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.