The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-12-19


 was so in this instance.
 Corporations which used to rely upon a relatively small number of important investors found it necessary to go out and educate others to become invest ors. Result:
 America has more "customer owners" cf securities today than the total num- Der of security owners in the whole country ten years ago.
 Also, there are more employee-sub- scribers for stocks today than the total number of stockholders in America be- fore the war.
 During 1924, electric light and power companies alone have sold nearly S2oo.- 100000 worth of their securities through "custom- ownership" campaigns to ap- proximately 225,oo0 individuals.
 How important the cultivation of this new crop of investors is becomes evil dent whan it is known that within the next ten years or less, this industry must find more capital for development than has been raised during the whole forty-odd years of its existence. The industry is confronted with the ra1s. ing in a comparatively few years, or $6,00O, ,0O0, ,O0O for plants, transmission lines and distribution systems to keep pace with the increase of 15 or 5O per cent in each year in demand for service
 Should the industry's aspiration in the realm of agriculture De reailzed, then the demand for capital will null tiply incidentally. The National Elec- tric Light association, cooperating with government agencies, agricultural asso- citations and manufacturers of electrical farm machinery is today at work in thirteen states with experimental lines reaching farms heretofore unconnected with "juice" Dirt farmers are co-ope- rating enthusiastically and alerady farm machinery in many sections IS pelhs adapted to electric drive.
 The Electric Light and Power asso, ciation's N. E. L. A. is to my nina tbe most imposing progressive, con- structive organizations in America. It's leaders. committees, officers and mem bers, take their associations duties se- riously For example, series or com mtttee meetings has just been heid Tn New York and instead of few local men attending. the deliberations were taken part in by such men as Samuel Insult, Martin K. Insull, J. J. OBrian, John F. Gilchrist, Chicago; Franklin T. Griffiths, Portland, oregon; John b.. Miller, R. H. Ballard, Los Angeies' Henry G. Bradley, R. T: Hans s Bos- K,
 man. Cincinnati; Thomas w. Martin, Birmingham; Joseph B. BcCalla, Ran dall Morgan, Herbert A. Wagner, Bos- ton: w. A. Thompson, Pittsburg Edwin c. Barrows, Providence; F: 5. ArK- wright, Atlanta, R. F. Pack, Minneap- oils; J. E. Davidson, Omaha, and such New York leaders as Owen D. Young, Guy p, Tripp, Henry L. Dougherty, Sid ney 2. Mitchell, N. E. Brady, John w Iieb. Thomas E. Murray, and M. S. Sloan, Brooklyn.
 These men assembled without any beating of drums and spent several arduous days wrestling with complicat- ed problems.
 During the first 35 years or more of it's existence, N. E. L. A. concerned it. self almost entirely with the engineer ing. the mechanical, the physical prob lems of the industry. But when k. H. Ballard. of the Southern California Edison company, became president in 1919, he, having had contact With the newspaper business when youth real ized that the time had come to tackle the still more complicated and import ant problem of winning the confidence of the public, the confidence Of custo- mers, the confidence of employees and inducing them to supply substantial part of the new capital which formerly came from large investors before the days of excess income surtaxes. At the same time, machinery was set in motion to democratize the association with the result that today the smallest company has the same voting power as the largest and all the improvements in processes evolved by the big corpora tions are promptly communicated to all the smaller companies. Ballard human ized the industry's activities, so to speak. In my humble opinion no industry in this country is destined to expand and progress more than the electrical in dustry. The age of industry is upon us.