name. This is quite true, as will be shown for the benefit of those who are not already aware of the fact, when the question of bank shares as investments is discussed in detail in a later chapter. But the fact that the banks put the greater part of the funds which they handle at the disposal of industry and finance in the form of discounts and adyances does not make their shares any less a doorway through which the possessor may enter straight into the position of ownership, with a body of highly trained experts constantly at work to see that the assets of which he owns a fraction are carefully selected and well distributed, over the immense field that is covered by those whom it is the pride and the profit of the banks to serve.
By taking refuge in this hospitable half-way house the investor will not, by any means, have put away all his risk, and in buying the shares of banks, discount companies and insurance companies he will have to give serious consideration to the question of the heavy liability that is generally carried by them; but the automatic and unconscious saving and reinvestment that we found to be carried out for the shareholder by the directors of well-financed industrial companies will here, especially through investments in insurance companies, be very strongly on his side, while the important position that the
