and quickly became a leader in its field, perhaps the largest and best financed of the western heavy contractors. It enjoyed early prosperity, although the ancient financial records were not kept in ways that would qualify under today's definitions of proper accounting methods. I am told that at the beginning of the year they counted the cash, appraised the assets for what they could be sold for in the market and subtracted the debts. At the end of the year they repeated the process and compared the two numbers, and the difference was profit or loss. I could argue that this would not be an inaccurate way to measure performance today but I would have to concede that appraising assets at market was probably simpler when the assets consisted primarily of horses and mules, hay and Fresno scrapers. However they counted the take, Utah on its humble capital made over $1 1/2 million in its first 10 years and over $7,600,000 in the next 10 years. In the year 1919 alone the company earned $1,600,000. They didn't know it at the time but it was going to take another 26 years before this figure would be surpassed and then only because the results included what now would be classified as an extraordinary item of a nonrecurring gain. In this twenty-six year period ending in 1945 earnings averaged less than $313, 000 yearly, about 4.4% on net worth. By 1945 the stockholders were so discouraged by the outlook for the company that they had a partial liquidation and complete liquidation had been seriously discussed. For the next five years things went better. Earnings averaged $990,000 and the return on net worth averaged 10.9%. The number -2-