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 it enables those who follow it to feel that they are in chase of a quarry which they will only catch if they have helped to produce something which the demand of consumers has sealed as desirable. It is true that consumers often demand things which make the fastidious shudder, but that is another question. Viewed in this light investment may become a quite interesting hobby, and as I hope to show before I have done, the cultivation of this hobby by a sufficient number of intelligent people might do much to clean out the gutters which bad investment and stupid investors fill with unsavoury refuse.

At the same time the ideal of safety has constantly to be kept before us, and it must never be forgotten that as little risk as possible was put first among the objects that we wish to achieve. Anyone who is investing for his old age and for dependents who rely on his earning power has no right to tread the primrose path of dalliance with speculative risks until he has secured himself and them against all chance of penury. It has been well said that it is man's first duty to be healthy, and his second to be solvent; if he fails in either of these duties he is not pulling his weight in the economic boat but is only a cumbersome passenger, carried by the exertions of others