Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/68

46 of the war and put into the hands of the Alien Property Custodian was about $600,000,000. Of this there had been returned previous to the middle of 1921 to the original owners, or to persons who had established claim under Section 9 of the Trading with the Enemy Act, property valued at $155,000,000. These figures can be regarded as hardly more than indications of real value, for naturally there have been fluctuations in the securities administered, with perhaps a general tendency toward decrease. At the middle of 1921 the value of all enemy property administered by the Alien Property Custodian was estimated at about $379,000,000. The return of this property awaits future legislation by Congress.

Besides the money loaned to foreign governments by the United States Government, and the foreign government, state and municipal loans that have been floated privately in the United States, there is a private investment of American capital abroad. This is divisible into two items: (1) capital invested by American corporations or by individuals in industrial undertakings abroad, as for example, lands, mines and manufacturing plants in Canada and Mexico, docks in Hamburg, sugar plantations and mills in Cuba and Haiti, oil developments in Venezuela and Colombia, meat packing plants in Argentina; and (2) American speculative investments in European internal bonds and in European depreciated currencies. On neither of these subjects have there been any adequate data. It has commonly been supposed that the foreign investments of the United States were inconsiderable.