Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Contiued research in the Pan American Bulletin



Some difficulties that I have been having in my research are staying focused and finding references to the Pan American Union Men’s club. The bulletin of the Pan American Union contains a vast amount of information that has a broad range of topics. Due to this, while skimming the bulletin, I am often distracted by articles that have no value to my research but are interesting. I find it interesting to compare the distribution of industries in a particular country in the early 20th century to modern distribution of industries found on the CIA world fact book. This has no value to understanding a growing Pan Americanism but I find it interesting. Another topic the usually does not hold any value to my research but I often get distracted by is articles describing the production of certain goods at the time. Reading these is like watching “How it’s Made” on the History channel and I find it fascinating.
               These distractions are not as damaging to my research as the second problem. I have found very few references to the Pan American Union Men’s club in the Bulletin. I feel as if I am missing references because of a lack of knowledge on the Men’s club. I am having trouble finding background information on the Men’s club. I’m going to ask Dr. Berger where I can find out more information of the Men’s Club so my research will not suffer.

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Blog post #7




               In the Bulletin of the Pan American Union, there was a growing concern about the unfavorable balance of trade between the United States and Latin America. The agreed upon situation was that Latin America would produce primary goods and export them to the United States, with the profits from the exports, they would import manufactured goods from Europe. Trade with Latin America was seen as a money drain on the United States. Examples of this opinion can be found in experts of the time like the former director of the Pan American Union before John Barrett. He claimed that the United States only accounted for one fourth of Latin American trade and that Latin Americans need to start buying manufactured goods in the United States.