Banking theories in the United States before 1860

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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 I. The utility of banks as a source of media of payment

Collection:: Economics Books

CHAPTER II EARLY MINOR ARGUMENTS CONCERNING THE MERITS OF BANKS The desirability of banks a moot question. — Minor advantages ascribed to banks. — Arguments of their early critics. WHEN the first few banks of the eighteenth century had been established, writes J. B. Felt, in his Historical Account of the Massachusetts Currency, the “fewness of these monied compeers and rivals for the golden fleece, drew upon them much attention, and made their chief officers to be highly honored, and especially on gala occasions.” ! Their popularity was not of long duration. The desirability of banks was, in fact, by no means accepted as the matter of course that it has become today. Nor need this surprise us, in view of the evils that attached to banking in the early decades of our national history — evils from which the escape was far from clear.’ On the other hand, the early antipathy to banking cannot be dismissed as entirely a matter of reaction against the abuses of its practice; to some extent, at least, it was based upon failure to understand the nature and significance of banking aside from its perversions. “Think of the locusts of Egypt: — These were to the people precisely what banks are to our farmers,” wrote one who saw in banks nothing more than “miserable institutions, a million of which would not add a cent to the wealth of the nation.” * The “Bank of the United States,” wrote another, “never raised a single bushel of wheat, nor even a single head of cabbage, nor a single pumpkin, potato, or turnip, during its whole existence, nor 1 J. B. Felt, Historical Account of the Massachusetts Currency (1839), p. 211. ? Most interesting contemporary accounts of the evils attending American bank- ing in the first part of the century are found in Gouge, A Short History of Paper Money and Banking in the United States (1833), Niles’ Register (1811-49), and the writings of Condy Raguet. 3 Jesse Atwater, Considerations on the Approaching Dissolution of the U. S. Bank (1810), pp. 8, 0.

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