COMPETITIVE CONDITIONS IN SOUTH AMERICAN TRADE. 183

many instances where an American manufacturer has his personal
representative stationed in Brazil or Argentina to push his trade,
he avails himself of the facilities of the local importing houses or
local branches of the American exporting houses to market his
products.
In some classes of American goods much effort is required to establish
 and maintain a profitable trade. In such cases the direct-representation
 agency, if the volume of business that can be developed
in the country will warrant it, is the desirable method for the American
 manufacturer. Members of two of the largest British importing
houses in the River Plate region have stated that the handling of
such lines is unsatisfactory both to the manufacturer and to the
importing house. Each house held agencies for a large number of
American manufacturers, covering a wide range of articles. All
goods were bought outright by the importing firms, payment being
made in the United States at time of shipment. Both firms had
specialized for years in the introduction of American manufactures
and had built up a large trade in them. Each informant pointed
out specific examples of American goods in which the trade developed
 had been very profitable to both manufacturer and importer.
In some instances the volume of trade developed had become so large
and the demand so constant that eventually the manufacturer established
 a direct agency under his own control and handled all his
business in the country through that medium. In other cases, while
the total volume of the sales was very large and the business highly
profitable to both manufacturer and importer, the character of the
business required the use of the distributing facilities of the importing
 house to be successful.
Mention was made of specific American manufactures in which
their houses were no longer in a position to give satisfactory service.
 It was said that such lines should be handled by men acting
in the direct interest of the manufacturer. Only in that way could
the personal attention and energy necessary to the successful development
 of a demand for such goods be obtained. The informants
stated that their own houses, because of their wide range of activities,
 could not afford to give the requisite personal attention for
pushing the sale of such goods. They had adopted a policy of refusing
 to take new agencies covering such lines and were not renewing
their old agencies, preferring to handle such goods solely as traders.
They emphasized the fact that the question whether direct representation
 or an agency is the better method of handling the foreign
trade of an American manufacturer must be determined by the special
circumstances involved in each particular case. The character of the
article, the consuming power of the market sought, both actual and
potential, the expense of developing the business, the nature of the