to £2 for the same quantity. But stocks of 
both types are subject to market fluctuations, 
and an increasing or decreasing demand for a 
particular stock will rapidly alter the facility 
with which it can be dealt in ; so that the 
free market of to-day becomes the laborious 
negotiation of to-morrow. 
Investors do not buy with the intention 
to sell again soon after ; they buy to hold 
for years. Suppose an investor, intending 
in 1905 to invest in a speculative South 
American Railway stock which paid a high 
rate of interest, had selected the then so- 
very-mucli-talked-about Buenos Ayres & Pacific 
Railway Common Stock rather than the 
very little known 5 per Cent. Second 
Preference Stock of the Cordoba Central 
Railway, and that he had made this choice 
because the former stock had a very free 
market, whilst in Cordoba Second Preference 
there was very little dealing and a difference 
of £2 per £100 between the quoted buying 
and selling prices. The income yields from 
both transactions in 1905 were about the same, 
while the dividends paid in the meantime on 
both stocks remained unchanged ; but if he 
had allowed himself to fall a victim to the 
free-market delusion and had bought Buenos 
Ayres Pacific Common at 143 (quoted then at