Considerable amounts of capital are invested in private industry, by individuals and partnerships. No record of these investments ever appears. Farmers invest in animals, machinery and improved buildings—investments that are not represented by stocks or bonds. Again, the great corporations themselves are constantly adding to their assets without increasing their stock or bond issues. In these and other ways, billions of new capital are yearly absorbed by the home investment market.
Although most of the enterprises of the United States have been floated with American capital, the investors of Great Britain, Holland, France and other countries took a hand. In 1913 the capitalists of Great Britain had larger investments in the United States than in any other country, or than in any British Dominion. (The U. S., 754,617,000 pounds; Canada and Newfoundland, 514,870,000 pounds; India and Ceylon, 378,776,000 pounds; South Africa, 370,192,000 pounds and so on.) (Annals, 1916, Vol. 68, p. 28, Article by C. K. Hobson.) The aggregate amount of European capital invested in the United States was approximately $6,500,000,000 in 1910. Of this sum more than half was British. ("Trade Balance of the United States," George Paisch. National Monetary Commission, 1910, p. 175.)
By the beginning of the present century (the U. S. Steel Corporation was organized in 1901) the main work of organization inside of the United States was completed. The bankers had some incidental tasks before them, but the industrial leaders themselves had done their pioneer duty. There were corners to be smoothed off, and bearings to be rubbed down, but the great structural problems had been solved, and the foundations of world industrial empire had been laid.
6. Leaving the Home Field
The Spanish-American War marks the beginning of the new era in American business organization. This war found the American people isolated and provincial. It left them with a new feeling for their own importance.
The worlds at home had been conquered. The transcontinental railroads had been built; the steel industry, the oil industry, the coal industry, the leather industry, the woolen industry and a host of others had been organized by a whole generation of industrial organizers who had given their lives to this task.
Across the borders of the United States—almost within arm's reach of the eager, stirring, high-strung men of the new generation, there were tens of thousands of square miles of undeveloped territory—territory that was fabulously rich in ore, in timber, in oil, in fertility. On every side the lands stretched away—Mexico, the West Indies, Central America, Canada—with opportunity that was to be had for the taking.
Opportunity called. Capital, seeking new fields for investment, urged. Youth, enthusiasm and enterprise answered the challenge.
The foreign investments of the United States at the time of the Spanish-American War were negligible. By 1910 American business men had two billions invested abroad—$700,000,000 in Mexico; $500,000,000 in Canada; $350,000,000 in Europe, and smaller sums in the West Indies, the Philippines, China, Central and South America. In 1913 there was a billion invested in Mexico and an equal amount in Canada. ("Commercial Policy," W. S. Culbertson, New York, Appleton, 1919, p. 315.)
Capital flowed out of the United States in two directions: