What curious good fortune some investors must have, while the
majority say they can find nothing to invest in. The annual meeting of the Aerated Bread Company was held on Wednesday, and a dividend was declared equivalent to 45 per cent. That, however, is nothing to what a few of the shareholders must be making. The company at first nearly failed, and when a gifted or lucky chairman changed it from a company for supplying one kind of bread, into a company supplying restaurants for the respectable, and especially for respectable women, some shares had been sold at a fourth of their par value. They were better at that price than shares in any prosperous gold or diamond mine, yet the prosperity had arisen from an idea,—viz., that respectable temperance restaurants were sadly wanted. It was, that is to say, due to ability alone, which not only proved itself more valuable than skill in handicraft, but actually created out of a capital which was a vanishing quantity, the means of paying hundreds of handicraftsmen. Perhaps the Daily Chronicle will explain why the man who did that ought to be paid like a labourer.
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