Let us now examine the American interests, the most encouraging features of which are the establishment of a branch bank of the National City Bank of New York and the unqualified success in the United States of the loans recently made by that enterprising institution and other American bankers to the Argentine Republic. These two factors point to the realization, by those who are best able to judge, of the necessity for a new basis of intercourse in the future; and that this fact is understood in the Argentine Republic may be seen by the appreciative opinions of the press and the public authorities of that country. In other forms of industrial or commercial enterprises, American interests are comparatively insignificant. The acquisition and establishment of local freezing plants by the American packing houses, though important in extent, involve considerations of too controversial a character to be dealt with in this survey of the commercial relations of the two countries. It is considered desirable, therefore, to treat only of such branches of industry, commerce and finance as embrace the general field of foreign enterprise. The only American interest in railways is in the Argentine Railway Company, which consists of a combination of three or four minor lines in the north and north-eastern provinces, with a small proportion of American capital. In the great cattle raising and agricultural industries there is little or no American capital employed and it is also conspicuous by its absence from the lengthy list of land, mortgage and finance companies established in the Republic. It is true that there are many manufacturing concerns of the United States represented by agencies, but apart from the Customs revenue this representation brings to the country it is in no sense a contributor to its development. [Illustration: ANOTHER PRIVATE RESIDENCE IN BUENOS AIRES] [Illustration: WATER WORKS BUILDING, BUENOS AIRES] An impartial examination of these circumstances raises the question as to how, without some changes in the directions pointed to, the United States may hope to share with Europe, on anything like equal terms, the profitable and ever-growing trade of the Argentine Republic? To sum up the situation, it may be asked, in what way can the United States equalize the advantages which Europe offers to the Argentine Republic by way of the purchase of her products, the large and constant supply of capital and the labor of its emigrants? There are many articles of merchandise and items of machinery in regard to which Europe cannot successfully compete with the United States, notwithstanding the greater facilities for transportation; but there are also numberless articles of American production which could find a ready market in Argentine if the surrounding conditions approached a greater measure of equality.