these data are neglected where they are now made public, would they be any more carefully studied, except by experts, when the mass of material to be examined was increased?

Undoubtedly publicity in certain cases where there is now secrecy would benefit a few, but it would be the few who now profit most by careful study of values and by shrewd employment of their resources. But it is not these men who are calling most loudly for "publicity," and it is not they whom it is in the heart of the agitator against the "trusts" to serve. Το "the man in the street" it is doubtful if publicity would be worth a dollar in increased profits or diminished losses, — whether, indeed, he would not be tempted into greater recklessness by the assurance that the paternal hand of the Government had for his protection been laid upon every corporation brought under Federal law.

It is worthy of serious thought, whether in seeking the protection of the individual, there is not danger that we should enter

on the narrow path of some of the continental countries, where interference by the State with corporate activity tends to stifle invention and to drive away capital. In France down to July, 1903, it was impossible by law to divide the shares of a corporation into common and preferred. Shares issued for anything but cash cannot be sold on the exchanges for two years. The securities of foreign corporations cannot be listed or even publicly sold in France without the payment of taxes which practically exclude them from the Paris bourse. As the result of such restrictions, the French masses have acquired in financial matters a degree of dependence upon the Government which has tended to take away their confidence in themselves. By the confession of thoughtful Frenchmen, capital tends to leave France for markets where it is more free, and the persistent thrift and intelligence of the French people does not find the productive outlets at home which would be found under a system of greater economic freedom.

For the protection of the investor, therefore, it is doubtful whether new laws would have value unless they stifled all the qualities which are giving America her predominance in the world of finance. The protection of the consumer presents another side of the problem. Will he be benefited by severe repressive legislation regarding investments and by giving publicity to all that is done by corporate authority? From a narrow standpoint it may be conceded that it is possible to take something for a limited time from the capitalist and the producer and hand it over to the consumer. The French National Assembly was able to take property from the nobility and turn it into the coffers of the nation. France and Mexico have been able to confiscate the property of the church and appropriate it to public uses. Italy, some years ago, converted a five per cent bond into a net four per cent obligation by imposing a tax of twenty per cent upon incomes from securities; but the stock market promptly responded by reducing Italian securities

to a price corresponding to their diminished net return. So it might be possible for the property of the Standard Oil Company or the Steel Corporation to be seized by the State or practically confiscated by excessive taxation and turned into the public treasury. But it is not such extreme measures that it is necessary to discuss. It is obvious that the attempt by the Government to fix maximum prices for commodities or to diminish by taxation the profits of industry, would yield only temporary results, because properties would be sold by their owners or abandoned when it became impossible to run them at a profit.

The essential question in regard to the consumer, therefore, is whether the community as a whole will secure in the long run a real economic gain by adopting restrictions on corporate activity or on the forms of investment. This is the crux of the problem, whether the consumer will be benefited in the long run by measures which tend to repress inventive skill and enterprise by diminishing the profits of

those who possess these qualities. The difference between a progressive nation and a receding one is chiefly the intellectual activity and inventive genius of the former. These qualities must, even in the most enlightened States, be the rare property of a limited number of individuals. In America, fortunately, the opportunity to enter their ranks is open practically to all men. But even under these favorable conditions the number of men who rise above the treadmill of daily routine, whose minds reach out to devise new mechanical appliances, great economies in railway and industrial management, and financial projects which carry out these economies, must ever remain a small fraction of the whole community. This being the case, the vital question is whether it is desirable to encourage the efforts of these men or to discourage them.

How mighty is the influence of these few minds, the inventors, the captains of industry, the resourceful authors of new financial combinations,-upon national economic progress is realized by