Since the landmark article of Thomas Navin and Marian Sears on the rise of the market for industrial securities in the Business History Review (XXIX, June 1955), there has been an active interest in the causal relationship between the remarkable upsurge in corporate mergers of industrial companies early in this century, and the greater activity of the securities markets. Professor Smiley adds to this literature with a study of interest rates and the growth of activity in what contemporaries called “financial banking” (lending money for transactions in securities) as opposed to commercial banking. There are limits to the inference of cause and effect relations from financial activity, however, and historians must continue to study these phenomena merger by merger in order to draw conclusions as to the reasons for them.
