Excerpt from British Railway Finance: With Special Reference to Capital Charges The recently issued Railway Returns of the United Kingdom for the year 1906 contain a formidable array of figures which is not calculated to attract the ordinary reader, though worthy of attentive consideration by those who have a pecuniary interest in railway securities. The writer is not aware that a census has ever been taken, but it would be interesting to know the present number of shareholders in the railways of the United Kingdom; of that great body of proprietors, the majority of whom never attend a half-yearly meeting but are satisfied to act as Bleeping partners, supporting the Directors, when asked to do so, by means of their proxies, and accepting whatever dividend is granted to them, merely regretting that it is not larger and hoping that it may improve in the future. Some (though of course a very imperfect) indication is, however, afforded by a statement at the last half-yearly meeting of the North Eastern Railway Company, when the chairman said that "the Ordinary Stock of the Company was £31,000,000 and the number of Ordinary Shareholders was about 31,000 - an average of £1,000 each." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.