tion between them. This would lead to lower prices and the importers would lose interest in handling the article. In combining sales to general importers with sales through traveling salesmen or agents to wholesalers, jobbers and retailers, the exporter loses the benefit of the concentration of the demand in the hands of the importer. Such a combination is very difficult even in the case of price concessions to the importers and the reservation of certain lines for them, for importers as a rule do not tolerate the simultaneous commercial intercourse of the exporter with them and with their customers. This is of smaller importance in those places where the position of the general importer has become weakened and they approach more or less the character of ordinary wholesalers, as is the case in many South American points. Particularly dangerous is the practice of turning over a representation or submitting samples to general importers who are subjects or citizens of a nation different from that of the exporter, for they are apt to show the samples to exporters of their own nation to the detriment of the foreign exporter. This is a point which American exporters must consider, because they have comparatively few general importers abroad of American nationality thorugh whom they can do business. Concentrating their dealings with one general importer the exporter runs the risk of considerable loss through one individual business failure, whereas occasional unavoidable small losses through failures of individual smaller customers may be counterbalanced by a little extra charge by way of self-insur ance. 6. The Growth and Development of Import Trading An import center is a place where foreign goods are bought in large quantities for consumption, distribution or further shipment. Therefore all prominent sea ports where goods are imported are import centers; points of particularly large consumption of imported goods, and to a lesser extent transshipment points are also import centers. Import trading centers are such places where imported goods are largely traded in, whether for inland use or for neighboring countries, whether shipped direct from abroad or in re-export. The international importance of an import trading center depends in the first instance upon the quantity of imports traded there and secondly upon the range of sources of supply and selling territories with which the import trading center is doing an extensive business. The quantity of imported goods traded in an import trading center depends upon the existing demand and the capacity of absorption of imports in the territory served by it and upon the degree in which it must share with its competing import trading centers the task of supplying that territory with imports. As a rule there is a full freedom of international competition in these import trading centers. But occasionally we find places in which one country's imports predominate. It may be that the import trading center is in a territory which maintains either freedom from import duties or preferential duties for the products of one exporting country side by side with high protective duties against imports from others, as in the case of some French colonies; or the importers in a given place may all be tied up with or financially dependent on connections with one particular exporting country, as for instance in Dutch East Indies with regard to Netherlands, where until recently even goods of other than Dutch origin were bought through Dutch importers via Holland. The sales effected from an import trading center (referring to European and American manufactured goods imported there) are rarely international. This international sell- ing of imported goods, that is intermediate trade with other foreign countries, is of importance in Bombay, Singapore and Hongkong. In European countries dealing one with another, due to more or less direct dealings between wholesalers and retailers importing their supplies and exporters abroad every commercial center is at the same time an import trading center, and there is observable therefore particularly in Germany-the phenomenon of the decentralization of import trade. It is principally a seaport, and secondarily an inland navigation port, where imports can be delivered by marine vessels or by river navigation in connection with marine navigation, that is likely to develop into an important trading center of import commerce, the examples of the latter being Bagdad, Asuncion, Montreal. Or it may be a large city in close proximity to a seaport, such as Lima-Callao, Caracas-La Guaira, Osaka-Kobe, finally important centers of consumption inland, Cairo next to Alexandria, Delhi besides Bombay and Calcutta, Johannesburg besides the seaport cities of South Africa. While the growth of import trading centers is a phenomenon of centralization of imports in certain strongholds, cultural and commercial development inevitably brings about a certain decentralization. Thus the development of a modern system of railways, the tendency of vessels to touch minor ports of entry, the effort of foreign exporters by sending traveling salesmen and agents to call on the trade in minor points, the competition among traders in smaller commercial cities forcing them to import direct, the rise of the cultural and commercial levels all lead inevitably to the participation of additional towns in the general importation of foreign goods. The exporter whose activity adds to this decentralization must figure upon the loss of his trade with general importers located in the prominent centers of import commerce, receiving in their place a wider circle of customers, who are generally weaker financially, requiring more credit, frequently of inferior commercial training, and from whom he can for a time secure higher prices until the competition neutralizes this advantage, but to deal with them requires a more expensive organization, greater difficulties for instance, the need of competent agents, who are not so easy to secure so that an exporter will not frivolously attempt to decentralize his trade with an import market. But if a decentralization tendency in a given market is observable, it may be a wise policy to be among the first to organize accordingly. In many minor points in the Orient and elsewhere the same goods are imported direct from the exporting countries and bought by wholesalers from the general importers in the import trading centers. The ability of the latter to do business in spite of direct importing by wholesalers in smaller inland towns is due to the fact that their customers receive from them credit favors which make them dependent upon the importers, whereas the exporter cannot or will not finance the wholesaler abroad to the same extent. Then the general importers obtain their goods so much cheaper than the ordinary wholesalers in these smaller towns. General importers and large distributing wholesalers located in the importing ports can because of the larger volume of their transactions always underbuy and therefore undersell the wholesalers in the inland trading points. CHAPTER VII. II. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE IMPORT TRADE IN PRODUCTS OF OVERSEA ORIGIN. A. THE ORGANIZATION IN THE EXPORTING COUNTRY. 1. General Remarks. In foregoing chapters we considered the organization of the commerce in manufactured products shipped from the industrial countries, such as the United States, Great Britain and certain countries of Continental Europe to countries which to a large extent obtain manufactured goods from abroad, or countries which we broadly call the export field. We pursued our consideration of this organization beginning with a review of the organization in the exporting country; we proceeded to a consideration of the connections between the exporting country and the importing country, and finally examined the counterpart organization in the importing country. We may now turn our attention to the consideration of the import trade in the industrial countries, and in this connection we may ignore the import into one industrial country from another, such as imports into United States from European manufacturing countries, or imports into one European manufacturing country from another, in other words imports of manufactured products or the interchange of manufactured products between two industrial countries. Large as this trade is, its characteristics have been discussed in and are covered by our consideration of the export trade from manufacturing countries. Agencies, manufacturers' own branches, wholesalers' branches, sales representatives, traveling salesmen, -correspondence also, because of the usually good postal service between industrially developed countries of Europe and between Europe and United States on the one hand, buying trips and buying agencies on the other cover the organization of the import of manufactured products by one manufacturing country from another. This busi |