Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/71

Rh principal have been considered, rightly or wrongly, to be numerous and attractive.

It is impossible to make any accurate expression of the total amount of this kind of paper that is held by the American people. The fragmentary data that have been here noted indicate that we may have put $400,000,000 into foreign internals. Some of this, particularly the speculation in Russian internals, has already had to be written off as a loss.

Similarly there have been large purchases of foreign currencies and large losses in them. Especially was there an immense and disastrous speculation in German marks. It is in no wise improbable that the United States has lost, or stands to lose, something like $600,000,000 in speculation in foreign internal bonds and foreign currencies. This may be regarded as a conservative statement.

The largest commercial investments of the United States are in Canada, Mexico, Cuba and South America, and these are mainly in lands, mines, oil wells, railways and public utilities; but there is scarcely a country of the civilized world in which American capital does not have some interests, which in certain cases aggregate to rather large figures. I have made an attempt to enumerate these, obtaining data to a large extent from replies to a questionnaire, addressed to the principal American industrial companies. The results of this investigation are presented in the following pages. It has not been very satisfactory, having been an exploration into an almost unknown field, and it is hoped that