but a partial extent drawn into the business as a basis for an actual credit extension. What counts in the case is the solvency of the operator rather than an outright resort to the credit extension which this solvency might afford. The working capital involved in these transactions is accordingly of a peculiarly ekisive character, and the time element in the use of this capital is hard to determine, if such a time element can properly be said to enter into the case at all.
More in detail, the business man in pursuit of gain along this line must, in the ordinary case, be possessed of large holdings of property, this being the basis of the solvency necessary to the business. These holdings are commonly in the form of securities in the concern whose vendible capital is the subject of his traffic, as well as in other corporations. These securities represent capital, tangible and intangible, which is already employed in the ordinary business of the concern by which they have been issued ; the capital, therefore, is already in use to the full extent and is presumably yielding the ordinary rate of earnings. But the solvency for which the ownership of this capital affords a basis may further be useful in enabling the owner to carry on a traffic in vendible corporate capital without withdrawing any appreciable portion of his holdings from the lucrative investments in vhich they have been placed. In other words, he
is able, under modern circumBtancea, to make a secondary use of his inveatmenta for the purpose of trading in vendible corporate capital ; but this secondary use of investmenta bears no hard and fast quantitative relation to the investments in question, nor does it in any determinate way interfere with the ordinary employment of tliis invested capital in