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The reader can easily translate into figures
the price-movements depicted on the chart,
by means of the horizontal price lines. These
annual average value figures have been added
up, and their totals displayed at the foot
of the chart. By this means the chart not
only pictorially illustrates the various price-
movements, but it also gives the several total
annual values of all the stocks depicted, year
by year, at their respective average prices.
The typical British stock, of course, is
London & North Western Railway Ordinary.
This starts at the price of 164—almost in
the middle of the chart — gradually rises
to 204 in the years 1896-1897, and then
equally gradually declines, until it records
150|- as its lowest quotation in the year
1904. It will be noticed that the tendency
of nearly all the stocks included in the chart
is to slavishly follow the same direction
as that marked out by North Western Railway
Ordinary, both in their upward and their
downward movements. Here and there in the
chart an occasional short deviation occurs
in a few of the zigzag price lines. These
deviations are due to an exceptional individual
increase or decrease in capital safety or
dividend productiveness on the part of that
particular stock. But it is curious to notice