92 The Stock Market Crash—dAnd After
during 1929, the rate of plowing-back of earnings
increased faster. The proportion of cash dividends
to all earnings was $71 for every $100 in August,
1927, while the market was rising to its record high;
it was $75 in August, 1928; but in August, 1929, this
proportion had fallen to $64 for cash dividends—
although, in that ratio, they exceeded the total of
1928—that is, $64 for every $100 of the expanded
total of earnings, the rate of which rose from 7 per
cent during August, 1928, to 714 per cent during
August, 1929.
It hardly needs emphasizing that enhanced capital
values, reflected by such figures of increased earnings,
 justified in large part the increase of the general
 level of stock prices during 1929. The high
point for the week ended September 6, 1929, on my
index of stock prices was 117 points above its lowest
level after the beginning of 1926, which was the base
year of the index. Rails were 69 points higher.
Utilities rose by 167 points. The agricultural equipment
 groups rose by 427 per cent; the office equipment
 group rose by 407 per cent; electrical equipment
 increased by 357 per cent; motors by 269 per
cent; chemicals by 251 per cent; coppers by 249 per
cent, while various other groups increased by about
100 per cent in price for that week. So the general
decline of 38 per cent in the price level from the
highest week in September to the lowest week in
November is a small fall compared with the rise of
this prosperity plateau subsequent to 1926, a plateau
of which the foundations stretch down to the recovery
from the deflation of 1920-1921.