The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-12-08

amount and then finds that he cannot read the catalog, for it is printed in English.
 About half the business letters which come here are underpaid, and those who receive them must pay extra postage be- fore they will be delivered. One of the leading bankers here has lust told me of his experience with a bank in St. Louis. The St. Louis bank sent letter request ing information bearing a cent stamp. The man paid 30 cents extra postage to get il, and then wrote courteous letter to the banker and pointed out the mistake and the annoyance such mistakes caused. In reply he received an apologetic letter from the president of tne St. Louis bank iEclosing 30 cents worth of American stamps which he could not use. The letter inclosing these stamps also bore a cent stamp, and the Guatemalan banker had to pay 30 cents to get it. He wrote again, and the same thing happened a third time. It took a fourth letter to show this St. Louis business man that a cent stamp was necessary for Guate- malan mail All this was thank you bus mess on the part of the Guatemalan
 Guatemala's Debt
 If Guatemala could make a loan of something like s3o, ,0OO,00o and have this secured by the customs I am told that
  foreign debt now amounts to under s2o.- OO0009 but she has defaulted in interest on this again and again, and the whole has been readjusted on 1 per cent basis On July 13 Of last year a settlement was made with the foreign bondholders to that effect which provided that the tn- paid interest should be wiped out at the end of three years. There was also a provision as to securing the external debt by the export duty on coffee and for the issuing of new bonds sufficient to dis charge the present lien on the coffee duty.
 1 am told that the local currency debt in 19a9 was over s70,000,000 in currency and it is probably considerably more to- day. If the currency could be wiped out at anything like its present value it would be a great thing for the country.
 Taxes and Revenues
 At present the chief source of the reve- nue is from the coffee export tax, which amounts to about sl gold a bag As the coffee exports are 7O,000,O00 or S000O,00O pounds year, 1t will be seen that this revenue is valuable. II is said that the government sells this tax at the beginning of the year to the Guatemalan bankers for a fixed sum. issuing therefor coffee ex- port tax certificates. The bankers sell the certificates to the coffee exporters and they make pront or the adherence be- tween the amount of the certificate face value and the sum they pay to the gov ernment and this profit is by no means small.
 The banks also make big money from loans. I doubt not they made pretty penny out of Knoxs visit. which must have required several hundred thousand dollars of new cash to paint up the towns, buy American flags for the chill dren and champagne for the American party In such cases the President often calls upon the Banco de Guatemala. in which Germans are interested. Among the chief financiers are the Stahls, who are ready to lend at such and other times of need, relying on getting their money back with big interest. l am told that these bankers recently bought up the bonds of a loan which every one thought had been repudiated. They got the bonds for a song and then 1t was found that the President had decided they were an hon est debt, and should be redeemed There are some discontents who say that his ex- celency President Cabrera and other nigh officials shared in the profits.
 FRANK G. CARPENTER.