AMERICAN LUMBER IN FOREIGN MARKETS. 165 



there business can be secured. Transportation rates by these vessels 

 has been reduced to such figures that the cost of shipment of lumber 

 from New York, or Savannah, or Pensacola to Marseilles and Toulon, 

 unlike formerly when it was the chief item of expense, is now often less 

 than that of transportation to the seaboard. The great difficulty in the 

 way of enlarging the American lumber trade here, and this unfortunate 

 impediment operates in the same manner with reference to American 

 commodities in general, is not that the market is lacking or in any 

 sense unwilling, but that there is a complete misunderstanding in the 

 United States of French business methods and habits, an error which 

 often goes so far as to seriously undertake to convert the French system 

 to American, rather than take advantage of situations as they are 

 found. It should not matter to an American that a Frenchman prefers 

 to weigh his wheat by old-fashioned "steelyards" rather than by the 

 carload in transit, moving at the rate of 20 miles an hour. And if he 

 prefers to buy wheat to-day at a fixed price at so much per bushel to be 

 delivered six months or a year hence, and is naturally skeptical of a 

 commercial system wherein the values of commodities in six months or 

 a year depend, not on supply and demand, but on the influence of 

 "corners" and "deals," we have only ourselves to blame that the 

 Eussian merchant, appreciating the situation, has well-nigh driven our 

 wheat from this market by taking advantage of this dissatisfaction 

 with the ups and downs of Chicago and New York boards of trade. 

 The Jdessa dealer sends a French-speaking agent to Marseilles with 

 instructions to sell wheat under the conditions prevailing in France, 

 not by the trade rules in vogue in Eussia. And in the same manner 

 the Eussian and Swedish lumber merchants come in person, learn the 

 situation, and make contract with the people in their own language. 

 The American, on the contrary, writes to his consul for the names of 

 people dealing in particular lines of goods. The names are sent, and 

 the American merchant writes a letter in English, inclosing a price list 

 beginning : " We quote, etc., so much per ft. f. o. b.," as if expecting the 

 Frenchman to learn English, and then master the intricacies of Ameri- 

 can trade abbreviations. 



In a word, there is a large field here for American lumber exports. 

 Pine, poplar, and oak are used in certain features of housebuilding 

 referred to herein. The manufacture of furniture is an enormous indus- 

 try, and American walnut is highly appreciated and wanted for the 

 purpose. In a great manufacturing city like this, there are hundreds 

 of uses for which all sorts of lumber are required, but which can not 

 be enumerated here. At Toulon are situated the great shipbuilding 

 concerns of the French Government, and the bulk of imported material 

 should come from the United States. 



To secure these markets American dealers should send here repre 

 sentatives who speak the language, with instructions to study the bus- 

 iness system of the people, and to sell in accord with it rather than 

 endeavor to bring the French to our way of thinking. Letters in Eng- 



