In 1906 other alterations were made in the tariff as regards flour from the United States, in addition to certain manufactured articles; it was suggested to Brazil that the United States was a good customer for Paulista coffee and Amazonian rubber, and that she expected “most favoured nation” treatment in return: a tax of three American cents per kilo against coffee was indicated as a short way with objectors. Brazil yielded, giving the United States a twenty per cent reduction on flour import duties, as well as for condensed milk, manufactures of rubber, clocks, dyes, varnishes, typewriters, ice-boxes, pianos, scales and wind-mills. Four years later the preferential tariff was extended to dried fruit, cement, school and office furniture, and in 1911 the rebate on flour entries was changed to thirty per cent. As a result American sales of the goods indicated have increased very largely, although sales of rubber and coffee have remained, on Brazil’s part, about the same for the last seven or eight years; her more markedly larger shipments to North America are cacao and hides. But American flour imports into Brazil have increased from a little over twenty-four thousand tons in 1906 to nearly sixty thousand tons in 1920, with rises in other articles equally pleasant for the northern manufacturer—cement sales, for instance, increased from one hundred and twenty tons in 1908 to over 76,000 tons in 1920; but in 1921 Germany, selling 30% below her rivals, captured this trade. Reduction of taxes on American flour is actively opposed from two points; the first is the group of flour mills operating in the country, and the second in the sister republic of Argentina who also has flour to sell. The flour mills in Brazil of commercial importance are eleven in number: the Moinho Fluminense and the Rio de Janeiro Flour Mills, in the city of Rio; Moinho Santa Cruz, across the bay in Nictheroy; Grandes Moinhos Gambas and Moinho Matarazzo, in São Paulo city; Moinho Santista, in Santos; there are three modern mills in Rio Grande State, at Pelotas, Porto Alegre, and Rio Grande City; Paraná has two, at Paranaguá and Antonia.[14] The great cereal of Brazil is that wonderful plant developed by the aborigines of the Americas, maize: it is commonly known as _milho_ in Brazil. Only recently has the wild plant, mother of all the different kinds of maize in the world, been identified—a proof of the long culture which brought it to the perfection which the first European conquerors encountered; yet such was the hardihood of this cereal that thirty years after the Conquest it had spread all over the warm parts of Europe and was thriving in Africa and Asia.