The Story of Brazilian Commerce 259
countries the autarchy policy or national sufficiency has
determined quotas for products imported from foreign
sources. Brazil had to negotiate larger quotas for her
products in return for concessions. The willingness to grant
larger quotas to Brazil was helped by the desire to release
credits blocked in Brazil and also by the fact that Brazilian
output is chiefly of raw materials and foodstuff's.
5. Greater credit facilities, by extension of the rediscount
and providing a broader field for internal securities, were
other government initiatives that improved considerably the
purchasing power of the country. Coal, iron, and cement
were among the first privileged mining activities; but manu-
facturing increased also rapidly, thus influencing the inter-
nal market for foreign goods. For coffee production results
were still more dramatic. It is said that large estates passed,
in Sao Paulo, from 50 per cent of the cultivated land to 10
per cent only; it is “the transition from the large absentee
ownership to small operating farmers,” as Ralph H. Aker-
man, commercial attaché, states in his report of 1937.
The Brazilian commercial depression began in 1926; re-
covery started in 1935. If we examine exports in tons, we
might follow the movement from ι,622,000 tons in 1932 to
3,933,000 tons in 1938. Values expressed in contos de reis
also increase but values in dollars, owing to exchange condi-
tions, show a decrease when compared with figures of 1926,
for instance.
As consequences of these facts, we may mention: an in-
creasing industrialization in the southern states, Sao Paulo,
for example; a rapid progress in the self-supporting system
of the country; the abandonment of a single crop economy
and policy; and a resultant new economy that may alter the
international trade relations of the country. Yet key in-
dustries are still missing.