THE IRRIGA TIO X A GE. 1 9 



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public mind to admit of the placing of an American Company's se- 

 curities. 



Large sums were expended in properly presenting the enterprise, 

 and every conceivable channel was tried in vain; the great financial 

 houses in England protesting that British investors had already suf- 

 fered too largely through investing in the bonds of American compa- 

 nies; that the finances of the United Stated were too unsettled; the 

 laws protecting foreign bond holders much too lax; that directors of 

 American companies were not, under American laws, sufficiently re- 

 sponsible for good management; that the United States might declare 

 for silver and repudiate all obligation to pay gold bonds in gold, and 

 that in the event of the bond holders having to foreclose, the Alien 

 Land Law would entail realization at a sacrifice. Financial house 

 after house raised the same series of objections, one and all pointing 

 out that the history of foreign investments in Texas, Kansas, Missouri, 

 etc., etc., tended to show that ignorant and hostile legislation may, in 

 the future as in the past, depreciate or possibly even invalidate tjhe 

 foreign bond holders' security. While all admitted the obvious merit 

 of the company's undertaking, none would risk investment. To such 

 a deplorable state has the asinine follies of American officials and 

 American legislative bodies brought American credit. 



All new countries must, in the nature of things, depend upon 

 monetary assistance from without for the development of their re- 

 sources. Much of America's wonderful progress would have been re- 

 tarded half a century or more had it not been for the powerful aid of 

 foreign gold. Individuals, communities and nations borrow, all justly 

 claiming the right to borrow in the cheapest market; but notwith- 

 standing recognized economic laws laws as clearly defined and unal- 

 terable as any other forces in nature governing the relations of labor, 

 capital and national resources, American legislatures have repeatedly 

 enacced laws openly an tagnostic to foreign capital. The result, dear 

 money and widespread disaster, obvious conditions of cause and effect, 

 have in every instance become immediately manifest. Foreign inves- 

 tors have largely withdrawn their capital, often enforcing abrupt 

 realization and reluctantly ruining thousands, leaving American bank- 

 ers, mortgage companies and other money lending institutions practi- 

 cally the only source of monetary supply. By paying high rates of 

 interest, the soundest of American financial companies have continued 

 to raise capital abroad, which they in turn advance to our western 

 farmers and merchants at more or less exorbitant rates. Ignorant 

 legislative opposition to foreign capital, by retarding development and 

 lowering the price of labor, has thus been one of the chief sources of 

 ruin for the farmers of the western states. 



It is a lamentable fact, perhaps not known to the majority of the 

 American people, that with certain isolated exceptions, every Ameri- 

 can enterprise, let its prospects and advantages be never so well 



