The reader will note the large sums appearing under mines and merchandise, showing that the Fuggers still maintained their dealings in wares, after they made finance their special business. The chief item, however, is that of loans, which included sums borrowed by the Pope, the Emperor, and kings of Europe. The Fuggers and other great financiers had immense influence on the politics of their time, for they could command money and credit while sovereigns were still trying in vain to build up an adequate revenue system. They made fabulous profits, over 50 per cent a year, in prosperous periods, and the Fuggers managed to make an average profit of over 30 per cent a year for over thirty years. In the case of most firms, however, there were lean years as well as fat ones, and the general average would be very much less. More striking than the rate of profit is the increase in the size of the capital. Taking two Italian banking firms, the Peruzzi about 1300, and the Medici about 1440, and comparing them with the Fuggers in 1546, we find that the capital was about as follows, expressed in modern purchasing power: Peruzzi, $800,000, Medici $7,500,000, Fuggers $40,000,000. =172. Weakness of the Fugger and other banking firms.=—The great financial firms of the sixteenth century seem to have been premature. They lacked the permanence of the later joint stock companies, for they still retained the medieval form of a company based chiefly on family relationship, and required constant reorganization. Their success in the hazardous operations of the time depended entirely on the sagacity of the heads of the family, and as genius cannot be transmitted indefinitely they went to pieces ordinarily in the third generation from their establishment. The head of the Fugger firm about 1550 tried to wind up the business and withdraw the capital, but found it impossible to do this, and became involved in more and more enterprises. The balance of the firm in 1563 showed decided weakness; members of the family began to quarrel among themselves; and the firm finally lost in unfortunate loans practically all its accumulations. The bankruptcy of one of these firms involved wide-spread disaster, for as time went on they carried on their business less and less on the money contributed by members, and more and more on their credit. All classes in the community—nobles, burghers, peasants whose savings did not exceed ten florins, even servants—deposited their money at interest with the financiers, and were involved in their fall.