Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/91

Rh Apparently Chinese private bonds are held by American interests to a considerable extent. There is no accurate method of estimating the aggregate amount of American investment in China. It may possibly have been as large as $10,000,000 at the end of 1916 and $20,000,000 at the end of 1920, but these figures are purely conjectural.

Although the data respecting American commercial investments in many of the foreign countries is fragmentary and unsatisfactory, we are able to form a fairly good idea of what there is in Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Chile and Peru, which constitutes the bulk of what we have put abroad. Even if there be huge errors in the conjectures as to other countries, the main conclusion at which we hope to arrive will not be seriously invalidated. If it be assumed that the total of these investments was about three billion dollars at the end of 1916 and four billion dollars at the end of 1920, divided substantially as shown in the accompanying tables, it will not be unreasonable, and probably not very far out of the way. If anything these totals are under-estimated rather than over-estimated.

The data show that outside of Canada, where industrial conditions are similar to our own, American capital has not been very fortunate in its major investments in foreign commercial enterprises and speculations. We made some money in mining and smelting in Mexico and in the railways of that country previous to 1914, but since then we have lost a good deal on Mexican railway bonds and in the physical destruction