This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ... court under which he has been appointed will discharge him. The cost of a receivership is always heavy; in big affairs the legal charges are enormous and there are court fees as well. Courts have usually special men they appoint as receivers in a general way, and in particular is this the case with the Federal Courts, but naturally if the receivership is brought about by the bondholders, in other words by those who seek to get an accounting without: at once foreclosing their mortgage, they have much to sa_v as to the person or persons to be named as receiver or receivers. In the case of a friendly receivership the president of the concern may be named as the receiver and often is. It is not necessary to go into the intricacies of the legal end of a receivership; it is, however, quite important to insist once more that security holders in particular need not by any manner of means immediately assume that they have lost their investment by such proceedings. Position of Electric Service Company Securities During the past ten years the investing public has been called upon to pass judgment upon electric service company securities to a very large extent and the final verdict has been a most favorable one. Prior to 1900 it was difficult to market; the bonds of such companies, except when the company issuing them operated in thickly populated centers and could show very large gross earnings. This hesitation on the part of the public did not arise from doubt as to the inherent safety of such securities. for the electrical business had been profitable and was known to be one of the few classes of enterprises which had passed through panics without experiencing any serious setback in earnings, but was due rather to the fact; that the technical...

Push a button and turn on the television; tap a button and get a ride; click a button and “like” something. The touch of a finger can set an appliance, a car, or a system in motion, even if the user doesn't understand the underlying mechanisms or algorithms. How did buttons become so ubiquitous? Why do people love them, loathe them, and fear them? In Power Button, Rachel Plotnick traces the origins of today's push-button society by examining how buttons have been made, distributed, used, rejected, and refashioned throughout history. Focusing on the period between 1880 and 1925, when “technologies of the hand” proliferated (including typewriters, telegraphs, and fingerprinting), Plotnick describes the ways that button pushing became a means for digital command, which promised effortless, discreet, and fool-proof control. Emphasizing the doubly digital nature of button pushing—as an act of the finger and a binary activity (on/off, up/down)—Plotnick suggests that the tenets of precomputational digital command anticipate contemporary ideas of computer users. Plotnick discusses the uses of early push buttons to call servants, and the growing tensions between those who work with their hands and those who command with their fingers; automation as “automagic,” enabling command at a distance; instant gratification, and the victory of light over darkness; and early twentieth-century imaginings of a future push-button culture. Push buttons, Plotnick tells us, have demonstrated remarkable staying power, despite efforts to cast button pushers as lazy, privileged, and even dangerous.