This sounds simple; but the employers did not find it so. You, I hope, would not buy shares in a new company unless you saw what are called good names on the prospectus, shewing that half a dozen persons whom you believe to be wealthy, trustworthy, good judges of business, and in responsible social stations were setting you the example. If ever you do you will regret it, possibly in the workhouse. Now the art of getting at the people with the good names, and interesting them, is one at which practical employers are for the most part incurably unskilled. Therefore when they want to raise capital on the modern scale they are forced to go to persons who, having made a special profession of it, know where to go and how to proceed. These persons are called Promoters, though they usually call themselves financiers. They naturally charge a very high commission for their services; and the accountants and solicitors whose reputations inspire confidence put a high price on their names also. They all find that they can make so much by raising large capitals that it is not worth their while to trouble themselves with small ones; and the quaint result of this is that an employer finds it easier to raise large sums than small ones. If he wants only £20,000, the promoters and financiers shew him the door contemptuously: the pickings on so small a sum are beneath their notice. If, however, he wants £100,000, they will listen superciliously, and perhaps get it for him. Only, though he has to pay interest on £100,000, and stand indebted in that amount, he is very lucky if he receives £70,000 in cash. The promoters and financiers divide the odd £30,000 among themselves for their names and their trouble in raising the money. The employers are helpless in their hands: it is a case of take it or leave it: if they refuse the terms they get no capital. Thus the financiers and their go-betweens are now masters of the situation; and the men who actually conduct and order the industry of the country, who would have been great commercial magnates in Queen Victoria’s reign, are now under the thumbs of men who never employed an industrial workman nor entered a factory or mine in their lives, and never intend to.