swelling dividends of the ordinary holders who come after them. But the fact of increased dividends for ordinary shareholders makes the preference holders' dividend more certain, gives them sounder sleep on their security and enables them to sell it better if they want to turn it into cash. Preference shares in a good and successful industrial concern are, as long as it is successful, as comfortable an investment as anyone can desire, especially when there is no debenture debt ahead of them.
Moreover financial ingenuity has devised a kind of preference share which combines all the advantages of a fixed preferential and sometimes cumulative rate with a share in profits after a certain rate has been paid on the ordinary. This is the "participating" preference share. Its holder gets all the security that his position can provide and at the same time has some share in prosperity if prosperity is abundant enough to give the ordinary shareholder an adequate return for his greater risk, and leave a divisible balance over. There is a good deal of equity in this principle, and it frees the preference holder's position from the objection that is often raised against it, namely that when things go wrong his rights are invaded and
