Atlanta Daily World

FINANCIAL FUMBLING

The current football season is about closed. Upsets have played
their part in making this season one of the most weird and exciting
and one of the greatest explanations of the greatest upsets of this season of upsets, has been overconfidence of fine football teams. It has come
about that the smart coaches jockey for the place of the under-dog rating for their teams. for when under dogs get themselves down to the
business of fighting. they are hard to crowd.

But one of the great factors in many of the upset wins or losses is
the common fumble. The team that fumbles at a critical stage very
often dooms itself to defeat: and the team that can hold onto the ball or
recover the other teams' fumbles, predisposes itself to victory. Many
a crucial game has been lost or won on fumbles.

Some months ago. this column carried a release on this selfsame
matter of fumbles in the financial world, financial fumbles, if
you please. It is a part of the economic lore of this land that our greatest
fortunes have resulted from wise investment. Hard work explains but
few of the major fortunes amassed in this country of great fortunes.

A few days ago. it was my good pleasure and fortune to chat with
Prof. C.A. Chick of the department of economics at Fayetteville
Teachers college, (N. C.). Prof. Chick made mention of the great
opportunities Negroes are passing up by not making fuller use of the
stock market offerings so abundant in this country. Remembering the
persistent preachments of the late Arthur Brisbane not to sell this
country short. somehow I along with Prof. Chick could sense the
great opportunities Negroes are letting slip by our seeming utter indifference to stock market opportunities.

A casual investigation will dispel the prevalent belief that only the
big money people are fit for the stock market or that they have the
good offerings cornered. Every day the market is offering the choicest
of stocks and bonds for discriminating buyers. When we consider
the growth and expansion of such now colossal firms as General Motors, American Telephone and Telegraph, Sears Roebuck and
others within the last one or two decades, and what a tremendous increase there has been in the value of those who might have invested, but did not.

The wise investor who took but a thin slice of any one of these
mentioned corporations a few years ago, is "sitting pretty" today, and
will be sitting even prettier tomorrow. There is no field where the
wealth accumulation opportunities are more fertile than in this field
of scientific investment and the few Negroes who have discovered
this fact will be secure in years to come.

If a large portion of our numbers trade could be diverted to substantial stock securities, or even a fraction of our big car money could be
wisely invested in accordance with sound investment principles,
the Negro race would make rapid strides toward economic independence that is so seriously jeopardized at present.

Life may begin at 40 or 60, but integration begins with the dollar.
Those Negroes who know what to do with a dollar will be the first
integrated Nobody wants to integrate paupers. Like Booker T. Washington's men at the ferry without 25 cents. he is just as well off on
one side of the river as the other.

Negroes must not be oblivious to the integrative possibilities of the
near-almighty dollar.

It is no strange experience to walk through some of our finest
sections of our finest cities and hear it said. "Negroes once owned this
or that" but somebody fumbled and let get away a golden opportunity.
Negroes are financially fumbling to almost totally disregard corporate securities investment opportunities.