Page:(Commercial character) The Joseph Fisher lecture in commerce, delivered at the University of Adelaide (IA commercialcharac00jessrich).pdf/18

14 able comment, for in the days of unlimited liability, when the possession of one share in say the City of Glasgow Bank meant ruin, and when in the language of flunkeydom, noblemen were noblemen, prospectuses, especially with titled names, were comparatively rare documents. What is the position to-day? There are over fifty thousand companies in the United Kingdom, with a paid-up capital of nearly two thousand millions and a borrowed capital of four hundred millions. It was a saying of one of the older Rothschilds that a fool may make money, but that it takes a wise man to keep it, and in this fact may be found some reason for the popularity enjoyed by joint stock companies. The raison d'être of a large proportion of these concerns is to be found, too, in the low rate of interest yielded by what are known as gilt-edged securities. Forty or fifty years ago the most unexceptionable investments in England returned about six per cent.; to-day they pay about half that rate. The small capitalist is therefore in a measure forced to take the risk incidental to trading enterprise, and so as a shareholder become a factor in commercial life, or he gambles. To the ordinary shareholder a balance-sheet is about as comprehensible as a cuneiform inscription, and everything goes as smoothly as possible so long as the management can so finance that the periodical dividend is forthcoming. Seldom is enquiry made if it has been earned, and never how, whether legitimately and fairly, whether by excessive charges or inconsiderate or unfair treatment of others, or produced by that faking process which goes to prove the truth of the aphorism that there's nothing so fallacious as facts except figures. The duties of directors and auditors, the controlling influence, are by no means well