imply fearful losses for unfortunate buyers during the boom. It may be said that sellers on the boom gained what the buyers have lost, and that in the end the country has suffered little. But this does not apply in the many cases where bad investments have sent a large amount of money out of the country to enrich the too 'cute American or the not over-scrupulous Canadian. Moreover, the ruin of individuals must always involve loss to the State, even when other individuals benefit by it. Society is not compensated for a dead man by two or three other persons being a little fuller-blooded in consequence. Violent fluctuations in securities are disastrous from a national point of view, even when the losses and gains both fall within the community. They are doubly disastrous when we have to bear all the loss ourselves, and clever foreigners get all the profit. To apply these principles to the present case, we have first to note a ruinous reduction of income from speculative investments, which may be estimated at 50 millions sterling per annum for the past three or four years, or 200 millions in all. Secondly, there is the consequent shrinkage in capital value of the securities affected by bad trade and reacting on it. This, at only 25 per cent of the market values of four years ago – say 1500 millions – would be 375 millions sterling. On principal and income together, there would be a loss in the four years of 575 millions sterling. The harvest from our investments is as fickle as our grain crops, and beyond comparison more important in its influence on trade. The latter in an average year are valued at above 70 millions sterling, while the national investments, if they yielded only 3 per cent all round, would represent an income of 130 millions. The losses of investors during the past four years exceed what the country would suffer if it did not grow an ear of wheat or any other grain for the next ten years.
This investing industry, which is carried on in the most haphazard way, which is not even a recognised profession, and which no House of Commons ever thinks of protecting by suitable legislation, is, next to our foreign trade, the keystone of national progress. While our investments were profitable we grew rapidly rich. Since they have become unprofitable we are growing rapidly poor, or, at least, our investing classes are. The causes of this disagreeable change are worthy surely of some study. Several of them lie on the surface, as, for instance, the credulity of investors, the absolute incompetence of many directors of joint-stock companies, the tendency of competent men to undertake too much, the merely nominal interest that many directors have in the companies they control, the dearth of reliable specialists in departments, such as mining and ranching, where they are indispensable; finally, the absence of legal safeguards against sharp practices of all kinds behind the backs of shareholders. A new Joint-Stock Company Act is badly wanted. The one we now work under is nearly twenty years old, and in various respects it is out of date. When joint-stock companies were mere experiments, the Legislature could not be too strict with them lest they should be discouraged; but now that they have spread their hands over fully one-half of the realised wealth and more than half the trade of the country, they require to be dealt with in a different spirit. It is high time to revert to the good old principle of
