A recent British experience supports this view. In a brief period last spring nine different issues, aggregating $135,840,000, were offered by syndicates on the London market, and on the average only about 10 per cent. of these loans was taken by the public. Money was “tight,” but the rates of interest offered were very liberal, and no one doubted that the investors were well supplied with funds. _The London Daily Mail_ presented an explanation: “The long series of rebuffs to new loans at the hands of investors reached a climax in the ill success of the great Rothschild issue. It will remain a topic of financial discussion for many days, and many in the city are expressing the opinion that it may have a revolutionary effect upon the present system of loan issuing and underwriting. The question being discussed is that the public have become loth to subscribe for stock which they believe the underwriters can afford, by reason of the commission they receive, to sell subsequently at a lower price than the issue price, and that the Stock Exchange has begun to realize the public’s attitude. The public sees in the underwriter not so much one who insures that the loan shall be subscribed in return for its commission as a middleman, who, as it were, has an opportunity of obtaining stock at a lower price than the public in order that he may pass it off at a profit subsequently. They prefer not to subscribe, but to await an opportunity of dividing that profit. They feel that if, when these issues were made, the stock were offered them at a more attractive price, there would be less need to pay the underwriters so high commissions. It is another practical protest, if indirect, against the existence of the middleman, which protest is one of the features of present-day finance.” PUBLICITY AS A REMEDY Compel bankers when issuing securities to make public the commissions or profits they are receiving. Let every circular letter, prospectus or advertisement of a bond or stock show clearly what the banker received for his middleman-services, and what the bonds and stocks net the issuing corporation. That is knowledge to which both the existing security holder and the prospective purchaser is fairly entitled. If the bankers’ compensation is reasonable, considering the skill and risk involved, there can be no objection to making it known. If it is not reasonable, the investor will “strike,” as investors seem to have done recently in England.