The Chairman is out to make a record, or to fortify a preconceived notion or accomplish a preconceived purpose.
Counsel is out to make a record. The principal witnesses are placed in the position of defendants at the bar without being protected by any of the safeguards which are thrown around defendants in a court of law.
To complete the picture, I must—saving your presence—add this other patch of black: The reporting is very frequently, if not generally, done by young men not very familiar with matters of finance and in search of incident and of high light rather than of the neutral tints of a sober and even record; and the job of headlining seems somehow to be entrusted always to a mortal enemy of the particular witnesses of each session, selected with great care for his ingenuity in compressing the maximum of poison gases into a few explosive words.
It may all be legitimate, according to political standards, but it is not justice, and what of benefit is accomplished could equally well be obtained, whatever of guilt is to be revealed could equally well and probably better be disclosed, without resorting to inflammatory appeal and without, by assault or innuendo, recklessly and often indiscriminately besmirching reputations and hurting before the whole world the good name of American business.
I do not know of any similar method and practice and spirit of conducting investigations in any other country.
By all means let us delve deep wherever we have reason to suspect that guilt lies buried. Let us take short cuts to arrive at the truth, but let us be sure that it is the truth that we shall meet at the end of our road, and not a mongrel thing wearing some of the garments of truth, but some others, too, belonging to that trinity of unlovely sisters, passion, prejudice and self-seeking.
III
In many ways, in many instances, wrong impressions about finance have been given to the public, sometimes from ignorance, sometimes with malice aforethought, sometimes for political purposes.
The fact is that the men in charge of our financial affairs are, and to be successful, must be every whit as honorable, as patriotic, as right thinking, as anxious for the good opinions of their fellowmen as those in other walks of life.
In every time of crisis or difficulty in the nation's history, from the War of Independence to the present European War, financiers have given striking proof of their devotion of the public weal, and they may be depended upon to do so whenever and howsoever called upon.