522 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE
lators and investors, to pay for the foodstuffs and munitions
which we were steadily furnishing to France and England.
Thus it was through the ready market provided by the
Stock Exchange that Europe's former mortgage upon our
leading railroad and industrial corporations amounting to bil-
lions of dollars was gradually liquidated and paid off, and the
large sums which it had previously been necessary for us to
send abroad to cover dividends and interest coupons due on
Europe’s pre-war investment in our corporate shares and obli-
gations, dwindled in proportion. The United States in the
next few years not only ceased to be a debtor but became a
creditor nation, although these huge amounts of securities were
so smoothly and efficiently handled on the great organized
securities exchange in New York that this profoundly signifi-
cant fact attracted little attention at the time except in the
technical financial press. The decrease in the foreign holdings
of U. S. Steel preferred and common stock during this period
will be noted in the accompanying chart (Figure 60).
But the Stock Exchange did not simply make possible the
transfer of our long lost stocks and bonds from Europe to our
shores. With its aid, the Allies also distributed large external
loans to American investors, the colossal Anglo-French 5%
loan of $500,000,000 being the most notable example. It
was largely through the instrumentality and the efficient opera-
tion of the Stock Exchange, therefore, that after over a century
of international indebtedness America became a creditor nation,
and that we were enabled to sell and Europe to purchase our
huge foreign exports of goods and foodstuffs in 1915 and
1916. This "extraordinary trade, so beneficial to us and so
vital to the success of the Allied arms, could not have been
maintained without the steady and smooth operation of the
Stock Exchange.?°
The Stock Exchange During the War.—Equally impor-
tant from the national standpoint were the services of the
20 See Appendix XVIIIf.
