STOCK EXCHANGE AN INTERNATIONAL MARKET 531
intellectual ability to profit by the mistakes which others have
made.3°
An even more complex problem, not without possible dan-
ger to our national interests, arises from financing foreign
industrial production which may come to compete successfully
with our own. On this score, Hobson said in respect to
British investments in the United States, “. . . it might
be urged that the export of capital to America had hastened
the day when Great Britain should become a relatively insig-
nificant power in moulding the destinies of the world.” ®* It
seems obvious that it is more to a creditor country’s advantage
to build up productive facilities in the debtor state for non-
competing products, such as railway transportation, electric
power and light, and the like. Yet even here reduced manu-
facturing or transportation charges within the debtor country
may in fact materially cheapen the price of its competing
exports in the international markets. On the other hand,
creditor communities can sometimes profit more from invest-
ments in new and distant competing industries, than from
endeavoring to protect their own industries against inevitable
shifts in production centers; it is, for example, well known
that the astonishing development of textile mills in North
Carolina has largely been accomplished with Massachusetts
capital.
Of course, all arguments regarding the benefits of foreign
investment fail if such investments are in poor securities and
result in heavy or complete losses to the lenders. In this
regard, it is better to give money away freely as a charity,
than to lose it, and also litigation expenses, grudgingly. Such
unsuccessful investments also are apt to have the same evil
effect upon the borrowers as promiscuous and unwise charity
is apt to upon habitual beggars. If we cannot invest safely
abroad, it would probably be better not to invest at all. Thus
far, however, losses to American investors on foreign securi-
"See Address of President E. H. H. Simmons, “The Myth of American Imperial.
bo, og iT Eiheunry Ah 199, D. Xviil
