to keep
it. In the Upper Aragon, the mortar with which the houses are built is
made with wine instead of water, the former being the most plentiful.
Aragon needs an enterprising American company to convert into
wholesome table wine the infinite varieties there produced, and which
our neighbors the French buy and carry away to convert into Bordeaux.

We want American enterprise in Galicia and Asturias, where milk is
almost given away, to convert it into the best of butter and cheese;
and also in those same provinces, where delicious fruit is grown in
such abundance that it is left on the ground for the swine.

Spain needs many more railroads and canals, all of which, when
constructed, are subsidized by the government; the railroads at the
rate of $12,000 a kilometer, and many more additional advantages are
offered for canals.

With regard to commerce with Spain, we have to lament the same
indifference on the part of the Americans. I have, for instance, an
American double-burner petroleum lamp. All who see it admire and covet
it, but they are not to be had here. If we except one American in
Madrid, who brings mostly pumps and similar articles on a very small
scale, we have no dealers in American goods here. Wooden clothes pins,
lemon squeezers, clothes horses, potato peelers, and the hundreds of
domestic appliances of American invention, elsewhere considered
indispensable, are in Spain unknown.

We had confidently expected that the new Spanish law on patents would
draw the attention of American inventors toward this country, that
to-day offers a wide field for every new practical invention, but I am
sorry to see that, with the exception of Edison and a few others, the
Americans have not yet availed themselves of the easy facility for
taking patents for Spain, where new inventions and new industries are
now eagerly accepted and adopted. And while the Americans are thus
careless as to their own interests, the French take out and negotiate,
in Spain, American patents with insignificant variations.

Let American inventors be assured that any new invention, useful and
practical, and above all, requiring but little capital to establish it
as an industry, will find a ready sale in Spain.

I could enlarge to a much greater extent upon the indifference of
American inventors, merchants, manufacturers, and business men, as to
the market they have in Spain in their respective lines, and upon the
importance of building up a tr