Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose

by Willis J. Abbot

TIVOLI HOTEL FROM HOSPITAL GROUNDS

MESTIZO GIRL OF CHORRERA

Whether the earlier spirit of world conquest will again spring up in the American mind so long content with the profits of its own national preserves is yet to be demonstrated. To what extent it has vanished any thoughtful traveler in foreign lands observes with a sigh. One sees evidences of its weakness at every foreign international exhibition, for the American section is generally the least impressive there. The opinion of our manufacturers is often that to show their products abroad is folly because foreign manufacturers will imitate them with cheaper materials and labor. In most foreign markets, in the cities of Europe, South America and the Orient the chief American products you see displayed are those manufactured by one of those combinations of capital we call a trust, and they are usually sold abroad at lower prices than at home. Typewriters, adding machines, sewing machines, shoes and the divers products of the protean Standard Oil Company seem to be the most vigorous representatives of American industrial activity abroad. Nevertheless the recent statistics show that our experts are on the up-grade, and evidences of growing interest in our export trade multiply daily.

That the Canal of itself will not make amends for indifference or lethargy on the part of our manufacturers goes without saying. The nation may supply them with the waterway, but it cannot compel them to use it, or even teach them how. Every American traveler in South America has groaned over the reports that come from every side concerning the fatuity with which our manufacturers permit themselves to be distanced in the race for the trade of those republics. Our consular reports are filled with suggestions from consuls, but the various associations of exporters are so busy passing platitudinous resolutions about the need of taking the consular service out of politics that they have no time to heed the really valuable suggestions offered. Our methods of packing goods, and our systems of credits, are repugnant to the South American needs and customs and the fact has been set forth in detail in innumerable consular reports without any response on the part of our exporters. The American attitude is “what is good enough at home is good enough abroad”—which is patriotic but not a good rule on which to attempt building up foreign trade. Incidentally sometimes what is good enough for a home market is often too good for a Latin-American one. The English and the Germans recognize this and govern themselves accordingly.

It is a far cry from digging a canal to the system of educating young men to represent a firm in foreign lands. Yet one finds in visiting South America, or for that matter Oriental cities, that a great deal of the rapid expansion of German trade is due to the systematic education of boys for business in foreign lands. The weakest part of the educational system of the United States is its indifference to foreign tongues, an indifference possibly quite natural because but few Americans have really any need for any language except their own. But the German representatives sent to South America are at home in the Spanish tongue, and carefully schooled in the commercial needs and customs of the Latin-American countries before they reach them. They are backed, too, by a strong semi-official organization in their own country. They have in most of the principal South American towns German banks quite as interested as the salesmen themselves in the extension of German trade. It is reported that whenever paper involved in an American transaction with a South American buyer passes through a German bank in South America a report of the transaction is sent to some central German agency which tries to divert the next business of the same sort into German hands. I have no personal knowledge of such transactions, but the story is current in South America and it is quite in accord with the German’s infinite capacity for taking pains with little things.

Copyright, 1913, F. E. Wright.

SANTA ANA PLAZA, PANAMA
This plaza was built up largely during the French régime and the open air cafés are relics of that period of pleasure. It is the gayest of the town’s rallying places.