This fact, so briefly stated, is of first-rank importance. For it summarizes one of the profound and far-reaching shifts in American social and economic life in the twentieth century. Never before in our history have so many of us owned so much of the nation's industrial wealth, so much of its productive capacity, so much of its profit potential.

In the minds of most, the stock market was a vast trap for the unwary. Like all public images, this was inexact, but not without a basis in reason. Time and again in the tumultuous capital expansion of the nation that began after the Civil War, small investors had been whipsawed in the market struggles of the tycoons, and panics and depressions had shrivelled their bright dreams of prosperity. Sober citizens were appalled by the insanity of the rampant speculation of the Twenties. Everybody knew someone who had been scorched in the holocaust of the Crash, and those who were not wiped out were nonetheless inclined to blame Wall Street for the depression which followed.

For most people, capital investment meant buying a home. If there was anything left over, it went into insurance and the savings bank.

The myth died slowly. Recovery from the depression consumed most of the Thirties. The Second World War lasted until the middle Forties. Throughout this period, the stock market continued to do business at the old stand, but at a greatly reduced volume. Reflecting the times, it pulled itself back uphill to a respectable peak in 1936, considerably short of the 1929 summit, but still the highest point since the Crash. It dropped sharply in the 1937 recession, staggered up and down uncertainly for several years, and then retreated under the impact of the war. From 1942 on, however, despite occasional setbacks such as the 1957 recession, the trend has been steadily upward.

The nation emerged from the war hardly conscious of how greatly the basic economy had changed. Production for war had forced a gigantic expansion of industrial plant, much of it with the aid of Government funds. High tax rates and controlled profits encouraged further investment in facilities. And liberal post-war settlements enabled corporations to buy Government-built plants cheaply or to depreciate them quickly, thereby reducing or eliminating what might otherwise have been a burden of long-term debt. The net result was a stupendous increase in the book value'in the fundamental assets'of a great number of companies.

Furthermore, consumer wants were ravenous. Having gone without for five years, Americans were ready to buy everything in sight. Industry, untouched by so much as a single enemy bomb, was able to convert swiftly to peacetime production. The boom began. New automobiles, new houses, new electrical appliances began to fill up the empty spaces in American lives. And with these familiar, much-missed items came new ones, virtually undreamed of before the war: television, hi-fi, sports cars, antibiotics, tranquilizers, frozen foods, synthetic fibbers and fabrics, plastics, electronics, and?for the on-rushing future?peacefully applied atomic energy. Radio Corporation of America announced that four-fifths of its current sales volume derived from products that were non existent a decade before. By the Fifties, economists were estimating that more than a third of the nation's gross national product?the total value of all its goods and services?was due to research and development of the past ten years.

Many elements have combined to bring this about. Until the end of World War II in 1945, stock ownership was for all practical purposes the privilege of the well to do. Only the man of wealth could afford to buy stock in significant amounts. Only the man with surplus funds could afford to ride out market slumps and the temporary loss of income and value. And only the few initiates were really educated and informed about the behaviour of markets and the ground rules of investment.

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