Sir Felix Schuster, at the half-yearly meeting of the Union
of London and Smiths Bank on Wednesday, made an interest- ing speech on the various ways of "popularising Consols." He strongly approved of the granting of greater facilities-for transferring stock, and held that the experiment of issuing bearer bonds of smaller denominations than 2100 was worth trying. He was inclined, however, to attach most importance to the scheme of reconverting Consols into a stock bearing a. higher rate of interest, say 3 per cent., on the basis that the operation must be optional, that the stock shall not be redeemable for sixty years, and that the new stock must be free of Income-tax. Sir Felix Schuster was careful to add that it was not in such measures alone that a remedy was to be sought; "a check must also sooner or later be placed on the great national and municipal expenditure, excessive in his opinion, in times of peace, if we wished to retain for times of trouble and difficulty those reserves of finai- cial strength and security which it was essential for any great nation to maintain." With this aspect of the situation we deal in another column.
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