the telegraphs of the railway companies not owned by the Government. There is also a submarine cable from Pará to Montevideo, Uruguay, and another from Pernambuco to Lisbon, Portugal; and still another, recently established, which connects Pará with New York by way of Venezuela and the West Indies. Telephone service in connection with that of the telegraph is being introduced through the country under direction of the ministry of agriculture.

GOVERNMENT FINANCES.

The Government debt in 1889 amounted to $516,564,178, according to the Handbook of American Republics, published by the United States Department of State. The financial situation of the country appears to be sound, paper money being at a premium above gold; and a recent official statement by the Government, after investigation, is that fiscal matters are in a satisfactory condition. The principal sources of revenue are import duties, export duties, and stamped paper of various classes. The revenues and expenditures are exhibited in detail as follows:

National income and expenses of the Republic of Brazil for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1890, as reported by the finance department.

The principal productions, and all those which enter into foreign commerce, are agricultural, excepting diamonds. Manufacturing upon a large scale is almost unknown, except that cotton manufacturing has recently begun, and mills for wheat-grinding are in operation at Rio, using imported wheat. Coffee is the great staple product, exceeding all the others in value. Its production has steadily increased, and the rate of increase seems to have borne some relation to the progress made toward the extinction of slavery. In "Brazil in 1889," before quoted from, it is stated that from 1835 to 1840, while the slave trade yet existed, the total annual production equaled 88,000,000 pounds; from 1855 to 1860, when the slave trade had ceased, the annual product equaled 264,000,000 pounds; from 1872 to 1877, when emancipation by purchase was in progress, the product was 389,000,000 pounds annually; from 1877 to 1882, when the abolition propaganda was organized, it was 770,000,000 pounds, and since the abolition of slavery it has risen still

further to 880,000,000. The area for coffee-culture in Brazil is practically unlimited, and coffee and caoutchouc, or rubber gum, her easiest and surest productions and most reliable articles for export, of considerable magnitude in the commerce of the world.

The latest available official report of the total exports of principal articles from Brazil, which shows her surplus production, was made by the minister of finance to Congress on the 6th day of May, 1887, for the three years ending June 30, 1886, and the figures, reduced to our weight and currency values, are as follows:

Official statement of the exports of principal articles of production of Brazil and values thereof during the fiscal years stated.

The coffee production of the world is variously estimated at from 1,250,000,000 to 1,415,000,000 pounds per annum, the latter being the estimate in round numbers of the American Grocer of the crop of 1888-'89. Of this amount Brazil furnishes at the lowest estimate 812,000,000 pounds, and according to "Brazil in 1889," 880,000,000.

The production of caoutchouc or the gum of the rubber tree in Brazil has probably increased within a few years. The table above states the amount for 1886 at 18,044,651 pounds, while the amount imported in that year from Brazil into the United States alone was 17,462,699 pounds, and that into England 10,186,176 pounds. The Brazilian statement is evidently incomplete.

It has been seen that wheat as a paying crop on any large scale has disappeared from Brazilian agriculture. It has only been claimed that wheat could be grown in the States of Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, Santa Catharina, São Paulo, and Minas Geraes, and of these States it

is admitted that the first named is the best. The physical and meteorological conditions of this State have herein been given in comparison with those of North Carolina, in the corresponding northern latitude. As it is a matter of interest for farmers of the United States to know in what, if anything, competition can consist between the productions of the two largest American republics, what Brazil has produced or is suited to produce in wheat is important.

Whatever wheat is raised in Brazil is stated by, our consular officers to be produced upon the farms of the immigrant population, in the southern States, farthest from the equator. They also state that no Brazilian wheat goes to the flour mills of Rio de Janeiro, which are supplied by importations from the Argentine Republic and the United States. Consul Bennington states that of the million population of Rio Grande do Sul not a hundred thousand derive a living from agriculture, and that wheat-farming was abandoned about 1820 for stockraising. The statement of the senator from Rio Grande heretofore quoted is referred to also in this connection. The "Politico-Economic Memoirs" of José G. Chaves, a Brazilian writer of 1822, show the wheat production of each year for the sixteen years ending with 1820 in Rio Grande do Sul, and the aggregate of the widely fluctuating but generally decreasing column is only 3,006,589 bushels, or less by 150,000 bushels for the sixteen years than North Carolina produced in the one year 1889. Taking all the evidence herein presented, it does not appear that we shall lack for a wheat and flour market in Brazil, especially as free entry into Brazil from the United States is secured by the reciprocity treaty.

DOMESTIC ANIMALS.

Large as the number of domestic animals may be supposed to be there is no information as to their numbers. The last census, in 1872, does not seem to have done more than enumerate and classify the population. Land and stock were equally free from taxation, and the real wealth of the States and the country, both in real and personal possessions, was never ascertained. Cattle are raised only or at least principally for their hides, tallow, horns, and their meat to some extent, and for bullock teams incidentally; horses for riding purposes in the country, and for driving to some extent in the cities; mules and asses for work of all kinds, and goats, hogs, and sheep for obvious purposes. The principal herds seem to pertain to the interior of the more southern States, and to be of inferior breeds, upon which little care has been be stowed for improvement.

FOREIGN COMMERCE OF BRAZIL.

The latest available statement of the foreign trade of Brazil, with principal countries only, is that for 1888, given in "Trade and Transportation between the United States and Spanish America," prepared

in the Department of State. In that publication the imports and exports are shown as follows:

The total of this trade is $204,836,966, besides which Brazil received over $33,000,000 in coin from England, making the total of exchange over $237,000,000. Of the amount of imports from Brazil the per cent of the United States was over 46.5, and of exports to Brazil shown in the table, about 83. The character of the articles entering into this commerce is shown in the table of Brazilian productions under a previous head.

COMMERCE WITH THE UNITED STATES.

The value of the exports of Brazil to the United States for a series of years ending June 30, 1890, which shows considerable increase, is shown in the following table, taken from the commercial returns of the Treasury Department. The named articles are all farm or soil products.

The value of the imports of domestic products from the United States into Brazil during these same years was respectively $8,496,696 for 1880; $8,645,261 for 1884; $6,480,738 for 1886; $7,063,892 for 1888, and $11,902,496 for 1890. This shows an increase of Brazilian exports to the United States including and since 1880 of the value of $7,348,666; an increase of imports from us amounting to $3,405,800; and a total increase in trade between the two countries equal to $10,754,466. The character of the exports to us has been shown. The character of the imports of Brazil from us, our exports to Brazil, and particularly of those immediately interesting to agriculturists, will appear under the following division of the subject. Our whole trade with Brazil was $71,221,252.

It is perhaps worth noting, in passing, that of our exports to Brazil

in 1888, the goods were sent in 75 American vessels of 63,581 tons, and 151 foreign vessels of 83,728 tons, and that our imports from Brazil were brought by 71 American vessels of 57,808 tons, and 497 foreign vessels of 331,985 tons. Of the imports the value of the goods brought in American vessels was $10,691,446, and of those brought in foreign vessels $43,018,788. The control of our carrying trade is so arranged, under other flags, that the ships which bring us goods, by triangular voyages between Europe, the United States, and Central and South America, carry goods to the latter from their own countries, and leave us to sell and deliver as best we can.

RECIPROCAL TRADE.

By the tariff act of the United States approved October 1, 1890, section 3, it was provided as follows:

That, with a view to secure reciprocal trade with countries producing the following articles, and for this purpose, on and after the 1st day of January, 1892, whenever and so often as the President shall be satisfied that the Government of any country producing and exporting sugars, molasses, coffee, tea, and hides, raw and uncured, or any of such articles, imposes duties or other exactions upon the agricultural or other products of the United States, which, in view of the free introduction of such sugar, molasses, coffee, tea, and hides into the United States, he may deem to be reciprocally unequal and unreasonable, he shall have the power, and it shall be his duty to suspend, by proclamation to that effect, the provisions of this act relating to the free introduction of such sugar, molasses, coffee, tea, and hides, the production of such country, for such time as he shall deem just, and in such case and during such suspension duties shall be levied, collected, and paid upon sugar, molasses, coffee, tea, and hides, the product of or exported from such designated country, etc., putting back the duties upon these articles generally as they were seven years ago.

Brazil being the largest of the South American republics, and our trade with her and the balance against us being also greatest, naturally she is the first with which the reciprocity contemplated by the foregoing provision has been secured, by which we gain an equitable return for the remission of duties upon imports of coffee, sugar, molasses, and hides from her. Reciprocity was proclaimed as in legal effect of the date of April 1, 1891, by the President of the United States, and is now in full operation as to the imports named, and the articles of export to Brazil from this country enumerated in the proclamation according to its terms. The following statement gives the names of articles admitted free under this arrangement, as enumerated in the proclamation, and those admitted at a reduction of duty of 25 per cent, with the values of such articles imported into Brazil from the United States during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1890; and it also shows the amount of agricultural products and their percentage relative to the whole reciprocal exports as well as to the whole amount of exports, favored or otherwise. This statement therefore becomes an analysis of our exports to Brazil and of the benefits reciprocity confers upon our own agriculture in this instance, on the basis of that year's trade.