THE THEORY OF INTEREST

unions. It was found that eighteen hundred million dol-lars a year might be saved in preventing illness anddeaths among American workers, and eight hundred andfifty million dollars more in preventing industrial acci-dents.

With the publication of this report, and of the suc-ceeding Hoover report on unemployment and businesscycles, American industrial management awoke to thepossibilities of economic savings and higher organization,and American investment management found its oppor-tunities correspondingly enhanced. Loans were suppliedby the banks in measured volume, according to the needsof industry. The vast American market, blessed withfree trade between forty-eight state jurisdictions, wasthoroughly surveyed, and the wonders of technique andresearch were systematically evoked in the large scaleas well as in the smaller but rapidly merging industries.

§7. Effects on- Investment

Because of these inventions, introducing economieswhich revolutionized industry, common stocks on theAmerican exchanges have advanced in 1928 and 1929,so that the dividend yields of dividend paying stockswere lower than the interest yields of high grade bonds.As an example of the eagerness of the investing publicto finance newly-evolving industries, the Daniel Gug-genheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics an-nounced that it was no longer necessary to grant equip-ment loans to air-transport companies, because, it stated,the “investment public is now ready to supply the capitalfor enterprises of this kind.” By the close of the thirddecade of the twentieth century America had alreadyshot ahead of Europe in commercial aviation, and was

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