COMPETITIVE CONDITIONS IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE. 55
and the Banque Russo-Asiatique has branches at Yokohama, Calcutta,
 and Bombay and seven in China.*

JAPAN.

The Yokohama Specie Bank (Ltd.) (Yokohama Shpkin Ginko),
with head office at Yokohama, has branches at New York, San Fransisco,
 and Los Angeles, at London, at Liyon in France, at Sydney, at
Bombay and Calcutta, and at seven points in China.
The Bank of Taiwan (Ltd.), with headquarters at Taipeh, Formosa
 (Taiwan), has branches at New York and San Francisco, at
Manila and Singapore, at Calcutta and Bombay, and at nine points
in China.
ADVANTAGES ENJOYED BY FOREIGN TRADERS IN FACILITIES FOR
BANKING, CREDIT, AND EXCHANGE.
Facilities for financing transactions in foreign markets.—In the
old days a ship might sail from London or Amsterdam with a cargo
owned partly or wholly by the owners of the ship and spend a year or
two or three years in a voyage around the world. It would call at
various ports and at each the captain or the supercargo might sell
and buy. The ship might come home at last with a cargo from the
Far East, and part or all of its burden might have been several times
exchanged.
In such trading there was no question of banks. Sales and purchases,
 when they were not in the way of barter, were made for local
currency, wherever the ship might be, and money balances were represented
 by specie in the ship’s strong box. But nowadays, if silks
go from Yokohama to London and cottons from London to Yokohama,
 each is sent to a particular consignee by a carrier who undertakes
 no responsibility beyond the delivery of the goods, and each
consignee in Yokohama or London must pay his consignor in money
or a credit equivalent of money.
This is the primary service, and perhaps the most essential service,
of the bank in foreign trade. It furnishes a market for the drafts of
the Yokohama exporter on the London importer and of the London
exporter on the Yokohama importer. Buying the bills of exchange
that are offered in each market and selling such as are needed there,
the bank effects on a large scale the balancing of experts against imports
 which the old ship captain used to effect on a small scale by his
own sales and purchases.
The fewer hands paper has to go through the less the cost of handling.
 A bank is likely to pay more, other things being equal. for a
draft on a place where it has a branch of its own, for in that case it
will get the whole profit, while otherwise it must divide with at least
one other bank.

\ Palgrave, op. cit., pp. 376, 383, G56.