e as far as possible relieved from any difficulty of finding all the
capital that it needs. To produce these results it is highly necessary
to increase the confidence of the public in the machinery of the Stock
Exchange, in company promotion and all financial issues. Any one who
sincerely believes that these results can be produced by tightening up
the Companies Acts is not only entitled but bound to press as hard as
he can for the securing of this object. But is this the right way to
do it? There is much to be said at first sight for making more strict
the regulations under which prospectuses have to be issued under the
Companies Acts, demanding a franker statement of the profits in the
past, a fuller statement concerning the prices paid to vendors, and
the prices paid by vendors to sub-vendors, and so forth. Any one who
sits down with a pre-war industrial prospectus in his hand can find
many openings for the hand of the reformer. The accounts published by
public companies might also be made fuller and more informing with
advantage. But even if these obviously beneficial reforms were carried
out, there would always be danger of their evasion. They might tend to
the placing of securities by hole-and-corner methods without the issue
of prospectuses at all, and to all the endless devices for dodging the
law which are so readily provided as soon as any attempt is made
by legislation to go too far ahead of public education and public
feeling.

This is the real solution of this problem--publicity, the education of
the public, and a higher ideal among financiers. As long as the public
likes to speculate and is greedy and ignorant enough to be taken in by
the wiles of the fraudulent promoter, attempts by legislation to check
this gentleman's enterprise will be defeated by his ingenuity and the
public's eagerness to be gulled. The ignorance of the public on the
subject of its investments is abysmal, as anybody knows who is brought
into practical touch with it. Just as the cure for the production of
rotten and fraudulent patent medicines thrust down the public's throat
by assiduous advertising is the education of the public concerning the
things of its stomach, so the real cure for financial swindles is the
education of the public concerning money matters, and its recognition
of the fact that it is impossible to make a fortune in the City
without running risks which involve the possible, not to say probable,
loss of all the mone