Business: THE NEED FOR RISK CAPITAL

Where Is the Small Investor?

AMERICANS have risked more money—and with more success—than any other people in the world. Yet in the U.S. today, there is a shortage of risk capital that threatens to slow the pace of industrial progress. In the past five years, corporations have needed $39.3 billion in outside funds for expansion. Of this total, they have raised only $3.9 billion in new stock issues, have had to borrow the rest. The melancholy fact is that only a relative handful of Americans are willing to "take a chance" on the nation's economic might by buying shares in U.S. industry....