In a new country of vast natural resources, especially if it is not
too well governed, there is sufficient scope for both speculative
enterprise and capital proper. The United States has been such a
country, at least down to a very recent date. There was easy money
enough for all men of shrewdness and resolution possessed of the
necessary initial stake--public forests to be leveled, railways to be
built or wrecked, trusts to be organized, cities to be provided with
public utilities. But all this easy money now appears to be in danger
of being locked up. We have a conservation movement in full swing,
and a civic reform tendency that is no longer a mere cloak for the
insatiable appetite of plunderers out of power. The popular attitude
toward monopolistic combinations is growing ominously serious; if old
and strong combinations do not dissolve in fear before it, yet those
who would organize new combinations are deeply discouraged. We have an
Interstate Commerce Commission with the will and the power to choke
all railways when some are believed to have stealings in their gorge.
Already we are beginning to hear murmurs about town, that in view of
the popular hostility to wealth, it will be necessary for American
capital to look to foreign investments. Not foreign investments in
England and France and Germany, where government is efficient and
capital proper prevails. But foreign investments in the undeveloped
countries, in a Land of the Morning, “east of Suez.”
In England the domestic field for capitalistic speculation has long
been restricted. For generations the British citizen has been taught
to look to Asia, Africa, America, for the opportunities for sudden
wealth. Germany, more recently launched upon an industrial career,
might have offered many rich opportunities at home. But Germany has
been well governed. The early nationalization of railways closed one
lucrative field; the cities, with their excellent business governments,
have taken control of their own utilities, or have driven hard bargains
with private enterprise. Industrial combinations have been as numerous
as with us; but they have assumed the form of the Kartell--a legally
binding agreement between independent producers, fixing prices and
volume of production. Such a form of organization, like our former
“pools,” distributes the profits of combination fairly equitably
among all the producers, and therefore has offered little opportunity
for such promoter’s gains as we are familiar with in American trust
finance. Some opening there was, of course, for speculative enterprise.
The launching of new industrial companies, dealings in real estate,
the military and naval industries, laid the basis for many astounding
mushroom fortunes. But the progress of governmental effectiveness
has been steadily encroaching upon these fields. The German internal
situation, then, has been such as to recommend the _Ausland_ to those
who wish to risk large stakes on the chance of brilliant returns.
The progress of modern industrial society, with its parallel
development in the art of government, tends to the extrusion of
speculative capital, and its concentration in the tropical and
subtropical belts. In the older societies the process has been in
operation for a considerable time; with us it is just beginning. But in
a generation, we may be sure, much of our own speculative capital, like
that of the older countries, will be engaged in colonial exploitation.