But since the beginning of this century, when the automobile industry began growing, many of our people have, among many other things, built the great automobile industry into what it is, and made money. Not only this, but they will build it still greater, and make still more money. Before we get through with this little analysis we will see that the automobile industry has not been more than half built thus far, and that the really big profits in it are yet to come, because so far much of the profits have been used in building the industry. This industry is, therefore, a fertile field for scientific investment. Many companies that are quite well established need more capital to enlarge their activities, and there are comparatively new companies, and there will be more, having very good propositions in which the prudent investor can find excellent openings for putting a little money at work under advantageous conditions. DEALERS PUT UP THEIR OWN MONEY. In speaking of the early financiering of the automobile industry, it would be unjust not to mention the aid that automobile dealers gave it. It is a fact that if dealers had not supported it in the way they did, it would not be where it is today. Bankers who could have furnished the money and should have done so, did nothing. They were too “conservative” to recognize a new industry. And so dealers stepped into the breach and became bankers to the industry. In the days when the automobile manufacturer was confronted with the problem of getting money to pay for making cars for which he had or could get orders, some financiering genius devised the plan of giving the dealer exclusive territory for the sale of a car. In return the dealer placed an order for a certain number of cars to be delivered in small lots from month to month throughout the period of the agency. Another consideration for this exclusive agency was that the dealer made a cash deposit on each car at the time of entering into the contract. The monthly shipments were then made C.O.D. for the balance due on the cars in each shipment. The advance deposit enabled the manufacturer to make cars for the first shipment, and the collection on the shipment enabled him to make cars for the second shipment, and so on. To manufacture and sell 1,617,708 cars in a year, as we did last year, appears like an impossible task, especially when we consider that only a negligible number was sold abroad. The fact is that nearly all the manufacturers, especially those of popular cars, could have sold many more, had they had the facilities to make them. In the midst of this condition some persons of narrow vision were wondering if there was a further market for cars, and were talking learnedly, as they thought, about the point of “saturation” having been reached. In the meantime the big men in the industry were saying nothing. Instead of talking, they were laying their plans to make and sell twice as many cars in 1917 as in 1916.