296 SELLING LATIN AMERICA 
and friends, an opportunity of learning our 
prices and terms. And so, not content with 
giving the foreign financier a chance to make 
money on our export trade, we also aid our 
greatest competitors by supplying prices and 
information to defeat our commercial purpose. 
Some mercantile houses in the larger of 
these countries maintain for their own use ac 
counts in New York against which they draw 
when liquidating bills in the States and do a 
general banking business as well, including 
the cashing of drafts and selling of exchange. 
Obviously only a large business concern could 
afford to do this and their natural tendency 
is to sell direct exchange on New York as 
high as the European banks. The dealer with 
small capital or the foreign merchant is in 
variably for one reason or another forced as a 
general rule to do business through the Eu 
ropean banker when in need of American ex 
change. 
In both Venezuela and Colombia, their 
nearness to the United States, a direct steam 
ship service to our leading ports and the fact