294 SELLING LATIN AMERICA 
American countries are almost entirely under 
the domination and control of the European 
financier, the English being paramount, fol 
lowed by Germans, French, Italians and Span 
ish, in the order named. Throughout Brazil, 
Argentine, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Bo 
livia, Peru and Ecuador, in all the larger cities 
and ports, as well as in the interior and isolated 
towns, where business is to be had, may be 
found branches, agencies, or representatives 
of banking houses of these nationalities. 
They keep their fingers on the pulse of trade, 
know mine outputs, crop prospects, cattle 
productions, stability of governments, possi 
bilities of revolutions or political unrest, the 
condition of business—in a word everything 
that has any bearing on banking or that could 
by any possibility reflect on the money market. 
Taking all these elements into consideration 
together with the important factor of the ques 
tion of supply and demand, they decide the 
price of exchange each day or how much a 
merchant having a foreign obligation to meet, 
must pay for the necessary sum to liquidate his