end of which a center feed of pulverized coal is governed and effected by an air blast. The feed of pulverized stone and coal are so regulated as to furnish the necessary quantity of both kinds of raw material-also to effect the required degree of temperature-to produce in a calcined form normal Portland clinker, which by special cooling devices is made ready for the finishing ball and tube mills, from which latter machines the finished cement is conveyed to the stock house and finally to the packing and shipping rooms, where it is loaded onto wagons of large capacity, ready for hauling by a 50-horsepower steam locomobile, made in California, to the nearest railway station.

The plant is to be driven by vertical impulse water wheels of the latest improvement, each wheel being designed with the special speed to suit the machine or machines to be driven. There are nine separate wheels or drives which afford the supreme advantage of running any one or all parts of the machinery in the various departments at will.

The power to drive the mill is furnished by a waterfall conducted to the mill by a metal pipe line 4.7 kilometers (2.9 miles) in length, furnishing normally about 2,400 horsepower.

The pipe line traverses a rugged, rocky cañon from the mill to the source of the Llobregat River, there being necessary along its length five trestle bridges, one tunnel 100 feet long driven through solid rock, many large rock cuts, and masonry piers of support for pipe. In order to lay this pipe, special roads and incline planes have had to be built to reach, first, the mill with the pipe and finally its disposition along the line, the latter being by far the more difficult.

The coal for the manufacture of the cement it is proposed to extract from a special lignite mine, from which an aërial cable will conduct the material to either a deposit next the company road in Pobla de Lillet or to the mill direct.

In the mill there is to be installed a special compressed-air and electric-light plant for operating the rock drills and lighting the mill and the engineer's house, as well as the administration and chemical-laboratory buildings. There will also be installed a complete machine shop for making repairs of all kinds, which in a cement mill of this kind is an imperative necessity.

The capital invested is some 2,500,000 pesetas ($482,500). The quality of cement is to be equal to the highest grade of the Portland cement made in the Lehigh district of Pennsylvania, the raw product being identical. The present building, one-half of the original project, is 116 by 395 feet by an average height of about 30 feet on each level, of which there are 14. The properties, including the asphalt, cementrock, coal, and forest claims, are very extensive, there being enough cement rock to last for centuries.

The estimated daily output will be 500 barrels (100 tons) with the present installation. In the near future it is proposed to increase the output to 1,000 barrels per day, there being sufficient power in reserve to operate the larger mill.

With the mechanical advantages possessed in having the latest improved American cement-making machinery and water-wheel construction, combined with the natural advantages of water, rock, and coal, it is assured that the cost of production will be such as to guarantee a greater consumption of Portland cement in Spain, and therefore lead to the more extensive developments of this steadily rising industry within the Iberian Peninsula.

BARCELONA, SPAIN, July 21, 1903.

JULIUS G. LAY,

Consul-General.

HUNGARIAN ATTORNEYS AND NOTARIES IN THE UNITED STATES.

The Austro-Hungarian consul at Pittsburg, Pa., lately prepared a report which, when received by the Hungarian Minister of the Interior, caused the issuance of the following order (No. 61221, 1902) by that official to county and city authorities:

The Austro-Hungarian consul has called my attention to the procedure of numerous private agents calling themselves "notaries public," "Hungarian or home attorneys," "law and collection office," etc., who obtain powers of attorney from Hungarian residents to collect the amounts of death benefits due from certain societies or institutions to relatives of Hungarian citizens dying in the United States, or to collect damages obtained judicially, through the consulate at Pittsburg, from the employers responsible, and who then interfere in the action of the consulate by charging fees equal to a considerable amount of the sum collected, or in some cases by having themselves appointed useless trustees or guardians, since a benefit is not an inheritance from an estate, and so wasting the sums collected. The consul finds the cause of such interference in the delays, often extending to many months, of the Hungarian home authorities in sending the necessary powers of attorney to carry out the requests for releases from further demands, signed by the parties, or guardianship letters, of which delay the said agents take advantage to press their claims.

The consul also calls attention to the abuse furthering the interests of the said agents by the visaing and sealing of the requested powers of attorney by the town councils, or the town or circuit clerks,* inasmuch as the agents prevent the consul from collecting the sums of damages or benefit sued for by him on the basis of such powers, by offering a compromise for a smaller sum and exhibiting the aforedescribed letters of trusteeship or guardianship, the consul having no time nor interest to carry through the validity of the powers of attorney so signed by a judicial suit. Such powers of attorney, he says, ought, according to the laws of most of the States of the Union, to be signed before a United States consul or a royal notary public of Hungary. In view of the foregoing, I charge you to carry out, without delay, the requests of the Austro-Hungarian consuls residing in the United States, and to warn the town councils (magistrates and clerks) to refrain from certifying the identity of the parties on powers of attorney, such certification having no force under the laws of most of the American States. FRANK DYER CHESTER,

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY, June 30, 1903.

Consul.

GERMAN AND AMERICAN VS. FRENCH COAL IN

FRANCE.

In reply to an inquiry as to the interest now being taken in this region in American coal, I am obliged to report that no American coal has yet been marketed here in quantity. Should our coal ever reach the interior cities of Europe it will be only after the trade has

* Called "notaries " in Germany and Hungary.

been firmly established at the coast ports, and then only to reach such interior cities to which the railway haulage will be no greater from the seaports than from the domestic mines, the whole question being that of railway freight rates.

It is true that considerable German railway coal reaches the interior of France as far as Lyons in this direction. The German imports assumed serious proportions during the French miners' strike of a year ago, when local coal could not be supplied and long contracts with foreigners were made, all of which have not yet expired. It is even probable that many of these contracts may be extended on terms which the French miners will find it impossible to underbid.

Since the general strike of 1902 and for the above reasons, the mining industry of the basin of the Loire (St. Etienne) has suffered a loss of not less than 20 per cent in production, while the Germans and the mines of the Departments of the Nord and Pas-de-Calais have gained that much of the trade formerly belonging to St. Etienne and the basin of the Loire.

ST. ETIENNE, FRANCE, July 21, 1903.

HILARY S. BRUNOT,

Consul.

DRAWBACKS TO AMERICAN-SPANISH TRADE. Regarding the commercial activity of Madrid, so far at least as it relates to American importations, I can report favorably. There are several houses here that import American goods, such as electric machinery, tools, plows, pumps, hardware, and patent medicines, directly from American manufacturers, and one American firm-the Holt Manufacturing Company, of San Francisco-has come into the Spanish market with large farming machinery, to which, however, the farm laborers, who form the largest and best-organized union in Spain, do not take kindly, and a short time ago banded together in the north of Spain and destroyed one of these machines.

In general, American goods are favorably received and find a ready market. That which stands in the way of a better and more profitable commercial intercourse between the United States and Spain is the lack of a commercial treaty. The tax on American goods is almost prohibitive, and the merchants are forced to get American goods from France, Germany, or England. As a rule, such goods enter Spain under French, German, or English labels. If these goods are praised, they are praised at the cost of SpanishAmerican commerce, and it ought to be our pride to sell American goods as American goods. Perhaps a more serious obstacle to the development of a direct Spanish-American commerce is the lack

of confidence with which American manufacturers treat the Spanish merchants.

This consulate is in receipt of hundreds of letters from manufacturers and exporters in the United States for names and addresses of firms in Madrid for the purpose of sending catalogues, hoping thereby to receive orders for the various articles they offer for sale. I may state here, quite positively, that nothing will ever result from such proceedings. The merchants, as a rule, admire the pictures in the "books," but never think of them as a means to a commercial end. What the American manufacturers ought to do is to send goods on consignment to responsible firms.

In the sale of goods directly to merchants here, they ought to give reasonable credits. This would, in a measure, counterbalance the high duties. It must be borne in mind that German and other European manufacturers, selling their goods far below the American. in price, also extend to the Spanish dealer a long credit.

this is the evident lack of faith and respect with which the American manufacturer treats the Spanish dealer, as the following case will illustrate: A Madrid business house sent an order for a certain kind of goods and with the order also sent the money. The American house did not have the specified article in stock and sent another and wholly useless article, stating, "This is what we have on hand; hope it will go." The article did not "go," and the house here has been unable to get any satisfaction from the firm whose self-interest ought to have inspired it to make reparation.

I can not emphasize too strongly the fact that Spanish merchants are, as a rule, honest and take pride in the "perpetuity" of their houses. They are, therefore, afraid of the shadow of a dishonest act, and if they pay slowly they pay none the less surely. I would therefore urge American manufacturers to come into this market boldly and generously.

MADRID, SPAIN, July 14, 1903.

ADOLPHUS DANZIGER,

Vice-Consul.

TRADE OF THE UNITED STATES WITH SPAIN DURING THE YEARS 1898 TO 1902, INCLUSIVE.

[Compiled in the Bureau of Statistics, Department of Commerce and Labor.]

EXPORTING GOODS TO GERMANY.

In trading with the district of Mainz-and the same holds good, more or less, for all other districts of Germany-American exporters should be careful to have it always clearly understood, if wares are sold by weight, whether the weight is gauged by the metric or avoirdupois system, as the metric pound is about 10 per cent heavier than the avoirdupois pound and the metric system is the standard gauge of the German Empire. Articles which are sold in original. packages, such as cereal foods and the like, should be packed according to the metric weight, viz, in half-kilogram, 1-kilogram, 5-kilogram (1.1023, 2.2046, and 11.023 pound), etc., packages.

Transportation to Mainz is most easily and cheaply effected by the water route-ocean freight to Rotterdam and thence by barge up the Rhine River. Freight rates on the Rhine are lowest in spring and summer.

As regards the facilities for handling freight in the harbor of Mainz and as to general information regarding opportunities for trade in this section, I beg to refer to my annual report dated September 24, 1898 (Vol. II, Commercial Relations, 1898), as the advice therein given by me still holds good.

Besides the customs duty levied by the Empire, the city of Mainz collects an octroi duty on a number of articles brought into the town. WALTER SCHUMANN,

MAINZ, GERMANY, July 13, 1903.

Consul.

AMERICAN TOBACCO TRUST IN GERMANY.

Since the American Tobacco Trust gained a footing in the German home markets by buying out some of the leading cigar and cigarette. factories and retail stores for the sale of the American product, the German cigar and cigarette manufacturers and other commercial bodies have taken alarm, as they fear that the capitalistic and manufacturing power of America will monopolize many industriesincluding the retail trade-of Germany.

The Industrial Association of Saxony lately addressed a communication to the Chamber of Commerce of Berlin, in which it sharply criticised the impolitic action of the chamber for having, in answer to an inquiry addressed thereto, expressed a favorable opinion on the quality of the cigarettes sold on the German market by the Jasmatyi firm, one of the branch factories of the American Tobacco Trust.