Family Stocks In America

What then are the means of perpetnating good family stocks in a democracy? The first is country life. In this regard democracies have much to learn from the Enropean aristocracies which have proved to be durable. All the vigorous aristocracies of past een tunes lived in the country a large part of the year. The men were soldiers and sportsmen for the most part, and lived on detached estates sparsely peopled by an agricultural and martial tenantry. They were of tener in camp than in the town orcity. Their women lived in castles, halls or chateanz in the open country almost the whole year, and their children were born and brought up there. The aristocratie and noble families of modern Europe 8till have their principal seate in the country, and go to town only for a few months of the year. Next, a permanent family should have a permanent dweiling place, domicile, or home towu. In older societies this has always been the case. Indeed, a place of ten lent its name to a family. In American cities and large towns there are as yet no such things as permanent family hotises. Even in the oldest cities of the east hardly any family lives in a single house through the whole of one generation, and it is very rare that two snecessive generations are born in the same house. Rapid changes of residence are the rnle for almost everybody, so that a city directory which is more than one year old is untrustworthy for home addresses. It is almost impossible for the human mind to attribute dignity and social consideration to a faruily which lives in a hotel or which moves into i new flat every 1st of May. In the country, however, things are much better. In the older states there are plenty of families which have inhabited the same town for several generarions; there are a few families which have inhabited the same house for three erenerations. The next means of promoting family permanence is the transmission oL a family business or occnpatíon froni father to sons. In all old countries this inheritance of a trade, shop or profession is a matter of course. Ünder right conditions, a transniitted business tends to make a sound family more secure and permanent, and a permanent family tends to hold and perfect a valnable business. This principie, which is securely founded on biological law, applies best in the trades and professions, in ordinary commerce, and in the industries which do not require immense capital; bnt in Enrope many vast industries and many great financial and mercantile concerns are family properties, and there is in our own country already a distinct tendency to this fainily management of largo businesses as being more eoonomical and vigilant than corporate management, and more discerning and prompter in picking out and advancing capable men of all grades. -