business. If for one reason or another they find
themselves short of means in difficult times, it is his task and care to
find ways and means to obtain what is needed, sometimes at great
financial risk to himself.

It is perhaps significant that almost all the railroad companies now in
receivers' hands were among those for whose financial policy no one
amongst the leading banking houses had a continuous and recognized
responsibility, though I must not be understood as meaning to suggest
that there were not other contributory causes for such receivership,
involving responsibility and blame, amongst others, also on members of
the banking fraternity.

II

Without going into shades of encyclopedic meaning, I would define, for
the purpose of this discussion, a financier as a man who has some
recognized relation and responsibility toward the larger monetary
affairs of the public, either by administering deposits and loaning
funds or by being a wholesale or retail distributor of securities.

To all such the confidence of the financial community, which naturally
knows them best, and of the investing public is absolutely vital.
Without it, they simply cannot live.

To provide for the thousands of millions of dollars annually needed by
our railroads and other industries, would vastly overtax the resources
of all the greatest financial houses and groups taken together, and
therefore the financier or group of financiers undertaking such
transactions _must_ depend in the first instance upon the co-operation
of the financial community at large. For this purpose such houses or
groups associate with themselves for every transaction of considerable
size, a large number of other houses, thus forming so-called syndicates.

But even the resources thus combined of the entire financial community
would fall far short of being sufficient to supply the needed funds for
more than a very limited time, and appeal must therefore be made to
the absorbing power of the country as a whole represented by the
ultimate investor.

Now, let a financial house, either through lack of a high standard of
integrity in dealing with the public, or through lack of thoroughness
and care, or through bad judgment, forfeit the confidence of its
neighbors or of the investing public, and the very roots of its being
are cut.

I do not mean to claim that high finance has not in some instances
strayed from the highest standard, that it has not made mistake