80 The Stock Market Crash—dAnd After 
banks and with insurance companies, indicated that 
the harvest of dividends was not being spent too fast 
in individual consumption. Indeed, there were 
plausible arguments during recent years that the 
time had come to spend more in order to utilize the 
augmented flow of a higher powered industry, since 
an increased standard of living was what had been 
sought by all this saving and reinvestment. 
As wages increased with growing unit production 
of workers, the wage earners of many corporations 
shared as investors in their securities, and the aug- 
mented investor class received an augmented income 
from its holdings. All this told in favor of increased 
demand from the mass of consumers, better propor- 
tioned to the increase of the well-directed productive 
energies of the nation. From this added demand 
further profits were reaped. During the long bull 
market there was the record of increased real in- 
come, while plowed-back earnings gave promise of 
future values resident in the productive and consum- 
ing plant of the nation that were properly reflected 
in a heightened level of stock prices.