The direction of the development of transportation and the exploitation of natural resources, therefore, was, for the most part, in the hands of individuals, and, in the case of large projects, of individuals organized as corporations, and, with the exception of farm land, of individuals and corporations representing nonresident capital. Many influences, of course, modified their activities, but these affected rather the security of their capital than the initiative of their plans. Many lost the capital which they poured into the new region, and the result was that the prospect of large returns was demanded by others before venturing; speculation, lost investments, and abnormally productive investments characterized the process as a whole. Politicians concerned themselves rather with the means, the questions of banking and currency, than with the end, the character of the development which should take place. The other independent portions of the American continents, for the most part, resembled the United States in organization, but the distribution of the economic factors differed and produced different results. Except in the United States, the capital which has been necessary for the occupation of the wilderness has come, for the most part, not from other portions of the same country, but from foreign countries. The most important of these frontiers during the nineteenth century has been that of Argentina. Here the established section was until recently comparatively unimportant, both labor and capital came in large measure from abroad; the greater portion of the labor from Italy, of the capital from Great Britain. The conflict between the debtor and creditor sections, therefore, was not one of politics, but of diplomacy. Argentina might have what system of banking and currency it wished, but most creditors had to be paid in an international standard of value. In a world state, doubtless, all the frontiers would unite to further their interests, as the frontier states have in the United States; in the world as at present unorganized the ultimate appeal is to force. A debtor country, and one relatively weak as compared with its creditor, Argentina has not been without its plans, conceived like those of the American frontiersman without moral dishonesty but with incapacity or unwillingness to think the thing through, for easing its burden. In the efforts of Calvo and Drago to incorporate into international law the principle that debts between nations and their citizens may not be collected by force, we see as surely the reflection of frontier views, as in the programs of Greenbacker and of Populist. In the greater interest in international affairs in Argentina than in the United States, we see a new illustration of the aphorism “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”