been most neglected in the past. For years readers of current literature have been regaled with tales of the way in which English, French, and German consuls, commercial agents, and salesmen have outmanoeuvred the United States in every foreign market and undersold us and taken our few lonely customers away from us. Hereafter it may be the American who is the hero in such tales, instead of the victim.

If this agreeable change in the cast for the international commercial drama is brought about it will be due to the admirable way in which the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce is fulfilling its function of enhancing the efficiency of our export trade. Its method of promoting foreign trade is described as "collecting information about foreign markets and distributing the information to American manufacturers and exporters." That certainly does not sound thrilling, but observe how it works out:

One of the new steps recently taken was the creation of the post of commercial

attaché. Ten of these attachés have been appointed so far. Mr. C. W. A. Veditz. who was assigned to Paris, went to his post by way of Madrid, where he dropped in on the King of Spain one afternoon. In the course of the conversation Mr. Veditz reminded His Majesty that ever since the Spanish-American war there had been a "transportation tax" of $1.20 a ton on American coal, which by any other name would be just as effective in shutting it out of the Spanish market in favor of the English product. Mr. Veditz suggested that right then would be as good a time as any to remove this prohibitive tax. The King said he would see about it, and he did. In a remarkably short time, measured by governmental ideas of time, Mr. Veditz was informed that the tax on American coal had been removed. As soon as he could get to the cable office, this information was forwarded to the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, with the names of some Spanish firms that were ready to handle American coal. The ink was hardly allowed to dry on the

cablegram in Washington before the information was distributed to a number of coal export houses. Three days later, one of them wrote to the Bureau that it was then loading the first consignment of coal for a new market that is expected to take about three million tons a year.

Hitherto we have been importing about $50,000,000 worth of tin a year, 90 per cent. of it from the Straits Settlements, where an export duty on ores enforced the reduction of the tin to metallic form before it was shipped out of the country In other words, the United States smelted practically none of the tin it used.

Fifteen months ago it occurred to the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce that it would be a good idea to import tin ores from Bolivia to be smelted here. Bolivia is rich in tin ores, but the ores have certain impurities that made them difficult to handle. Besides, there were innumerable obstacles in the way of a deal. One of the new commercial attachés rolled up his sleeves and went at it. When he had smoothed out the preliminary

negotiations, the matter was turned over to the American Smelting & Refining Company to finish. The result is that a new industry has been established in America. A tin smelter is now in operation at Perth Amboy, where an electrolytic process handles the refractory ores so well that the tin produced is of even higher grade than that from the Straits Settlements. The value of this new enterprise to the commerce of the Nation is estimated at $50,000,000 a year.

Another commercial attaché procured for American manufacturers orders for $1,000,000 worth of cotton machinery for China. Another million-dollar order from China, obtained through the Bureau, was for machinery for an arsenal at Han-yang. Still another achievement was an order from Russia for 40,000 bales of cotton a year for five years.

The Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, however, is more than a mere salesman. Through published information and through confidential information not published, by sending representatives