Banking theories in the United States before 1860

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1755492553

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-133529

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Miller, Harry Edward http://d-nb.info/gnd/1055250875

Title:: Banking theories in the United States before 1860

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: Harvard University Press

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: XI, 240 S.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part III. Bank notes and bank deposits

Collection:: Economics Books

144 BANKING THEORIES IN UNITED STATES denominations generally favored by those who were opposed to smaller notes, so that the discussion was, after all, not exactly comparable to that which took place in England, where five pounds was usually the minimum proposed. Cooper did suggest in 1826 that the logical course would be to prohibit all denomina- tions not higher than the largest coin being struck by the mint (twenty dollars).! After the middle of the century, twenty and fifty dollars apparently became the favorite minima,” while, as early as 1840, the editor of the Democratic Review urged the sup- pression of all notes under one hundred dollars.® It was frequently advocated that the smallest denominations be prohibited first and the minimum gradually raised until the desired level was reached. Gallatin added the suggestion (which it is interesting to compare with the law of 1864 taxing the notes of state banks out of existence) that Congress prevent the issue of undesirable denominations by imposing a prohibitive stamp duty upon them.* The Treasury Department, in sympathy with the hard-money sentiments of Jackson, began to discriminate against small notes in 1835, and Secretary Woodbury stated in his Finance Reporl of that year that over two thirds of the States already had highly salutary ‘‘usages or laws’ in existence regulating the denomina- tions of notes. Hildreth devoted twenty pages of his Banks, Banking, and Paper Currencies to a defence of notes of smaller denominations, presenting most of the more familiar arguments in their favor. Smith’s fear that the privilege of issuing trivial notes would enable men of faulty character to become bankers did not apply to the United States, he thought, because banks here had to be incorporated, or, if free, were required to furnish security for 1 Cooper, Lectures (1826), p. 147. Andrew Jackson recommended that twenty dollars be the minimum in his message of 1835. Richardson, Messages of the Presi- dents, iii, 166. 2 Middleton, Government and Currency (1850), p. 120; James Buchanan, Message (1857), Richardson’s Messages of the Presidents, v, 441; John A. Dix, Bankers’ Magazine (1859), xiii, 517. 3 Democratic Review (March, 1840), vii, 202. 4 Gallatin, Letter to Biddle (Aug. 14, 1830), Writings, ii, 432. Several bills to this purport were introduced in Congress during the next decade. See the National Era (1857), p. 166.

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