_Third:_ Investment bankers, like J. P. Morgan & Co., dealers in bonds, stocks and notes, encroached upon the functions of the three other classes of corporations with which their business brought them into contact. They became the directing power in railroads, public service and industrial companies through which our great business operations are conducted--the makers of bonds and stocks. They became the directing power in the life insurance companies, and other corporate reservoirs of the people’s savings--the buyers of bonds and stocks. They became the directing power also in banks and trust companies--the depositaries of the quick capital of the country--the life blood of business, with which they and others carried on their operations. Thus four distinct functions, each essential to business, and each exercised, originally, by a distinct set of men, became united in the investment banker. It is to this union of business functions that the existence of the Money Trust is mainly due.* * Obviously only a few of the investment bankers exercise this great power; but many others perform important functions in the system, as hereinafter described. * * * * * The development of our financial oligarchy followed, in this respect, lines with which the history of political despotism has familiarized us:--usurpation, proceeding by gradual encroachment rather than by violent acts; subtle and often long-concealed concentration of distinct functions, which are beneficent when separately administered, and dangerous only when combined in the same persons. It was by processes such as these that Cæsar Augustus became master of Rome. The makers of our own Constitution had in mind like dangers to our political liberty when they provided so carefully for the separation of governmental powers. THE PROPER SPHERE OF THE INVESTMENT BANKER