ABSTRACT
The influence exercised by the growth of economic technology on the class structure of Western society is too evident and too indisputable in its nature for more than the merest summary to be needed. The revolution in the textile industries did not in its earlier phases make for urban concentration in any direct way. The railways provided in Great Britain and to a smaller extent in many other countries the first kind of joint stock investment to be widely held by small investors. In Great Britain, because of the early development of an extensive middle class with spare money to invest, banking developed chiefly as deposit banking, and the specialized investment banks and agencies found their main fields of activity overseas, or rather in organizing foreign lending.
