Investments provided by machinery can be done on a very large scale, and when successful are as a consequence very profitable. But unfortunately it is a kind of avocation that is pretty nearly sure to be followed by many unscrupulous persons, who will resort to all kinds of deceit and trickery, in giving a false and dazzling hue to projects that should never have seen the light. Moreover, the great difficulty that individuals find in ascertaining the truth of statements, and the authenticity of facts, causes them too frequently to take for granted what should be always viewed with more or less suspicion, unless the people who vouch for such facts are of the most undoubted standing and respectability; and, as we have remarked, it is seldom that such persons will lend their names to anything of the kind. During a season of great prosperity the promotion of new companies is sure to be largely overdone, and great will be the losses suffered; but there is sure to be more good done in the world by the dissemination of capital in new parts of the earth that would otherwise lie for the most part unproductive, than there is harm done through the misapplication or loss of a part of it. Many people bewail and lament over the failure of a bank, a discount house, or joint-stock concern now and again, and when a commercial crisis takes place one would think the world was coming to an end, as indeed the Viennese thought when they had a sharp lesson for their money-greed, early in 1873; but a little sensible reflection will show that calms and storms alternate in every variety of form on the earth, and are not confined to seas whose strands occasionally strewed with the produce of a foreign clime is only an indication of the miscarriage of a minute portion of the benefits which, in fair weather, are conveyed by the inhabitants of one land to those of another. The fact remains, however, that speculation by machinery, or in other words, the modern system of cramming the public with securities wholesale, may be attended with a good deal of mischief, and although it is too much to say that people who launch new undertakings upon such a system are necessarily unscrupulous, there are strong reasons for looking very closely at securities known to proceed from the offices of firms whose business it professedly is to make money by manufacturing stocks and shares wholesale, and forcing them upon the public. In the first place, such a business requires a great deal of money to carry it on, and a good deal of risk must be run, and money paid out of pocket, before there is a chance of seeing anything back again. Under such circumstances private enterprises are sought to be purchased at a small price, and sold to the public at a very large one, so as to secure a considerable margin, the only object of the speculators by machinery being to fill their own pockets.