The bankers and large investors who can preserve in their files annual reports of a corporation over a long period of years probably number less than one per cent of the total number of stockholders to whom the annual reports are sent. It is only in very large, well managed offices that a file of corporation reports is made so that a complete set of reports for a long period of years is available for comparison with any new report which may be received. The average stockholder cannot preserve his annual reports from year to year in such manner that he can lay his hands on the earlier reports, and thus compare the last report with the record of preceding years. Even if every stockholder should have some yet uninvented type of filing system by which everything is preserved and everything can be found instantly when needed, that would not solve the problem. Stockholders are changing so rapidly that, of the total number of stockholders to whom reports are sent in any one year, a comparatively small percent-

308 GRAPHIC METHODS

age have been stockholders for more than two or three years. Because they have not been stockholders for any length of time, they cannot have available the annual reports of earlier years to compare with any annual report just received. The only way a new stockholder can possibly determine whether he wishes to buy some more stock or sell what stock he already has, is to hunt up some other stockholder or some banker who may happen to have a file of the annual reports over a period of years. Assuming that a complete file of annual reports can be found, most stockholders, if left to their own resources, would be hopelessly confused in trying to reach any correct basis for analyzing the figures.