36 FOREIGN MARKETS FOR AMERICAN HORSES. 



purchase their horses from German citizens, and we would not have 

 been able to have disposed of a single horse to the officers of the army- 

 had it not been for the fact that my partner himself was a German. 

 The habits of the officers are such that a horse seems to be thoroughly 

 discussed among them before a purchase is made, and at present there 

 is a determination in some quarters to prevent as far as possible the 

 introduction of American horses into the army. My partner, how- 

 ever, succeeded in negotiating several sales with the army officers, 

 and these, with the sales that he had made from a former shipment, 

 all turned out to be extremely satisfactory. We had facilities for 

 knowing that the officers who had bought the horses, without excep- 

 tion, made most flattering reports to their colonels in regard to them, 

 and that these reports to the colonels also reached the war department 

 of the Kingdom of Saxony. We were endeavoring to negotiate a sale 

 of horses to the Swiss Government, and it came to us quite directly 

 that the report of the Saxon war department upon the American horses 

 in the Saxon army to the Swiss Government was highly favorable. It 

 is, however, impracticable to attempt to supply the army with Amer- 

 ican horses at the present time, unless combinations can be effected 

 through channels which we fail to discover. 



The trade in Germany is carried on quite differently from that in 

 America. Their business methods and their manner of negotiating 

 sales are entirely different from ours. There is no such thing as fixed 

 prices in Germany, and it is not an uncommon thing for a dealer to 

 ask three times as much as he will take for a horse. The intending 

 purchaser selects the horse he wishes, and then goes off with the dealer 

 to a cafe or beer garden, where they smoke and drink beer and con- 

 tinue in negotiations, the dealer gradually falling in his price and the 

 intending purchaser rising in his, until, perhaps, they come to an 

 agreement. The intending purchaser, accompanied by his friends, 

 makes two or three visits and at last brings a veterinarian. 



Such a thing as competition, as known to us, would be considered 

 dishonorable among the,Germans, and if- a gentleman is considering 

 the purchase of a horse and another comes around who is well 

 pleased with it, you dare not under any circumstances allow him to 

 know that the other man is thinking of purchasing the animal, as he 

 would at once stand aside and wait until the other man made up his 

 mind. The sale of horses by auction is substantially unknown in 

 Germany and it will probably be a long time before it is well intro- 

 duced, if it should ever be, as it meets with opposition from all those 

 people who live upon the men who are dealing in horses. There is 

 one firm in Berlin of very considerable wealth that is able to buy 

 extensively and continue the auction of horses somewhat on the prin- 

 ciple followed in the large sales of horses in this country, but it is com- 

 pelled in many cases, I am told, to bid in its horses in order to prevent 

 loss. This combination of dealers not to bid against one another and 

 to follow the principle of finding fault with a horse that a man is 



