The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1903-08-14
FRIDAY, AUGUST IA, 1908.
NO GREAT MYSTERY.

AS confrmatory of the reason stated
recently in T he Gil o b e for the weak
ness and unsteadfness of the general
stock list: apparently without any ref
erence to the real values and certain
returns behind standard securities, we
quote from some circulars recently sent
out by firms prominent in financial
transactions and members of the New
York and Chicago exchanges. Advis-
ing their customers of the state of the
market, and speaking as optimistically
as they may, they say:
The market has been weak today
because of the seeming lack of conf
dence by the public in corporations
and firms. The first requisite of every
religion is faith, and it is the first
requisite of a stable, strong stock mar
ket. There is practically none today,
and until there is some return of it
there can be no betterment in the
prices of securities. AS to when conf
dence will return and liquidation
cease, no one can say. 1t will come
about slowly and the first step towards
it will be a period of steadiness.
And again, by way of explanation
and apology for present conditions and
encoura cement for the future:
Granting, however, that the specu-
1ative community is not invested with
much confidence on account of the con-
tinued declining tendency of our Sc
curities, and, withal, are somewhat
discouraged at the seeming disinclina-
ton of large interests to offer concert
ed support thereto, it must be recog-
nized that fundamental conditions are
not impaired and that the prices of
number of so-called high class railroad
shares are at an exceptionally attrac-
tive level and return an unusually fair
percentage to the investor
The meaning of the situation may
be read easily between these lines.
Despite the disclaimers of those who
know the truth, but do not like to ae-
knowledge it, it is exactly as T e
Clio b e has stated it. Why is there
lack of confidence by the public in
corporations and in firms?" 1t is not,
in the case of great Eastern and
Northwestern trunk lines and systems,
that anybody doubts their ability to
earn and pay dividends. Confidence in
industrials may, indeed, have been
pushed to the vanishing point; and
their. decline may be attributed to a
general belief that most of them are
destined to liquidation, and that no one
can determine the point at which it
will finally leave them. But that is
only half the story.
The general public has lost conf
dence as well in the securities of sys-
TENS whose names are as we'll known
and whose credit as good throughout
the whole world heretofore as that Of
the government itself. There is a
seeming Discrimination" on the part of
capital in general to take advantage Of
admittedly low prices and buy gener-
ously. And it is because neither the
big investor nor the little one can pos
sibly know what he is buying.
Everything must depend upon the
outcome of actions in the courts that
are the first cause of all this distress
and disturbance, as far as it affects
standard securities. The blow has
been struck, and the investor simply
waits in his cave to see where it will
fall. If it shall be held that community
of interest and of ownership in cor
porations doing interstate business is a
crime, then there must be readjust-
ment and reorganization so prodigious
that even the imagination fails to pic
ture it. And, as all the great systems
whose stocks are dealt in on the street
are in precisely this condition, nobody
knows what he would be purchasing in