ABSTRACT
AS the area of investment, widens for any class or nation of investors, their interests and sympathies expand, and the influence they exert through public opinion or politics upon the conduct of affairs in the places where they have invested capital becomes a factor of growing importance. Regarded merely as an educational influence, this expansion of the area of investment is of considerable efficacy. A man whose business interests arc confined within his parish is parochial in his sympathies and outlook. If, on the other hand, his trade brings him into touch with business men in many other towns in his native country, his country means more to bim bo, is a better citizen. Still more is this the case where trading interest is supplemented by investment and a business man has a”stake” in a number of industries in various places. Though his patriotism may be too much a matter of pocket and his politics too exclusively capitalistic, it remains true that they will be broader, and more, intelligent., and on the whole more conform-ahle to public welfare than the feelings and the policy of the mere parochialist. When trade and investments carry men still further afield, inducing a knowledge and an interest in the affairs of foreign countries, the widening of outlook and of sympathy involved lays the basis of the cosmopolitan, the true “man of the world.” This expansion of interest and policy is essential to the success of the modern art of investment, and its political and social implications are of the first imporiance in the history of modern civilisation.
Local influence exerted by Investors of Capital.
