BY CHARLES A. CONANT A History of Modern Banks of Issue With an Account of the Economic Crises of the Present Century Wall Street and the Country A Study of Recent Financial Tendencies 12mo. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS LONDON and The Country A Study of Recent Financial Tendencies By Charles A. Conant Author of A History of Modern Banks of Issue," etc. G. P. Putnam's Sons PREFACE THE essays contained in this volume were written for the purpose of setting forth the magnitude of the problems presented by the modern tendency to capitalization and of removing misapprehensions on the subject which seem to have obtained a lodgment in the minds of a certain portion of the public. In a country like the United States, whose phenomenal expansion has been the admiration and envy of competent foreign observers, it has been inevitable that this expansion should create serious new problems and require many new experiments in regard to the organization of the money market, the powers of corporations, and the relations of the latter to the State. There is little reason to doubt that in the long run these problems will be solved by the American people with their 150267 usual sobriety and good sense. It is to be regretted, however, that a degree of passion has been imported into their discussion which tends to hinder such a solution rather than to hasten it. Many organs of public opinion, even among those which have been credited with conservatism and sound economic views, have been swept along upon a current of popular agitation in favor of the extension of the power of the State in a manner radical in itself and far beyond any previous exercise of it sanctioned by experience or by American political ideals. The denunciation of the stock exchange, one of the most necessary functions of modern industry, and the abuse of large corporate interests have become undiscriminating and extreme, even where in the minds of those who have made them many limitations and reservations undoubtedly existed. These expressions have tended to stimulate a degree of popular prejudice which militates against a dispassionate solution of our new national problems. |