200 The Stock Market Crash—And After 
matter of fact, the crucial element in all investments 
is the value of the dollar. 
Among several important books which emphasize 
the important role of changes in the value of the 
dollar, none has impressed the investing public so 
profoundly as certain events that gave rise to invest- 
ment counsel and investment trusts in America, in- 
cluding especially the publication of Edgar Lawrence 
Smith's book, Common Stocks as Long-Term Invest- 
ments (Macmillan). Another excellent book is 
Kenneth Van Strum’s Investment and Purchasing 
Power. 
Stocks vs. Bonds 
Mr. Smith made about a dozen comparisons to 
show how the stockholder and bondholder actually 
fared at different periods. In the various tests, sev- 
eral different methods of selection were used, but all 
were calculated to favor bonds rather than stocks. 
Otherwise the superiority in yield of stocks would 
have been even more pronounced. 
But even with the choice of securities favorable 
to bonds and unfavorable to stocks rather than rep- 
resentative of both, in only one case does Mr. Smith 
find an excess of advantage for bonds. This is Test 
6, where Boston investors are supposed to have in- 
vested $10,000 in bonds in 1866, and, at the same 
time, $10,000 in assorted stocks. When they com- 
pared notes twenty years later it was found that the 
total income from stocks was $13,169, and that from 
the bonds was $12,155, showing a slight excess in