by the Pujo Committee would be confined to railroad corporations; and the new security issues of other corporations listed on the New York Stock Exchange have aggregated in the last five years $4,525,404,025, which is more than either the railroad or the municipal issues. Publicity offers, however, another and even more promising remedy: a method of regulating bankers’ charges which would apply automatically to railroad, public-service and industrial corporations alike.
The question may be asked: Why have these excessive charges been submitted to? Corporations, which in the first instance bear the charges for capital, have, doubtless, submitted because of banker-control; exercised directly through interlocking directorates, or kindred relations, and indirectly through combinations among bankers to suppress competition. But why have the investors submitted, since ultimately all these charges are borne by the investors, except so far as corporations succeed in shifting the burden upon the community? The large army of small investors, constituting a substantial majority of all security buyers, are entirely