People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1896 — OWNED IN ENGLAND. [ARTICLE]

OWNED IN ENGLAND.

Alt t!u Armies of the World Could Not H-»rm Vs So Much. Sixty per cent of the stocks and bonds of the vast Pennsylvania railroad system is said to be owned in Europe. Nearly all the Illinois Central railroad, extending from Chicago to New Orleans, with great city properties and branches and laterals, is owned in Holland. Great ownership in the immense properties of the New York Central Railroad company, and all its vast railroad connections, is held in Europe. A controlling interest in the Great Northern railroad, running from Lake Superior to the Pacific ocean, Is owned in England. A controlling interest in the Northern Pacific railroad, lying south of, and as extensive as the last named railroad, is owned in Germany. Large, if not controlling, interests in every other important railroad in the United States, are owned by European investors. The immense Carnegie iron works at Homestead, Pa., are owned principally in Scotland. The controlling interest in the famous Pillsbury flouring mills at Minneapolis, the largest in the world, is owned in England. The great iron mills of the Lake Superior region, said to produce 10,000,000 tons of iron ore a year, are largely held by English investors. A controlling Interest in the Grant smelters in Denver and Omaha, the largest in the world, is owned by Englishmen. Foreigners own immense interests in the breweries of the country, largely if not The largest bankers of New York are foreigners, or representalves of foreign banking houses. These are the great gold shippers. A large percentage of our fire and marine insurance is in foreign insurance companies.

Five-sixths of all our freightage of our foreign commerce is carried in foreign vessels. Foreigners own millions of acres of our farming lands. They own many millions of dollars in value of our city properties. Their mortgage loans overspread the face of the country. Foreign capitalists own hundreds of millions of United States bonds, and state bonds; and they own untold millions of city bonds, and other municipal obligations in the United States, and vast amounts of other properties not here specially stated. So gre°t has become the aggregate of all those ownerships in United States properties, by foreigners living in foreign countries, that the aggregate cannot be less than >7,000,000,000 , with an average of earnings of not less than five per cent per annum. Besides, there are great numbers of wealthy people who are annual tourists to foreign countries; tourists who live expensively, and invest large sums of American money in European luxuries and costly productions. The sums so expended have been estimated at SIOO,000,000 yearly. This is probably excessive, but the amounts are known to be very great. The aggregate of all these European dues on investments in this country and expenditures by our tourist classes, may with fairness and moderation be placed at $400,000,000 each year. This is Europe’s annual money demand upon the United States, to be responded to, in gold, or gold values, in new railroads or other investments, or trade balances. All the nations of the earth in armed conflict against us could not financially and industriously harm us as much as, by unwise legislation, we have harmed ourselves. Let, then, Americans protect American rights, and all equitable American interests, against the world. Thus will freedom preserve her glorious inheritance and the highest results of civilization will be continued to future generations in America. —Anson Walcott in National Bimetallist.