Convention

In six special trains, which had paused on their dash southward only to take on ice, 1,000 delegates to the 14th annual convention of the Investment Bankers' Association of America were met at Winter Park, 140 miles from St. Petersburg, by the St. Petersburg Chambermen of Commerce, with several squads of motorcycle policemen and 54 enormous motor busses, which shimmered in the station-yard like a caravan of painted elephants. Handshaking, backslapping, ensued. The bankers dispersed to divert themselves before settling down to the serious sessions of boosting, debate, criticism which would begin next day.

Store windows had big signs up: "Bankers, give Florida due credit. Check it up and pledge to indorse it without protest . . . ." A real estate spellbinder went about urging bankers "to give Florida help with bonds, stocks, debentures, and other collateral." Almost none of the financiers thus exhorted were able to discover exactly what was meant.

Dry raiders confiscated 100 quarts of whisky from a room in the Soreno Hotel, headquarters of the convention. No warrants were issued.

Robert A. Gardner (Mitchell, Hutchins & Co., Chicago) and George V. Rotan (Newhaus & Co., Houston), in an exhibition golf match against Walter Hagen and Gilbert Nichols (trick-shot artist), beat them, 2 up.

Less proficient players indulged in a tournament of their own. On the desk of the Soreno Hotel the winners' trophies stood on display--two cocktail shakers.

Having completed their preliminary investigation of Florida conditions, the delegates assembled for their first session. A letter from President Coolidge was read by Eugene E. Thompson (Crane, Paris & Co., Washington). Many of the delegates thought that the President himself was reading to them, for Mr. Thompson strongly resembles Mr. Coolidge, except that he is not quite so angular. The President stated that he approved of the Association's efforts to stop the sale of unsound securities. Then an epistle from Secretary Mellon was read. Mr. Mellon explained why it is to the interest of U. S. prosperity to curb the issuance of tax-exempt securities.

Thomas N. Dysart, President of the Association, scored the "blue-sky" laws, which attempt to save the ignorant stock buyer from the clutches of unscrupulous dealers. He said that in actual practice these laws, by complicating sales, hamper the flotation of high-grade stocks.

George Whitney (J. P. Morgan & Co.) advised the public to divert the flow of the country's exportable capital from foreign bonds to domestic investments that yield dividends. "Why," he asked, "should the American investor hold the bag?"

E. H. H. Simmons, President of the New York Stock Exchange, said:

"A good many of us do not appreciate what the Stock Exchange does for us. After all, what we do here is to sell securities and make an initial offering. We regulate the price in that initial offering, and then we pass them on to the Stock Exchange for a secondary market. All of us know that the secondary market is much more difficult than the primary market. If the bonds are successful they are good securities, and their secondary market on the Stock Exchange will be well taken care of."

B. A. Tompkins (Bankers' Trust Co.) : "We have learned the utter futility of attempting to deal with a legislature on the basis of intelligence, because to use a term gleaned from geometry, intelligence in the average legislature approaches zero as a constant."

In its report, the committee on industrial securities defended banker control of industrial enterprises against the attacks of Professor William Zebina Ripley of Harvard.

Ray Morris (Brown Bros. & Co.) was elected President of the Association for 1926,