Page:Hints About Investments (1926).pdf/132

 wagon. In that day Messrs. Bass, if still existing, will be brewing ginger beer.

In the meantime there would be a bad time of dwindling demand to go through, and on the assumption of this bad time the critic will proceed. Cash, he will say, looks very nice at half a million and more, but if bad times came and it were necessary for the brewers to fight for the diminishing thirst of the public there would not be nearly so much of that cash before the fight had gone far. The same thing can be said of investments. It is an imposing total, but even supposing that they can be sold to realize the price—and we all remember days in 1914 when very few securities could be sold at all—would the total still be as imposing after a few years of depression in the drink trade?

And these are the plums in the assets pudding, because their value does not depend on that of beer; the jaundiced critic would only begin to enjoy himself when he proceeded to deal with the others. Debtors and bills receivable, he would say, are, or may be, very good assets as long as brewing and selling beer is a prosperous business, but if it were afflicted by misfortunes that affected Messrs. Bass, their debtors—the trade connections who have been supplied on credit—would almost certainly be affected even more severely, and who knows