Felix Somary: Review of Wagon (1906)

Somary’s brief review of Die finanzielle Entwicklung deutscher Aktiengesellschaften von 1870–1900 values Wagon’s book as a statistical foundation for comparative research. German corporate statistics had long been neglected; earlier scholarship and recent official initiatives had only partly addressed the gap. Wagon’s independent compilation therefore constitutes a significant contribution, although its coverage is limited to shares listed on the Berlin stock exchange.

Somary locates the book’s chief merit in its annual tables, arranged into 38 groups and recording company numbers, share capital, borrowing, reserves, net profits, and dividends. He praises their laborious construction and reports that spot checks confirmed their accuracy. This endorsement does not extend uniformly to the exposition:

Im Texte ist manches interessante Detail, die Einleitung dagegen (Seite I—15) ist mißlungen.

English translation: In the text there is many an interesting detail; the introduction, by contrast (pages I—15), is a failure.

The review moves from data quality to comparative usefulness. Recalling his own comparison with Austria elsewhere, Somary identifies borrowing totals, higher average profits, and greater dependence on economic fluctuations as distinguishing features of German companies. His conclusion makes the broader relevance explicit:

Jedesfalls kann man nunmehr, auf Wagons Buch gestützt bei internationaler Vergleichung der Aktienstatistik auch das Deutsche Reich mit berücksichtigen.

English translation: In any case one can now, relying on Wagon's book, take the German Reich into account as well in the international comparison of joint-stock statistics.

The core judgment is thus methodological: reliable tabulation enables international comparison even where the accompanying interpretation is uneven.