England, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Japan and the United States, the great industrial nations, have become the great lending nations. Their search for "undeveloped territory" and "spheres of influence" is not a search for trade, but for an opportunity to invest and exploit. If these nations wished to exchange cotton for coffee, or machinery for wheat on even terms, they could exchange with one another, or with one of the undeveloped countries, but they demand an outlet for surplus wealth--an outlet that can only be utilized where the government of the developed country will guarantee the investment of its citizens in the undeveloped territory. The investing nations either want to take the raw products of the undeveloped country, manufacture them and sell them back as finished material (the British policy in India), or else they desire to secure possession of the resources, franchises and other special privileges in the undeveloped country which they can exploit for their own profit (the British policy in South America). The Indians, under the British policy, are thus in relatively the same position as the workers in one of the industrial countries. They are paid for their raw material a fraction of the value of the finished product. They are expected to buy back the finished product, which is a manifest impossibility. There is thus a drastic limitation on the exploitation of undeveloped countries, just as there is a limitation on the exploitation of domestic labor. In both cases the people as consumers can buy back less in value than the exploiters have to sell. Obviously the time must come when all the undeveloped sections of the world have been exploited to the limit. Then surplus will go a-begging. Some of the investors in the great exploiting nations have abandoned the idea of making huge returns by way of the English policy in India. Instead the investors in every nation are buying up resources, franchises and concessions and other special privileges in the undeveloped countries and treating them in exactly the same way that they would treat a domestic investment. In this case the resources and labor of the undeveloped country are exploited for the profit of the foreign investor. The Roman conquerors subjugated the people politically and then exacted an economic return in the form of tribute. The modern imperialists do not bother about the political machinery, so long as it remains in abeyance, but content themselves with securing possession of the economic resources of a region and exacting a return in interest and dividends on the investment. Political tribute is largely a thing of the past. In its place there is a new form--economic tribute--which is safer, cheaper, and on the whole far superior to the Roman method of exploiting undeveloped regions. 5. _The American Home Field_