increase their capitals by appeals to the public for subscription, thus enabling themselves to rely less upon banking credit for their operations. But, besides all this, it thought that institutions to provide additional assistance for trade and industry by developing similar facilities to those which have been given by the German banks were necessary. In this connection it noted the formation of the British Trade Corporation, whose career has since provided the City, always suspicious of semi-official enterprise, with some malicious satisfaction. Launched on a career of expansion in the after-war fever, with no solid mass of sound old business to lean on, with no hidden reserves to be used for concealing unfortunate slips, it showed some considerable losses when the fever gave way to anemic debility.
The Committee also made some sound and practical suggestions for an improvement in the machinery for promoting enterprise, and offering for public subscription new issues of capital. It pointed to the machinery already in existence, consisting of a group of financial houses, comprising investment trust companies, well-known issuing houses, merchant bankers and others, and it thought that it was within the power of this important group to render further assistance by identifying themselves with pro-
