We are looking forward with eagerness for the results of the sessions of the Pan American Congress in Rio; and this interest has been greatly augmented by the high honor you confer upon us in selecting this opportunity to visit our people and our country, thus strengthening the ties of friendship between Americans and Brazilians; and though we belong to a class accustomed to consider only facts and cold figures, we are deeply touched by this high distinction, and, representing the Santos Board of Trade and the coffee planters of São Paulo--the greatest coffee producers of the world--I offer most hearty greetings to you, and through you to the great American people, the chief consumers of coffee in the world. REPLY OF MR. ROOT It is a great pleasure to represent here in this great commercial city the best and largest customer you have. The United States of America bought in the last fiscal year, the statistics of which have been made public, from the United States of Brazil about $99,000,000 worth of goods, and we sold to Brazil about $11,000,000 worth of goods. I should like to see the trade more even; I should like to see the prosperity of Brazil so increase that the purchasing power of Brazil will grow; and I should like to see the activity of that purchasing power turned towards the markets of the North American republic. I am well aware that the course of trade cannot be controlled by sentiment or by governments. It follows its own immutable laws and is drawn solely in the direction of profit. But there are many ways in which the course of trade can be facilitated, can be stimulated, can be induced and increased. Mutual knowledge leads to trade. All the advertisement in the world which pays is but the means of carrying information, knowledge, and suggestion to the mind that reads the advertisement. Mutual knowledge as between the people of North America and the people of Brazil--knowledge as between the individual people--will increase the trade. Our people will buy more coffee and more sugar and more rubber from the people they know, from the various trading concerns that they know about, than they will from strangers. Mutual knowledge cannot exist without mutual respect. I believe so much in the goodness of humanity that I think no two people can know each other without respecting each other.