Evening star., 1928-12-31
BY CHARLES F. SPEARE.

Special Dispatch to The Star.
N YEW YORK, December 31-The
~ topsy-turvy year of 1928 has
NJ been distinct in that the money
i market and the market for
speculative securities have been
at discord instead of in harmony; also
in the separation of real from imaginary
stock values and in the degree to which
the future growth and earnings of
American corporations have been antici-
pated and discounted in the years price
list.
Conditions parallel to those that have
obtained in the stock market may be
found in the period of 80 years ago
when the first great movement toward
industrial consolidation in this country
occurred and again between 1905 and
1908, when similar tendencies were at
work among the railroads. They were
duplicated in 1916 and 1917 in the days
of the war brides"
In none of these times of excessive
public speculation, however was there
the fierce opposition to imitation in
stocks by the money powers that has
persisted for the past nine months and
has but recently made its impression
on Wall Street.
Represented in this conflict were two
schools of economic thought, the one
conservative and the other liberal.
Obviously the first was composed of the
men whose Judgment was largely based
on the traditions of business and who
we're inclined to follow precedents. They
were the gray-haired men. The second
school was made up Of more buoyant
and imaginative class who looked for
ward for their leads instead of back
oil frtO
tive measures and saw nothing ahead
but indefinite prosperity for the United
States, with sufficient credit to carry on
their operations a year or two longer.
Wealth Well Distributed.
The constituency of this school in
cluded many who had been made rich
by the war or whose wealth had come
from the new industrial developments
and inventions, or out Of the new meth
ods of distribution and merchandising
that are the product of the past decade.
One significant contrast in this picture
is that between the EaSterner and the
WeSterner.
In all other periods of great specu-
lative or investment markets the liquid
capital of the industrial East-NeW
England, New York and Pennsylvania
has been the supporting and stimulating
factor. In this instance 1t has been
fully as much supplied by the West
Michigan, Illinois. Minnesota, Wiscon-
sin, Colorado, California, oregon, Wash
ington-and by some of the Southern
and Southwestern States, as Kentucky,
Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas, and by
Virginia and Georgia in the Southeast.
This is one of the strongest evidences
. I~Io - tol cfah
of the country and of the distribution
of wealth. It may be that just as
the West has been more liberal politi-
cally and socially than the East and
has fashioned many Of the policies
that are part of our Government to-
day, so may 1t have a clearer con-
ception than the East Of the meaning
of twentieth century science in business
mass production, installment buying,
chain stores, aerial communications,
motor transportation, transportation by
air, group banking. investment trusts,
superpower systems, low cost produc-
tion, high average wages and a nation
al credit position that is the envy Of
the world and promises to increase
rather than to diminish.
With the East and the West, the
North and the South, concentrating
their attention and their capital on
the stock market, there has developed
the largest volume of transactions and
the highest average Of industrial prices
ever recorded, and, with this, the en-
ployment of the greatest ratio Of
American bank funds In speculation
ever before known. Wall Street" is
now familiar to every center Of popula-
ton in the country. Its operations
have been, and still are, a problem Of
the banks, a threat to business and
a subject for legislative inquiry.
1t must frankly be admitted that
those who were "bearish" on stocks
before the break of March, 1926, and
the beginning of the Federal Reserve
policy of disciplining the speculative
market late last Winter, were wrong
in their judgment They had not
recognized the changes that had taken
place in the industrial life of the coun-
try, in its new methods Of business,
or given sufficient credit to the effect