(b) Inter-American High Commission. As the Pan-American Union grew out of the First Pan-American Conference in 1889-1890, so the Inter-American High Commission (originally called the International High Commission) grew out of the first Pan-American Financial Conference in 1915-a conference of finance ministers and commercial and financial leaders of the American republics to consider inter-American commercial and financial relations as affected by the European War. The Commission was devised in order to provide a permanent and effective organization for frequent consultation on certain commercial and financial matters calling for international coöperation. In each of the national sections provided for, are eminent jurists and financiers under the chairmanship of the minister of finance. Each section has its own secretariat, and meets in separate sessions upon call of the chairman: all the sections meet together from time to time as the majority may determine; the directive and coördinating body is a central executive council consisting of three officers of the United States section headed by the Secretary of the Treasury. The activities of the United States section are financed by Congressional appropriations.

In general the aims of the Commission have been to make effective the recommendations of the financial conferences, the second of which was held in 1920. It studies selected problems, formulates proposed solutions either by way of treaties or uniform legislation, and each section stimulates its own government to ratify conventions agreed upon and to enact suggested laws. Among the subjects taken up by the Commission have been (1) uniform measures as to bills of exchange, checks, bills of lading, warehouse receipts, consular certificates and invoices, port charges, customs regulations, commercial travelers, and foreign corporations; (2) international protection of trade-marks, patents, and copyrights; (3) lower rates of postage and better money-order

and parcel-post facilities; (4) arbitration for the adjustment of commercial disputes; (5) methods of avoiding double taxation of individuals and corporations as between American nations; and (6) the establishment of a gold clearance fund.

(c) Other International Agencies. -The United States is also a member of many other international organizations whose work bears more or less directly upon the development of trade. These include the Universal Postal Union; the International Union for the Protection of Industrial Property; the International Bureau of the Telegraphic Union at Berne; the International Bureau for Publication of Customs Tariffs at Brussels; the International Institute of Agriculture at Rome; the International Trademark Registration Bureau at Havana; etc. Most of these organizations rest upon treaties or conventions which have usually been formulated by international conferences or congresses.

Criticism of the Public Trade-promoting Institutions of the United States. The trade-promoting activities of the United States government have come to cover a very wide range and have attained a high degree of efficiency. While not entirely beyond the reach of politics, appointments and promotions are based primarily upon merit. In recent years, the work has become more and more expert and specialized, more intensive in the foreign field, and practically serviceable to more and more lines of domestic interest. Appreciation of it has steadily grown in the minds of American business men, and favorable comment has come from various foreign observers. At the same time the shortcomings of our public trade promoting arrangements have been repeatedly emphasized both in official and in business circles. Two criticisms perhaps merit especial attention at this point:

(a) The scale of salaries is too low to attract and to hold a sufficient number of men of the superior qualifications which the service should command. Many young men of promise

do enter the various branches of the service, and some remain for long periods; but, as a career for those of large capacity but of small means, this work still offers inadequate rewards, especially in view of alternatives in the business world. This difficulty has long been recognized by students of the consular service. The Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce likewise has been too largely a training school for men who later entered the employment of private business concerns. Such competition is inevitable and the government can hardly expect to meet it on even terms; nor is it clearly contrary to public policy for the government to contribute somewhat to the training of men for higher positions in business. At the same time it is important for the government to retain and capitalize accumulated experience as far as possible. A higher salary scale would doubtless help to reduce the turnover which is now excessive, both by lengthening the period of government work on the part of those who ultimately enter the field of private business and by encouraging an increasing number to look upon public service as a career. And with the question of salaries is intimately bound up the need of more adequate provision for travel allowances, housing, and other proper expenses incident to the various types of service in foreign countries.

(b) The trade-promoting work of the various departments and bureaus is not effectively coördinated. Even within the same department there are sometimes cleavages which militate against the highest efficiency; for example, the two branches of the Foreign Service (the Diplomatic and the Consular), both of which are engaged in commercial as well as political work, should, in the words of Secretary Hughes, " be drawn together and treated as an interchangeable unit "; but proposed legislation authorizing such flexibility has thus far failed of enactment. More than this, there are about a dozen departments, commissions, and other governmental agencies

each charged with certain duties affecting foreign commerce, and each free to act more or less independently, without legal obligation to inform the others as to plans or activities. There is a lack of centralization, of system, or of coördination except as secured through voluntary action of responsible heads of these several agencies. This may well prove an insufficient safeguard in view of personal or departmental ambitions or jealousies. In 1919, at the suggestion of the Secretary of State, an Economic Liaison Committee was instituted, consisting of a representative of each department, board, and commission dealing directly or indirectly with questions of foreign trade these representatives holding weekly meetings with a view to obviating duplication of effort, expediting the handling of matters calling for interdepartmental consultation, and harmonizing and integrating the work of these various governmental agencies.

Some more formal and assured means of correlation would seem clearly desirable. Various plans of reorganization have been proposed, among others the linking of the numerous boards and commissions whose work vitally touches trade matters, to the Department of Commerce by providing for a representative of that department in each of these agencies. But such a plan would not afford a basis for adjusting the relations between the Department of Commerce and the Department of State - a problem by no means easy of solution. As Secretary Redfield observed in 1919: There is a 'no man's land' wherein the diplomatic field runs parallel with the commercial, and the commercial field touches closely upon the diplomatic. It will probably always be necessary to maintain a species of joint endeavor between the two departments." The respective fields can hardly be nicely delimited by law, and the possibility of duplication of effort is perhaps inescapable. Britain attempted to meet a somewhat parallel situation through the creation in 1917 of a Department of

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Overseas Trade under the joint control of the Foreign Office and the Board of Trade, to which were transferred in 1919 the Consular and Commercial Departments of the Foreign Office. The joint control of the new department was intrusted to an interdepartmental committee of which the head of the Board of Trade was made chairman. This whole matter is but one phase of the larger problem of correlation and reorganization of all the administrative agencies of our federal government.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Consult references for Chapters XIII and XIV.

B. Annual Reports of Secretaries of Treasury, Agriculture, and War and of Postmaster General, Federal Reserve Board, Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Insular Affairs (War Department), War Finance Corporation; Federal Reserve Bulletin (monthly); U. S. Official Postal Guide; Pan-American Union Bulletin; Reports of Pan-American Financial Conferences, Pan-American Commercial Conferences, etc.

D. Department of Agriculture. - WANLASS, The United States Department of Agriculture; Sherman, History of the Bureau of Markets; bulletins of Bureau of Agricultural Economics.

Federal Trade Commission. - HOLT, The Federal Trade Commission; Work of Fed. Trade Commission relating to Commerce (Sen. Doc. 247, 66th Cong., 2d Sess.); JONES, Trust Problem, 343-357, 374-387, 526-528; CULBERTSON, Commercial Policy, 215, 228-229, 451-461; Fed. Trade Commission, Report on Coöperation in American Export Trade, 1916; NOTZ AND HARVEY, American Foreign Trade as Promoted by the Webb-Pomerene and Edge Acts.

Federal Reserve Board. The Federal Reserve Act as amended to 1920, compiled by Federal Reserve Board; KEMMERER, The ABC of the Federal Reserve System; WESTERFIELD, Banking Principles and Practice, Vol. I, pp. 296 et seq.; AMERICAN EXCHANGE NATIONAL BANK (N. Y.), Acceptances as a Means of Increasing and Simplifying Domestic and Foreign Trade, 1921; Acceptances, branches of member banks, and Edge Law corporations (see Fed. Res. Bulletins and Annual Reports of Fed. Res. Board); WOLFE, Theory and Practice of International Commerce, 378-411.

International Agencies.

ALLEN, International Relations; REINSCH,