On another occasion similar difficulties were encountered, but the cargo in this case was one of steel rails for the first line ever built to Buenaventura, Colombia. The rails had to be unloaded separately and sent ashore one by one on the little native dugout canoes. It was only the skill of the natives in handling their frail barks with such unwieldy cargoes that prevented a large part of the shipment finding a resting place at the bottom of the harbor. The American Bridge Co. has erected a number of bridges in the Far East. Some of these have been in the interior of China, where the rivers, subject to seasonal floods and periods of absolute dryness, provide the main highways for freight traffic. In such instances the steel for the bridges was hauled up the river beds during the dry seasons, and if the rains arrived before the destination was reached, the steel was simply left on the river bed until the subsidence of the flood permitted the resumption of the journey up-stream. In developing its export trade the Steel Corporation has performed a real and important service to American commerce generally. To a great extent, shipping depends on the trend of “weight cargo,” and exports of other goods classed as “measured cargo” depend similarly on shipping facilities. By supplying the heavy cargo for numerous markets where American goods had never sold before the Corporation made it possible for manufacturers of many lighter products to develop business for themselves in these new markets. In other words, it blazed the way for American commerce as a whole. How great is the debt that American business generally owes to the Corporation, and to a less extent to the Standard Oil and International Harvester companies, is plain when it is realized that these three companies shipped for many years more than half the “weight cargo” leaving the shores of the United States. One of the principal benefits of large exports is its effect on labor in the producing country. The Corporation’s effort has been to find a regular market in foreign countries for 20 per cent. of its total output. This level was never actually reached under normal conditions, although during the war exports did, at one period, run about 33 per cent. of total production for a time. Taking the year 1912, the record pre-war year for exports, as a representative period, we find that shipments to customers abroad represented nearly 18 per cent. of total finished steel delivered by the Corporation’s mills. As the “Steel Trust” in that year employed an average of 221,000 men, this meant that about 39,000 workers were busy on material destined for export and that $34,000,000, of the Corporation’s payroll of $190,000,000 was being paid to American labor by foreign consumers. In 1919, 16.5 per cent. of the total business was export and by the same analysis, foreign buyers paid American workmen in the Corporation’s plants more than $79,000,000 in wages.