of view, while the most recommendable method to import goods made in smaller factories and 
workshops is to employ a commission agent and to select the goods on the spot, the Vienna Fair 
taking place twice a year, in March and September, immediately after the Leipzig Fair, offering an 
excellent opportunity for a personal purchase. For other reasons too it is often advisable to make 
use of a commission agent, as the following case, which is one of practical experience, will demons- 
trate. The buyer of an American company, which runs a number of chain stores in the United States, 
was shown a sample of a finely enamelled silver cigarette case and having ascertained the Austrian 
producer and agreed with him on the price, had intended to place a trial order for one dozen each 
for the respective departments of all the stores (say five) controlled by his company, the order 
therefore amounting to 5X1 dozen cases. Having heard, however, from the manufacturer that the 
making of one dozen of so valuable and artistically finished an object would require a period of four 
months and that he would therefore have to wait 5X4 months for his five dozen, the American 
buyer was unable to confirm the order and a business connection, which might have been advant- 
ageous to his company as well as to the Austrian producer, did not come about. Had the American 
buyer, or the Company represented by him, entrusted a Vienna commission agent with the placing 
of the order, it would have been possible to secure delivery in time by splitting the order up among 
several producers. The addresses of reliable Austrian firms which act as commission agents for 
foreign accounts are easily obtainable. They are to be found in this and other directories and foreign 
businessmen can, besides, obtain them from the Austrian Chambers of Commerce, from the foreign 
Chambers of Commerce in Vienna, of which @ great number exists, and. from the consular officers of 
their native state in Austria, a list of whom is published in the annex. 
Correspondence with exporters and commission agents, with large and, in many cases, with 
medium-size enterprises, can take place, as a rule, in any of the great commercial languages of the 
worid. With firms whose speciality is the export to countries, where less widely known languages 
are spoken, correspondence can generally be carried on in the language of the respective country. 
The knowledge of languages has been very extensively disseminated in Austria, especially since 
the cnd of the War, but it would be wrong to imagine a state of things as exists for instance in 
Levant ports where every small trader has a command, to a certain extent at any rate, of five or 
six foreign languages. This is another reason why it is generally advisable to employ @ commission 
agent or a merchant-exporter, especially as it is impossible for foreign importers to dispense with 
products which in many cases are made in small factories or workshops and which, in a like quality 
and finish, are produced nowhere else. A commission agent will render valuable services to foreign 
buyers coming to Vienna. On the occasion of the Vienna Fair, for instance, the saving of time which 
a foreign visitor will effect through the aid of a purchasing agent will alone more than compensate 
the former for the commission due to the latter. This assistance, however, by no means exhausts the 
range of extremely useful services which are incumbent on exporters or commission agents, whose 
function, as a rule, becomes indispensable in the further phases of the business only. He has to see 
that delivery by the various makers is effected in time, he has to take over, to examine, to sort and 
to pack the goods, to take out all necessary documents (consular invoices etc.), to look after the 
forwarding and the insurance and to attend to many other things in this connection. This work, 
which requires @ large amount of time and of care to be devoted to the order in question and for 
which, besides, a complete knowledge of local conditions as well as of the conditions in the importing 
country is indispensable, cannot be undertaken, as a rule, by the home producer or by the foreign 
buver. 
A sphere in which Austria, and in the first place Vienna, possesses particular importance for Transit Tra 
international commerce, is the transit trade. It was relatively little developed before the War, 
because within a large protected customs territory, as was the former monarchy, Austrian commerce 
was above all internal and, with few exceptions, had no international character, but since the end 
of the War, transit trade has increased very largely owing to the far-reaching changes made in the 
political map of this part of the world. When before the War a manufacturer in Northern Bohemia 
supplied goods to a customer at Ljubljana, the business represented an internal trade transaction. 
At the present time, however, it not only is an export transaction, but the goods forwarded from one 
country (Czechoslovakia) to another (Yugoslavia) must on their way there pass through a third 
state (Austria). This example, which is typical for the trade relations between the Succession States, 
by no means sums up, however, all the characteristic features of Austrian transit trade. The case 
mentioned above would be simply the natural consequence of the geographical position of Austria 
and of the distribution of railway connections over the territory of the former monarchy, the 
geographical situation as well as the communication system distinctly favouring Austria in this 
instance. There are two other cireumstances, however, which have made Austrian transit trade what 
it really is. One is a system very strongly developed in Austria, under which goods in the possession 
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