'THE HOUSE'
SIR,—How pleasant it was to read Lothbury's very sane criticism of the House. I fear, however, that it will take far more than a charter to correct the shortcomings of that institution.
It would be a healthy sign if we saw a few mcre takeovers among stockbrokers themselves, resulting in larger firms able to pass on economies of scale. Perhaps then the small investor would not be refused or discouraged so often by firms whose ideas of costing are, to say the least, strange. And surely it is time the City generally followed industry's example and went to the universities for more recruits? At a time when an increasing proportion of the school population goes on to university, no institution can afford to be content with non- graduates, whose abilities must be increasingly lower. If stockbrokers recruited more graduates we might also see an end of the traditional cliche-ridden language of their circulars, and a few more trained economists might eradicate some of the howlers to be found in them and clear away the old, decayed jargon of City economics.
V. C. EARL 44 Montague Road, Cambridge
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