$0  BEPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE.
lack of steamship facilities was greatly delaying American shipments
to the Orient, said that he knew numerous cases in China where
buyers who had ordered American goods but had not yet received
them were visited by Japanese salesmen, who disparaged the American
 goods and intimated that it took a very long time for a shipment
 to come from America and that it might never arrive, whereas
the Japanese could make quick shipments of an article just as good.
In this way many Chinese, although preferring to deal with Ameritans,
 were finally induced to take Japanese products. He stated
further that, although he had no proof that the Japanese steamship
companies informed the Japanese of prospective American shipments,
 he concluded from the number of these incidents that such
action by the steamship companies seemed the only reasonable explanation.


SECTION 3. FOREIGN BANKING AND CREDIT FACILITIES.
The financial organization for foreign business is one of the most
potent factors in the development and maintenance of trade with
foreign countries. As in the case of transportation facilities, so here
also the United States has been behindhand. Other countries have
built up their own financial organizations for business beyond their
borders, but the United States has depended upon foreign agencies
for the financial transactions necessary to the conduct of its interaational
 trade. In consequence American traders have heen at a
further disadvantage in competition.
That this may be the better understood the foreign banking and
credit organizations of the principal trading nations are outlined
briefly herewith, and some mention is made of the advantages they
have thereby in the markets of the world.

FOREIGN TRADE FINANCIAL ORGANIZATION OF THE CHIEF COM-MERCIAL
 NATIONS.
GREAT BRITAIN,
As Great Britain has been the chief trading nation so has its
financial organization for international trade been the most comprehensive
 in the world. It has provided all the financial facilities
needed for its exporters and importers to do business With other
men anywhere on the globe, and, conversely, through British agencies,
merchants in the most remote regions have been able to transact business,
 not only with British subjects, but with the merchants of any
other country. Traders of distant countries could thus settle their
accounts promptly, equitably, and with mutual satisfaction. Quite
naturally, therefore, the “bill on London” in pounds sterling has
been the usual currency of commerce and London has been the
financial center of the world’s trade.