The most important of these—the one indeed which is now, as it always
has been, of central importance in the consular service, is the one
first mentioned—commercial duties. Owing to its importance I will quote
in full from the Consular Regulations, pages 248-51, the list of
subjects upon which the consul is expected to report to the State
Department:
“1. Conditions of foreign commerce and internal trade, manufacturers,
mechanical industries, agriculture, etc., especially—
“(a) Statistics of exports and imports, of shipping and of revenue and
expenditure of the country; amount of public debts, national and local;
rates of taxation, character of taxable basis, how taxation is levied
and collected, amount of taxation per capita, etc.; value, actual value
in exchange, and also as measured by the dollar of the United States;
changes in purchasing power of the currency; banking—new systems,
especially of savings banks and of banks as associations for lending
money to agriculturists, mechanics, and factory operatives; public loans
and the matters of finance affecting the industry or commerce of the
country; commercial credits—rates and periods usually granted to foreign
purchasers, and those expected from foreign shippers; trade usages and
peculiarities; special demands of consumers as to demand and quality of
goods or supplies already in use or capable of being introduced among
them, with suggestions as to the best and most economical style of
packing to conform to local requirements of sale and transportation.
“(b) Improvement of old and development of new industries, including
inventions or discoveries, and the result obtained from the practical
application of them.
“(c) Introduction of inventions made in the United States or imitations
of them; application of business or mechanical methods employed in the
United States.
“(d) Importation and use of food supplies, raw materials and
manufactures from the United States, or the possibility of introducing
them, and local or race requirements to make them acceptable to foreign
consumers.
“2. Facilities for direct and indirect communication with the United
States—establishment of new ocean or international railroad lines or
agencies; development of internal transportation lines—railroads,
highways and steamboat or other carriage on rivers and canals, or
betterment of them; opening up of new trade routes or abandonment of old
ones; changes in transportation rates, both freight and passenger, which
are of general interest to commerce; bounties or subsidies to railroads
and shipping.
“3. Development or decline of commercial and manufacturing centers;
causes of drift of agricultural population to towns and cities;
diversion of trade from one local market or district to another;
projects for great manufacturing or other industrial enterprises for
harbor or river improvement, for better methods of lighting, street
paving, water supply, sewerage and disposal of sewage, economy of
municipal taxation and expenditure; hygienic and quarantine measures;
police systems, urban and rural.
“4. Changes in economic condition of producing communities, urban and
rural; fluctuations in rates of wages, cost of living, prices of
products, raw and manufactured, especially for food supplies, wearing
apparel, agricultural and domestic implements, machinery, etc.; scarcity
or glut of articles of consumption of all kinds, particularly those
produced in the United States; changes in hours of labor or other
conditions affecting workingmen, trades’ unions; strikes and lockouts;
systems of co-operation and profit sharing; government measures
(national, municipal or local) or private (organized) projects for
insurance or care of infirm or superannuated laborers, for improved
sanitation of factories and dwellings, for regulating the labor of women
and children, and for combating usury in the lending of money; technical
and commercial education; museums, exhibitions, merchants’ unions and
similar organizations for promoting trade, and the functions assumed by
the state in connection therewith.
“5. All changes in tariff legislation, including new rates of export,
import, or transit duties, special care being taken to state whether
they discriminate in favor of or against the United States as compared
with other countries. When a wholly new tariff law is enacted it should
be given in full with an explanatory statement of increase or decrease
in duties as compared with the tariff previously existing. Prompt notice
of contemplated tariff legislation should be sent to the Department. By
tariff legislation are meant not only measures affecting export and
import duties, but also those relating to customs administration,
transit duties, octroi or municipal taxes upon supplies entering cities
and towns, taxes imposed upon the import or export of articles from one
political district of a country (such as a state, province, canton,
arrondissement, etc.) to another, tonnage, taxes and port dues, or other
taxes upon shipping, etc.
[Illustration: Man surrounded by stacks of paper]
“6. Legislation or proposed legislation of interest to farmers,
merchants, mechanics, inventors, etc., such as changes in patent, trade
mark, and copyright laws; laws to prevent adulteration of food, or to
prohibit importation or sale of adulterated or impure food; laws
prohibitory of importation of diseased animals, impure seeds, etc.;
measures discriminating for or against any particular class of products
or against imports from any country; bounties granted to special lines
of manufacture or agricultural production; changes in legislation
concerning agricultural, commercial or industrial concessions, such as
government land grants, railroad bonuses, special privileges, and
exemptions for colonists; encouragements to or restrictions of
immigration; rights of citizenship; taxation or exemption of
manufacturing plants, machinery and implements; licenses to trade;
taxation of commercial travelers; legislation as to bankruptcy and
collection of debts, etc. Also decisions of courts or of government
officers on important commercial questions; government regulations
relating to law changes; changes in commercial procedure.
“7. Undertakings and enterprises of moment—the construction of public
works, the opening of mines, the granting of concessions for working
minerals or forests, or for other similar purposes”.
This is an admirable list for any one to study if he would learn what
are the signs of a nation’s material prosperity. It deserves further
comment because of its importance to the consular service, but we must
pass on.