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The Age of Mergers 113 able needs. In protecting the consumer, the law should also protect the producer against cutthroat competition with its “profitless prosperity” followed by bankruptcy and curtailment of output, resulting in prices even higher than would have existed under an organization to regulate output and prices. But much has already been done by way of legislation to protect producers and consumers against the wide fluctuations in output and prices in basic industries. Much has been done, also, through the agency of the Federal Reserve Board to stabilize more effectively the general price level for the protection of all producers and consumers everywhere against insidious changes in the value of the dollar, and consequent losses which cannot be guarded against by any trade association or combination. What has been said about the superior economies of mergers, and the consequent increase in the price level of their securities during the long bull market, does not mean that many corporations are not still on trial before the bar of public opinion. Professor William Z. Ripley of Harvard University did a public service a few years ago in exposing the misleading or inadequate financial statements from certain large companies. Professor Ripley contended that visibility might be aided by floodlights of publicity at the point where the Main Street of widespread popular investment crosses Wall Street. This suggestion, by the way, was originally advanced with special reference to railways more than a generation ago by Professor Arthur Twining Hadley, now Presidents