STUDIES IN SECURITIES 
although by stock dividends 74 shares have been added to every 
100 held in that year. 
American Steel Foundries has shown its ability to cover dividend 
requirements in recent years of poor railroad equipment business. 
In view of rich treasury position, the realization of long promised 
railroad buying should provide earnings that could be translated 
into favorable dividend action. 
American Sugar Refining Co. 
As the sugar situation of the world gradually is subsiding from 
its cataclysmic variations of the deflation period, so is the Ameri- 
can Sugar Refining Co. (the dominating factor in the trade) 
steadily returning to its old time position of established earning 
power. 
A fluctuation of 197 cents in 1920 in the price of raw sugar 
compared with a normal year’s range of about a cent and stag- 
cering losses on customers’ contracts interrupted this company’s 
splendid record of thirty years’ dividend payments on its common 
stock, averaging 8.839% annually—never less than 79% except in 
1900 when 614% was paid. There followed a four year period 
1922-5 with no payment on the common shares, until restoration 
at the current 5% rate in January, 1926. The preferred divi- 
dend was maintained throughout, though the market price of 6714 
in 1921 evidenced the doubt of even its maintenance, and in that 
year only 2% of its 7% was earned. 
The trade condition even in more recent years has been erratic, 
though progressively improving. The range of fluctuation be- 
tween high and low price of raw sugar, refining profits and earn- 
ings per common share in the past four years appear as follows: 
Range in Raw Refining 
(Cents) Profits 
1.1875 "7.092,000 
1.125 277,000 
2.8125 “228 000 
. 3.375 993.000 
*1.088. 
In 1926 there were 85 changes in the price of raw sugar against 
115 in each of preceding three years, and accepted estimates of 
sugar production of the world for 1926-7 crop show the first 
decrease in seven years, auguring, it is hoped, an approach to 
former stabilized conditions. 
The chaotic post war period naturally was not survived without 
Some fundamental changes in American Sugar Co.’s old-time rich 
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