No. 6.
Mr. Hanna to
Mr. Bayard.
Buenos Ayres, February 5, 1887. (Received March 28.)
Sir: I have the honor to report that another sharp contest has just closed here between some representatives of the United States and European manufacturers. This time the struggle was with Germany. One of the national railroads of this Government had asked for sealed bids on a large addition of railroad supplies—engines, passenger and sleeping coaches, freight cars, etc. The request was generous and the opportunity inviting.
The Harlan and Hollingsworth Company of Wilmington, Del., long known among the most standard and advanced manufacturers of railroad equipment in the world, were represented by Mr. W. * * *
The Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia, with a reputation for probity and efficiencey in their great handicraft which can not be successfully challenged, were represented by Mr. E.
Mr. E. found the competition comparatively weak in the sale of the engines, and at once sold 12 of them at asking prices and for cash. Mr. W., however, had a harder conflict, and, although not altogether defeated, has been only partially successful. He has closed a contract with this Government for 32 passenger coaches of the Harlan and Hollings-worth Company’s make. The 150 freight cars to be supplied in the transaction went to Germany, they having most savagely cut under the standard prices. * * *
Mr. W. informs me the wheels and axles for the passenger coaches he has just contracted for, and for some 400 cars he sold here last year, were all made in England; that we have no manufacturers in the United States making the special patterns of wheels used on Argentine railroads, and that, even if we did have them, the English prices are so much lower than ours he will be forced to buy them, as heretofore, in England. These wheels will be shipped from England here, as our Government will not permit the Harlan and Hollingsworth Company to transport them to their shops in Delaware and there adjust them to their cars without the payment of a consuming tariff, even though they are for export. Thus through broken shipments—one part of the car going from the United States and another part from England—our manufacturers labor under a grievous embarrassment.
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I have, etc.,