Satisfactory Oil Heating Is Here NOW An ment issued to every home owner by the directors of the Oil Heating Institute. No other modern improvement in the home has had such a spontaneous and hearty welcome as oil heating. All agree that it is most beneficial to the health and comfort of every member of the family. Oil heating is automatic and uniform, clean, healthful and steady. It more than pays for itself in peace of mind. This modern miracle of home comfort antiquates yesterday's crude, untidy, exasperating methods. To give the public a full and accurate understanding of the many benefits of oil heating, the Oil Heating Institute was founded. It is composed of leading manufacturers of oil heating equipment who have a combined invested capital of over $40,000,000. They are well organized, soundly financed and thoroughly qualified in experience, technical skill and manufacturing ability to render permanently satisfactory service to the public. These manufacturers realize that domestic oil heating is of nation-wide interest and importance. Hence the organization of the Oil Heating Institute, not for profit, butas a central and unbiased bureau for research and information. It is the agreed policy of the members of This Is the Emblem of the Oil Heating Institute It is the symbol of satisfactory public service in oil heating. Only the manufacturers who are members of the Oil Heating Institute are permitted to use it. These manufacturers have earned their membership through the enthusiasm of thousands ofhome owners whom they have provided with efficient and dependable oil heating. This emblem protects you, and it will be protected, on your behalf, by the Oil Heating Institute. the Oil Heating Institute to serve the public not only in providing equipment, but in assuring permanent heating satisfaction. The Oil Heating Institute is fully qualified to guide the betterment of oil heating service. The Institute offers the public the benefit of the accumulated experience of all its member companies. Working with it are inter national authorities on oil and oil combustion, specialists in the design and manufacture of oil heating devices, and men trained in the requirements of satisfactory oil heating. Furthermore, the Oil Heating Institute numbers among its associate members leading oil companies which are cooperating to deliver furnace oil and fuel oil efficiently and economically; also leading manufacturers of electrical devices and automatic control equipment, who are actively engaged in furnishing the most efficient and up-to-date application of electrical power and automatic operation to oil heating. The Oil Heating Institute has prepared a non-technical 80-page Book which contains the latest information regarding tested and proved methods of oil heating. This book is written by leading authorities, and gives complete instructions for the selection of oil heating equipment. It will be sent to any one who returns this coupon together with ten cents to cover mailing costs. Send in the Coupon TODAY! OIL HEATING THE MODERN MIRACLE OF COMFORT How to select oil healing equipment THE OIL HEATING INSTITUTE 350 Madison Avenue, New York City Enclosed find 10 cents (10c) for which please send me, postpaid, your book entitled "Oil Heating, the Modern Miracle of Comfort," containing instructions on how to select oil heating equipment. Name.... Address. City... State. S7 S ERVING 286 communities in the fast growing territory adjoining Chicago, Public Service Company of Northern Illinois is experiencing corresponding growth. Operating revenue for 1926 totaled $23,311,198, an increase over 1925 of 12.9% Property account has increased from $59,615,178 in 1921 to $98,429,202 in 1926. Dividends have been paid by the Company and its principal prede cessor without break for 25 years. We represent this and other public UTILITY SECURITIES 72 W. Adams St., Chicago may not at least be approaching a period of overstrained credit. Bank loans outstanding this season in Wall Street on stock and bond collateral, as reported to the Federal Reserve, are $500,000,000 larger than a year ago and a thousand million dollars greater than at the end of 1924. Is there not a necessary limit to this process, pursued on such a scale both in finance and trade? It has always heretofore been reached, on occasions of this kind. FOR all of these suggestions of doubt the believers in continuing prosperity have an answer. In the field of manufacture the high rate of consumption results primarily from well-employed, well-paid, and contented labor, which is itself a consequence of large and highly organized production. Econ omies in the production process have The made possible the once inconsistent Case for achievements of high wages, lower Continued prices, and sustained industrial profits. Prosperity The higher wages have enlarged the ca pacity to buy, the lower prices have increased the willingness to purchase, and thus the rate of consumption is maintained. To the suggestion of an overstrain on credit, the familiar answer is that none of the preliminary indications of a condition of the kind has at any time come into view during the period of high prosperity. But it is further pointed out, first that the absence in general industry both of rising prices and of speculative accumulation of goods makes the use of credit in that field not heavier but lighter than before; second, that legitimate facilities for granting credit have been increasing faster than the aggregate demand for it. The available fund of capital has grown in proportion to the rise of industrial activity; foreign capital in immense amounts has been moving into the United States. The gold basis of the country's credit structure is far greater than is necessary to support the present requisitions on it. Import of gold has been on a scale this year exceeded in only one or two corresponding periods since the war; the estimated total stock of gold in the United States reached in April the largest recorded figure; it had increased $212,000,000 in a year, $618,000,000 since the same date in 1923, and $1,620,000,000 since 1921. The Federal Reserve has deliberately opposed the indefinite heaping up of gold in the vaults of the central credit institutions by paying out gold certificates from its own reserve on ordinary transactions with the market. Yet the reserve banks, the ratio of whose gold to their fiduciary obligations measures the potential lending power, reported very lately a gold reserve only slightly under the highest in their history and double the amount required by law to be held against their note circulation and deposits. WF WHETHER the present conditions in America can be maintained without some readjustment of our trade relations with Europe is another query sometimes raised. Some of our most important international bankers have themselves asked how Europe can continue indefinitely to pay interest and principal on its accumulat- Our ing debt to the United States if we will Markets not take payment through an excess of and Europe merchandise imports over exports; and they have not answered their own question. The total "balance of payments" is admittedly kept in (Financial Situation, continued on page 50) THE HE small town finds electric power a strong ally. As the evolution of industry turns into a new and brighter phase, factories are released from concentration in densely populated urban centers. To a substantial extent this has been made possible by the transmission of electric power from advantageously located generating stations, efficiently operated and adequate in capacity, to communities for miles around, sometimes bringing electric service for the first time, sometimes replacing inadequate local plants. With the assurance to the small community of ample and econom ical power, industry is enabled to realize the advantages of better and cheaper living conditions for workers, and in many cases closer proximity to raw materials and markets. Development of the local demand immediately available—the grist mill, grain elevator, waterworks system, street lighting-justifies the initial investment by the utility company, which thereafter cooperates with the community in building up local industries and attracting new ones. In this healthy trend the subsidiaries of the Middle West Utilities Company are among the most active participants. (Financial Situation, continued from page 48) equilibrium only through new American loans to foreign countries running nearly to a billion dollars annually. But this, so long as the balance due on other accounts remains in favor of the United States, would appear to foreshadow perpetual and rapid increase of the total balance to be covered, because of the constantly rising annual interest payments on the foreign loans. Why would this not ultimately mean such necessary investment of American capital in European enterprise as would eventually make America the owner of Europe's industrial plant? There have not been many attempts at a confident prospective solution of this problem. The London Economist, in a recent and entirely friendly discussion of the matter, frankly admitted that it was probably for the best interests of everybody that the functions of a central world-market should be divided between London and New York instead of being monopolized by London. It also recognized that our advances of capital in the last few years had been 'one of the chief factors in hastening the economic reconstruction of the world." But it added that our assumption of the rôle of creditor nation had been accompanied by phenomena unfamiliar to economic history. In the half-century during which England, as the creditor state, was lending its capital to the outside world on an even greater scale and thereby freely developing distant countries, "her trade balance has shown a large surplus of imports," whereas the United States not only maintains a larger and continuous export surplus but, "so far as Europe is concerned, she is taking steps to keep out the products of the countries which her capital is developing and restoring." The Economist did not pretend to foresee the solution of the problem. THESE aspects of the international position have occasionally raised the question whether the great prosperity of the United States is not being acquired at the expense of Europe, and whether the United States is not thereby crippling the capacity for payment by the very nations to which American private capital has Are We been loaned, according to the latest cal- Prospering culation of the Department of Com- at Europe's merce, up to nearly twelve thousand Expense? million dollars. The answer to that question is easier, but careful distinction is required between present circumstances and the circumstances of a decade ago. When the United States was providing belligerent Europe with war munitions and the neutral states with goods that belligerent Europe could no longer make for them, our industries were undeniably profiting by Europe's waste of her own accumulated wealth in war and by her surrender of her peace-time trade with the nonbelligerents. That the resultant surplus of American exports over imports should, in the six years from 1915 to 1920 inclusive, have exceeded the total credit on the same account in the full half-century after the Civil War, may fairly be described as measuring belligerent Europe's economic losses of the period. But all this ended with the war, or very soon afterward. There is no such credit balance nowadays on merchandise account; on the contrary, the aggregate (Financial Situation, continued on page 52) T HOSE who are not in Our monthly offering list is more IN IN the year 144 B.C. Rome invested the equivalent of approximately eight million dollars, and the labor of countless slaves, in a 38-mile aqueduct to increase the city's water supply. More than a century before that, the loot captured from Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, had been thriftily used to build the Anio Vetus, 43 miles long. As the republic's fortunes mounted, says the historian, "so the arches rose higher and higher." Water was indispensable to Rome and it is indispensable to the modern city. Some of Rome's aqueducts are still in use -a tribute to the permanency of waterworks systems. The investor of today buys water company bonds for the permanence of their security, the changelessness of water company service, the stability of water company income. Write to our nearest office for a new booklet "Water-The Indispensable Utility" G.L.OHRSTROM & CO. |