CHAPTER XI
WHY THE PAN-AMERICAN COMPANY CONTROLS MEXICAN PETROLEUM
American financial interests are now more keenly alive than ever before as respects their responsibilities toward investors. The opening up in Alaska of the greatest copper bonanza the world has ever seen sent Kennecott Copper mining shares into the fifties and made a wide distribution. J. P. Morgan & Company and their associates might have been tempted to dispose of all their shares to the public and let the public take the risk of a continuation of the bonanza ore, which could be mined and marketed at less than five cents per pound when it was being sold at above twenty-five cents a pound.
Morgan & Company, however, realized their responsibilities and sought insurance for Kennecott's future by acquisition of the Braden Copper mines of South America, which, when developed, will insure a large copper output at low cost, and also by acquisition of more than one-third of the shares of the Utah Copper Company, the world's
