Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 238, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1916 — Our Opportunity In Latin America [ARTICLE]

Our Opportunity In Latin America

By JOHN BARRETT, In the Review of Reviews. These are the times when everybody should studying the twenty American republics lying south of the United States. These are the days of unprecedented and legitimate opportunity In Latin America for the commercial and financial Interests of this country. This present year should be the beginning of a new epoch in the material, social and political relations of North land South America. The next ten years are going to bd* ‘ all American” years. All America is to attract the attention of all Americans. This new development Is inevitable. The cause Is found in the natural wealth, resources and potentialities of Central and South America, their actual commerce and trade, their remarkable progress during recent years, together with the unceasing propaganda of the Pan-American union, which was at first even ridiculed and little appreciated, but is now (generally valued and recognized. The occasion of this new Interest at this moment Is the European war and the emphasis it has placed upon Tthe geographical segregation and commercial solldarity of the nations of the western hemisphere. Consider Latin America in any phase one prefers, and it is worthy of keen interest. Let us ferst look at it geographically artd physically. We see twenty countries ranging in area, from little Salvador, with less, than 8,000 square miles, or smaller than Vermont, up to mighty Brazil, with £,200,000 square miles, bF greater than the United {States proper with Great Britain thrown in! In

all, they spread over nearly 9,000,000 square miles, or three times the connected area of the United States! They contain mountains higher, rivers longer and more navigable, valleys wider and more fertile, and climates more varied than those of thq United States. Noting the population, we find that Costa Rica starts the small end of the list with 400,000 Inhabltants. ahlT Brazil tops it wltlT 20,000,0007“ ATT Latin America supnorts today approximately a population of 75,000,000, which Is increasing by reproduction faster titan is the population of the United States. .When the new emigration from Europe starts, in after the war, and when the Panama canal tqlp/iull use by the shipping of a peaceful Europe, this total may soon overtake and pass that of the big sister nation of North America. ' ' ' -i We are almost astonished by the figures of Ljatin-Amerlcan commerce. They make us respect many of the southern republics and peoples, even If some other influences may not be so favorable. Last year the twenty southern neighbors of the United States, through sheer strength and capacity, pushed up the total of their foreign trade to the huge sum us nearly $3,000,000,000? This wasr divided almost equally between exports and imports, with the actual balance of trade In their favor. Argentina, for example, with an ambitious, vigorous and prosperous .people numberingabout nine millions of souls, conducted a foreign commerce valued at the surprising total of $900,000,000, which makes an average of about SIOO per head. Chile, a land of achievement and promise,

lying on the Pacific coast of South America (like the states of California, Oregon and Washington, on the Pacific slope of the United States), covering an area of nearly 300,000 square miles, or more than that of Texas, and directly tributary to the Panama canal, bought and sold in f oreign com merco products ¥eltted-at-neaTty~s2o2,ooo,ooo.