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 would gladly advise you on investments. But perhaps you rightly feel that the less they know about your financial affairs, the better. To handle trusts, and to care for the securities of widows and orphans, is our business.”

It was startling to note how this sort of thing mounted into millions. “Women are becoming more and more used to the handling of money,” Paula said, shrewdly. “Pretty soon their patronage is going to be as valuable as that of men. The average woman doesn’t know about bonds—about bond buying. They think they’re something mysterious and risky. They ought to be educated up to it. Didn’t you say something, Dirk, about classes in finance for women? You could make a sort of semi-social affair of it. Send out invitations and get various bankers—big men, whose names are known—to talk to these women.”

“But would the women come?”

“Of course they’d come. Women will accept any invitation that’s engraved on heavy cream paper.”

The Great Lakes Trust had a branch in Cleveland now, and one in New York, on Fifth Avenue. The drive to interest women in bond buying and to instruct them in finance was to take on almost national proportions. There was to be newspaper and magazine advertising.

The Talks for Women on the Subject of Finance were held every two weeks in the crystal room of the Blackstone and were a great success. Paula was right. Much of old Aug Hempel’s shrewdness and business