“A man raised the money in the late ’90s and built a beet sugar factory in Michigan. Wise-acres said it was nonsense. He gathered together the money from his friends who would take a chance with him. He not only built the sugar factory (and there was never any doubt of his ability to do that) but he made it pay. The next year two more sugar factories were built, and were financially successful. These were built by private individuals of wealth, taking chances in the face of cries of doubting bankers and trust companies. “Once demonstrated that the industry was a sound one financially and _then_ bankers and trust companies would lend the new sugar companies which were speedily organized a large part of the necessary funds to construct and operate. “The motor-car business was the same. “When a few gentlemen followed me in my vision of the possibilities of the business, the banks and older business men (who in the main were the banks) said, ‘fools and their money soon to be parted’--etc., etc. “Private capital at first establishes an industry, backs it through its troubles, and, if possible, wins financial success when banks would not lend a dollar of aid. “The business once having proved to be practicable and financially successful, then do the banks lend aid to its needs.” Such also was the experience of the greatest of the many financial successes in the automobile industry--the Ford Motor Company. HOW BANKERS ARREST DEVELOPMENT But “great banking houses” have not merely failed to initiate industrial development; they have definitely arrested development because to them the creation of the trusts is largely due. The recital in the Memorial addressed to the President by the Investors’ Guild in November, 1911, is significant: “It is a well-known fact that modern trade combinations tend strongly toward constancy of process and products, and by their very nature are opposed to new processes and new products originated by independent inventors, and hence tend to restrain competition in the development and sale of patents and patent rights; and consequently tend to discourage independent inventive thought, to the great detriment of the nation, and with injustice to inventors whom the Constitution especially intended to encourage and protect in their rights.” And more specific was the testimony of the _Engineering News_: “We are today something like five years behind Germany in iron and steel metallurgy, and such innovations as are being introduced by our iron and steel manufacturers are most of them merely following the lead set by foreigners years ago.