The wholesale importing houses in Argentina and Uruguay usually give ninety days’ acceptances for imported goods and in their turn give six months’ credit to their retail customers. This arrangement has now the sanction of long usage based on its practically being a division of the burden of credit given to the storekeeper by the Importer between the latter and the Exporter. The system of banking in both Argentina and Uruguay differs little from that obtaining in England except for a certain amount of good single-name paper being taken on account of the usually intimate acquaintance with the business and standing of all leading firms possessed by the commercial community generally. Rents and working expenses, including special traders’ taxes, in the Capitals of both Republics are high, but the scale of profits when calculated on anything like a reasonable turnover will in most cases be found to leave a balance in favour of both wholesale and retail traders which would be regarded as highly satisfactory by their European and North American brethren. In fact, it may fairly be said that if a man in either country does any appreciable bulk of business in any branch of commerce or trade he is doing what elsewhere would be considered as very good business indeed. When rumour assigns shakiness to any established firm it may be taken as certain that such rumour is founded on tales of speculation outside the lines on which that firm’s true business has been built up. There seems a temptation inherent in new countries for men who have earned money in businesses they understand to risk it in other speculations of which they have next door to no experience. This is, of course, a phase of the “get rich quick” fever which frequently attacks the young inheritors of stable businesses which seem to them too slow and sure to be interesting or indeed to require much looking after. At one time the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange was responsible for a large number of victims among all classes of the public, but of late years the public has fought very shy of it indeed; so shy in fact as now to be practically unrepresented in the share ring of that Institution. As a consequence of this abstention the few brokers and professional speculators who daily do what courtesy perhaps demands that one should call business there suggests the tale of the island the inhabitants of which lived simply by taking in each other’s washing.