The organization of the Money Trust is intensive, the combination comprehensive; but one other element was recognized as necessary to render it stable, and to make its dynamic force irresistible. Despotism, be it financial or political, is vulnerable, unless it is believed to rest upon a moral sanction. The longing for freedom is ineradicable. It will express itself in protest against servitude and inaction, unless the striving for freedom be made to seem immoral. Long ago monarchs invented, as a preservative of absolutism, the fiction of “The divine right of kings.” Bankers, imitating royalty, invented recently that precious rule of so-called “Ethics,” by which it is declared unprofessional to come to the financial relief of any corporation which is already the prey of another “reputable” banker. “The possibility of competition between these banking houses in the purchase of securities,” says the Pujo Committee, “is further removed by the understanding between them and others, that one will not seek, by offering better terms, to take away from another, a customer which it has theretofore served, and by corollary of this, namely, that where given bankers have once satisfactorily united in bringing out an issue of a corporation, they shall also join in bringing out any subsequent issue of the same corporations. This is described as a principle of banking ethics.” The “Ethical” basis of the rule must be that the interests of the combined bankers are superior to the interests of the rest of the community. Their attitude reminds one of the “spheres of influence” with ample “hinterlands” by which rapacious nations are adjusting differences. Important banking concerns, too ambitious to be willing to take a subordinate position in the alliance, and too powerful to be suppressed, are accorded a financial “sphere of influence” upon the understanding that the rule of banking ethics will be faithfully observed. Most prominent among such lesser potentates are Kuhn, Loeb & Co., of New York, an international banking house of great wealth, with large clientele and connections. They are accorded an important “sphere of influence” in American railroading, including among other systems the Baltimore & Ohio, the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific. They and the Morgan group have with few exceptions preëmpted the banking business of the important railroads of the country. But even Kuhn, Loeb & Co. are not wholly independent. The Pujo Committee reports that they are “qualified allies of the inner group”; and through their “close relations with the National City Bank and the National Bank of Commerce and other financial institutions” have “many interests in common with the Morgan associates, conducting large joint-account operations with them.” THE EVILS RESULTANT