(3) Finally, all business must be looked upon as a form of public service, and the convenience of customers scrupulously consulted. Where there is competition this tends to regulate itself; but our public- service monopolies have too often followed the "public- be-damned" policy. The long-suffering community puts up with inadequate and crowded streetcars, inconvenient train service, a bungled and high- handed telephone system. Railway managements have sometimes been criminally indifferent to public safety, finding it less expensive to lose occasional damage suits than to install safety appliances. Efficiency in serving the public has likewise been sacrificed to dividends; and courtesy, where it is not recognized to have a cash value, tends to disappear. Such indictments point to the widespread existence of the idea that men and corporations are in business for themselves only, and not as fulfilling a public need.[Footnote: For concrete illustrations, see Outlook, vol. 91, p. 861; vol. 95, p. 515. World's Work, vol. 23, p. 579.] II. TO INVENTORS? It has not been generally enough recognized that business men owe it to investors to do their best to see to it that they get fair returns on their money invested -and only fair returns. There are a number of ways in which, on the one hand, the investing public is "skinned," and, on the other hand, stock in a business, largely owned by the management itself, has been rewarded with undeserved dividends at the expense of the public. (1) There are, in the first place, the get-rich-quick swindles, the out-and-out impostures, which have deceived the credulous into investments that never could pay. Bonanza mines, impractical inventions, town lots laid out on the prairie, orange groves that existed only on paper-such bogus hopes have enticed many an honest man and woman, who could ill afford to lose, into turning over their small earnings to the brazen exploiters.[Footnote: For cases, see World's Work, vol. 21, p. 14112.]