Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/79

Rh of which was due to the United States. The United Fruit Co. owned railways in the Republic that had cost $3,600,000. About $5,000,000 of American money had been invested in public utilities. The United Fruit Co. had about $3,600,000 in lands and equipment, in addition to its railways. The total American investment in Panama at the end of 1916 may be put conservatively at $20,000,000. This is, of course, exclusive of the investment of the American government in the Panama Canal and railway. At the end of 1920 the total American private investment in Panama may be put down roughly at $30,000,000.

In a statement recently issued by a special Cuban commercial mission to the United States, attention was drawn to the large amount of American capital invested in the Cuban sugar industry, in railways, and in tobacco and other branches of industry. It was estimated that altogether there was upward of $700,000,000 of American capital invested in Cuba, whereof about $600,000,000 was in sugar plantations and mills, this being upward of 60 per cent of the total amount in that industry. These representations would naturally be discounted in view of the fact that a principal purpose of this mission was to secure tariff concessions from the United States, wherefore a magnification of the amounts of American investments in Cuba would be politic. The investigations of this subject that I have carried on failed to disclose a total anywhere near so large.

In 1916 the sugar industry of Cuba apparently had capacity for the production of about 25,000,000 bags