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THE NEW PROTECTIONISM

Mining financiers moulded the policy of South Africa towards annexation of the gold reef. Tripoli was in essence a gigantic business coup of the Banco di Roma. In Mexico history will find a leading clue to recent disturbances in the contest of two commercial potentates for the control of oilfields. Persia came into modern politics as an arena of struggle between Russian and British bankers, seeking areas of profitable concessions and spheres of financial influence. In China it was the competition for railroads and for leases and concessions, followed by forced pressures, now competing, now combining to plant profitable loans. Turkey and the Balkans became an incendiary issue to Western Europe because they lay along the route of German economic penetration in Asia, a project fatally antagonized by Russian needs for "free" Southern waters.

The pressure of demand from organized business interests for preferential economic opportunities in backward countries is the

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