58 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE
GREAT BRITAIN.

As it was in England that the modern growth of large amounts of
disposable capital began, Englishmen were the first to make large
nvestments outside their own country.
It was computed that in 1857 the sum of £30,000,000 ($400,000,000)
in American railroad steck alone was held in England. In 1886
British holdings in South American banks and railways were estimated,
 market value, at £52,855,000 ($264,275,000) and in South
American government and provincial loans, market value, at
£58,223,000 ($291,115,000) ; a total for these three South American
items alone of over £111,000,000 ($555,000,000).2
According to Bowley’s estimate, as long ago as 1854 British owners
“had some £550,000,000 ($2,750,000,000) invested abroad, in Government
 loans and railways presumably;” and this may have risen to
about £1,400,000,000 ($7,000,000,000) by 1875, and to £2,000,000.000
1$10,000,000,000) by 1890.%
Sir Robert Giffen, starting from the income-tax returns, reached
an estimate for 1885 of £1,302,000,000 ($6,510,000,000),* while Bowley’s
 estimate for that year would apparently be about £1,700,000,000
($8,500,000,000). Later estimates, for which F. W. Hirst, editor of
The Economist, is responsible, and which are similar in method to
Giffen’s, give £1,600,000,000 ($8,000,000,000) for 1895, £2,025,000,000
($10,125,000,000) for 1905, and £2,382,000,000 ($11,660,000,000) for
1909. Mr. Hirst regards these estimates as “a minimum rather than
a maximum.” ®
At the meeting of the Royal Statistical Society in December, 1910,
Sir G. Paish gave an estimate of the public securities then in British
hands, based partly on income-tax returns and partly on examination
of the reports, balance sheets, and income statements of several
thousand companies; indeed, of all Qritish companies working abroad
about which official information could be obtained.” The estimate is
summarized in the following table:

LC. K. Hobson, The Hxport of Capital, London, 1914, p. 128.
1 The Economist, London, Jan. 23, 1886, pp. 105-106.
' Bowley, op. cit., pp. 76, 77.
'G. R. Porter, The Progress of the Nation, revised by F. W. Hirst, London, 1912, p. 701.
fF Bowley, op. cit., p. 77.
3 Porter, op. cit, pp. 701, 702.
‘Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, January, 1911, pp. 167, 168, 171, 172,
185, 186.