rbed by the home
investment market.

Although most of the enterprises of the United States have been floated
with American capital, the investors of Great Britain, Holland, France
and other countries took a hand. In 1913 the capitalists of Great
Britain had larger investments in the United States than in any other
country, or than in any British Dominion. (The U. S., 754,617,000
pounds; Canada and Newfoundland, 514,870,000 pounds; India and Ceylon,
378,776,000 pounds; South Africa, 370,192,000 pounds and so on.)
(_Annals_, 1916, Vol. 68, p. 28, Article by C. K. Hobson.) The aggregate
amount of European capital invested in the United States was
approximately $6,500,000,000 in 1910. Of this sum more than half was
British. ("Trade Balance of the United States," George Paisch. National
Monetary Commission, 1910, p. 175.)

By the beginning of the present century (the U. S. Steel Corporation was
organized in 1901) the main work of organization inside of the United
States was completed. The bankers had some incidental tasks before them,
but the industrial leaders themselves had done their pioneer duty. There
were corners to be smoothed off, and bearings to be rubbed down, but the
great structural problems had been solved, and the foundations of world
industrial empire had been laid.

6. _Leaving the Home Field_

The Spanish-American War marks the beginning of the new era in American
business organization. This war found the American people isolated and
provincial. It left them with a new feeling for their own importance.

The worlds at home had been conquered. The transcontinental railroads
had been built; the steel industry, the oil industry, the coal industry,
the leather industry, the woolen industry and a host of others had been
organized by a whole generation of industrial organizers who had given
their lives to this task.

Across the borders of the United States--almost within arm's reach of
the eager, stirring, high-strung men of the new generation, there were
tens of thousands of square miles of undeveloped territory--territory
that was fabulously rich in ore, in timber, in oil, in fertility. On
every side the lands stretched away--Mexico, the West Indies, Central
America, Canada--with opportunity that was to be had for the taking.

Opportunity called. Capital, seeking new fields for investment, urged.
Youth, enthusiasm and enterprise answered the challenge.

The foreign investments of the United States at t