Selling Latin America

I made the acquaintance of Doctor W. E. Aughinbaugh about eight years ago, when I was in charge of the advertising department of a large concern doing an international business. The doctor came with us to look after the export trade, especially in the West Indies and South America. My work naturally brought me into close association with him, and I soon began to appreciate his unusual ability in many directions and his special fitness for the position he occupied. There seemed to be no phase of merchandising in far-off markets with which he was not fully conversant; nor did this knowledge relate solely to Latin America. He had previously travelled the distant markets of the Orient in the interests of an American house whose products he successfully introduced there and to him the Far East was an open book.

He has been in Egypt eight times on business 

ii

missions. He has travelled Somaliland, Palestine, Asia Minor, Morocco, Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers, South Africa, Persia, Arabia, Afghanistan, Cashmir, Beluchistan, India, Assam, Burma, Siam, China, Cochin-China, Japan, the East Indies and all over Europe with the single exception of Russia. The doctor also spent two years of his restless life in the Far North where a business mission of importance took him into Iceland, Greenland, Labrador, Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, Prince Edward Island and the Hudson’s Bay Country. As to the West Indies and South America, he has been not only to them, but through them many times and in every habitable spot where business was to be done. Some idea may be gained as to the frequency of his visits to South America by mentioning the fact that he has made thirty-six trips across the Equator.

Dr. Aughinbaugh talks about the markets of foreign countries with the authority of long experience for he has been engaged in these special fields for more than twenty years; yet 

iii

he is still a young man with a modern viewpoint. He speaks the languages of many countries and speaks them well. His information is first-hand, reliable data gathered on the ground where he lived and worked, whose people he knew and could speak to in their own tongue, not the unreliable, superficial vaporings of some dilettante globe-trotter who has given the high-spots of civilization the “once over” and therefore considers himself a competent authority to write upon the commerce, customs and manners of foreign countries the very languages of which he does not understand without the aid of an interpreter, or who could not find his way back to the railway station or dock without the assistance of a guide.

Doctor Aughinbaugh is no such lightweight. He has not written this book because he believes he knows it all. Left to himself he would never have written it. It was only after repeated urgings on the part of some of his friends who appreciated his ability to write an unusual book, that he consented to 

iv

undertake the work, and then he did so under protest.

It may be asked with pertinence how a man could travel in the interest of one line and yet be in possession of so much information relating to every other line; or how one could master the intricacies of foreign banking and credits and still attend to his business. The answer to all of this is that no man can successfully negotiate foreign markets unless he is more than a mere “order taker.” As to the doctor’s ability to measure the requirements of a market all the way from cereals to concrete, that may be accounted for by the fact that he is both a physician and a graduate of the law, and while he never practised at the bar to any great extent he did have considerable experience in medicine, a profession which developed a naturally analytical mind, so that he looked at things with the eyes of a student and from the viewpoint of the trained diagnostician. For six years he followed medicine in Latin America, finally giving it up to accept an offer from a large company 

v

who compensated him accordingly. His experience in that line alone took him all over the world and the ramifications of the business brought him into close contact with the marketing of nearly every other commodity. But even had this not been so, he is the sort of man who would have sensed a business opportunity because he is naturally a keen observer and everything interests him. He is the type of man who absorbs information; he does not have to be shown—he sees.

Here, then, is a man possessed of a fund of particularly desirable information—especially valuable to-day when Europe is war-mad and, in her sanguinary frenzy, has left open the door of opportunity to peaceful Uncle Sam. Why not put this information in concrete form for the benefit of American commerce?

These considerations were put up to the author by some of his friends who knew him to be a keen, accurate, analytical observer, a writer and a raconteur of more than ordinary ability, and this book was the result.

Probably never—let us fervently hope never 

vi

for the same reason—will the United States have another opportunity such as the present one, to enter those fruitful fields to the south, where Europe in general, and Germany in particular, has reaped a golden harvest for so many years.

A careful reading of this book—not a difficult matter, for unlike most works on commerce it is full of lively interest—will be profitable to every business man interested in the subject of Latin America. It will be valuable to those who are equipped or willing to prepare themselves to cope with conditions as they really are, and just as valuable to those who are not, for it may save them from the costly mistakes of experimentation in foreign fields.

Maurice Switzer.

New York, March 20, 1915.