out twenty thousand prospectuses of a new mine. People are very touchy in such matters, and therefore, in catering for the public, as regards investments, great discrimination is necessary. The different classes of investors must be passed through the speculator’s machine like the threshed corn, and when the husks and dust have been winnowed from the solid grain, he proceeds to classify them, and, as far as possible, learn their taste in the matter of investments. [Sidenote: ADMINISTERING SHARES TO THE PUBLIC.] When joint-stock banking came into vogue, promoters of the new undertakings that were destined gradually to supersede private banks, and have superseded all but those that have exceptionally deep roots, and partners left who are very tenacious of ancient customs, were very tentative in their mode of proceeding. As with all new things for which the public require to be educated, companies established on the share system had in the beginning to be brought forward gently and quietly, so as not to startle people. Persons are easily scared when asked to become partners in a bank, in the sense of taking much responsibility and sharing but to a small extent in what are understood to be the honors of such a position. The finessing which was at first necessary to accustom the public to joint-stock undertakings was gradually followed by a thirst for shares, because all such concerns for a considerable time were associated with a premium. Individual promoters worked at the business of building up joint-stock schemes, then it grew to syndicates, and now we have wealthy firms, with large machinery, whose whole time and staff are devoted to hunting about the world for powers to bring out foreign loans, for concessions for making railways, docks, harbours, gasworks, and the like. When they have procured one or the other, they fix the amount of capital, cut it up into shares, and administer them to the public, by much the same process as the Strasburgers enlarge the livers of their geese. Instead of people being asked politely by an advertisement to become shareholders in a new concern, the axiom of the supply creating a demand is acted upon in these times, and a man finds in his letter-box an investment especially suited to his taste and means, at the precise moment when his half-yearly dividends are falling due. The economy of capital is thus being pushed to its extremest limits, through the development of a system by which one man makes it his anxious business to see that his neighbour’s interest on his capital shall scarcely have been passed to his credit at the bank before it is snatched away to fructify in some scheme for benefiting mankind in one or other of the four quarters of the globe.