have also in some cases been granted artificial advantages, at the expense of the consuming public, by the high tariff policy of the United States.
Third—and perhaps most important—eight out of the twelve test periods chosen ended in 1922, and so covered a time in which American industry was making extra-special and abnormal profits out of the European belligerents during the war and then during the after-war boom. It was not only the directly war industries—the growers of food and materials and the makers of munitions—that reaped these profits, but all the industries of the country benefited by the stream of wealth which the war poured into America, converting her from a debtor country into one which holds all the world in fee.
For these reasons I venture to think that we should add a few words to the conclusion quoted on p. 182 and say that diversified lists of common shares in the industries of a country that is enjoying exceptional growth and prosperity give them a margin of advantage over high grade bonds.
With this modification the conclusion represents much more exactly what Mr. Smith has really proved. How far does it help us in trying to secure the ideal which we have
