ocracy is right.

Men occupying conspicuous and leading places in finance as in every
other calling touching the people's interests, are legitimate objects
for public scrutiny in the exercise of their functions.

If opportunity for such scrutiny is denied, if the people's legitimate
desire for information is met with silence, secrecy, impatience and
resentment, the public mind very naturally becomes infected with
suspicion and lends a willing ear to all sorts of gossip and rumors.

The people properly and justly insist that the same "fierce light that
beats upon a throne" should also beat upon the high places of finance
and commerce.

It is for those occupying such places to show cause why they should be
considered fit persons to be entrusted with them, the test being not
merely ability, but just as much, if not more, character,
self-restraint, fair-mindedness and due sense of duty towards the
public.

Finance, instead of avoiding publicity in all of its aspects, should
welcome it and seek it. Publicity won't hurt its dignity. A dignity
which can be preserved only by seclusion, which cannot hold its own in
the market place, is neither merited nor worth having.

We must more and more get out of the seclusion of our offices, out into
the rough and tumble of democracy, out--to get to know the people and
get known by them.

Not to know one another means but too frequently to misunderstand one
another, and there is no more fruitful source of trouble than to
misunderstand one another's kind and ways and motives.

3. Service

Every man who by eminent success in commerce or finance raises himself
beyond his peers is in the nature of things more or less of an
"irritant" (I use the word in its technical meaning) to the community.

It behooves him, therefore, to make his position as little jarring as
possible upon that immense majority whose existence is spent in the
lowlands of life so far as material circumstances are concerned.

It behooves him to exercise self-restraint and to make ample allowance
for the point of view and the feelings of others, to be patient,
helpful, conciliatory.

It behooves him to remember that many other men are working, and have
worked all their lives, with probably as much effort and assiduous
application, as much self-abnegation as he, but have not succeeded in
raising themselves above mediocre stations in life, because to them has
not been granted the possession of those peculiar gi