Long credits are not to be encouraged. They were excusable in the age of the sailing ships and poor banking facilities, but with the quick transportation service of to-day are unwise and unnecessary. Under no conditions should more than six months time be allowed and that only for some special line dependent upon some future contingency, such for instance as crops—agricultural machinery being a good illustration. Staples and necessities require less time to dispose of and ninety days should be ample. If possible it might be wise to get the customer to agree to pay one-third of the invoice on receipt of shipping documents and the balance in sixty or ninety days. On overdue accounts, the Latin American merchant has always been accustomed to pay a good rate of interest.
XXVI
PACKING AND SHIPPING
The method of packing goods intended for the export markets of Latin America is worthy of the greatest study and the most serious consideration. Poor and improper packing, so characteristic of American made goods, has caused us the loss of much business, and wherever I have been in these countries it has formed the subject of much unfavorable comment and highly warranted criticism. Of late there has been a slight tendency toward improvement in this really important branch of the foreign trade, but there is still much opportunity for bettering conditions in this regard.
In the United States with every forwarding facility, the largest, best and most complete transportation systems on earth, we are prone to think of the rest of the world as being similarly provided with modern methods for handling goods. The fact is that the burro, the llama, the camel, the elephant, the coolie and the Indian are yet the greatest common carriers, and it will be many, many years before the shrill whistle of the locomotive will supplant the jingling bells of the pack train, or the slow moving caravan, in the outer edges of terra firma. In Latin America to-day, in proportion to its size, there are comparatively few railways, and fully another century will elapse before it possesses half the amount of mileage that we have at present in the United States. This is primarily due to the scarcity of population and secondarily to the inaccessibility of many of its interior towns, built in early days in remote and secluded spots so as to be free from the frequent invasions of buccaneers, as were the coast cities, or for the purpose of being near some rich mine or fertile agricultural district. The narrow mountain trails that wend their circuitous and tiresome way along the gigantic buttresses which Nature has so profusely placed throughout this part of the world are the only routes to these inland cities. As a rule they are hardly wide enough for two mules or pack animals to pass, except at certain localities. On one side they are bounded by the walls of snow-tipped mountains, which raise their majestic heads into the clouds, while on the other yawning abysses, hundreds, sometimes thousands of feet deep, open their gaping mouths, along the bottom of which winding watercourses wend their way to the sea.
Photograph by Underwood & Underwood
A Pack-train on the Andes Trail in Colombia
“In the United States with every forwarding facility, the largest, best and most complete transportation systems on earth, we are prone to think of the rest of the world as being similarly provided with modern methods for handling goods. The fact is that the burro, the llama, the camel, the elephant, the coolie and the Indian are yet the greatest common carriers”
Many of the ports of Latin America are open roadsteads, such for instance as Mollendo, Peru, one of the gateways to the interior of that country and Bolivia as well. At certain seasons of the year it is almost impossible for one to land and I have known of vessels to wait as long as six weeks before getting their cargoes discharged into the rolling, tossing lighters which continually thump and smash against the side of the ship. After the lighters are loaded, they in turn have to wait days, weeks and often months before a favorable opportunity arrives for getting their contents ashore. Without being conversant with these conditions one can hardly realize the strain and pressure exerted upon packing cases at such times.
After the goods have been brought to land by the none too gentle longshoremen, they are opened by the customs authorities and examined, and are then placed upon trains for forwarding into the interior points, for practically all these ports are the terminus of some railway leading into the remote inland districts. When they have gone as far as the train can take them, they are then consigned to the tender mercies of the muleteer, aided and abetted by the llama, burro or mule, and may be weeks on the road to their final destination.
The varying climatic changes to which they are subjected should also be given due consideration. Leaving the ice-bound northern ports of the States in winter, they come through the storm tossed waters of either or both oceans to the port of disembarkation, where for days they may rest under the broiling tropical sun. As they follow their path to the interior, on train and by beast of burden, they pass through torrid heat and tropical rains, across wind swept plateaus, through sand and snow storms, sleet and hail, above the clouds in high altitudes, and down into green valleys, across swollen streams, and on again up the sides of steep canyons, and through gloomy woods. Each night they are unstrapped from the animals’ backs, and roughly thrown on the ground along the trail or in the filthy barnyard of some mountain hospice. Before the stars have stopped their twinkling in the early dawn they are again piled upon the backs of the unwilling, resisting beasts and the dreary, wearying, monotonous march resumed.
Custom has decreed the exact weight each burro, llama or mule will carry and let me add that these animals know to a nicety their load, and are life members of a union that prohibits its initiates from carrying more than is expected of them. Attempts to overload bring forth growls, groans and moans, and if these signals of protestation are overlooked by the attendants, the animal flatly refuses to budge, until the burden is made the standard union size, a condition of affairs that must be extremely satisfactory to the cause of labor.