g corporations and public
utility corporations, by means of stock holdings, voting trusts, fiscal
agency contracts, or representation upon their boards of directors, or
through supplying the money requirements of railway, industrial, and
public utility corporations and thereby being enabled to participate in
the determination of their financial and business policies" (p. 56).

5. "Through partnership or joint account arrangements between a few of
the leading banking houses, banks, and trust companies in the purchase
of security issues of the great interstate corporations, accompanied by
understandings of recent growth--sometimes called 'banking
ethics'--which have had the effect of effectually destroying competition
between such banking houses, banks, and trust companies in the struggle
for business or in the purchase and sale of large issues of such
securities" (p. 56).

Morgan & Co., the First National Bank, the National City Bank, the
Bankers Trust Co., and the Guaranty Trust Co., which were all closely
affiliated, had extended their control until they held,--

118 directorships in 34 banks with combined resources of
$2,679,000,000.

30 directorships in 10 insurance companies with total assets of
$2,293,000,000.

105 directorships in 32 transportation systems having a total
capital of $11,784,000,000.

63 directorships in 24 producing and trading companies having a
total capitalization of $3,339,000,000.

25 directorships in 12 public utility corporations with a total
capitalization of $2,150,000,000.

The investment banker had become, what he was ultimately bound to be,
the center of the system built upon the century-long struggle to control
the wealth of the continent in the interest of the favored few who
happened to own the choicest natural gifts.

6. _The Cohesion of Wealth_

The struggle for wealth and power, actively waged among the business men
of the United States for more than a century, has thus by a process of
elimination, subordination and survival, placed a few small groups of
strong men in a position of immense economic power. The growth of
surplus and its importance in the world of affairs has made the
investment banker the logical center of this business leadership. He,
with his immediate associates, directs and controls the affairs of the
economic world.

The spirit of competition ruled the American business world at the
beginnin