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the  business  of  a  local  hotel,  you  will  find  the
grocer  who  supplies  the  bacon,  the  butcher
who  supplies  the  meat,  the  wine  merchant  who
supplies  the  wine,  and  so  on,  are  shareholders
in  the  company.  Owing  to  lack  of  competition
for  the  contracts,  the  result  naturally  is  that
the  hotel  is  carried  on  at  great  expense,  and  the
shareholders  suffer  in  consequence.  This
matters  little  or  nothing  to  the  interested
shareholders  who  continue  to  make  large
profits  by  their  contracts  ;  but  it  hardly  conduces ­
  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  disinterested
investor.  Indeed,  such  a  form  of  investment
is  scarcely  less  dangerous  than  confining  the
capital  to  be  invested  to  one  country,  and
so  speculating  on  that  country’s  future  trading
prosperity.
In  the  next  chapter  we  shall  discuss  a
practical  scheme  whereby  an  investor  may  so
widely  distribute  his  investments  over  the
world’s  area  as  to  endow  his  capital  with
the  maximum  stability  of  value.