This Latin neighbor of ours not only lives on the same street but he lives in a bigger and better house than ours. To the "lick-all-creation" type of Fourth-of-July American this is rank heresy, but facts have little regard for fireworks. With twenty-eight per cent of the population of the Americas, the Latin holds sixty-five per cent of the territory and fully the same proportion of natural resources. His soil, his rivers, his mountains, his harbors, his mines are as good as ours, and he has more of them. In the western hemisphere he controls the longest rivers, the highest mountains, the largest area of habitable land, the longest seacoast, and the entire inexhaustible fertility of the tropics. His untouched and uncharted natural resources are beyond computation. His estate is second to none in the entire world, and he could spare enough for the crowded millions of India or the swarming islands of Japan and never miss it. All of this we would have discovered sooner but for the world war, which focused all attention on the main issue and postponed the direct results of the successful completion of the Panama Canal. With a normal supply of shipping, the west coast alone of South America would keep the Canal busy much of the time and affect American markets profoundly. [Illustration: JUNGLE PRODUCTS] In material achievements our neighbor has not been idle, though some of his attempts have resulted in failure or fiasco. He has built great and beautiful cities, he has constructed long and difficult railroads over tortuous mountain systems, he has developed huge industries and organized big commercial enterprises. He has produced a civilization in keeping with his character, artistic, homogeneous, progressive, and on a high intellectual plane. His libraries, theaters, and public buildings are a credit to his taste and skill, and his churches are massive and stately as the rock-ribbed mountains that tie together the whole system from El Paso to Patagonia. We have heard more or less of a Pan-Americanism, but we have never taken it seriously. As subject for diplomatic papers, magazine articles, and after-dinner oratory the all-America idea has been a refuge of word-venders. But so long as the bulk of South American trade was with Europe our brand of fraternal talk was harmless--also helpless; and the reason for our failure to do business with South America has not been entirely the neglect of our shippers. The larger exports of South America have all been to Europe, and with ships loaded both ways the American exporter was hopelessly handicapped in his effort to secure favorable freight rates. When American salesmen tried to compete with German and French and Spanish exporters they always failed to secure freight rates that gave them an even chance.