40 BRAZILIAN COTTON 



All textile machinery from abroad jiays 15 per cent, import duty 

 ad valore?n, 55 per cent, of which is payable at the rate of gold dollars, 

 so that the actual duty works out to 40 to 50 per cent, paper money, 

 ad valorem, according to the rate of exchange. 



Method of Sale. — The method of sale of goods is in almost 

 all cases a simple one. There are in Rio manj^ wholesale dry goods 

 stores which are frequently shareholders in the mills. At times a 

 mill will sell its whole production on commission through one of these 

 drj' goods houses, j^aying 8% commission and 2% for the Delcredere. 

 In other cases the mill has six to ten dry goods houses as customers, 

 they buying outright. In the case of financially weak cotton mills, 

 the big wholesale dry goods fiims act as bankers. It happens at times 

 that goods made in Bahia or Minas are sent to Rio and sold again by 

 the Rio houses to the same States ; but generally these goods will be 

 sold on the reference patterns and sent direct from the mill to the 

 customer of the Rio dry goods house. 



A number of Rio firms selling national goods used to do exclu- 

 sively an import business of cotton goods from Europe. This has 

 fallen off enormously as will be seen from the table of imports, and 

 consequently the importing houses have taken up during the last 

 15 years the sale of national goods. Formerly the buyers (shop- 

 keejjers, etc.) from the Interior used to come regularly to Rio to make 

 their purchases, but with increased competition the dry goods houses 

 have now to send a large number of travellers into the Interior. 

 Business has ceased to come to Rio. consequentlj^ the Rio houses had 

 to go after business into the Interior. Some of these travellers are 

 often away a year on their journey and in view of the somewhat 

 unreliable mail service, it is necessary to telegraph orders and practically 

 all the communications. Large remittances from the Interior are 

 frequently sent in paper money by an ordinary native messenger. 



The Making-Up and Pattern Rooms were generally extremely 

 well managed and situated in very pleasant and light quarters. Special 

 care was taken in the preparation of " reference " patterns. An 

 electric iron was used in several pattern rooms to bring up the finish 

 of the goods. 



The mill store-rooms of the larger concerns are a pattern of 

 system : every article entering or leaving is most methodically booked. 



Profits. — As to the average profit of the cotton industry I 

 have been told on good authority that 12 per cent, is generally divided. 

 Many mills are making much bigger jDrofits ; they keep enlarging their 

 concerns out of profit, still paying 10 to 12 per cent, dividend. A good 

 deal is said by Rio and Sao Paulo i^eople of the graft and thefts com- 

 mitted in many cotton mills : it is maintained that responsible heads 

 of departments will give orders only if they receive secret commission. 

 I am not able to say whether this statement is correct or not, but I 

 am inclined to think that it is one of the many exaggerations told by 

 Europeans resident in Brazil because they have not been able to 

 obtain certain orders for machinery or mill furniture. One English 

 mill manager told us, however, that his concern did not pay prior to 

 his arrival, principally because so much money and goods were stolen. 



