RECOVERY OF THE EXCHANGES 47 
countries paid at this time the dividends due on capital 
lent by the Old World in the form of shipments of yellow 
metal to Europe. The majority of the older countries, 
enriched by centuries of trade and foreign investment, 
found themselves each year with a favourable balance 
partly in the form of imports of gold. A part of this 
balance was wiped out, however, by foreign loans to less 
developed countries, which often had a deficit in their 
Trade Balance and used this method to balance their 
accounts with foreign countries and get together a new 
stock of metal. 
But it must be remembered that the monetary stock of 
any one country only contained a small proportion of gold, 
which was the only really international currency ; a general 
dislocation of international Exchanges was bound there- 
fore to create monetary disturbances which could only 
have been avoided by making the entire circulation of 
money international.