Who it is for
Readers studying financial history, investment education, and the chapter’s specific subject—principal, income return, promise to pay—will get the most from this section. It is not suitable as a modern trading or investment checklist.
English reader · Project Gutenberg #34463
I. General Principles of Investment
How to Invest Money. English-only reading by default; switch among English, Chinese, and Spanish, or compare languages side by side.
Chapter summary
This chapter examines I. General Principles of Investment, using the author’s early-twentieth-century investment framework to explain how investors were expected to judge security quality, income, risk, and market conditions. It opens from the chapter’s own discussion: With the immense increase in wealth in the United States during the last decade and its more general distribution, the problem of investment has assumed correspondingly greater importance. As long as the average business man was an habitual borrower of money and possest no private fortune outside of his interest in his business, he was not greatly concerned with investment problems.
Modern reader note
Read this chapter as historical investment education. The market rules, disclosure practices, securities, commissions, interest-rate conditions, and investor protections around principal, income return, promise to pay may differ sharply from modern markets.
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