curacy, until the question of
tariff rates shall have been definitely settled. There is now nothing on
which to base any plans or calculations for business operations. The
native merchants are complaining seriously. They are waiting to place
orders for hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of goods to replenish
stocks which have been depleted through many mouths of uncertain trade
conditions, and are losing business which they have been led to expect
would be open to them almost immediately after the American occupation
of the different cities in which they are located. Nor is it at all easy
for an American to obtain any definite information or accurate details
regarding any particular line of business and its possibilities. Local
commercial methods are not reduced to the system which prevails among
American business men. The Porto Rican merchant buys and sells, but I
fail to find evidence of that close study of business and business
methods by which the American merchant increases his trade and his
profits.

"The entire trade of the island is of no very great magnitude. The
local trade in local products is chiefly confined to the morning market
for table supplies, which is held in all the cities and larger towns.
The total imports and exports hardly reach a gross amount of thirty
millions of dollars a year, and the imports exceed the exports by a
couple of millions. I have been unable to find any statistics which I
was willing to accept as wholly reliable. So far as I can learn, no
complete report has been submitted by the United States Consul, and
there are discrepancies which I cannot reconcile in the published
reports of the English Consul and those of the Dutch Consul. I can,
therefore, only give figures which are approximate, though they are
sufficiently close for general purposes.

"Cotton goods appear to be the largest item among the imports, and they
represent a trade of two or three millions of dollars, varying from year
to year, according to the prices and the success or failure of the crop
products of the island. Rice is imported to the value of one and a half
to two millions of dollars. Flour, chiefly from the United States,
approximates three-quarters of a million dollars. Dried, salt and
pickled fish, of which Canada seems to obtain the lion's share of the
trade, represents a million to a million and a quarter. The United
States has the major portion of a trade in pork and pork products which
about eq