Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 August 1884 — Getting Particular About It. [ARTICLE]

Getting Particular About It.

It used to be an easy matter to satisfy European holders of American railroad shares when a dividend was passed. It could be laid to droughts, freshets, snow slides, grasshoppers, yellow fever, heat or cold, or need of rolling-stock. Those people are getting more particular within the last year or two, and really expect shares to bring ’em in some sort of income. An American now traveling in Germany writes home that some of our non-paying dividend railroads will have to employ a firstclass liar to invent new and satisfactory excuses, or the shares will come back. As one German holder remarked to him: “My frendt, I wait now about five years for some difidends on my stock, but I doan’ shmell a cent. Eatery time it vhas cyclones, grasshoppers, poor grops or repairs, und dot difidend goes py. If you doan’ has some peesness for your railroads, vhy doan’ you go on foot mit ox-teams!”— Wall Street News.