The importance of the telegraph in commerce can be illustrated by conditions in Shanghai about 1870, before the cable reached that port. The rate of foreign exchange, a decisive factor in all commercial calculations, was at that time determined by European advices brought by post steamers. The news brought by one steamer would make the Chinese tael equivalent to 7.25 francs; on the arrival of another steamer the rate would rise to 8.10. As merchants bought in taels and sold in francs or other European currency, their profits and losses were largely dependent on variations in the rate. Two mercantile houses of Shanghai had found it worth their while to invest a large sum in the construction of special vessels, which could be made like modern torpedo boats, practically all machinery and hence very fast, as the only cargo they had to carry was a single letter, bringing from Singapore or Hong-Kong the European news affecting the rate of exchange, many hours in advance of the regular steamer. The few merchants who enjoyed the benefit of this news service had, of course, a great advantage over their competitors, buying and selling with full knowledge of what the rate would be. With the introduction of the cable, however, all merchants shared alike in such information, and, furthermore, by the continuous communication thus established, the former violent fluctations in rates became a thing of the past. =390. Services of the telegraph to the modern organization.=—Newspapers spread broadcast the market quotations which are carried by the telegraph to all parts of the world, and the farmer in the American West, the cotton grower in the South, or the sheep raiser in Australia, can learn with ease what prices his staple brings in the great markets and what price he can ask for it. At the centers of business the great merchants, in touch, by the post and telegraph, with both consumers and producers, study to apportion the supply so that it will reach those who stand most in need of it, and seek to regulate future production so that there may be neither waste nor want when the product is brought to market. The remarkable progress of Brazil in coffee production has been explained by a student of the subject as due in large part to the spread of the telegraph in South America and the laying of a cable to Pernambuco in 1874, bringing the country into communication with the world’s coffee markets.