PROMOTERS AND PROMOTING 



investment. New railways were built, 

 banks started, mines and furnaces opened, 

 and factories erected. But in each case, or 

 at least as a rule, the project was wholly in- 

 dividual, involving new organization, 

 large often fraudulent capitalization, 

 fake dividends, and the other features 

 which American experience has made so 

 familiar, but not embracing any combina- 

 tion of plants or of corporations. It is safe 

 to say that the proportion of promoting to 

 total business was as great in Germany and 

 Austria, 1870-75 no trusts yet existing as 

 in the United States, 1899-1903 the golden 

 age of trusts and that it was far more reck- 

 less and disastrous in those countries then 

 than it has been in our own country during 

 the trust years just past. 



It is now in order to raise the inquiry 

 whether the promoter, whose portrait we 

 have tried to outline, is a producer or a para- 

 site, a boon or a burden. Does he contribute 

 to the social pile or simply help pull it down 

 after we of the sweaty brows and the horny 

 hands have heaped it up? Are not dead 



257 



