Trust companies have lately shown a tendency both to increase their capital and to multiply their number, and there is certainly room for great development in this field.
By investing in all the companies of this financing class, the investor may be certain that he is doing a most useful service to all kinds of industry. Without banking, discounting and insurance, industry, as now organized, would be impossible; and trust companies, which take their shareholders' money and invest it, put it directly at the disposal of industrial and official borrowers. If we all insisted on buying nothing but trust company stocks, the whole work of investment would be done by trust companies, and though it is likely that some bad ones would come into being to meet the public's incurable craving for questionable securities, the business of investment would probably be done, on the whole, much better than it is now. Industries which wanted capital would have to get it from trained experts.
When the investor has built his ground floor he can, if he wants a house of many storeys, go on to industrial ventures and to public debts which he believes to be "promising," because new leaves are going to be turned, and sinners are going to forswear sack and live cleanly.
