the improvements we created, the value has gone up 40 or 50 times as
much in 35 or 40 years.

Others have had similar increases in the value of their properties,
but have enlarged their capitalization correspondingly. They have
escaped the criticism which has been directed against us, who with our
old-fashioned and conservative notions have continued without such
expansion of capitalization.

There is nothing strange or miraculous in all this; it was all done
through this natural law of trade development. It is what the Astors
and many other large landholders did.

If a man starts in business with $1,000 capital and gradually
increases his property and investment by retaining in his concern much
of his earnings, instead of spending them, and thus accumulates values
until his investment is, say, $10,000, it would be folly to base the
percentage of his actual profits only on the original $1,000 with
which he started. Here, again, I think the managers of the Standard
should be praised, and not blamed. They have set an example for
upbuilding on the most conservative lines, and in a business which has
always been, to say the least, hazardous, and to a large degree
unavoidably speculative. Yet no one who has relied upon the ownership
of this stock to pay a yearly income has been disappointed, and the
stock is held by an increasing number of small holders the country
over.


THE MANAGEMENT OF CAPITAL