466 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[June 1, 1914. 



mules gracefully filing around corners on ledges eighteen inches 

 wide above chasms a thousand feet deep; or, perhaps, a dark, 

 long-haired native crossing a similar abyss on a rope-bridge 

 and carrying on his shoulders a chair in which sits a fair and 

 meditative senorita. It is all right in pictures, he says, awfully 

 interesting in reality, but he does not, as in his youth, hanker 

 for tlie pleasure of personal experience. We may at once 

 admit tliat he is entitled to his prejudices, and suggest that if 

 he wishes to visit Quito in less trying fashion he may take a 

 train on the newly-built railroad from the seaport, hand up his 

 ticket to an American conductor, and, when he arrives at 

 Quito, get off and go to a hotel. That is the way they do it 

 now, and the distance is less than 300 miles by rail. 



Ecuador has an area about as great as that of Nevada, with 

 a population fifteen times as great. A majority of the popula- 

 tion are of Indian, or partly Indian, descent, but wholly civilized. 



Courtesy of The Pan American Union, Washington. 



The M.\rket Place in Quito, Ecu.^dor, 



and such peaceful occupations as agriculture and stock-raising 

 furnish employment to the greater number. In the production 

 of cacao Ecuador leads the world. This valuable article of food 

 and drink was first exported from Ecuador less than forty 

 years ago, but the planters have found such profit in it that the 

 production has risen to a hundred million pounds. This sup- 

 ply, great as it is, is less than the consumption in the United 

 States. Much of it goes to Europe, and then back across the 

 ocean to us. There is no reason why this should continue. The 

 crude product realizes to the grower only about ten cents a 

 pound, and enters our ports duty free. When it reaches the 

 consumer as chocolate, cocoa or cocoa-butter the price has been 

 advanced by an average of 500 per cent. With the opening of 

 the Panama Canal the seeds should be shipped directly from 

 the plantation to the American factory, and the food products 

 sold at reasonable cost. The ships that bring the cacao will 

 bring also rubber, coffee, rice, cocoanuts and otlier tropic prod- 

 ucts, for whicli we have such insatiable need. 



These ships, if they are to run, must have freight both ways, 

 and it is in order for American manufacturers to think about 

 what they are going to send to the market that is waiting for 

 them. From New York to Guayaquil, by the Strait of Magellan, 

 is over ten thousand miles, a distance that will be reduced by the 

 Panama route to less than three thousand miles. The present 

 average of sixty-five days will be reduced to fourteen. Freiglit 

 rates are bound to find a reasonable level. The commerce of 

 Ecuador will be like the movement of a released spring, in- 

 stantly responding when its bonds are removed. Production will 

 be enormously stimulated, immigration on a large scale will be 

 inaugurated and the demand for foreign goods multiplied many 

 times. 



.•\t the present time the exports from the United States to 

 Ecrador are mostly of a crude order — lumber, flour, kerosene 

 and railroad materials. Such trade as there is, outside of the 



oil which is 

 sold by a cor- 

 poration always 

 ready to look 

 after business, 

 may be said to 

 be largely the 

 result of acci- 

 dent, the out- 

 come of orders 

 for supplies for 

 Americans who 

 built the Guaya- 

 quil-Quito rail- 

 road. In more 

 finished lines 

 the United 

 States occupies 

 a very subordi- 

 nate place, 

 third, sixth or 

 "also ran." The 

 American busi- 

 ness man still 

 thinks of Ecua- 

 dor as a semi- 

 savage country, 

 impossibly re- 

 mote. He is 

 governed by th^ 

 geography of a 

 bygone age, and 

 his impressions 

 are about as 

 correct as those 



of the reader of the Xinlh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britan- 

 nica (superseded only last year) who is informed that the Amer- 

 ican Indian tribes living in the States west of the Mississippi 

 river make use of horses, but that the tribes living east of that 

 river do not do so because of the heavy forests with which 

 the land is covered. The Ecuadorean, on the other hand, thinks 

 that the United States, as a manufacturing or exporting coun- 

 try, must amount to very little. No traveling salesman ever 

 comes to solicit his trade for an American house, and his dear 

 friends, the European salesmen, are unanimous in informing 

 him that the Americans are small potatoes and few in the hill. 



Guayaquil is the port through which flows 90 per cent, of 

 Ecuador's foreign trade. It has a population rising well toward 

 a hundred thousand and, while in the past one of the most un- 

 sanitary of cities, is now putting its houses in order, that it may 

 meet the demand of the world for modern sanitation at all its 

 ports. The traveler who takes the railroad for Quito from this 

 port passes through the reality of all the pictures of the old 



