The figures showing the distribution of these imports for 1884 can not yet be obtained, but the exports of the United States, France, and Great Britain to the countries named below in 1883 were as follows:

The increase of the imports from Great Britain into the Argentine Republic in 1884 was very large, and reached a total of $38,000,000. There was a corresponding increase in most of the other countries.

The following shows the exports from England. France, and the United States to Mexico, Central and South America, the Spanish West Indies, Haiti, and Santo Domingo of cotton goods, iron and steel, machines and implements, and hardware and cutlery, the goods in which we excel:

Our total exports to Mexico are greater than those of either England or France, while our total exports to South America are less than one-fourth of those of England, and only one half of those of France.

During the last twenty years the value of the exports from the United States to the Spanish Americas was $442,048,975, and during that time we purchased of them raw products to the amount of $1,185,828,579, showing an excess of imports during the twenty years amounting to $765,992,219, which was paid in cash. It will thus be seen that our commerce with Central and South America has left a very large balance on the wrong side of the ledger, while those countries have all the time been buying in Europe the very merchandise we have for sale. Being the very reverse of the United States in climate and resources, they constitute our natural commercial allies, and the exchange should at least be even; but they sell their raw products here and buy their manufactured articles in Europe. The principal reason for this is that the carrying trade is in the hands of Englishmen. The statistics show, that, of the total imports into the United States from Spanish America, which, in 1884, amounted to $159,000,000, three-fourths were carried in foreign vessels. Of our exports to those countries, amounting last year to $64,000,000, $46,000,000 were carried in American vessels, while only $18,000,000 were carried by foreign vessels. It will thus be seen that nearly everything we buy is brought to us from Spanish America by Englishmen, while nearly everything sell we have to carry there ourselves. The logic of the facts is irresistible. The most absurd spectacle in the commercial world is the trade we carry on with Brazil. We buy nearly all her raw products, while she spends the money we pay for them in England and France.

In 1884 of the exports of Brazil $50,266,000 went to the United States, $29,000,000 to England, and $24,000,000 to France. Of the imports of Brazil in 1884, $35,000,000 came from England, $15,000,000 from France, and $8,000,000 from the United States.

Another peculiar feature of this commerce was that of the exports of Brazil to the United States $32,000,000 was carried in English vessels and $9,000,000 in American vessels, while of her imports from the United States $6.000,000 was carried in American vessels and only $2,000,000 in English vessels. The trade is carried on by triangular voyages. Two lines of steamships sailing under the British flag load every week at Rio for New York. Arriving at the latter port

they place their cargoes of coffee and hides in the hands of commission merchants, and sail for Europe, where they draw against these consignments, and buy Manchester cotton. Birmingham hardware, and other goods which they carry to Brazil. During the last twenty years this absurd spectacle has cost the United States $600.000,000, every cent of which has gone into the pockets of English and French manufacturers. We have not only paid for the goods that England has sold Brazil, but as we have had no banking connections with that country and no ships on the sea, nearly every ton of this commerce has paid a tax to English bankers and vessel owners.

Several years ago when we removed the import tax on coffee, Brazil put an export duty on, so that the attempt of Congress to secure a cheap breakfast for the workingman simply resulted in diverting several million dollars from the Treasury of the United States into the treasury of Brazil, without changing the price of the article. Mexico and the countries washed by the Caribbean Sea produce a better quality of coffee than is grown in Brazil, and if the United States Government would consent to discriminate against Brazilian coffee, raised by slave labor, the nations of Central America and the Spanish Main would reciprocate by admitting free to their ports our flour, lumber, provision, lard, dairy products, kerosene, and other articles which are now kept from the common people by an almost prohibitory tariff.

Brazil is in such a critical condition financially and commercially that if we did not buy her coffee it would rot on the trees, and the Englishmen who control her foreign commerce would have to close their warehouses and throw all the Brazilian planters into the bankrupt court. These Englishmen have secured mortgages upon the plantations of Brazil by supplying the planters with merchandise on credit and taking the crop at the end of the season in payment; but as the crop seldom pays the advances, the mortgages have been lapping over upon the plantations, until now the Englishmen have the Brazilians by the throat, making their own terms, charging one profit on the merchandise sold, another as interest on the advances, a third on the coffee purchased, and a fourth as interest on payments deferred, while they make three profits out of us: first, on coffee they sell us; second, on transportation charges; third, in discounting our bills on London.

The greater part of our exports to Spanish America go to Mexico and the West Indies. Deducting these from the total, it will be found that we buy over 30 per cent of what the South American countries have for sale and furnish them only 6 per cent of their imports. The balance of trade goes on piling up at the rate of nearly $100,000,000 a year. This was not always so. Twenty years ago more than half the commerce of this hemisphere was controlled by the merchants of New York, Boston, and Baltimore, and more than half the ships in its harbors sailed from those ports Now only a small percentage of the carrying trade is done in American bottoms, while English shipowners who control the transportation facilities permit the Spanish American merchants to buy in this country only such goods as they can not obtain elsewhere.

The cause of this astonishing phenomenon is our neglect to furnish the ways and means of commerce. We can no more prevent trade following facilities for communication than we can repeal the law of gravity. While we have been pointing with pride at our internal development, England and France have been stealing our markets away from us. The problem of recovering them is easy of solution. The States of Central and South America will buy what we have to sell if intelligent measures are used to cultivate the markets and means are provided for the delivery of the goods.

The Spanish-American nations seek political intimacy with the United States and look to this, the mother of republics, for example and encouragement. They recognize and assert the superiority of our products. They offer and pay subsidies to our ships. Brazil now pays $100,000 a year as a subsidy to an American steamship line, while the United States Government paid only $4,000 last year to the same line for carrying our mails. The Argentine Republic had a law upon its statute books representing a standing offer of a subsidy of 96,000 silver dollars a year to any company that will establish a steamship line between Buenos Ayres and New York under the American flag, and at the same time has 21 lines of steamships, sailing from 45 to 60 vessels a month, between Buenos Ayres and the ports of Europe, to which it pays nothing. We have no steamship communication with the Argentine Republic whatever. During the last year, ont of the millions of tons of shipping represented in the harbor of that metropolis, there were no steamers from the United States, and our flag was seen upon but 2 per cent of the sailing vessels. Here is a nation purchasing in Europe $70,000,000 worth of merchandise every year, and only spending about $4,000,000 in the United States. and these $4,000,000 represent articles. such as petroleum, lumber, lard and other pork products, which could not elsewhere be obtained.

Thomas W. Howard. United States vice-consul at Uruguay, stated to the commission that the carrying trade between that country and Europe was done by 567 steamers, of which 203 were English, 118 French, 107 German, 48 Italian, and 14 Spanish, with not one under the American flag; and he said that no steamers ever came from the United States to Uruguay, except occasionally an English tramp chartered for a special cargo. The foreign commerce of Uruguay amounts to $15,000,000 a year, of which over $20,000,000 are imports of manufactured merchandise. The chief imports are wearing apparel, iron and steel goods, agricultural implements, and machinery. England furnishes 27 per cent, France 17 per cent, Germany 13 per cent, Spain 10 per cent, Italy 6 per cent, and the United States only 5 per cent.

The Spanish Americans erect statues to Washington and Lincoln, and imitate the United States in all their political and economical endeavors. Their republics are founded upon constitutions in imitation of that our fathers framed. They have introduced our school system and they import teachers from the United States.

Even more surprising than our neglect of the commercial opportuities they offer is our ignorance of their condition and progress. We recollect their civilization as we saw it last-to be an anarchy of errors. We do not realize that the triumph of liberal intelligence and the influx of modern enterprise have opened to the nations of South and Central America a destiny second only in promis to our own. While it would be useless to seek in those Republics an ideal of selfgovernment, their progress in the last half century has placed them in a situation where their political reform is not only hopeful but assured.

The development of the southern half of South America is nearly as rapid as that of the United States. Immigration is flooding in, internal improvements are opening new and fertile fields, and wealth is increasing in a ratio enjoyed by no other section of the globe.

Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and the Argentine Republic, almost a terra incognita to us, are booming like our Western Territories. In 1876 the imports of the Argentine Republic were valued at $35,000,000; in 1884 they had reached $80,000,000. In 1876 the merchandise brought to that country from England, France. and Germany was valued at only $18,000,000, while in 1884 it was more than $53,000,000. The entire imports from the United States for twenty years were $6,000,000 less than those from the three commercial nations of Europe for the year 1884.

Within the last three months the Government of the Argentine Republic has made contracts for $59,000,000 worth of railway improvements, including a line of road northward into Bolivia, and two lines across the continent to Chile, so as to bring the commerce of the Pacific slope into the harbor of Buenos Ayres, instead of taking it around the Straits of Magellan.

In 1874 the foreign commerce of Chile amounted to $12,000,000. In 1834 it reached $132,000,000. From $50,000,000 to $60.000,000 in merchandise is imported into Chile every year, of which England furnishes over $20,000,000, France over $12,000,000, Germany over $8,000,000, and the United States $3,000,000.

Adding the imports of Brazil to those of Uruguay, Chile, and the Argentine Republic, it will be found that the aggregate value of manufactured products introduced into those four countries annually reaches the enormous sum of $250,000,000, of which England furnishes nearly one half, France about $50,000,000, Germany about $35,000,000, and the United States about $17,000,000.

We have no adequate conception of the present magnitude of these markets, nor of their prospective value. The manufacturers of the United States can supply almost every article represented in that $250,000,000, with the exception of a few articles of luxury which we ourselves import. The consumption of cotton goods alone amounts annually to over $65,000,000, and 95 per cent is supplied by the mills of Manchester.

Cotton fabrics now and always will constitute the wearing apparel of threefourths of the people, and they must be imported. England monopolizes this trade because her mills furnish an article especially adapted to the wants and tastes of the consumers, which our looms have never attempted to produce. The assertion that we can not compete with Manchester prices is absurd. The only reason we are undersold is that we send an honest fabric to compete with a dishonest one; but as long as the English manufacturers send cargoes of pipeclay and starch to the tropical countries our exporters must furnish the same article or be undersold. There is a grim humor in the fact that the popularity of our cotton goods is so great that nearly every bale of this bogus fabric shipped from Manchester to the South American nations bears the coat of arms of the United States, and is marked "Best American drillings, Massachusetts, U. S. A."

There is not a commercial city in Spanish America where the manufacturers of the United States can not compete with their European rivals in every article we

produce for export. The report of the South American Commission shows, by the testimony of the importing merchants of those countries, that aside from the difference in the cost and convenience of transportation it is to their advantage to buy in the United States, because the quality of our products is superior, and our prices are usually as low as those of Europe.

But as long as the freight from Liverpool, Hamburg, and Bordeaux is $15 a ton, they can not be induced to pay $40 a ton to bring merchandise from the United States.

The control of the transportation facilities being in the hands of European merchants, assisted by liberal subsidies from Governments that encourage them in seeking trade, there is a natural and effective discrimination against freights from this country, and is usually cheaper to ship goods from New York via Hamburg to the South American countries than to send them direct.

The bill which Mr. Frye has introduced contemplates an assemblage of delegates from these Spanish-American nations at Washington for the purpose of considering measures to bring them into closer political and commercial relations with the United States.

Under instructions from the late Secretary of State, Mr. Frelinghuysen, the South American Commission submitted to each of the Governments it visited a series of propositions covering the suggestions contained in this bill, and, with the exception of Chile, each of the Governments visited promptly and cordially accepted the propositions made. The commission was not instructed to conclude conventions of any character, but was directed to initiate a movement this bill is designed to promote. The Government of Chile declined to enter into any compact whatever with the United States, by treaty or otherwise. The propositions were submitted to the President of that Republic, in the presence of his entire cabinet, and discussed at length, but the only one that Government was inclined to accept was that relating to the establishment of a common silver coin. This suggestion they very cordially approved, and its importance was enlarged upon by the President of Chile and his minister of finance.

The proposition to hold a congress of American nations was not declined by Chile, but taken under advisement, the Government reserving the right to accept or decline an invitation to such a congress when the United States was prepared to submit a plan in detail, defining its scope, the subjects to be considered, and the extent of the powers intrusted to the delegates.

Even if the contemplated congress should fail to reach any conclusions upon the subjects proposed for it by Congress, a visit by the leading men of the SpanishAmerican nations to the United States will be productive of great good.

The report of the South American Commission upon this subject says: "The attainment of closer international and commercial relations between our country and these Republics is easily accomplished. Our reports have frequently called attention to the feeling of admiration with which the progress, wealth, and power of our land are regarded by the other countries of the Western Hemisphere. They one and all find in our history a model for their own institutions, and our moral support and approbation are prized above those of any and all other nations. Hence our advances toward a more perfect understanding and greater confidence will meet with a quick and true response. There will be no prejudices to overcome, no antipathies to remove, few differences of constitutional life to adjust. The result of our observations leads us to believe that these Republics have felt that our country heretofore has given them too little thought; that in its greatness and introspection it has failed to take a warm interest in the trials and struggles of peoples who are striving to realize for their own countries something of the peace and prosperity that belong to what they always term "La Grande Republica." Unless we have been completely misled by the expressions and protestations of the ruling powers of each and every one of the Governments we have visited, the only estrangement possible between them and us will flow from our own indifference and neglect. Indeed, we have already lost much that naturally belongs to us from this cause. Every President and cabinet officer, every leading and thoughtful citizen we met, joined in the sentiment of gratified surprise that our country had taken the initiative by this embassy in bringing about more cordial and hearty communication between the various Republics and our own. In our effort to reach more intimate relations we have, then, this basis of kindness and desire upon the part of those we seek to reach as a foundation for our action. We shall plant seed in a genial soil, beneath a propitious sky.

"To the foregoing considerations we may add the beneficial influence of the proposed convention of representatives of the States of the Western Hemisphere. Our several reports show with what warmth the suggestion has been welcomed by nearly every country we visited. It is cordially indorsed by all save Chile, which only gave a qualified assent.

"The general opinions of the Governments visited point to the propriety of this country's issuing the call for the convention, fixing time, place, memiership, and also suggesting in the invitation a list of topics for discussion, at the same time conceding to every State represented the right to bring forward such other subjects affecting the welfare of all as it may deem best.

"Not only should the call and programme emanate from our Government, but the assembly should convene in the United States under its hospitable welcome and direction. The details we do not enter upon, though we may be permitted the quite obvious reflection that the range of topics should be so varied that in some one or more of them each State should feel a particular interest, and the general scope of all tend to the prosperity and common good of all. We can well believe that the discussion of these topics which pertain to the common weal would be followed in each State with profound interest, the conclusions reached, especially if found with much unanimity, of great practical good, and the general result of a joint deliberation of the several people on questions of moment to each would inevitably weave into firmer fabric the warp and woof of the threads of friendship and interest and communication reaching from one to all the rest. Neither need we point out the value to our country in many ways of filling the position of a generous host, welcoming to our homes and estates guests whose good opinion we desire to win by sincere courtesy and a just revelation of our noble national character. To this end the representatives should enjoy extended opportunities to become familiar with the marvelous economies, politics, industry, education, and religion out of which our greatness has sprung. No limited or contracted parsimony should bound our efforts to exhibit in fair colors the magnitude and glory of that temple of freedom in which we worship. Every section of our land would reveal to their eyes, in language stronger than words, the wealth, progress, and happiness that attend a people whose institutions are founded on equality, where the poorest and weakest citizen has his wrongs redressed and his rights protected equally with the strongest and most wealthy. From such a survey they would carry home deeper respect for a country whose religion, unaided by the civil power, builds shrines in every neighborhood where the humblest may kneel and adore according to his conscience, where education rains down on every rank of life manifold blessings, and where obedience to the expressed will of the majority is deemed a sacred duty. "In such a convention could be discussed, as was suggested by some of the States consulted, the plan of agreeing upon a common silver coin which should be current among all the States of the American continent at its face value. This proposition has een favorably entertained by all the Governments advised with as one which would add value to the silver product and prove a potent factor in promoting commerce between the countries adhering to it.

The States of Central and South America stand ready to respond heartily to our call for such a convention, and once he'd it would prove, doubtless, the forerunner of many more, whose influence would be puissant in promoting more intimate relations, both international and commercial."

The reports of the commision show that the suggestions for a common currency was favorably received by all the Governments visited, including Chile. All the Spanish American countries are now under a system of silver monometallism.

There is no gold to be seen. Silver is not only the current coin, but the legal tender everywhere. These countries have paper money, but its value is regulated by the silver coin that prevails in each. They do not even coin their own production of gold.

The report of the Director of the Mint for 1884 shows that the entire product of gold in Spanish America for the three years previous was $25,000,000, of which only $1,500,000 was coined.

From the same report it is shown that for the three years the product of silver in Central and South America, including Mexico, was $143.000,000, of which $81,000,000 was coined, and of this total Mexico produced over $86,000,000 and coined $73,000,000. Deducting from the total the product and coinage of Mexico, we find that the total product of silver in Central and South America for three years was only $57,000,000, or about $19,000,000 a year, while the total coinage for three years was only $11,000,000, or less than $4,000,000 a year.

Bolivia is the next largest producer of silver. Deducting the product and coinage of Bolivia for three years, we find that the remaining nations of Central and South America produced only $19,000,000 in silver during the three years, and coined only six millions of this product, or about $2,000,000 a year. The balance of the product is shipped to Europe in ore.

Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, and Venezuela are the only nations producing silver to any amount.

From the report of the Director of the Mint it is shown that the total circulation