Renewal of Reichsbank Charter

respect the case is really not so bad. In this connection I should like to call attention to a certain tendency to look in all directions for the economically weak, who must be protected against the supposedly strong. In this instance, the public, as the weaker part, is to be protected against the stronger banking world. This is the social tendency, and everything that is touched by it is rendered holy and inviolable. But, gentlemen, even the last secretary of the interior, Count von Posadowsky, frequently declared in the Reichstag that we must be careful not to weaken the self-reliance of the people by too much supervision and too much protection. If I am not mistaken, he used the expression once that we should be careful not to place a guardian at the side of each man, and that every one should be brought up to self-reliance and to a recognition of his own responsibility for the actions of his economic life. If a banker offers a customer 6 or 8 per cent, while the large banks will give only 3 per cent, he is a very foolish man and lacking in good judgment who trusts his money to the former in order to reach the golden mountain. No law can protect the stupid; to limit banks in their important operations for their sake would be a foolish proceeding. This would be especially regretted by industry, which recognizes the importance of a fully developed banking system. I would not go as far as the first main speaker, who says that the banks have been the pioneers of industry. I would reckon among these pioneers the enterprise of the manufacturers themselves and the great technical skill of those associated with them. But there is no doubt that industry is thoroughly

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