588 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
to grasp it with intelligent persistence and determination. South 
America is ready to take American goods in very large quantities as 
soon as we are ready to take time to give attention to her needs. As 
Mr. Lincoln Hutchinson aptly says: 
There is no quick and easy remedy; money must be spent, thoroughly 
equipped export managers must be employed, export houses specializing on South 
American trade must be established, efficient travelers must be sent out, technical 
experts employed, agencies established, credits be given, minutie of orders at- 
tended to, and, above all, trade connections adhered to in spite of allurements 
of the home market, if we would succeed in the face of our competitors. Half- 
way measures can accomplish but little, and that only temporary. 
Germany teaches her young business men Spanish or Portuguese 
and sends them out to learn conditions in the field. American univer- 
sities long ago learned the advantage of adopting Germany’s thorough- 
going methods of scientific research. American business men have 
hitherto failed to realize the importance of adopting Germany’s thor- 
ough-going methods of developing foreign commerce. It is high time 
that they took a leaf out of the experience of the “ unpractical ” 
universities. 
Finally, a word of caution to those in search of information regard- 
ing the history, politics or geography of South America. The most 
unfortunate result of the seven centuries during which Arab, Moorish 
or Mohammedan rule dominated a part or the whole of the Spanish 
peninsula, is the truly Oriental attitude which the Spaniard and the 
Spanish American maintains towards reliable information, or what we 
eall “facts.” The student of the East realizes that orientals, including 
Turks and celestials, have no sense of the importance of agreeing with 
fact. They have, furthermore, a great abhorence of a vacuum. If they 
do not know the reply to a question they answer at random, preferring 
anything to the admission of ignorance. If they do know, and have no 
interest in substituting something else for what they know, they give 
the facts. When they have no facts they give something else. They 
not only deceive the questioner, they actually deceive themselves. The 
same thing is true to a certain degree in South Americans. Sometimes 
I have thought they were actually too polite to say “ I don’t know.” 
In South America as in the Hast it is of primary importance to reach 
the men who know and to pay no attention to any one else. No one 
really knows, who is not actually on the spot, in contact with the facts. 
The prudent observer must avoid all evidence that is not first hand and 
derived from a trustworthy source. 
I do not bring this as a charge against the South Americans. I 
state it as a condition which I have found to be nearly universally true. 
So: far as the South Americans are concerned it is an inherited trait 
and one which they are endeavoring to overcome. They are not to be 
blamed for having it, any more than we are to be blamed for having in- 
herited traits from our Anglo-Saxon ancestors which are unpleasant to 
