Page:Mexico and its reconstruction.djvu/263

Rh as follows: petroleum companies, $120,000,000; mining companies, $85,000,000; light, power, and street railway companies, $145,000,000; divers industries, $40,000,000; and banks, $70,000,000. In the same year another writer put the total as high as $800,000,000 gold.

The American authority above cited reported French investments in 1912 as totaling $143,446,000, of which national bonds and bank stocks formed almost two-thirds. Frenchmen were far the most important foreign investors in cotton mills, wholesale stores, and tobacco factories.

In 1914 French residents in Mexico claimed that there were French holdings there amounting to several thousand million francs invested in government obligations, banks, railways, electric transportation, mills, factories, and businesses of every kind. Among the more important French interests were mentioned mines such as Dos Estrellas and El Boleo, industrial establishments such as the Buen Tono, tobacco factory, the chief Orizaba textile mills, and the large French stores in various cities.

German interest in Mexico began early. In the Maximilian régime a colony of 500 was brought from