ck at the interim dividend, a rapid contraction.
Consider such a case as that of the great British Electric Traction
Company which began with ordinary shares at ten, which clambered above
twenty-one (21-7/8), which is now (October 1907) fluctuating about two.
Its six per cent, preference shares have moved between fourteen and five
and a half. Its ordinary shares represent a total capital of
L1,333,010, and its preference L1,614,370; so that here in this one
concern we have a phantom appearance and disappearance of over two
million pounds' worth of value and a real disappearance of perhaps half
that amount. It requires only a very slight knowledge of the world to
convince one that the bulk of that sum was contributed by the modest
investments of mediocre and small people out of touch with the real
conditions of the world of finance.

These little investors, it is said, are the bitter champions of
private finance against the municipalities and Socialists. One wonders
why.

One could find a score of parallels and worse instances representing
in the end many scores of millions of pounds taken from the investing
public in the last few years. I will, however, content myself with one
sober quotation from the New York _Journal of Commerce_, which the
reader will admit is not likely to be a willing witness for Socialism.
Commenting on the testimony of the principal witness, Mr. Harriman, of
the Illinois Central Railroad, before the Inter-State Commerce
Commission (March 1907), it says:--

"On his own admission he was one of a 'combine' of four who
got possession of the Chicago and Alton Railroad, and
immediately issued bonds for $40,000,000, out of the proceeds
of which they paid themselves a dividend of 30 per cent, on
the stock they held, besides taking the bonds at 65 and
subsequently selling them at 90 or more, some of them to life
insurance companies with which Mr. Harriman had some kind of
relation. There were no earnings or surplus out of which the
dividend could be paid, but the books of the company were
juggled by transferring some $12,000,000 expended for
betterments to capital account as a sort of bookkeeping basis
for the performance.

"Besides this, the Chicago and Alton Railroad was transformed
into a 'railway,' and a capitalization of a little under
$40,000,000 was swollen to nearly $123,000,000 to cover an
actual expenditure in improvements o