ABSTRACT
An estimate of the number of individuals owning stock in the United States must, at best, be very approximate. This is true, primarily, because a very great increase in the number of stockholders could be made without seriously affecting the ownership of the bulk of corporate shares. If the ownership of stock had been shifted so that one per cent of all dividends paid to indi viduals in 1927 had been shifted from a few individuals to persons who owned no stock so that each new stockholder received an average of $471 in dividends, a million new stockholders would have been created. Such small stockholdings are by no means uncommon. In 1924, 37 per cent2 of the stockholders of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company owned five shares or less and received less than $46 in dividends from this Company, probably averaging less than $25.
