Fig. 24. The control, according to commercial or financial ownership of the world’s mineral production. (Insert following Fig. 23)

COMMERCIAL CONTROL (FINANCIAL)
(Percentages are Estimated)

Prepared by John E. Orchard
Assistant Mine Economist
U.S. Bureau of Mines, May 1, 1919

[192] Recent

Who Owns the Earth?

—The answer to our inquiry at the head of this chapter, “Who Owns the Earth?” is therefore answered by these summaries, and is further set forth in the accompanying charts, one showing political (or, rather, in this case, strictly territorial) control, and the other commercial control, [Figs. 23] and [24]. As based upon the territorial and commercial control of the fundamental minerals, it appears that the earth is owned by the two great Anglo-Saxon nations, the United States and the British Empire: the former by destiny and good fortune and without political plan or policy, in that such a vast store of mineral wealth was found in the great sparsely populated wilderness of America which it occupied; the latter through the imperial policy of Britain, developed through hundreds of years by the need of extending commerce and the flag into far-off lands to supplant the slender resources of its own limited islands. Of the two, the United States is rather in the lead, and possesses and controls more of the world’s mineral wealth than any other nation; but Great Britain is a close second.

Rapid changes occur, however, in these days, and the future must be inspected. The imperial policy of expansion and increasing political control has become a tradition and an instinct with Great Britain; she learned since the loss of her American colonies to give full autonomy to her more intelligent colonies, so that she strengthens her dominion thereby, and persistently goes on her way putting more and more of the earth under the British flag. The wealth and resources of the United States being so far greater than its necessities, foreign problems have resolved into occasional questions of self-protection; and from this condition a directly resulting theory has sprung, of non-interference in the rest of the world. Like China, we declare ourselves apart from the world, and simply ask to be left alone, in consideration of which we agree to leave the world alone. Our Monroe Doctrine as originated is part of that theory—we wanted the world to leave all the Americas alone, but took no responsibility for the Americas otherwise—a selfish and one-sided position.

The manner in which we cling to this doctrine is stupid and ineffective: while we have conceived of it only as applying to military or political encroachment, we have overlooked the modern phase of commercial conquest. Thereby we gain the suspicion of our Latin-American neighbors, who accordingly welcome more gladly European or Japanese rather than American capital; and thus we encourage the very encroachments we have thought to prevent. We should either abandon the Monroe Doctrine entirely, or define it also in terms of political control.

Therefore, as regards our great industries, and, more specifically, our mineral industries, we have never had any definite policy; our troubles and problems were purely internal, and the Government’s efforts were largely directed to preventing such solidarity of any one industry that its power should be too great, although American organizing genius first successfully developed these colossal business combinations, rising without government support. England, too, and France, with their democratic traditions, tended to resist the overwhelming power of great business organizations, as leading to the destruction of equal opportunity and threatening the power of the state. It remained for Germany, pressing impudently toward the conquest of the world, to see the advantage of combining the powers of the state with those of business monopolies, as a means of regulating industry at home and overpowering other nations. Thus the old question of the union or separation of Church and State becomes one of Business and State.