II. THE RATIO OF CURRENT LIABILITIES TO 
TOTAL EQUITIES 
The Current Liabilities of a utility company constitute only a small 
fraction of its Total Equities. Unlike most industries, the utility com- 
panies sell a service furnished through their vast fixed plants, and do 
not trade in a merchandise to be resold. This condition is reflected in 
the Current Liabilities. 
A survey of the ratio of Current Liabilities to Total Equities of 
companies over the entire United States gave the following: 
Total cases analyzed........... 
Cases with no Current Liabilities. . .. 
Cases with very highratio............. 
Cases incorporated in Chart 2a. . . 
3 
26 
t,581 
29 
1.552 
The 26 high ratios ranged from .36 to .94, of which 9 belonged to one 
company. 
The concentration of these ratios about a central figure (average) 
is shown as follows. The 1,552 ratios were divided into 18 uniform 
groups of 2 per cent each from 0-.019, .02-.039, etc. Slightly over 25 
per cent of these cases fell in one group—that from .02-.039—while 61 
per cent of all these cases fell in the three groups included from 
.00-.059. Looking at this from another view, the Current Liabilities 
of 61 per cent of the cases constituted less than 6 per cent of the Total 
Equities. The typical ratio for this distribution is .031; i.e., 3.1 per 
cent of the total equities consist of current liabilities in the typical 
company. 
THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTIONS 
Table IIb gives the frequency distributions for the ratio of Cur- 
rent Liabilities to Total Equities when the cases are divided according 
to their territorial locations of East, Middle West, West, and South. 
The approximated mode for each section, and the respective de- 
orees of concentration are as follows: 
Modal ratio. ......... ee 
Concentration about the mode. .. 
Middle 
East West West South 
033 .033 .028 .034 
529 70%, 679%, 629, 
The modes (averages) do not vary much, the West with its aver- 
age of .028 differing from the other three sections. In each group the 
concentration is high, especially in the Middle West where 70 per cent 
of all the cases are located in the highest bar and the bar on each side.