Objectionable methods and practices sometimes resorted to in the past by corporate interests in endeavoring to influence legislation and public opinion have been abandoned beyond resurrection.
It is only fair that with them should be abandoned the habit of politicians, sometimes politicians in very high places, to denounce as "lobbying" every organized effort of large business to oppose tendencies and propositions of legislation deemed by it inimical to the best interests of business and of the country.
It is only fair that there should be abandoned the habit of sneering at and suspecting organized efforts by business men to educate public opinion on questions affecting business and finance as improper attempts to "manufacture" or "accelerate" public opinion.
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The people are fair-minded and when fully informed, almost invariably wise and right in their judgment, which cannot always be said of their representatives.
When scolded, browbeaten, maligned and harassed, finance may well turn upon its professional fault-finders and challenge comparison.
Finance and financiers have had no mean share in creating organizations and institutions in this country which are models of efficiency and which men from all quarters of the globe come here to study and to admire.
It is the critics of finance and business who—to mention but a few instances—have given to the army aeroplanes that are grossly defective, to the navy submarines that are in constant trouble, who have passed laws which have driven our ships off the seas in the world's trade, and other laws which have mainly brought it about that in the year 1915 less railroad mileage has been constructed in the United States than within any one year since the Civil War.
Just as Congress, by a series of laws, has imposed burdens and costs upon ships operating under the American flag which made it impossible for capital to invest in American ships for use in the world's trade and earn a fair return in normal times, so the Federal and State Legislatures, during the past ten years, have imposed upon the railroads all kinds of exactions, restrictions and increasing costs which have had the result of arresting progress, and which threaten, after the cessation of the present period of abnormal earnings, to seriously lame that vastly important industry.
Congress has done little to indicate that it recognizes the urgency and bigness and significance of the momentous situation which confronts the country.