The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1939-07-06
United States-SOuth American
Trade Developed After
Civil War
Prepared by National Geographic Society,
Washington, d. C.--WNU Service.

Orelgn tIdue HdS loiAS
arms" said a rancher on the
Argentine pampa. Il buy a
Chicago windmill to pump
water for my cattle, miles of
barbed wire to fence my pas
/ lures, or a tractor from Detroit;
pay by selling North America
load of hides for tanneries, a
cargo of flaxseed for paint fac
tories-or I sell my hogs and
cattle to a local packing plant
that ships meat to London, and
pay in cash."
Such is the essence of world
trade.
Portuguese had founded the old
town of Olinda, near what is now
Recife (Pernambuco) in Brazil,
about 100 years before Henry Hud-
son saw Manhattan island; by the
time Massachusetts colony was be-
ing formed, they had already built
many sugar factories thereabouts.
Soon afterward, Dutch traders es-
tablished Pernambuco, where CEN
turies later the German transatlan-
tic dirigible long tied up.
How gold : hunting Spaniards
blazed trails from Panama to Ar
gentina, conquered and sacked In
dian settlements, and built their own
cities and churches IS an oft-told
tale.
No less familiar is the record of
English exploration, with the adven-
lures of Sebastian CABOT, Sir Fran
els Drake, Hawkins, and others.
England Takes the Lead
Up to the time of our Civil war,
probably no man anywhere imag-
ined what a destiny lay ahead of
this continent.
Of course these young nations
needed credit, capital, immigration
besides advice-just as did our
own land in its youth. AS with us,
too, it was from Europe these things
first came, in return for South Amer
ica's raw materials.
England, particularly, took the
lead. Though she did not send emf
grants by hundreds of thousands, as
Italy later did, she gave credit, sup
piled capital and business brains,
started ocean ship lines, laid cables,
and built railways until by 1900 she
dominated the finances and COM
merce of all South America.
Guano from Peru was coming
around the Horn to Baltimore, for
use on our Atlantic coast farms,
when the Mexicans still owned Cali
fornia. In 1909 Brazil sent us her
first coffee, cargo of 1872 bags,
landed at Salem, Mass, from the
ship Marquis de Someruelas. From
that first small shipment this trade
has grown till now it takes 1000, 900
or 5000, 900 bags of Brazilian coffee
to meet our needs.
Foreigners Take Roles.
Like Cecil Rhodes in Africa, GER
tain foreign pioneers played con-
early development.
Some were English, some Irish,
some from the United States. There
was William Wheelwright, Yankee
who founded the historic Pacific
Steam Navigation company, built
railways, and had monuments
raised in his honor. And Henry
Meiggs, from California, who ''fiung
the amazing Oroya Railway across
the sky-piercing passes of the Peru
Wan Andes; and the two Harmans
of Virginia, John and Archer, of
"Guayaquil to Quito fame.
In that miraculous rail-laying
task, they say fever took cne human
life for every tie laid through so
miles of jungle. Both brothers
were dead before this job was done
-one killed by a landslide; but not
before the hardest work was fin
ished and the rails well on their way
to lofty, isolated Quito.
Fresh from County Cork, 200
young Irishmen landed in Peru one
day in 1850. Among them was Will
liam r. Grace. Malaria killed most
of the band; other survivors went
on to Australia, but Grace stuck.
He started business with a store
ship serving Peru's Chincha islands
| guano fleet and lived to see a pas
senger fleet of his own swarm over
two seas, a fleet that was later to
send one of the first ships through
the Panama canal and the first un-