Leading bankers have undoubtedly coöperated during the last 15 years in floating some very large security issues, as well as many small ones. But relatively few large issues were made necessary by great improvements undertaken or by industrial development. Improvements and development ordinarily proceed slowly. For them, even where the enterprise involves large expenditures, a series of smaller issues is usually more appropriate than single large ones. This is particularly true in the East where the building of new railroads has practically ceased. The “great” security issues in which bankers have coöperated were, with relatively few exceptions, made either for the purpose of effecting combinations or as a consequence of such combinations. Furthermore, the combinations which made necessary these large security issues or underwritings were, in most cases, either contrary to existing statute law, or contrary to laws recommended by the Interstate Commerce Commission, or contrary to the laws of business efficiency. So both the financial concentration and the combinations which they have served were, in the main, against the public interest. Size, we are told, is not a crime. But size may, at least, become noxious by reason of the means through which it was attained or the uses to which it is put. And it is size attained by combination, instead of natural growth, which has contributed so largely to our financial concentration. Let us examine a few cases: THE HARRIMAN PACIFICS J. P. Morgan & Co., in urging the “need of large banks and the coöperation of bankers,” said: “The Attorney-General’s recent approval of the Union Pacific settlement calls for a single commitment on the part of bankers of $126,000,000.” This $126,000,000 “commitment” was not made to enable the Union Pacific to secure capital. On the contrary it was a guaranty that it would succeed in disposing of its Southern Pacific stock to that amount. And when it had disposed of that stock, it was confronted with the serious problem--what to do with the proceeds? This huge underwriting became necessary solely because the Union Pacific had violated the Sherman Law. It had acquired that amount of Southern Pacific stock illegally; and the Supreme Court of the United States finally decreed that the illegality cease. This same illegal purchase had been the occasion, twelve years earlier, of another “great transaction,”--the issue of a $100,000,000 of Union Pacific bonds, which were sold to provide funds for acquiring this Southern Pacific and other stocks in violation of law. Bankers “coöperated” also to accomplish that. UNION PACIFIC IMPROVEMENTS