314 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE.

Edward A. Filene, president of the William Filene’s Sons Co.,
merchants and jobbers, and vice president of Fifth International
Congress of Chambers of Commerce, Boston, Mass., said:
The pioneer work, as far as I have been able to study the situation, has got
to be done by the bankers of this country, if we are to get a real foreign trade.
[ am not going into the reasons or the details of that. I think you have probably
 heard it enough already. You know what is being done by English and
German banks, and in South America, in China, and, wherever I went in the
Orient, it was the banking men and the bankers who determined largely the
amount of the foreign trade that was coming back to their home countries.
They were advancing the firms out there, the commission and the shipping
firms, and the native firms even, the money. They were asking why they were
not buying any goods if they were not buying. They were doing all the work
everywhere; in China and everywhere that I have been it is the banking firms
that are really the practical pioneers of export trade.
Louis M. Cole, of Simon Levi Co., wholesale produce dealers and
canners, Los Angeles, Cal., said: :
There is another very important feature, I think, and that is the financial
end of it. * * * Of course, if we had a condition existing, as I understand
it does abroad, where we could take extended paper for 60 days up to 9 or 10
months or a year and rediscount that with our banks and keep our capital
turning over or rotating, I think there would be no reason in the world why
we could not try to extend our markets and do it successfully if we had the
transportation. Those are the two problems, I think, that confront us here in
any extension of our foreign trade. * * * But I think our banking arrangements
 must be taken care of so as to permit us to compete not with the people
In the United States but with the people in Europe. Those aré the people
who are our greatest competitors. They are the people who have afforded these
people the liberal time in which to pay. their bills by these acceptances, and
that is where I think our principal competition is to come from, in being able
to give them the same identical accommodations that they were formerly able
to get in Europe and make them good deliveries of goods.
J. C. Hobart, of the Triumph Electric Manufacturing Co., Cin-~innati.
 Ohio. stated: :

The two great difficulties we meet in the export field are the inability to
grant the terms required by foreign customers, owing to the lack of financial
~onnections, and the difficulty of getting vessels, accommodations, etc. ?
Fred L. Lipman, vice president of the Wells Fargo Nevada
National Bank, San Francisco, Cal., said:

We have had dealings with German banks in South America, with Holland
sanks in the East Indies, with British banks throughout all the world, and
have never heard of any difficulty on the part of our clientele. That is purely
negative, of course. I have not any information that that is serious. We
nave considerable foreign business, and we do our foreign business through
foreign banks, and, as far as I can see, it would be no good as an outlet to
take care of our clientele to establish a branch any place where our business
Is not active.
oo

Ed * * * *
think it would be of some advantage, but I doubt if it would be an adrantage
 worth paying for.

Bankers are not temperamentally promotion men; they are not strong on
jevelopment ; they are cautious; they represent another element in the development
 of trade than push. But no doubt that has been /done; no doubt the
English banks and German banks, respectively, aid their own countries.
Howard Coonley, president of the Walworth Manufacturing Co.,
manufacturers of brass castings, Boston, Mass., said:
There are a number of things that would help us. In tHe first place, we
have always been handicapped because of lack of banking facilities. The