From time to time, new paper features stories of shrew investors of modest income who surprised their friends and relatives by leaving substantial fortunes accumulated in the stock market.  A close study, of these cases usually reveals that careful timing and patience, rather than any mysterious secret or fantastic luck, were the explanation of the success story.  Students of the stock market are indebted to the Chicago newspapers for coverage, early in February, 1955, of the story of Miss Ida Mighell of Aurora, Illinois.  Miss Migehell had died on January 1 1955, at the age of eighty-six and left an estate appraised at just under two million dollars.  Even close friends had assumed that her income had consisted of the salary, or pension, of a Chicago school teacher plus income from a twelve thousand dollar inheritance received forty-five year before.

She also owned real estate, government bonds, and some local or thinly traded stocks.  It is immediately apparent that not all of Miss Mighell's selections have been outstanding growth situations, such issues as Westinghouse Air Brake, Kennecott, and Pennsyvania Railroad have failed to keep pace with the Dow Joes averages and even the portfolio's third largest holding, American Telephone and Telegraph did not raise its dividend for  thirty-six years.  A few highly  profitable transactions more than offset an equal number of mediocre of poor deals in Miss  Mighell's account, as has been the case in the experience of most successful investors.

It is unfortunate that information regarding the cost prices and purchase dates of Miss Mighell's stocks is not  available,  but we can reasonably surmise that many items were originally purchased many years ago and swelled the fund with their dividends.  For example, the odd amounts of Consolidated Natural Gas, Mission Corporation, and Mission Development Company were in all probability, received as dividends on Standard Oil of New Jersey held in the 1930's.  The mere factor of compound interest has done much to increase this fund, the elderly  spinster with a modest standard of living probably reinvested all of her after-tax dividend income in recent years.

It is also quite apparent from Miss Mighell's choice of stocks that liberal income was not her principal criterion of selection.  Most of the larger holdings, such as  Standard Oil of New Jersey, Westinghouse Electric, Union Carbide, and Chicago Corporation, have been quite conservative in their payouts through the years and have been consistently reinvested a substantial percentage of their  profits.

Miss Mighell apparently did not aim to get rich in a hurry.  There is not a  single electronic or space age stock in the portfolio, and oil stocks are of large companies.  Although many American fortunes have been created by buying common stocks of "infanct industries" and holding them until they grow to maturity, it is notable that all of the larger holdings in the Mighell portfolio were stocks of companies which were already dominant factors in established industries in 1914, when this shrewd lady first began to invest.  No spectacular new listings of the post World War II era are included.

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