In such good times as we had for several years prior to 1901 the combined demand from all these sources was enormous; hence both the rise in the price of securities and the rush to create and float new issues which we witnessed during that period.

I have not been able to find statistics which present a complete account of the increase in the supply of investment securities in the United States during the period I have named. Some idea, however, may be obtained from the amount of bonds and stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange, although these are but a small portion of the whole. For the five years ending 1901 there were listed $949,516,639 bonds and $1,443,850,208 stocks, exclusive of those which merely replaced old securities. In addition to these, every village, town, city, county, and state in the country has its own local securities. New issues are also constantly being created by new inventions, such as the telephone, the bicycle, the automobile, etc., so that my former estimate of a total of $10,000,000,000 of new securities issued during these five years is probably not far astray.

Yet no question is more frequently asked than this: Where can I find a safe investment which will yield a fair rate of interest? And perhaps no question is more difficult to answer.