Page:The Bank of England and the State, 1905.djvu/61

 advance took place in gilt-edged securities, and great activity in South African mining shares, in which a large amount of capital was invested. In 1895 peace was concluded between China and Japan, and the large war indemnity was paid to the Bank of England, raising the stock of gold to unprecedented figures. The demand for home securities increased, and record prices were reached. In 1896 new capital applied for again rose to 153 millions. The demand was not so much for foreign or colonial securities, but mainly for home investments and industrial undertakings of all sorts. The company promoter was hard at work, and in many cases not for the benefit of the community at large or of the industries which he took in hand. We have thus a distinct change in the channels of investment; we deliberately turned away from foreign and colonial enterprises, in favour of investments in the home markets, and to that may be directly due part of the lack of expansion in our exports, which would have followed naturally had we placed the capital abroad, and also the increase in our imports for the home industries, which receive much of their material from abroad.

Towards the end of 1896 the memorable Presidential election in the United States took place, when that nation decided in favour of a gold standard; the harvests in that country had been abundant, while there had been partial failures in Australasia, Russia, and the Argentine. These circumstances are of importance to our enquiry, for they explain the partial stagnation of exports to these last-named countries; as regards the United States, the desire to settle their currency troubles led to immediate exports of gold from here, and from that time also dates the important movement, which has since taken place, of Americans buying back their securities from European markets, a movement partly caused by distrust on our side in consequence of these currency troubles, but principally by returning confidence in the United States and the remarkable revival of their industrial and commercial development, assisted by a continuous series of abundant harvests. It was assisted also, no doubt, by the new Dingley Tariff, introduced in 1897, which certainly caused a diminution in our exports to the United States, whereas at the