The Dow Jones industrial Average may be in need of a name change

Tomorrow marks the end of an era in a slightly more literal way than that in which that phrase is normally employed to mark. After 122 years, General Electric Co. (GE), the last surviving member of the original 1896 Dow Jones Industrial Average, will be dropped from that well-known listing of US blue-chip stocks.
The Dow Jones was established back in May 1896, comprising 12 prominent American industrial companies:

• American Cotton Oil Company
• American Sugar Refining Company
• American Tobacco Company
• Chicago Gas Light and Coke Company
• Distilling and Cattle Feeding Company
• General Electric Company
• Laclede Gas Company
• National Lead Company
• North American Company
• Tennessee Coal Iron and Railroad Company
• United States Leather Company
• United States Rubber Company

Of these, GE is just about the only company still recognizable today, although several others have morphed into companies that we would recognize (e.g. the American Cotton Oil Company has become Unilever in the intervening years, the United States Rubber Company has become Uniroyal, etc). Most of the others have just gone the way of the dinosaurs.
A quick look at the composition of the 30 companies that make up today's Dow Jones Index reveals a very different profile of companies, including many whose function was not even conceivable back in 1896 (Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco Systems, Verizon, Visa, etc). Indeed it reveals an almost complete redefinition of the word "industrial". After all, there has been a Second Industrial Revolution and then a Third Industrial (Digital) Revolution since 1896. Companies like GE - companies that actually make things - are no longer in the ascendancy.
It is perhaps no surprise that the company is struggling, despite attempts over the years to diversify and change with the times. It's paradoxical in a way: after all, the world still needs electrical equipment, power generation equipment, healthcare technology, industrial plastics, locomotives, aviation equipment, etc, all of which GE does very well. But it probably needs less of these things, and it is happier buying them for cheap from China and other countries in the Far East.