HUGE PROFITS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13575, 6 December 1907, Page 2

HUGE PROFITS.

" . mi ■ — AMERICA'S BIG TRUSTS, . STANDARD ;' OIL FIGURES . ,f „,:., 4 .....>-. REtEALEi).. ' : ' " " ' ? There is ho mystery now about tho wealth of the Standard Oil Company; because all the essential figures haye 1 been given in evidence on oath. The total assets of the company are valued at £7J5,00b,000> and the reserve fund amounts to £50,000,000. The parent corporation, the Standard Oil Company of New Jer&ey, counts as its assets the stocks of the sixty-thiree subsidiary companies, from which it received in dividends last year the sum of £10,000,000. As it made a nett profit of nearly £2,000,000 on its own business, it wa3 able to pay a 40 per cent, dividend on its own stock and carry over £4,000,000 to reserve. The company has cleared about £100,000 in seven years, paying £62,000,000 in dividends. The largest shareholder is Mr J. D. Rockefeller, who has 247,692 shares, nominally worth £5,000,000 but marketable at four times that sum. Colonel Oliver H. Paya-3 holds 40,000 shares, and Mr Henry M Flagler 30,500, but the Harkness estate, representing twelve individuals, hoHs 80,000 shares and ranks next to Mr Rockefeller in voting strength. Tho Standard Oil Company is a very prosperous concern, but it is not the largest corporation in America. The assets of the. United States Steel Corporation rao valued at about £350,000,000, and its net profits > last year were about £30,000,000. The Union Pacific Railroad Company had assets in 1906 worth £115,500,000, and the assets of the Atchison at the same time amounted oo ,£106,000,000. As a corporation Standard Oil comes some distance down the list. What makes its wealth so impressive is the fact that the bulk of it is concentrated in a few hands. The people who bought Standard Oil stocks at over 800 dollars a few years ago paid twice as much as the shares were worth, and even at the present quotation;;, which vary between 440 and 450 dollars, the investment is not profitable according to American ideas. If the men who bbught Standard Oil at £40 had bought Steel Corporation shares they would row be drawing about £40 a year por share, instead of only £8 or £9. The "Steel Corporation pays a dividend -f only about 2 per cent, on the nominal value of its stock, but then the men who control it were wise in their generation. A 2 per cent, dividend excites less hostility than does one of 40 per cent.