THE DISTRIBUTION OF SECURITIES 119
from economic collapse and in stimulating and augmenting
American prosperity, are little realized in this country.
Nor has security investment been confined to our older and
wealthier states, or to the upper strata of American society.
Practically everyone has begun to acquire and hold security
investments, irrespective of who they are or where they live.
The steady distribution of securities to employees has remark-
ably changed the relation of capital and labor in this country,
and replaced a former spirit of mutual distrust by one of
cooperating partners in business enterprise. The old demagogic
expression of “bloated bondholder” seems to have become obso-
lete and to have disappeared altogether. Even the casual
examination of the list of stockholders in an average listed
American stock issue today will reveal the surprising extent to
which shares are held in small amounts by investors all over
this country. The radio has largely revolutionized security
marketing in the United States by making daily Stock Ex-
change prices available to even the most remote localities. This
whole American movement toward thrift and security invest-
ing is revealed by the enormous number of shareholders today
in our larger American corporations.?” It has been this ever-
widening circle of American security investors which was
basically responsible for the rapid growth of security dealings
on the Stock Exchange after the war, and the consequent
expansion of Stock Exchange facilities.
The Menace of the Stock Swindler.—The New York
Stock Exchange, more than any major securities market in the
world, has always striven to throw about the processes of deal-
ing and investment in securities all the protecting safeguards
which experience could indicate or ingenuity devise.*® In recent
years, this effort has been intensified because of the realization
that so many of the new American investors were people of
small means, brief financial experience and often imperfect
52 See Appendix IVn.
8B See Appendix IVa.
