The uses and customs are identical in the two markets. Commerce obeys a rule above all unfavorable to the sellers who cannot put a value on their merchandise but are forced before all things to accept the price imposed by the buyers. That disadvantageous condition of dependency is the natural outcome of the deficient economic organization in the exploitation of the rubber industry in the valley of the Amazon. Reference has already been made in another place to the burdensome commercial relations between the seringueiros and the patrons or proprietors of seringaes and between the same patrons and the commercial traders. The same vices and defects are to be found in the relations between the commercial traders and the great exporting houses. Those latter, possessors of large capital and united together in the common interests, dominate the market, which, weakened by successive crises and always in a precarious state cannot oppose them an efficacious resistance. That situation can only be modified in the case of the actual economic and commercial methods, which place in the hands of the merchant-trader all the responsibility of the conduction of business in the place, without at the same time arming them with the means of defence against unrestricted speculations. The merchant-trader’s houses are the intermediaries between the seringueiros and the exporting houses. But, their principal function is that of furnishing the seringueiro during the year all the goods necessary to sustain him and his employes as well as supplying him with tools, utensils, wearing apparel and in fact, everything that may be necessary to his life in the seringaes. This supplying is done on credit, that is to say, against the remittance of rubber produced by the borrower and which is sold on its arrival by the merchant-trader to the exporting houses. The merchant-trader thus requires large capital so as to meet the engagements that he assumes in the market with the great and numerous supplies, which he is obliged to make. It is incumbent on him also to transport the same for which he nearly always employs steamers of his own, in order to bring the merchandise to its destination in far-away regions, bringing back on the return trip the rubber collected by his aviados, i.e., his borrowers of the seringaes.