NEW “PEOPLE’S CAPITALISM”

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29010, 26 September 1959, Page 11

NEW “PEOPLE’S CAPITALISM”

Mass Ownership Of Shares (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) SYDNEY, September 24. A “people’s capitalism,’* based on mass ownership of shares, had emerged, the New York Stock Exchange president (Mr Keith G. Funstoip said today. Mr Funston, speaking at a luncheon at the Sydney Stock Exchange, said he believed that, in the long view of history, this new “people’s capitalism” would take its place as a major economic landmark. “We are emerging now with a new brand of capitalism, as we once passed from a feudal society to the industrial revolution, and a primitive form of capitalism,” he said. Mr Funston said that, as in Australia, great changes had shaped the American economy since the end of World War IL

“Perhaps the most significant of these had been the explosive growth of America’s middle income millions,” he said. “In recent years this group, with its vast savings and numerical superiority, has come to hold the balance of our economic power. “More and more the American people have seized their opportunity to invest directly and indirectly in publicly-held companies. In increasing numbers they have become the voting owners of those businesses.

“In its scope and impact this ownership of the means of production is without precedent in economic history,” said Mr Funston.