Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1922-12-17

SAVED BY FOREIGN MARKET

bureau is to make the foreign order
familiar in the factories of every town
in the United States. 1t is doing this
by direct notwithstanding the OPP
~portunities, putting the producer in
touch with them, and assisting him in
concrete ways to get the business.
Long ago the department of agricul-
ture discovered that it could not make
the farmers of America pay much at
tentlon 60 the latest discoveries of the
agricultural scientists merely by pub
fishing reports of the discoveries, so
it adopted the demonstration system
and sent its county agents to every
farm TO show the value of the dis
coveries by actual test in the fields.
In like manner Mr.. Hoover, upon
taking office, Immediately realized the
futility OF publishing trade statistics
aud miscellaneous consular reports in
the expectation that they would build
up our foreign trade. He directed the
expansion Of the bureau of foreign and
domestic commerce, then a mere sta
tistical organization, into what it now
which works directly with the pro-
ducers in this country and the buyers
in other lands.
NHeFfSdHS Learn Guickiy
Under this tutelage the American
manufacturer who 10 years ago would
not have dreamt Of fooling with ex-
port business is now becoming an
adept at handling it. Americans learn
rapidly when they want to learn.
Gone is the day when a speculative
Yankee exporter would send q con-
Segment of umbrellas 10 rainless
A rSrfo on STA ENrra ynn yr thN 1~~n~
stiff-necked attitude that the foreign
buyer must accept our styles and taste
or go without our goods. Vanished is
that old and often repeated fable that
American business men would never be
able to obtain foreign trade because of
their unwillingness TO accede to for
eign credit practices. The American
exporter is showing himself to be
adaptive. He has broken out Of his
shell of isolation and is becoming
familiar with conditions in other lands.
And he is beating the astute Briton,
the pirate German, and the willy Jap
anese at their W games.
The Cincinnati soap factory that
kept going in the hard times is itself
an Illustration Of the new attitude Of
American commerce. This plant has
acquired in a brief time a virtual
monopoly of the fine toilet soap trade
of both Peru and Cuba. In both coun-
tries it took the business away from
French manufacturers. 1t is perhaps
understandable why this could occur
in Peru. bat to one who knows some
thing of Cuba this conquest savers of
the miraculous.
Above all, Cuban women are ad-
mirers of the French chic. The Ha-
hana senoritasas often travels to
Paris to do her shopping as she does
to New York. In women's apparel, in
cosmetics. in nerfumery and in all
French have the call. With one ex-
eeption noE-soap.
The bureau CT foreign and do
mestic enabled the Cincin-
natl manufacturer to get this business.
LIS studies of the trade in Cuba told
him what scents were in favor. what
shapes of cakes, what should be the
color of the paper in which the soap
was to be wrapped. 1t showed him
the business-getting device of emboss-
ing on each cake the name of the
Cuban dealer who was to sell it. I'm
der its advice French names were
adapted for the soaps.
When this was done. he had a
product that could compete With
French soap in every way for the
Cuban trade. And in the most i'm
portant respect he had the advantage
Of his French competitors, for they
could not meet him in price. His fac
tory methods were much superior to
theirs in efficiency. The Cuban
woman could buy IN American produce
that suited them entirely and could
buy it cheaper than they could get
French soap. and that was all there
was to it. The factory stayed open
during the business depression, and s.
hundred or so families of workmen did
not know there were any hard times.
This is but one of dozens of Illus
trations of what the bureau of foreign
and domestic is now doing
for the trade Of the United States.