To utilize this opportunity certain practical things must be done. For the most part these things must be done by a multitude of individual efforts; they cannot be done by government. Government may help to furnish facilities for the doing of them, but the facilities will be useless unless used by individuals. This cannot be done by resolutions of this or any other commercial body; resolutions are useless unless they stir individual business men to action in their own business affairs. The things needed have been fully and specifically set forth in many reports of efficient consuls and of highly competent agents of the Department of Commerce and Labor, and they have been described in countless newspapers and magazine articles; but all these things are worthless unless they are followed by individual action.
I will indicate some of the matters to which every producer and merchant who desires South American trade should pay attention.
1. He should learn what the South Americans want and conform his product to their wants. If they think they need heavy castings, he should give them heavy castings and not expect them to buy light ones because he thinks they are better. If they want coarse cottons, he should give them coarse cottons and not expect them to buy fine cottons. It may not pay today, but it will pay tomorrow. The tendency to standardize articles of manufacture may reduce the cost and promote convenience, but if the consumers on the River Plata demand a different standard from the consumers on the Mississippi, you must have two standards or lose one market.
2. Both for the purpose of learning what the South American people want and of securing their attention to your goods, you must have agents who speak the Spanish or Portuguese language. For this there are two reasons: one is that people can seldom really get at each other's minds through an interpreter, and the other is that nine times out of ten it is only through knowing the Spanish or Portuguese language that a North American comes to appreciate the admirable and attractive personal qualities of the South American, and is thus able to establish that kindly and agreeable personal relation which is so potent in leading to business relations.