common shares when income and increase in capital value are added together. In one case only is the advantage on the side of the bonds, and that is because the rise in capital value of the bonds was great enough to offset the larger income from the shares.
The first test is made by the investment of $10,000 in the first full week of January, rgor, on the top of a quick rise in security prices during the last months of 1900. The investor is supposed to have put as nearly as he could $1,000 each into the ten industrial stocks in which there had been most transactions. These were American Sugar, American Tobacco, Continental Tobacco, People's Gas, Tennessee Coal and Iron, Western Union Telegraph, Federal Steel, Amalgamated Copper, American Smelting and American Tin Plate.
At that time fifteen high grade railroad bonds were selling at prices yielding 3.95 per cent. But in order to give the bond every chance, the investor was supposed to have made his bond investment so as to earn 4 per cent. and to have chosen his bonds so well that during the period from January, 1901, to December 31, 1922, none of them lost any value owing to poor credit or high interest rates.
The result of this test is that the holding of common stocks, which were bought for $10,002
