inct from the agitation of particular business men or organizations
having a special object to serve, such as on the occasion of tariff
making in former days) are ignored, their advice brushed aside or even
resented, their representatives treated as interlopers.

It is only in America that the exigencies of politics not infrequently,
I might almost say habitually, are given precedence over the exigencies
of business.

Objectionable methods and practices sometimes resorted to in the past by
corporate interests in endeavoring to influence legislation and public
opinion have been abandoned beyond resurrection.

It is only fair that with them should be abandoned the habit of
politicians, sometimes politicians in very high places, to denounce as
"lobbying" every organized effort of large business to oppose tendencies
and propositions of legislation deemed by it inimical to the best
interests of business and of the country.

It is only fair that there should be abandoned the habit of sneering at
and suspecting organized efforts by business men to educate public
opinion on questions affecting business and finance as improper attempts
to "manufacture" or "accelerate" public opinion.

V

The people are fair-minded and when fully informed, almost invariably
wise and right in their judgment, which cannot always be said of their
representatives.

When scolded, browbeaten, maligned and harassed, finance may well turn
upon its professional fault-finders and challenge comparison.

Finance and financiers have had no mean share in creating organizations
and institutions in this country which are models of efficiency and
which men from all quarters of the globe come here to study and to
admire.

It is the critics of finance and business who--to mention but a few
instances--have given to the army aeroplanes that are grossly defective,
to the navy submarines that are in constant trouble, who have passed
laws which have driven our ships off the seas in the world's trade, and
other laws which have mainly brought it about that in the year 1915 less
railroad mileage has been constructed in the United States than within
any one year since the Civil War.

Just as Congress, by a series of laws, has imposed burdens and costs
upon ships operating under the American flag which made it impossible
for capital to invest in American ships for use in the world's trade and
earn a fair return in normal times, so the Federal and State
L