- age have been stockholders for more than two or three years. Because
they have not been stockholders for any length of time, they cannot have available the annual reports of earlier years to compare with any annual report just received. The only way a new stockholder can possibly determine whether he wishes to buy some more stock or sell what stock he already has, is to hunt up some other stockholder or some banker who may happen to have a file of the annual reports over a period of years. Assuming that a complete file of annual reports can be found, most stockholders, if left to their own resources, would be hopelessly confused in trying to reach any correct basis for analyzing the figures. Each stockholder would have to take a sheet of paper and copy off, into different columns for various important items of the operating statement and balance sheet, figures for a number of years so that the figures for different years could all be seen at one time and compared. This means that each stockholder would have to make practically a cross-index of the most important data contained in a series of annual reports in order to study the different phases of operation independently. Even if the stockholder should know how to make such a cross-index properly, there are very few stockholders who would be willing to give the time and the mental effort requisite to make a tabulated comparison of the kind necessary.
The absorption of good securities by the public has increased in the last ten years at a tremendous rate. The Wall Street Journal has compiled statistics of the stockholders of the larger railway and industrial corporations showing that the numbers have grown as follows:
1901 227,000
1906 431,000
1911 865,000
1913 1,250,000
Mr. Samuel Rea, the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, recently stated that there are nearly 100,000 stockholders in the Pennsylvania Railroad and its affiliated companies, and that the number of its bondholders probably exceeded 200,000. Therefore, if there are 1,250,000 stockholders of the railways and industrial corporations, there are doubtless considerably more than 2,000,000 bondholders. Though there are many duplications in these figures, the fact remains that the prosperity of probably 3,000,000 investors is largely dependent upon the success of these corporations.
