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HIGH FINANCE

OTTO H. KAHN

ADDRESS DELIVERED AT ANNUAL DINNER AMERICAN NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION APRIL 27, 1916, WALDORF-ASTORIA, NEW YORK

HIGH FINANCE

The term "high finance" derives its origin from the French "haute finance," which in France as elsewhere in Europe designates the most eminently respectable, the most unqualifiedly trustworthy amongst financial houses.

Why has that term, in becoming acclimated in this country, gradually come to suggest a rather different meaning?

Why does there exist in the United States, alone amongst the great nations, a widespread attitude of suspicion, indeed in many quarters, of virtual hostility, toward the financial community and especially toward the financial activities which focus in New York, the country's financial capital?

There are a number of causes and for some of them finance cannot be absolved from responsibility. But the primary underlying and continuing cause is lack of clear appreciation of what finance means and stands for and is needed for. And from this there has sprung a veritable host of misconceptions, prejudices, superstitions and catch-phrases.

Never was it of more importance than in the present emergency that the people should have a clear and correct understanding of the meaning and significance of finance, indeed of "high finance," and that they should approach the subject calmly and dispassionately and with untroubled vision, for when the European war is over and the period of reconstruction sets in, one of the most vital questions of the day will be that of finance and financing.

The handling and adjustment of that question, although it primarily concerns Europe, cannot fail to affect America favorably or unfavorably, according to the wisdom or lack of wisdom of our own attitude and actions.

A great many things are being and have been charged in the popular view against finance, with which finance, properly understood, has nothing to do.

The possession of wealth does not make a man a financier--just as little as the possession of a chest of tools makes a man a carpenter.

Finance does not mean speculation--although speculation when it does not degenerate into mere gambling has a proper and legitimate place in the scheme of things economic. Finance most emphatically does not mean fleecing the public, nor fattening parasitically off the industry and commerce of the country.

Finance cannot properly be held responsible for the exploits, good, bad or indifferent, of the man who, having made money at manufacturing, or mining, or in other commercial pursuits, blows into town, either physically or by telephone or telegraph, and goes on a financial spree, more or less prolonged.

Finance means constructive work. It means mobilizing and organizing the wealth of the country so that the scattered monetary resources of the individuals may be united and guided into a mighty current of fruitful co-operation--a hundredfold, nay ten-thousandfold as potent as they would or could be in individual hands.

Finance means promoting and facilitating the country's trade at home and abroad, creating new wealth, making new jobs for workmen.

It means continuous study of the conditions prevailing throughout the world. It means daring and imagination combined with care and foresight and integrity, and hard, wearing work--much of it not compensated, because of every ten propositions submitted to the scrutiny or evolved by the brain of the financier who is duly careful of his reputation and conscious of his responsibility to the public, it is safe to say that not more than three materialize.

For the financial offspring of which he acknowledges parentage, or merely godfathership, he is held responsible by the public for better or for worse, and will continue to be held responsible notwithstanding certain ill-advised provisions of the recently enacted Clayton Anti-Trust Act which are bound to make it more difficult for him to discharge that responsibility.

It is perhaps significant that almost all the railroad companies now in receivers' hands were among those for whose financial policy no one amongst the leading banking houses had a continuous and recognized responsibility, though I must not be understood as meaning to suggest that there were not other contributory causes for such receivership, involving responsibility and blame, amongst others, also on members of the banking fraternity.

Without going into shades of encyclopedic meaning, I would define, for the purpose of this discussion, a financier as a man who has some recognized relation and responsibility toward the larger monetary affairs of the public, either by administering deposits and loaning funds or by being a wholesale or retail distributor of securities.

To all such the confidence of the financial community, which naturally knows them best, and of the investing public is absolutely vital. Without it, they simply cannot live.

But even the resources thus combined of the entire financial community would fall far short of being sufficient to supply the needed funds for more than a very limited time, and appeal must therefore be made to the absorbing power of the country as a whole represented by the ultimate investor.

Now, let a financial house, either through lack of a high standard of integrity in dealing with the public, or through lack of thoroughness and care, or through bad judgment, forfeit the confidence of its neighbors or of the investing public, and the very roots of its being are cut.

I do not mean to claim that high finance has not in some instances strayed from the highest standard, that it has not made mistakes, that it has not at times yielded to temptation--and the temptations which beset its path are indeed many--that there have not been some occurrences which every right thinking man must deplore and condemn.

But I do say and claim that practically all such instances have occurred during what may be termed the country's industrial and economic pioneer period, a period of vast and unparalleled concentration of national energy and effort upon material achievement, of tremendous and turbulent surging towards tangible accomplishment, of sheer individualism, a period of lax enforcement of the laws by those in authority, of uncertainty regarding the meaning of the statutes relating to business and, consequently, of impatience at restraint and a weakened sense of the fear, respect and obedience due to the law.

In the mighty and blinding rush of that whirlwind of enterprise and achievement things were done--generally without any attempt at concealment, in the open light of day for everyone to behold--which would not accord with our present ethical and legal standards, and public opinion permitted them to be done.

To quote one instance out of many: Campaign contributions by corporations were a recognized and almost universal practice. The acceptance of such contributions did not shock the most tender political conscience. Now they are rightly forbidden, and what up to a few short years ago was not only not prohibited but sanctioned by the custom of a generation and more, is now made and considered a crime.

Then suddenly a mirror was held up by influences sufficiently powerful to cause the mad race to halt for a moment and to compel the concentrated attention of all the people. And that mirror clearly showed, perhaps it even magnified, the blemishes on that which it reflected.

With their recognition came stern insistence upon change, and very quickly the realization of that demand. That is the normal process of civilization in its march forward and upward.

And I claim that Finance has been as quick and willing as any other element in the community to discern the moral obligations of the new era brought about within the last ten years and to align itself on their side.

As soon as the meaning of the laws under which business was to be conducted had come to be reasonably defined, as soon as it became apparent that the latitude tacitly permitted during the pioneer period must end, finance fell into line with the new spirit and has kept in line.

I say this notwithstanding the various investigations that have since taken place, nearly all of which have dealt with incidents that occurred several years ago.

And in this connection I would add that it is difficult to imagine anything more unfair than the theory and method of these investigations as all too frequently conducted.

The appeal all too often is to the gallery, hungry for sensation; the method--to wash as much soiled linen as possible in public , and to use a profusion of soap and water quite out of proportion to the actual cleaning to be done.

To innocent transactions it is sought to give a sinister meaning; what lapses, faults or wrongs may be discovered are given exaggerated portent and significance.

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.

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.

American finance has rendered immense services to the country, and its record--considering especially the gross faultiness of the laws under which it had to work before the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, and in some respects still has to work--compares by no means unfavorably with that of finance in Europe.

There has been no gambling frenzy in the financial markets of America within the memory of this generation equalling the recklessness and magnitude of England's South African mining craze with its record of questionable episodes, some of them involving great names; no scandal comparable to the Panama scandal, the copper collapse, the Cronier failure, and similar events in France; no bank failure as disgraceful and ruinous as that of the Leipziger Bank and two or three others within the last dozen years in Germany. No combination exists in this country remotely approaching the monopolistic control exercised by several of the so-called cartels and syndicates of Europe.

One of the reasons why finance so frequently has been the target for popular attack is that it deals with the tangible expression of wealth, and in the popular mind pre-eminently personifies wealth, and is widely looked upon as an easy way to acquire wealth without adequate service.

Yet it is a fact that there are very few financial houses of great wealth. All of the very greatest fortunes of the country, and in fact most of the great fortunes, have been made, not in finance, but in trade, industries and inventions.

A similar exaggerated view prevails as to the power of finance.

It is true there have been men in finance from time to time, though very rarely indeed, who did exercise exceedingly great power, such as, in our generation, the late J. P. Morgan and E. H. Harriman.

But the power of those men rested not in their being financiers, but in the compelling force of their unique personalities. They were born leaders of men and they would have been acknowledged leaders and exercised the power of such leadership in whatever walk of life they might have selected as theirs.

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