earance of exuberance, conveyed a deep
solicitude.

"Shall I stay or do you want to talk alone?"

"Stay." Drake caught the hand which had stolen about his neck and patted
it with rough tenderness. "Besides I want you to get certain false ideas
out of your head. Well, Tom, I'll tell you the situation." He stopped a
moment as though considering, before beginning again with an appearance
of frankness which almost convinced the young man, though it failed
before the alarmed instinct of his daughter. "Miss Patsie here is taking
entirely too seriously something her mother repeated to her. I won't
attempt to deny that the times are shaky. They are. They may become
suddenly worse. That depends entirely on a certain group of men. But the
strong point as well as the weak point in the present situation is that
it can depend on a certain group. There will be no panic for the simple
reason that in a panic this group will lose in the tens of millions
where others lose thousands. Now this group in the past through their
control direct or inter-related has been able to dominate the centers of
credit, the money loaning institutions, such as the great banks and
insurance companies. By this means they have been in a measure able to
keep to themselves the great industrial exploitations dependent on the
ability to finance in the hundreds of millions. More, they have been
able to limit to narrow fields such men as myself and other newcomers,
who wish to rise to the same financial advantage. Lately this supremacy
has been threatened by the rise of a new financial idea, the Trust
company. This new form of banking, due to the scope permitted under the
present law, has been able to deal in business and to make loans on
collateral which, while valid, is forbidden a bank under the statutes.
The Trust companies, able to deal in more profitable business and to pay
good interest consequently on deposits, have developed so enormously as
to threaten to overshadow the banks. Back of all this the Trust
companies have been developed and purchased by the younger generation of
financiers in order to acquire the means of providing themselves with
the credit necessary to develop their large schemes of industrial
expansion, without being at the mercy of influences which can be
controlled by others. From the moment the dominant group perceived this
phase of the development of the Trust company, war was certain. That's
where I come in. Pretty dry stuff. Can you