CAPITAL 97 



to get the $15,000 not what to do with it after they 

 get it." 



It is an interesting commentary upon the tenacity 

 with which even intelligent people maintain conven- 

 tional illusions that such a letter was written to me 

 after the collapse of the securities market in 1929. In 

 spite of the collapse of the houses of cards which 

 buyers of securities everywhere were discovering they 

 had erected for themselves, this man still believed 

 that dependence upon investments in stocks and 

 bonds was superior to dependence upon a homestead 

 equipped with livestock, tools, and machinery with 

 which a family could produce a plentiful living for 

 themselves no matter what happened to the business 

 world. If the depression should have taught him any- 

 thing, it should have made him sec that stocks and 

 bonds furnish no one real security. The only possible 

 security in our present chaos is direct access to the 

 opportunity to produce for oneself the essentials of a 

 comfortable living. 



But even if it were true, as my friendly critic be- 

 lieved, that there were such things as secure securities, 

 the point remains that in the beginning there was 

 no $15,000 invested in the Borsodi homestead. Cer- 

 tainly I was never confronted with the alternative of 

 investing $15,000 in stocks and bonds or of investing 

 it in a homestead. Yet it is true that today, after 

 twelve years of slow growth, the homestead does rep- 

 resent a large investment, an investment much greater 

 than the sum at which this critic valued it. It is the 



