Germany's Aim At The Panama Fair.

New York Times 100 years ago today, August 18, 1912:
Will Not Seek Our Trade, but Will Endeavor to Obtain South American Orders.
NEW SCHEMES FOR BRAZIL
Movement to Colonize Southern States with 20,000 Germans in the Next Four Years.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    BERLIN, Aug. 17.— References to German commercial progress in South America, contained in the interview which President Ryan of the Amalgamated Copper Company gave out in New York on his return from Europe a few days ago, are highly suggestive, in connection with the German plans regarding the Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco in 1915.
    The Kaiser's Government is still gathering opinions from Merchants, manufacturers, and exporters in reference to the advisability of an extensive German exhibit at San Francisco. A definite promise to exhibit will not be given until this collection of judgments is complete, but it may be regarded as absolutely certain that the Fatherland will be represented in the most creditable fashion.
    A significant feature of the Teutonic exhibit at the Golden Gate, The New York Times correspondent learns, will be that it will amount to a systematic and comprehensive bid for South American trade. Everything will be arranged so as to constitute a huge advertisement of German wares for the purpose of attracting the attention of the Latin republics.
    North Americans who visit the exposition will, it is hoped, be edified and pleased, but the attention which Germans plan chiefly to arrest is that of the Brazilians, Argentinians, Peruvians, Chileans, and Venezuelans, who, it is expected here, will visit San Francisco in great numbers.
    The Germans hope, incidentally, to make their exhibit an advertisement for trade in Japan and China, but it is the South American, orders which they desire most. It is the consensus of opinion of all the great business leaders whom the Government is now sounding that the San Francisco exhibit should be made, if at all, exclusively with that end in view.
    Silent hopes are cherished that the American tariff will lose much of its prohibitory character under a Democratic Presidential and Congressional regime, but Germans realize that American manufacturers, even under the best conditions for foreigners, have a firm grip on their home market. The San Francisco show, therefore, is not expected to prove commercially profitable for any European exhibitors, as far as trade with the United States is concerned, so the Germans, with far-sighted thoroughness, are going to exploit it for the purpose of expanding their business in territories far remote from the United States tariff walls.
    A strong revival of German interest in Brazil is at present noticeable. News comes from Rio Janeiro that a well-known German in the State of Sao Paulo has organized a movement for colonizing the southern States of the republic with 20,000 Germans in the next four years.
    The Deutsch-Brazilian Post, a newspaper representing German interests in the Amazon republic, announces that a German-Brazilian , Congress will take place in Berlin on Sept. 6, 7, and 8. All German Brazilians resident in Europe, especially those who have lived in the German colonies in the southern States, have been invited to assemble at the congress and help map out a fresh scheme for spreading German culture and commerce in Brazil.
    Still more evidence of Germany's lively interest in everything concerning Brazil is contained in the announcement just made that the Kaiser has presented to Dr. Lauro Mueller, the Brazilian Foreign Minister, a life-sized bust of his Majesty as a souvenir of Senhor Mueller's visit to Berlin in 1911.