value of their holding, though the risk falls first on the proprietor and wipes him out before the creditor is touched. But the compensating chance of increase which comforts the proprietor never cheers the heart of the creditor. He ranks before the proprietor, though after the wage-earner, the tax-gatherer, the office boy and other expenses essential to the maintenance of the business, but he only ranks before the proprietor for a fixed amount, and if the net income of the enterprise is multiplied by ten, he gets no more interest, though he may see an increase in the selling price of his security.
It thus begins to look as if the prudence of those who will on no account be deluded into the purchase of anything so speculative as an ordinary stock or share may sometimes mislead them. They minimize their risk, but they do not, as the Prussian-Hamburg example shows, eliminate it altogether, and they eliminate altogether all chance of expansion in income.
And this chance of expansion in income from ordinary shares in concerns that are well established, well financed and well and successfully conducted on the business side, is not only a chance but a probability. An American writer, whose work[1] and investigations will be more closely examined in a later chapter, made
- ↑ Common Stocks as Long Term Investments. By Edgar Lawrence Smith. Macmillan, New York.
