Neither should an investment banker be needed to find investors willing to take up, in small lots, a new issue of bonds of New York or Massachusetts, of Boston, Philadelphia or Baltimore, or a hundred other American cities. A state or municipality seeking to market direct to the investor its own bonds would naturally experience, at the outset, some difficulty in marketing a large issue. And in a newer community, where there is little accumulation of unemployed capital, it might be impossible to find buyers for any large issue. Investors are apt to be conservative; and they have been trained to regard the intervention of the banker as necessary. The bankers would naturally discourage any attempt of states and cities to dispense with their services. Entrance upon a market, hitherto monopolized by them, would usually have to be struggled for. But banker-fed investors, as well as others could, in time, be brought to realize the advantage of avoiding the middleman and dealing directly with responsible borrowers. Governments, like private concerns, would have to do educational work; but this publicity would be much less expensive and much more productive than that undertaken by the bankers. Many investors are already impatient of banker exactions; and eager to deal directly with governmental agencies in whom they have more confidence. And a great demand could, at once, be developed among smaller investors whom the bankers have been unable to interest, and who now never buy state or municipal bonds. The opening of this new field would furnish a market, in some respects more desirable and certainly wider than that now reached by the bankers. Neither do states or cities ordinarily need the services of the investment banker to carry their bonds pending distribution to the investor. Where there is immediate need for large funds, states and cities--at least the older communities--should be able to raise the money temporarily, quite as well as the bankers do now, while awaiting distribution of their bonds to the investor. Bankers carry the bonds with other people’s money, not with their own. Why should not cities get the temporary use of other people’s money as well? Bankers have the preferential use of the deposits in the banks, often because they control the banks. Free these institutions from banker-control, and no applicant to borrow the people’s money will be received with greater favor than our large cities. Boston, with its $1,500,000,000 of assessed valuation and $78,033,128 net debt, is certainly as good a risk as even Lee, Higginson & Co. or Kidder, Peabody & Co.