[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."
SIB,—There is a cause for our greater proportionate increase of imports than exports which I have not seen noticed by any writer. That cause is the repayment of capital. Twenty or thirty years ago we all went wild over foreign investments. Any loan was good enough to be subscribed fora Speaking of what I personally know, we in Glasgow sent away enormous sums of money for investment in the deposits of Australian banks, in the debentures of the Jarvis-Conklin and other American and Colonial mortgage companies, and of South American railways. All that money was, of course, sent abroad in the form of goods, and appeared in the table of exports. Many of these investments turned out to be bad. Much of the Australian money was squandered by Socialistic legisla- tion. The Jarvis-Conklin money was lost in 'various wild-cat schemes such as the bringing of a water-supply to Chicago from a distant lake without any connection for their pipes at the Chicago end, and the South American railways had not sufficient traffic to pay the current expenses. But once bitten, twice shy. We no longer subscribe so lavishly to
foreign schemes, and the money which we are slowly realising from the adventures I have spoken of is being kept for in- vestment at home. It now appears in the form of imports. We are not now sending away so much money for foreign investment as we did for a few years, while we are getting back a considerable part of what we then sent. That is one of the causes, and by no means a small one, of the change of the proportions of exports and imports which some people think such an evidence of failing prosperity.—
Previous page
