Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/285

1885.] sale dealer and the manufacturer are joint-stock companies. Their shares may be held by hundreds of persons who know nothing about the business they carry on, and have no interest in it beyond the dividends they expect to draw from it. To them depression of trade takes the very tangible form of reduced dividends, and the process of retrenchment already described begins all over again. The investor spends less with the tradesman, the tradesman less with the wholesale dealer, and the wholesale dealer less with the manufacturer, ending, perhaps, in a further reduction of dividends, and further contraction of income among investors. If the full significance of this circle of self-multiplying losses could be expressed in figures, it might reach a startling magnitude. Of the 4100 millions sterling of securities above enumerated, not one-half can be considered beyond the range of speculative fluctuation. If we reckon as absolutely safe, both in respect of capital and interest, such items as the British Funds, 811 millions; Corporation Stocks, 43 millions; Colonial and Provincial Government Bonds, 130 millions; first-class Foreign Government Stocks, say 400 millions; Railway Debenture and Preference Stocks, about 420 millions; first-class American and Foreign Railway Bonds, say 50 millions; and commercial securities of the gilt-edged sort, say 100 millions, – we shall have a total of little more than 2000 millions sterling of investments free from risk. Among the 2100 millions of stocks and shares lying outside this select circle speculation reigns. It may vary in degree from the smallest minimum of risk to the wildest gamble, but one character pervades the whole. The investor who ventures into it embarks on a sea of hazards which is swept by storms from all quarters of the globe. For a month or two, or even for a short year, he may bask in the sunshine of a rising market, but his normal condition is to find the waves dashing over him, or, what is worse, to feel the water ebbing away from under him as his frail bark runs aground. Short and fitful "booms," followed by prolonged agonies of shrinkage, is the natural course of events he must get accustomed to.

There are practised gamblers in stocks who enjoy the excitement of quickly changing values. They have schooled themselves to win without being elated, and to lose without being depressed. They claim no sympathy when the market goes against them, for they are supple, and can follow it either up or down as the temper of the times may dictate. They are not investors, and, as a rule, expect no income from the stuff they gamble in. It suits their purpose better, in fact, if it has dropped altogether out of the ranks of interest-bearing securities, as the less intrinsic value it has of its own, the better suited it is for a gambling counter. Of the 2100 millions of speculative securities held in this country, perhaps 500 millions are of the gambling sort, such as Erie shares, Grand Trunks, Indian Gold Mines, and Electric Lighting shares. It is only in a figurative sense that these can be reckoned as wealth at all. They are rather the spectres of wealth that has been squandered. Dividends are unknown in their history, and are not expected from them in the most distant future ; but Capel Court is always loth to part with a "nimble nine-pence," however seedy. The rubbish goes up and it goes down;