If opportunity for such scrutiny is denied, if the people's legitimate desire for information is met with silence, secrecy, impatience and resentment, the public mind very naturally becomes infected with suspicion and lends a willing ear to all sorts of gossip and rumors. The people properly and justly insist that the same "fierce light that beats upon a throne" should also beat upon the high places of finance and commerce. It is for those occupying such places to show cause why they should be considered fit persons to be entrusted with them, the test being not merely ability, but just as much, if not more, character, self-restraint, fair-mindedness and due sense of duty towards the public. Finance, instead of avoiding publicity in all of its aspects, should welcome it and seek it. Publicity won't hurt its dignity. A dignity which can be preserved only by seclusion, which cannot hold its own in the market place, is neither merited nor worth having. We must more and more get out of the seclusion of our offices, out into the rough and tumble of democracy, out--to get to know the people and get known by them. Not to know one another means but too frequently to misunderstand one another, and there is no more fruitful source of trouble than to misunderstand one another's kind and ways and motives. 3. Service Every man who by eminent success in commerce or finance raises himself beyond his peers is in the nature of things more or less of an "irritant" (I use the word in its technical meaning) to the community. It behooves him, therefore, to make his position as little jarring as possible upon that immense majority whose existence is spent in the lowlands of life so far as material circumstances are concerned. It behooves him to exercise self-restraint and to make ample allowance for the point of view and the feelings of others, to be patient, helpful, conciliatory. It behooves him to remember that many other men are working, and have worked all their lives, with probably as much effort and assiduous application, as much self-abnegation as he, but have not succeeded in raising themselves above mediocre stations in life, because to them has not been granted the possession of those peculiar gifts which beget conspicuous success, and to which, because they are very rare and because they are needed for the world's work, is given the incentive of liberal reward. He should beware of that insidious tendency of wealth to chill and isolate; he should be careful not to let his feelings, aspirations and sympathies become hardened or narrowed; lest he become estranged from his fellow men; and with this in view he should not only be approachable but should seek and welcome contact with the work-a-day world so as to remain part and parcel of it, to maintain and prove his homogeneity with his fellow men.