307
\
Thomas F. Anderson, secretary of the New England Shoe &amp;
Leather Association, Boston, Mass., said:
It is extremely difficult to carry on a satisfactory shoe business with South
America. }
This is due, in the first place. to lack of proper transportation facilities. In
the second place, the trouble is exchange. There are other conditions in other
places. The tariffs are almost prohibitive—local tariffs in Argentina, Uruguay,
 Brazil, and some of the other countries. They set up against our
shoes a tariff, amounting to 40 or 50 per cent. Again, in the country, and
sometimes in the city, the traveling salesman who goes through is obliged to
pay a $100 license fee, and their cost of travel is high; the entertainment a
man is expected to do, more or less, and all that makes the exploitation of our
foreign trade in South American countries exceedingly expensive. So, you
have got to add to the salary of salesmen, probably not less than $5,000 a year,
for necessary expenses. That means you have got to sell a good quantity of
goods or else sell at an abnormal profit. Then you have got to find some
way to cut down this tremendous cost of doing business in these South Ameriran
 countries.
Ernest G. Howes, president of the Howes Bros. Co., Boston, Mass.,
manufacturers of leather, said:
Unfortundtely, we can not sell merchandise in South America, as the tariff
is too high, * * *
In England, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and some of the other countries,
we are able to ship our merchandise. The tariff wall is entirely too high in
Germany, as well as ih Austria and France. In Switzerland we are able to do
more or less business. -

Relative to concessions granted by Canada, which favor products
coming from Great Britain, F. C. Gilbert, assistant secretary of the
Timken-Detroit Axle Co.. Detroit. Mich.. stated:

Another thing I want to speak to you about is the Canadian differential. I
do not know whether you know that, on products coming into Canada from
(ireat Britain, there is a differential of 10 per cent in favor of the mother
country. That, practically, in connection with the present high Canadian tariff,
is almost automatically shutting us out from doing business across at Windsor.
As to whether all countries manufacture playing cards, J. S.
White, of the U. S. Playing Card Co., Cincinnati, Ohio, said:

No, sir; in some countries it is a Government concession, and we can not
zet into them. We do get into Germany some, but we are hampered a little
there, France we can not get into at all. Italy and Russia we can not get
into at all.

(b) Transportation.

“The relatively cheaper transportation of wheat as compared with
flour is responsible for the establishment of mills in Great Britain
and the corresponding decrease in American flour exports,” said
H. P. Gallagher, of the Northwestern Consolidated Milling Co.,
Minneapolis, Minn. He stated:

The milling industry on the other side, which, as you know, has been encouraged
 and brought about through the relatively cheaper transportation of
wheat as compared with the manufactured product, has been the great thing
we have had to contend with all along. There was a time when our business
in Great Britain was fully 50 per cent of our [total] business, but in later
years the cost of transporting wheat, both by rail and steamship, was so much
less than the cost of the transportation of the manufactured product, that it
encouraged the building of mills on the other side. I am speaking particularly
 now of Great Britain, and I fear very much that the bulk of our export
pusiness is gone for all time, that is, after the conflict -on the other side hag
ended and conditions become normal on that side.