State College - 5/l. -2 - Alaska Canada Mexico Panama, Colombia Peru France Japan Korea Guam Philippines Australia Tasmania Our foreign activities cover 3 broad fields: construction; mining; ocean shipping. Our ocean shipping activities are an outgrowth of our mining developments, and both will be discussed in more detail later. Our construction services overseas are hired by foreign governments or through agencies as well as by private firms, some of which are U. S. corporations while others are foreign. There is an important distinction between the problems posed by construction contracts abroad and those encountered in mining. For the most part, the large construction projects on which U. S. firms are usually engaged have already been screened by the foreign government involved and determined to be in their national interest before the contract is ever let. This means that a contractor can usually count upon a high degree of cooperation from the governments involved. Particularly in the smaller countries there is far more flexibility in the government approach then we find here in the United States where the Federal Government, the States, and even the cities have a rigidity and an inflexibility that is almost impossible to alter and therefore must be accepted in advance. There is also another factor in construction work and that is that it is possible, though perhaps unwise to approach it from the short range viewpoint on the theory that the work will be soon over and the contractor can go his way.