Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/593

Rh. It makes him fairly froth at the mouth, as it did the Americans in the days of Charles Dickens's first visit. So the pleasant-faced gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Bevan, told young Martin Chuzzlewit:

There is a story in Santiago de Chile of a young American scholar who spent some time there studying localisms. When he returned to New York he ventured to publish honest but rather severe criticisms of society, as he saw it, in that most aristocratic of South American republics. As a result, the university from which he came received a bad name in Chile and his visit is held in such unpleasant memory that his welcome, were he to return there, would be far from friendly. This seems narrow-minded and perverse, but is exactly the way we felt not long ago toward foreigners who spent a few months in the states and wrote, for the benefit of the European public, sincere but caustic criticisms. American sensitiveness became a byword in Europe. Possibly it is growing less with us. However that may be, South American sensitiveness is no keener to-day than ours was fifty years since.

It is particularly important that we should realize that the political conditions of the larger republics are very much more stable than our newspaper-and novel-reading public are aware of. Lynchings are unheard of. Serious riots, such as some of our largest American cities have seen within the past generation, are no more common with them than with us. It is true that the Latin temperament finds it much more difficult to bow to the majesty of the law and to yield gracefully to governmental decrees than the more phlegmatic Teuton or Anglo-Saxon. But the revolutions and riots that Paris has witnessed during the past century have not kept us from a serious effort to increase our business with France. The occasional political riot that takes place, of no more significance than the riots caused by strikers with which we are all too familiar at home, is no reason why we should be afraid to endeavor to capture the South American market.

Climatic conditions and difficulties of rapid transportation have had much to do with the backwardness of the South American republics. With the progress of science, the great increase in transportation facilities and the war that is being successfully waged against tropical diseases, a change is coming about which we must be ready to meet.

There is not the slightest question that there is a great opportunity awaiting the American manufacturer and exporter when he is willing