Only once in a generation, because of fortuitous circumstances, the stress of the period or the brilliance of a personality, a man lives a life of unusual service to his profession and to the commonweal. To the distinguished company of accounting immortals, William Plender is rightfully admitted because he, more than any other English practitioner, achieved in his lifetime wide recognition as a skillful interpreter of financial data as well as a faithful servant of the Crown.

Plender's life has much to recommend it for study by the rising generation not only in Great Britain but in other parts of the world where accountancy has achieved the status of an honored profession. It is for this reason, alone, that the present memoir is written: to re-count the rise of one accountant in professional and public circles because of the quality of his mind and the force of his personality, to say, this was accomplished by one man; it can be done by others if they but dedicate themselves to the pursuit of the professional ideal wherever it may be found, in England, in America, everywhere.

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century the financial milieu of the United States was enlivened by the appearance of farm mortgage companies whose agents scoured the northeastern states, proclaiming the discovery of an investors' mother Iode, the western farm mortgage. To the experienced investor the farm mortgage was no innovation of course, but the mortgage companies were to bring the mortgage market to a new peak of organization and their investors ultimately to a state of frustration compounded. This paper deals with the history of one western mortgage company.

Businessmen are accustomed to thinking of the capital they use as of two types: short-term and long-term. Short-term capital is the capital which is used typically to finance seasonal peaks in business activity, such as the rush at Christmastime; it is borrowed from commercial banks and must be repaid in a short time, usually less than a year. Long-term capital may be either equity capital, invested by the owners of the business, or borrowed capital, on loan to the owners for a number of years. Long-term capital is usually obtained by businessmen through investment bankers. There are many exceptions to these generalizations, and the exceptions have been increasing in number in recent years, but historically and in theory these general statements may be treated as working definitions.