Evening star., 1949-01-19

each. Togo had the three Mikigas and tn
Genoese and six other European armoret
cruisers. Against this dozen the RUSSIAN
Baltic fleet had five good ships and sever
inferior ones . Summing up the specifica
tions, 1t appears that Russia had more biz
and fewer small guns and much less speed.
Comdr Frost in his book, Some Famous
Sea Fights" says that the japanese superior.
ity at Tsushima had been two to one In mate
nal and ut least the same m efficiency Of per-
sonnel'
Naturally, one cannot dispute the fact OF
the Russian defeat at Tsushima nevertheless
one must concede that for an armada which
sailed almost 10000 miles from its home port
the result Of this famous battle was not
surprising One wonders If . feet Of any
other country could have done better under
the same circumstances and handicaps.
ALEXANDER TARsA1DZE,
Association of Former Russian Naval Ofncers
in America.
No Financial Matriarchy In Sight
To the EDITOR OF The star:
While the general purport. in not too serious
a vein, Of your recent editorial, "A Word to
the Stronger Sex" invites only pleasant agree
ment, some of the implications OF figures cited
to show the concentration of wealth in the
hands of women might be questioned. The
statement that some 10 per cent of the coun-
trys private wealth" is in the hands Of women
is an example II by private wealth Is
meant corporate securities and businesses in
general, the statement surely is questionable
for these, among other reasons:
l. Statistical or authoritative backing for the
statement is curiously elusive. Probably the
statement is q confusion from another one,
and remains in currency only because one
newspaper and magazine writer after another
repeats 1T from other similar writer's without
checking upon it. Numerous large corpora
tions report that 40 per cent, so per cent or
even 80 per cent OF the total number Of stock
holders are women, not that 40 per cent, so
per cent or so per cent of the total amount
Of stock is owned by women, a very different
thing.
T. Much Of the country's wealth is owned
not by men or women but by large institn-
tions, such as fre and life insurance COM
panies, banks, foundations and charitable
trusts, hospitals and schools. One of the local
utility companies in Washington has as its
largest stockholder Harvard University, which
is certainly not feminine.
;. In financial, business and industrial cities
such rs Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pitts
burgh, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago, as well
as hundreds Of similar towns. there are thou
sands Of men who hold highly paid executive
positions Corresponding women are very few.
4. While there are few hundred very large
corporations with tens OF thousands of stock
holders, both men and women, there are
several million business concerns, small, me-
dium sized and large, founded by men, oper-
ated by men and mostly owned either by one
man or q few men A few women, but only
relatively few, own such business concerns.
True, there are some women with very large
incomes from inherited wealth, but as COM
pared with the number of men with very
large incomes, either as salaries or dividends
from more or less privately owned business
concerns, they are few. =
S. Much is made of the fact that most OF /.
the proceeds Of life insurance go to women
Life insurance is huge in the aggregate and
many millions own it. But the average policy
Is small. and 80 is the total amount OF An
surance held by the average man. Thus the
average widow only gets few thousand dol
lars, only enough. as rule, to tide her over
from wifehood to widowhood Even If the
husband leaves enough to provide living
income for his widow, that only maintains
her, it does not make her financial matriarch
, The moral Of all this is simply that while
the tendency of wealth to flow into the hands
of women Is interesting, 1t need cause no par
ticular excitement. A "tyrannical matriarchy'
or female putocracy is 4 long way of.
ALBERT w. ATWOOD.