1. Where a system of exchange is highly developed, things are looked upon as capital yielding an objective income rather than as wealth yielding immediate means of enjoyment. In the old organization of industry most men got most of their living from the things they raised or made. At the present time goods are gotten in the most indirect ways; men seek wealth because it will yield them an objective or money income, knowing that if they can get the income, they can get other things by exchange. In business today, wherever there is a rental, it is capitalized, has a market value, is bought and sold. Men compete in the purchase of income-yielding agents. There is a continual contest in judgment among investors to secure the largest rent for the smallest outlay. On the other hand, the owners of any rental strive to secure the largest capitalization for it that they' can. In this market for capital it is money rents that are exchanged as an indirect means of arriving at gratifications.

As exchange increases capitalization of goods becomes more usual.

2. The issue of capital stock is the putting of the incomes of wealth into marketable form. Stock companies, or corporations, are business enterprises which issue stock, or certificates of a share in their wealth and income. Doubtless the convenience of the sale and transfer of invested capital by the use of stock, has been one of several reasons for the large increase of this form of organization during the past century. Originally the stock of a company taken collectively represented all the capital invested, and each share entitled the owner to a given portion of the total income earned. The shares were issued in regular denominations in terms of money, and this amount expressed on the face of the stock remained fixed. But as a business proves more or less profitable, the value of a share of its income rises and falls regardless of the original amount of stock issued. At once there is a divergence between the nominal or face value and the market value of the stock. The nominal value is relatively permanent, the same year after year; it may increase by further issues, but rarely is it decreased. But when stock is the only form of claim on the earnings that is issued, the fluctuations of the market value of the stock record the real value of the business, that is, the capital value of the rents it is expected to yield. But in present practice there are several forms (of which stock is but one) in which an investor may buy a share in the earnings of a business. Bonds usually do not give their owner a vote in the management or make him in the technical legal sense a part owner in the business. Bonds representing money loaned to a company, and entitling their holder to regular interest payments, are nearest in form to the medieval rent-charge. Next stands preferred stock, which entitles the owners to share first in the dividends, if there are any; and finally the common stock, which gets a share only when the other claims are satisfied. By the multiplication and further variation of these readily salable claims on industrial incomes, the needs and desires of investors are met more fully and with greater precision.

Various kinds of corporation securities put expected incomes in salable form.

Any continuing income can be capitalized.

3. Men seek to convert into marketable capital any increase of income in their wealth or business. A man who invests a given capital sum in machines, buildings, and materials buys them, as others do, at prices that represent their usual, or market, earning power. If he succeeds exceptionally in his business, he makes the capital earn more than the rents on which it was capitalized. The same material wealth becomes worth more because of the reputation of his products, and therefore the trade-mark and good-will of the business can be capitalized. In this sense a good name can be sold, and is at least as much to be desired, even in a mercenary age, as great riches. Likewise, social changes, new needs, the growth of population, increase the net income of wealth, or the rents of a business. The basis of capital value is income, and whatever be its cause, political or economic, material income can and will be capitalized and added to the market value of the privilege, wealth, or industry on which the income is conditioned.

Notable cases of this sort arise in connection with public franchises. If a street-railway or a gas-company is given the exclusive right to operate in a given locality, any income above average interest on the investment is capitalized either in the higher price of the stock or in additional stock issued without the addition of any material to the plant. If the franchise is unlimited, the income may be capitalized as practically perpetual; if the franchise is limited, and is to expire in thirty or forty years, only the limited series of privileged incomes can ordinarily be capitalized. When, however, the managers are able to exert influence enough to have the franchise extended, and the investors believe in the skill of the managers and perhaps in their power to bribe the legislators, the value of the stock continues higher than it could usually be under a limited franchise. Such circumstances becloud the question whether the exceptional income arising under the franchise should go to the public or to the company. Granted, however, that the company is entitled to the income, the burden of proof is on those who object to the capitalizing of the income as is done in every other business.

4. The manipulation of dividends and the resulting changes in capitalization open up great opportunities for the dishonest increase of private fortunes. A great change in the market value of stock is made by a comparatively small change in the income it regularly affords, for if the prevailing rate of interest on money loans is five per cent., each dollar of dividends is capitalized at $20. It might seem that the dividend would be declared if earned, otherwise not. The matter is not so simple and impersonal, however. The control of corporations is vested in the hands of a small group of directors who have both the opportunity and the temptation to withhold dividends when they are earned, to pay them with borrowed money if unearned, and in either case to keep the stock-holders and the public in ignorance of the real condition and earning power of the business. The stocks can, by this manipulation of dividends, be made a lottery for the legitimate investor, a trap for the unwary, and a source of unrighteous gain by men recreant to their trusts.

The capitalizing of franchises for public-service corporations.

Some difficulties in the capitalization of corporate incomes.

In this way it may be seen that an earning power not known to bidders in the market does not enter into capitalization; a fictitious earning power, however, is capitalized so long as the investors continue to be deceived. Instances of this kind present problems not only of private morality, but of the preservation of free industrial institutions. The solution of these problems would perhaps be hastened if the economic nature of capitalization were more clearly understood. Capital value in modern industry is everywhere the expression of the serial rents of wealth, discounted at a prevailing rate of time discount.

Questions On Chapter 15. The Capitalization Of All Forms Of Rent

1. What relation is there between the rate of interest and the price of land bearing a given rental?

2. If a $100 share of railroad stock sells at par when interest on loans is at 5%, what will be its price when interest rises to 6%? When interest falls to 4%"?

3. If a business is very successful and its dividends double, what will be the effect on the selling price of its stock?

Note

The subject is almost foreign to the standard works on economics, which have continued to look upon capital as primary, and its income as derived. Numerous recent articles will be found, however, dealing with concrete problems where the logical and the practical views are seen to be the same; e.g., W. Z. Ripley, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. XV, p. 106 (1900), article on "The Capitalization of Public Service Corporations"; also article in Engineering News, Vol. XXVIII, p. 492 (November, 1892).