We have seen that the margin in favour of ordinary shares and stocks which seems to have been established by Mr. Smith's extremely interesting tests was based on earnings made under conditions so exceptional that it can hardly be taken as proved in the case of the industries of any other country. Even in America one does not feel quite certain that industrial profits are going to be so fat in the future, when once the exceptional circumstances now in favour of the United States have given way to more normal conditions. We have yet to see the effect of the restrictions on immigration by which one of the causes of amazing economic expansion has been seriously weakened.
All that, for the purposes of really fastidious investors, has been proved by these investigations is that ordinary shares have advantages which make it impossible to regard them as necessarily so speculative that we ought to feel rather ashamed of possessing them.
At the same time, the preceding pages have
