Broadly speaking, nearly sixty per cent of Brazilian imports are manufactured goods. Large quantities of machinery, steel rails, locomotives, etc., are usually imported every year for the construction work needed in a vast and young country. Over twenty-four per cent of the total purchases are of foodstuffs with wheat and wheat-flour largely preponderant: last year one-fifth of the total imports of Brazil were credited to these two items. About ten per cent of Brazilian purchase money is paid for coal. Financial stringency due to abnormal conditions has cut down Brazilian imports in a salutary manner—and fortunately for Brazilian merchants and retailers, stores were at the outbreak of hostilities largely overstocked by the unprecedentedly large purchases of 1913, when $326,000,000 was paid for imports. As a result of big sales and reduced buying, Brazil in 1915 had a trade balance in her favour of about 440,000 contos of reis (exports 1,022,634 contos and imports 582,996 contos) the equivalent of nearly $140,000,000 in United States currency. This balance appears to have largely remained abroad to help meet Brazilian indebtedness, and helped to steady exchange. This surplus of export values dropped well below 400,000 contos in 1916 and 1917, and to 148,000 in 1918, but rose to the unprecedented height of 845,000 in 1919, when the milreis soared to the rather inconvenient exchange value of 18 pence. The years 1920 and 1921 witnessed adverse balances of trade, with the milreis fallen below 8 pence, 1922 showing trade recoveries practically to pre-war values. Brazil has weathered many a storm commercially and industrially because the world needs her raw material; she has every reason for confidence in the future.