. Remember that a vast majority of the population whom you will meet are either Indians or of Indian origin. Their tastes are sure to be primitive, to incline to gaudy colorings and lack practicability. Remember, too, that they are paying the bills. If they want the things that offend your educated, æsthetic eye, forget it and explain to the house why they should make them as desired. It is always easier to follow styles in vogue for centuries than to create new ones and foist them on the public.
Latin America has always been a hotbed for disease. Be abstemious in eating and drinking. Alcoholic beverages should be taboo, inasmuch as they unnecessarily heat the system. Water supplies are inefficient and often polluted. Your drinking water should be boiled; if good water is not obtainable otherwise drink some reliable mineral water. Remember that plague comes from the bite of the flea, and yellow fever and malaria from the bite of the mosquito, so avoid as much as possible the places where these pests are to be found. Daily baths are apt to remove danger from flea bites and sleeping under a net minimizes the possibilities of contracting yellow and malarial fevers. Personal hygiene should always be observed. In twenty years of the roughest and toughest travelling up creeks and down tropical rivers, through forests heavy with dew, across barren, wind-swept plains, over mountains, in high and low altitudes, by exercising these suggested precautions I have had only one serious illness, yellow fever. Conditions have vastly improved since I first began my trips and are getting better every year. With judgment one could now take a journey all over Latin America without any physical dangers or serious illness intervening, and with less risk than he would be liable to encounter on a trip between New York and Chicago.
From a perusal of the requirements necessary for a salesman in this territory, and I may add that I have not overcolored, or underestimated them, it is apparent that the right man will be difficult to find. If a house cannot see its way clear to enter this field with the right kind of a representative, it had better remain out of it altogether or combine with several concerns in allied lines and send one high grade man to represent them jointly. It is extremely doubtful if any one could do justice to more than five firms in such a venture. The plan adopted by European houses is to send a capable young man to one of the countries and let him live there until he has acquired the language, the customs of the people and their ways of doing business. Then they put him on the road. This serves to demonstrate the thoroughness which marked every step of the European conquest of these markets. Our American public schools are now instructing pupils in Spanish and Latin Americans are coming to this country to acquire English in increasing numbers right along, so that the possibilities are that within a few years these conditions will change for the better. To-day, however, the efficient, competent and reliable salesman for Latin America is so rare and so much in demand that he can practically name his own salary.
Nearly every country in Latin America requires that a license to sell goods must be taken out by the salesman before he can do business within its territory, and as a result there has arisen much cause for complaint. As a rule these taxes or fees are entirely too high and out of proportion to those charged anywhere else in the world, thereby creating a natural tendency to evade the law by every possible means. In some localities runners about the hotels stand in with the authorities and for a small sum provide guests with the necessary paper entitling them to sell goods, while in other places the law is practically ignored.
The right to collect this tax in many countries is sold yearly by the municipal authorities for a lump sum to some individual, who always endeavors to collect as much as he can from the concession. Beware of the person who holds this right. He has at his beck and call a score of petty employes about the city and around the hotels who report your movements to him, and the result is generally disastrous to you, especially if you try to do business without his permission.
In the Argentine republic for example each province has a fixed fee for this purpose and the total sum, if paid, would eliminate the profits from the average amount of your sales. Failure to pay generally means a term in jail.
The merchant’s yearly taxes in many countries includes the right to sell goods by travelling salesmen and if he is approached properly by a non-resident representative will allow him to take advantage of his business foresight and use this permit, thereby giving a legitimate and legal opportunity to omit paying these obnoxious charges. By observing these suggestions and the exercise of diplomacy and good judgment, little need be feared from the authorities in this connection.
Before entering a foreign country for the first time, it is well to obtain letters of introduction to leading merchants and especially to government officials. They prove wonderfully beneficial and are highly successful in smoothing out the rough places which are sure to be met with in the paths of business. It generally pays to act implicitly on the advice given by responsible people living in the land wherein you are a pilgrim, for they are well acquainted with local idiosyncrasies, and can suggest the exact spot where a small tip will facilitate matters materially.
Be sure to cultivate the acquaintance of the high grade old time traveller whom you will be certain to meet sooner or later on your trip. You will find him pregnant with pertinent and useful suggestions, which will do much toward making your initial trip a success. Years of experience in the Latin American school of business have given him a marvellous amount of wisdom, which you will always find him willing to dispense if you are the right kind and not trying to impress the world with your superior knowledge.