REPRODUCED AT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES. DECLASSIFIED Athority Stateletter Whe ay me, NARA Da. 2498 company was interested in building up rubber plantations along the line of Fordlandia, Brazil. It was reported that the company was prepared to spend at least a million dollars. Later, a British mining promoter, Calderwood, was denied the concession he sought for developing certain mineral deposits, with capital ready and available. The laterMinor Keith at one time contemplatea erecting a meat packing plant such as was later built in Colombia. He was prepared to invest a quarter of a million dollars or more in this enterprise, providing that he could have cattle brought in free of duty from Nicaragua.
without digressing to examine each of the foregoing propositions in greater detail, it is enough to point out that not one of them has ever materialized.
The result, provided, as may be assumed, that the country would have been protected by equitable concessions and arrangements in each instance, is a large net loss to the economic life of the nation and to the rational dévelopment of its resources. The fear of being exploited and the activities of short sighted and perhaps mercenary legislators, were largely responsible for Costa Rica doing what no country in similar circumstances has ever done and been able to get away with: it shut the door to foreign capital and technological knowledge at a period when its internal resources were insufficient to develop the nation to the fullest without such aid from abroad.
The statement made above that the door was shut to foreign capital must be largely qualified, naturally; at