THE PROMOTIVE ATTITUDE

HE United States Government

THE

may be lacking in concrete foreign policy in a technical, foreign-office sense, but it has for years followed a definite course of foreign trade promotion. The amendments to the Federal Reserve Act culminating in the Edge Act, the Webb-Pomerene Act, the recent laws on shipping and marine insurance, the support of the activities of the Inter-American High Commission are all tangible, legislative action for foreign trade promotion. There may be a confusing range of congressional committees having a hand in the foreign trade matters, and ample signs of the ignorance of the right hand as to the action of the left, lack of a coördinating policy fitting the fragments into a workmanlike whole, but the spirit of promoting and encourageing foreign (rather, export) trade is indisputably there. Since 1904 we have had a central foreign trade information bureau (the old Bureau of Manufactures, succeeded by the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce) and Congress has from year to year granted the means for the development and improvement of the foreign trade information service.

THE AGENCIES OF TRADE PROMOTION

The Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, in the Department of Commerce, is the hub of our service. The State Department, with the expanding consular service, is the chief arm of the Government in this work outside the Commerce Department, and its foreign trade promotion activities are by law hooked up with the

Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce. The Tariff Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Reserve Board, the Department of Agriculture, the Post Office Department and the Inter-American High Commission in the Treasury Department all have certain definite functions

contributing to facilitate export business. These various government agencies, and others, now have their representatives meet weekly in the State Department in an organization with

the wartime name of the Economic Liaison Committee, in which information about work in hand and in

prospect is cleared and a certain measure of coördination is made possible. For most practical purposes, however, the United States Government's efforts in foreign trade promotion may be considered as depending on the Department of Commerce (Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce) and the Department of State (Consular Service, Geographic Divisions, and Foreign Trade Adviser's Office). On the joint effectiveness of the Commerce Bureau and the Consular Service and its administration our exporters in the main must rely, so far as government help is concerned. THE BUREAU OF FOREIGN AND DoMESTIC COMMERCE

The Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce publishes the foreign trade statistics and the reports about conditions and trade opportunities in foreign countries. Exporters want to know the volume and nature of the trade of foreign countries in particular commodities; the kind of goods re

quired in this or that foreign market; the merchandising methods, customary terms of credit, and shipping and warehouse facilities; the customs tariff rates, the consular invoice requirements, the taxes on commercial travelers; and they want good lists of merchants, manufacturers, brokers and manufacturers' agents. These things they can get from the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce. The Bureau is a great aggregation of constantly renewing files of facts and figures, kept up by current reading and collation of official reports, official gazettes, directories and trade papers from abroad, as well as by current and special reports from a staff of resident representatives and traveling investigators of the United States Government in all parts of the world.

In the Washington office of the Bureau there is a research staff of statisticians, economists, geographic experts, tariff experts, trade-mark specialists, translators, compilers and editors. The work is organized in part on geographic lines (Latin-American Division, Far Eastern Division, etc.) and in part on economic subject lines (Statistics Division, Tariff Division, etc.).

Of course, there is a good deal of administrative work in connection with the extensive field service. All told, the Washington staff, including all classes of employes, numbers about one hundred and fifty. As government offices in Washington go, it is a well-organized, hard-working and generally efficient Bureau. The work is interesting, less routine than most government work, and has attracted and held many men of enthusiasm and high ability, in the face of an unusually low level of salaries, even for government work in Washington. There is testimony from former directors and other officials that have left the Bureau to locate with business concerns, that

in zeal and efficiency the staff of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce will compare favorably with the staff in successful American business houses.

Besides its publications-the Daily Commerce Reports, the reports of Special Agents, the Miscellaneous Series of foreign trade reports, the Monthly Summary and the other statistical reports and heavy use of circulars and other duplicated material in the mails on the basis of well-classified mailing lists of American exporters who have asked for the service, the Bureau distributes the foreign trade information through a chain of branch offices. These are district offices in charge of staff men under civil service, in seven of the principal centers, and "coöperative" offices in chambers of commerce in an increasing number of other industrial and trade centers in the United States. Not only do these offices serve their purpose in the distribution of the information which the Bureau obtains from export declarations and import entries, and from foreign countries, but they also serve the decidedly salutary purpose of keeping the Washington headquarters alive to the thought, needs and tendencies in the cities where the foreign trade is actually being handled.

The foreign service of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce itself consists of two main divisions: resident general representatives and traveling specialists and investigators. The commercial attaché is the resident man, the trade commissioner is the traveling investigator. Until 1916 the traveling investigators were known as commercial agents or special agents. The change of designation was made to give a title that would clearly indicate the investigator as a government representative and get away from the use of the word "agent"

with its sometimes misleading legal connotation. The traveling specialist, studying foreign markets for cotton goods, electrical equipment, boots and shoes, agricultural machinery and what not, has been a part of the system for fifteen years or more. The commercial attaché, or resident representative of the Commerce Department, dates back only to 1914.

THE TRADE COMMISSIONER The field for the traveling investigator is pretty clearly defined and needs no particular comment. The Bureau determines upon a characteristic industry possessing possibilities for export, and with the aid of the interested trade organizations secures a man with adequate technical training, personality, language, and writing and investigating ability and sends him out to South America, or Europe, or the Far East, or somewhere else, to report back for the benefit of all the Americans interested in the things which an American exporter of the particular commodities ought to know about the markets in question. He may be gone one, two or three years, and when he has finished one part of the world and has come back home and told his story, he may be sent out to "cover" another continent. Or, he may go back into business again. The exporters like these technical reports made by experts and the Bureau every year sends out investigators to report on lines not previously covered.

THE COMMERCIAL ATTACHÉ

The commercial attaché's field is not so generally recognized as clearly defined, and yet in half a dozen years the meagre commercial attaché service has so firmly established itself in the good graces of our export community that when Congress, in 1920, suggested eliminating the attachés a storm of

protest arose from all parts of the country. The commercial commercial attaché is attached or accredited to an embassy or legation, as a rule. In Australia, where we have no legation, the attaché is accredited to a consulate. The commercial attaché is sent by the secretary of commerce to devote his full time to purely commercial matters, and primarily to pay attention to legislation, and aspects of commerce affecting the commercial interests of the United States in the particular foreign country as a whole. His "district" is not a city or a group of cities; it is a country, and his business is to keep American business men posted on the broader phases of business in that country. He is accredited to the embassy or legation to give him the prestige of such a connection and likewise to make his services and advice available to the American ambassador or minister in any commercial matter requiring formal representations or other diplomatic action.

The offices of the commercial attaché in London or in Peking are offices of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, instantly available for an urgent telegraphic inquiry, staffed by one or more men carefully selected for previous training in connection with American business. These offices are available as headquarters for the traveling trade commissioners and are of undoubted help to those investigators in making their contacts. We have about a dozen regular commercial attachés and in addition about an equal number of so-called resident trade commissioners, practically equivalent in duties, stationed at less important posts, and not called commercial attachés principally because they are paid out of appropriations other than that designated for commercial attachés.

THE CONSULAR SERVICE In comparison with the services of other nations we have a good consular service. We have hundreds of consulates, mostly headed by full-time consuls of career, chosen as a result of strict examinations, covering practically every foreign commercial center of any real importance. As a rule, the consul must start at the bottom of the ladder and work up-the service idea, like in the army or navy, is there. The compensation is not great: the average for officers of career now is only $3,400 per annum. There is no retirement provision. Allowances for entertainment and travel and cost of living are not up to the requirements of the position. To keep up a high standard in our consular service, it must offer a more attractive career, financially, and in promotions and post assignments. The consul is the local representative of the United States Government in a prescribed district. Notarial duties are likely to draw heavily on his time. His set functions of a routine character are numerous. He is selected, naturally, with this multifarious task in mind. It may well be that the man chosen for a consular place will have had not the slightest business experience, and it may also well be that such a man will have a successful consular career. He has a number of routine tasks that bear on business-putting his seal on consular invoices, ships' papers, passports, etc. He is expected to observe and report on all phases of business in his district which are pertinent to American foreign trade. Some consuls do this latter work in a perfunctory manner, and others do it brilliantly well. It depends in considerable part on the turn of mind of the consul, and in part on the amount of time available when other, more routine tasks are dispatched.

The consul is a wonderful power for good in our foreign trade, especially if he stays long at one post. He can get to know all the ins and outs of the business in his district and his reports, trade opportunities, and trade lists may be of much direct value to our exporters. The right kind of consul with an appreciation of the chances for trade promotion is often personally a big factor in the sale of American products. He can be of the greatest assistance to American salesmen and to resident Americans if he makes the right impression and the right sort of contacts with local business men and officials of the district where he is stationed. He should return to the States more frequently and be given better facilities, when in the States, for meeting exporters and importers.

CONSULAR ECONOMISTS

To improve our governmental trade promotion work we can well afford to strengthen these local headquarters in the consulates. the consulates. Every advocate of governmental foreign trade promotion should be pleased at the appointment of economic specialists in the consulates, to give their full time to the consular trade promotion work. The first of these consular economists have been sent out in 1920 and the results of their work remain to be seen: the field for a specialist on trade matters in every important consulate is clear. In every consulate in a commercial district of importance there are enough purely local trade matters of interest to American exporters to justify the full time of a competent observer.

THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE

The diplomatic service has more and more economic problems to handle, and is possessed of great possibilities in trade promotion, particularly in shaping a course of friendly commercial

relations between the United States and foreign countries and in negotiating liberal commercial treaties. It is a shamefully neglected branch of our foreign service; the average salary of the career officials in the service is less than $1,900 per annum, and at present it is necessarily restricted to men of independent means. There are many good men in it, but not enough. Some officials have wanted to keep up the glamour of its mysterious "political" work and to keep the service exclusive. As a matter of fact, the work of a dip lomatic secretary is most often of as workaday character as that of a Civil Service worker in Washington, and there is little reason why the service should not be made into an adequately paid force staffed entirely with capable men picked for their fitness for close, careful work, with less emphasis on their social qualifications. Our most successful first secretaries and counsellors today are a very high type of officials; remarkable for a capacity for constant, hard work. The Rogers Bill for consolidating the consular and diplomatic services looks like a step in the right direction. The present social gap between the services is absurd.

The diplomatic service would be greatly improved by having the large consular force to draw on for capable secretaries and counsellors. So far as trade information goes, the diplomatic service is not at present a material factor in our equipment. Its work remains largely political, even if on a more or less economic background; it waits on Washington to a considerable extent. Our lack of settled, general foreign trade policy curtails the possibilities for diplomatic work. on commercial treaties and for creating a friendly international commercial atmosphere that might loom large in the work of governmental trade pro

motion.

STATE DEPARTMENT ADMINISTRATION

In Washington the administration of the consular and diplomatic service and the shaping of their trade promotion work are obviously most important. By law, the Commerce Department is given a lien on the commercial reports received at the State Department, and the Commerce Department is privileged to call on the consular service, through the State Department, for special consular reports. Many solid series of reports have originated in this manner. The Commerce Department publishes the consular reports. The administration of the consular service, however, like the selection and assignment of consuls, is entirely in the hands of the State Department. The building up of our consular service has been in large part the work of one man, Mr. Wilbur J. Carr, the present director of the service, who deserves nothing but praise for his successful efforts while occupying a position of great responsibility in the Department, with constant demands on his personal time for miscellaneous duties, and with inadequate assistance. The defects in the service can not be removed until adequate administrative machinery for it in Washington is provided.

The other most important State Department element in the work of foreign trade promotion is that of the Foreign Trade Adviser. The Department, of course, requires a skilled foreign trade adviser with competent assistants, to see to it that instructions to consuls and diplomats on commercial matters are aptly drawn and the action of the Department generally based on proper advice. The office of the Foreign Trade Adviser has been developed to its highest point during 1920, and the Department of State is stronger on trade matters at the present time than it has ever been before,