MR. BANKER: Mr. Lawyer, unless you stop your flow of eloquence upon this newly discovered means of human happiness, I will not get a chance to state the third greatest contributing cause to the uniform and universal development and advancement of mankind. It is steam and its modern companion electricity. Through the application of steam to ocean craft and railroads, transportation has brought the people of the whole world practically into one market zone, and we are now all eating the same food and wearing the same clothes, and to the last degree, every people, and broadly speaking, every man, is doing that which he can do most efficiently and profitably.
MR. MANUFACTURER: Mr. Banker, you have certainly opened up an entirely new strain of thought to me; and yet when you grasp the full force of the idea, and comprehend fully these three elements or forces: printing, the general transmission or diffusion of thought or knowledge; credit, the fullest use of all our talents by opening up a world of opportunity; and transportation, the fullest exchange of all the products of the mind and hand of man, you have actually covered the realm of human life up to date. And yet, who ever thought of placing this relative importance upon credit. We have been discussing the comparative importance of gun powder that brought the knight and soldier to a common level, the cotton gin, electricity, the telegraph, the telephone, chemistry, surgery, wireless, printing and steam, but whoever heard of credit in this connection?
MR. MERCHANT: What you say is distinctly true, but all these other things I can readily see are only additional facilities in making the three great fundamental instrumentalities for the advancement of the human race more efficient; and the more one thinks it over, the more impressive Mr. Banker's statement becomes.
_First_: Printing, the means of spreading knowledge;
_Second_: Credit, the fullest opportunity of developing and using the powers of mind and body;
_Third_: Steam and electricity, the means of distributing on land and sea the products of all mankind.
These three, printing, credit and power are certainly the three greatest forces of modern civilization.
MR. BANKER: Now, gentlemen, having convinced you as I assume I must have done, of the tremendous part that credit is playing in the world of today, let us try to find out and comprehend just what credit really is, and how it happens to be so essential to our present life.