William H. Lough
In 1910 he co-founded and became vice-president of the Alexander Hamilton Institute, a corporation engaged in collecting, organizing and transmitting business information.
[6] He was also Head of Division of Business Training of Army Educational Corps, American Expeditionary Forces in France.
[5] Further in the 1920s Lough continued his work at the School of Commerce of New York University, and as president of the Business Training Corporation.
"[9] In 1935 he published his last book "High-Level Consumption" (1935) with assistance of the economist and statistician Martin R. Gainsborough, who was employed at Trade-Ways.
In a 1910 review Hammond stated, that Professor Lough's book is the most comprehensive, the most scholarly and the best written treatise on the subject of corporation finance which has appeared in this country.
Like the other volumes in the series of which it is a part, the book was written primarily in the interest of business men, although the author expresses the hope that it will also prove useful to stock and bond brokers, to lawyers, to bankers and to accountants.
It is more than probable that it was the author's experience with just such students which accounts in large measure for the clearness and logical method of his presentation.
This book is primarily descriptive of the methods of promoting, organizing and financing corporations, and all the illustrations are taken from the experience of American companies.
Lough started explaining that "in theory, however, even if not in practice, a board of directors is supposed to represent all the stockholders equally.
Sometimes this control consists in holding a bare majority of the voting stock of the subsidiary; but it is generally advisable to secure as much stock as possible, for the greater the extent of the control, the more readily may the holding company carry out its plans to achieve economies and fix prices.
Lough continued: The reader will get a sufficiently clear idea as to how complex organizations of this kind are built up if he will study the accompanying chart of the Interborough-Metropolitan Company, which was prepared for the Public Service Commission of the First District of the State of 'New York.
The Interborough-Metropolitan Company controls all the street car, elevated and subway railway lines in the principal boroughs of New York City.
In Chapters 16-19 the author describes the four methods of selling securities: by inside distribution; through Wall Street; through bond and brokerage houses; and by means of advertising.
[10] In chapter 19 Lough explains the working of syndicates, and gives and example of how a new plant was constructed wholly with borrowed funds.
:In the spring of 1902 the promoter of a smelting and refining company in Mexico succeeded in convincing a number of Philadelphia financiers that his proposition was worth looking into.
Finally, come three excellent chapters on insolvency and reorganization with illustrations drawn from the financial history of the Santa Fe, the Rock Island and the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company.
[10] A 1918 review of this work by Arthur S. Dewing (1880–1971)[17] stated, that this book represents an important study of modern financial practice, especially with reference to medium-sized industrial corporations.
In accordance with this theory one would wish that he had devoted more than a paragraph to the important recent changes in New York and other state laws permitting the issue of stock without par value.
The subjects treated in the latter have wide economic significance, but the generalizations are somewhat superficial and backed by insufficient empirical evidence.
As a whole, the book shows a wide familiarity with current financial discussion and, above all, great sanity and good judgment.
From the pedagogical point of view it strikes the happy medium between unjustified generalities and a hopeless maze of detail.
while the National Bureau of Economic Research had "estimated total retail sales as 22 billion dollars for that year.
"[19] In 1935 Lough with the assistance of Martin Gainsbrugh published "High-Level Consumption", which is considered the first detailed estimates of aggregate consumer expenditures for goods and services in the United States over a period of time.
The data for the later years were revised and extended by Harold Barger, Outlay and Income in the United States, 1921–1938, National Bureau of Economic Research, New York, 1942.
[20] In 1935, estimates of aggregate consumer expenditures in detail for 1909 and 1929 and selected years between were prepared by Martin Gainsbrugh and published in William H. Lough, HighLevel Consumption...
This book included a comparison with The Brookings Institution's aggregates for 1929, showing that the two estimates were very close for food expense, and reasonably close for attire and home maintenance; but the estimates by Lough and Gainsbrugh of expenditures for all other items were much higher than the Brookings' figures.
