MR. BANKER: I think that you will all perceive from what Mr. Lawyer has just said with regard to the various directions into which capital may be turned and the fatal mistake that is ever and ever recurring--the transfer of active or productive capital, or the commercial fund, into the investment fund, or fixed forms, is what invariably, as he said a moment ago, breaks the chain of credit at some point.
You can readily see, indeed it takes no argument to show, that nothing in the business world should be guarded so jealously as the commercial fund of the country, in order that credit may be maintained and labor steadily employed.
MR. LAWYER: Our discussion has brought us most naturally to the last word suggested for our consideration, and that is the word "credit." I remember what Daniel Webster once said in a speech when speaking on the continuance of the charter of the United States Bank in 1837. It was this: "Credit is the vital air of the system of modern commerce. It has done more, a thousand times, to enrich the nations than all the mines of all the world." And again in another place he says: "We owe more to credit and to commercial confidence than any nation which ever existed; and ten times more than any nation, except England. Credit and confidence have been the life of our system, and powerfully productive causes of all our prosperity. They have covered the seas with our commerce, replenished the treasury, paid off the national debt, excited and stimulated the manufacturing industry, encouraged labor to put forth the whole strength of its sinews, felled the forests and multiplied our numbers, and augmented the nation, so far beyond all example, as to leave us a phenomenon for other nations to look at with wonder."
MR. BANKER: That might have been true in 1837, but today other commercial nations could truthfully reverse that comment, for they have in some respects and in some places passed us in credit facilities--they have beaten us as it were at our own game, that is, in having worked out a more highly developed use of credit.
MR. MANUFACTURER: When you recall the fact that between 90 and 95 per cent of our business is carried on in some form of credit, you realize that we have become so accustomed to this marvelous device that we have lost appreciation of its power for human achievement and advancement.