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

THE MERITS OF BANKS 21 prohibition by the constitutions which some of the states adopted during these decades. With the very desirability of banks so moot a question, no small part of the literature on banking was concerned with the economic influence of the institution and its relative merits and demerits. To this problem we now turn. In the colonial period, we have already observed, the concep- tion of a bank was quite different from that of our own time, and this must be borne in mind in interpreting the bearing of the colonial views concerning the utility of banks upon those of the period in which our primary interest lies. For the most part, the colonists meant by a bank little more than an emission of paper money, with infrequent provision for convertibility on demand; and less continuity can be established between their general con- clusions as to the desirability of banks and the views of the later writers, than between the lines of reasoning by which each arrived at the conclusions. The first important discussion of the merits of banks of the modern type occurred in Pennsylvania soon after the Revolution, when the repeal of the charter of the Bank of North America was being considered. In 1785 a bill? was introduced to repeal the charter which the state had granted three years before, and a spirited controversy followed. Mathew Carey has, fortunately, preserved for us a record of the debate in the General Assembly? to which we have to add several pamphlets that were called forth by the issue. The advantages ascribed to banks in this early discussion were chiefly that they (1) make for punctuality in payments; 1 The original constitutions of both Iowa (1846-1857) and Texas (1843), for example, contained such clauses. Not until 1904 did Texas grant any state charters to banks, although a loophole was found in the constitution for the practice of private banking. Sumner states that in 1852 banking was illegal in nine of the states and in the District of Columbia. (History of Banking in the United States, p. 415.) 2 The bill was enacted in September of that year. In 1787 the bank, which had continued in business in the meantime, was given a new charter. 3 Carev. Debates and Proceedings of the General Assembly (1786).

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