Readings in Money and Banking Part 44

DR. BANKING DEPARTMENT CR.

Proprietor's capital 14,553,000 Government securities 14,554,834 Rest 3,564,729 Other securities 7,835,616 Public deposits 3,630,809 Notes 8,175,025 Other deposits 8,644,348 Gold and silver coin 857,765 Seven-day and other bills 1,030,354 ----------- ----------- 31,423,240 31,423,240

... Taken as a whole the act has worked well, and has succeeded, in combination with greater knowledge and foresight, in maintaining our banking system in a sound condition....

The main point of contention between the supporters and opponents of the act lies in its want of elasticity in time of need. Under no circ.u.mstances can the bank increase its issue of notes against securities beyond the prescribed limit, without a breach of the law; but on three occasions in the past the law has been broken, though with the consent of the Government, and subsequent confirmation of Parliament....

We will now briefly review the ... occasions on which the Bank Act was suspended, and the effect of such suspensions.

The first of these occasions was during the panic in the year 1847--known as the "railway panic." Shortly previous to this year a great acc.u.mulation of capital had led to a demand for new investments, which were duly provided for the public by those concerned with such matters. Added to this, interest rates had ruled low for some time, and this conduced to a period of speculative activity. Too much capital was put into fixed investments--chiefly railways--and in one session of Parliament sanction was asked for various railway schemes involving a total capital of 340,000,000. Wild gambling in railway stocks ensued, credit was inflated above all reason, and then the turn came. This was primarily due to a bad harvest and potato crop, causing a heavy importation of corn, and consequent export of gold.

During the panic which ensued, the reserve of the Bank of England fell to 1,600,000, but when the panic was at its height, the act, pa.s.sed only three years before, was suspended. The bank was authorised to increase its accommodation to the public by exceeding, to an indefinite extent, the limit fixed for the issue of notes not secured against gold.

The effect of this suspension of the act was immediate and complete. The fear that "there was not enough to go round" pa.s.sed from men's minds. As a matter of fact, the issue on this occasion did not exceed the normal limit, the mere knowledge that the bank was empowered to exceed this limit proving sufficient to allay the panic.

The second suspension of the Bank Act was due to the crisis of 1857, a crisis that was brought about by reckless overtrading, and came upon the public very suddenly and with practically no warning....

The third suspension of the Bank Act took place in 1866.[152] Many elements of disturbance to the money market had been in force during two or three preceding years. The Civil War in America had resulted in gold being sent to this country; but the stoppage of the supply of cotton from America, owing to the war, disorganised one of our staple national industries, and supplies of cotton had to be obtained from elsewhere at high prices, and paid for in cash. Hence a drain of gold set in on a large scale. In addition, a large speculation had been built up on credit in the stocks and shares of the many new limited liability companies which were formed at that time.

General uneasiness began to prevail towards the end of 1865; in January, 1866, the bank raised its discount rate to 8 per cent., and a crisis began to develop rapidly....

On the 9th May the bank rate was raised to 9 per cent. On the 10th May the failure of Overend, Gurney, and Company--for upwards of ten millions--was announced, and the bank rate went to 10 per cent. This failure was not made known till after business hours, so it was not till Friday, the 11th May, 1866--known as "Black Friday"--that the crisis reached its height.

The stoppage of this large house affected the whole world, and general failure seemed imminent, when, in the afternoon of the day on which the failure became known, it was announced that the Bank Act was again suspended, and calm began to take the place of mania. But though the panic was allayed, many failures shortly took place, which delayed the quick restoration of a sense of security....

From the above brief records of the financial tragedies of the past, we see that on each occasion reckless speculation and overtrading had been allowed to reach a dangerous height before any steps were taken to check them, and on each occasion the check came too late. But we also see the marvellously quick effect which the suspension of the act had on the situation....

THE FUNCTIONS OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND

[153]The distinctive functions of the Bank of England consist in its acting as:

1. Banker to the British Government.

2. Banker to the joint stock and private banks.

3. (a) Sole possessor of the right to issue notes which are legal tender in England; (b) sole possessor, among joint stock banks with an office in London, of the right to issue notes at all.

4. Provider of emergency currency.

5. Keeper of the gold reserve for British banking.

6. Keeper of the gold reserve which is most readily available for the purposes of international banking.

These various functions fit into and supplement one another, and though their diversity is sometimes pointed to as throwing too much responsibility onto one inst.i.tution, it in fact enables the bank to carry out its duties with extraordinary ease, and with the least possible disturbance to the financial community. By the fact that it keeps the balances of the other banks, the Bank of England is enabled to conduct the payment of the interest on the British debt largely by transfers in its books. By the fact that it keeps the balances of the Government and has the monopoly of the legal-tender note issue, the Bank has a great prestige in the eyes of the general public, which it communicates to the other banks which bank with it. There is an impression that the Government is always behind the bank, and that the bank is always behind the other banks, and this feeling has certainly done much to foster the confidence of the British public in its banking system.

A credit in the books of the Bank of England has come to be regarded as just as good as so much gold; and the other banks, with one exception, habitually state their "cash in hand and at the Bank of England" as one item in their balance sheets, as if there were no difference between an actual holding of gold or legal tender and a balance at the Bank of England. It thus follows at times when an increase of currency is desirable, it can be expanded by an increase in the balances of the other banks at the Bank of England, since they thus become possessed of more cash to be used as the basis of credit. For currency in England chiefly consists of cheques, and customers who apply to the banks for accommodation, by way of discount or advance, use it by drawing a cheque which is pa.s.sed on and so creates a deposit; and expansion of currency thus consists chiefly in expansion of banking deposits. This expansion is only limited by the proportion between deposits and cash which the banks think fit to keep, and as long as they can increase their cash by increasing their credit in the Bank of England's books the creation of currency can proceed without let or hindrance. Their balances can be increased by borrowing from the Bank of England, which is generally carried out not by the banks themselves but by their customers from whom they have called in loans, and the Bank of England is thus enabled to provide emergency currency with great ease, by means of loans and discounts which are used to swell the balances of the other banks, which thus show an increase of the cash at the Bank of England which they use as a basis for credit operations. The elasticity of the system is thus remarkable, and the merchants and bill brokers of London can by taking approved security to the Bank of England, increase the basis of English credit in a few minutes by borrowing.

1. Examining these functions of the Bank of England in closer detail we find that its first and most obvious one, which originally brought it into being, of financing the British Government and acting as its banker, is now perhaps its least difficult and important duty. Apart from the prestige which it thus acquires and its close touch with the Government and the officials of the Treasury, the bank's position as government banker is of little direct material advantage. Its duties as such, besides the normal relation between a bank and a customer, consist chiefly in making advances to the Treasury in the shape of "deficiency advances" when the government balances are too low to admit of the payment of the quarterly interest on the British debt without replenishment, or against "ways and means" advances at times when the revenue is coming in more slowly than government expenditure is proceeding. It also, when the Government has to borrow to a greater extent, manages its issues of Treasury bills, or any loan operation that the Government may have to undertake.

2. The second of the Bank of England's distinctive functions--its acting as banker to the rest of the English banking community--is the one which throws upon it its most serious responsibilities and gives it most of its actual power and ease in working. The Government gives it prestige in the eyes of the mult.i.tude, which considers that governments are omnipotent; the other banks give it the power of providing emergency currency by making entries in its books, and so acting as the easily efficient centre of a banking system in which elasticity and the economy of gold are carried to a perfection which is almost excessive.

Nevertheless, it pays heavily for its apparently privileged position as bankers' bank. At first sight it would appear that these customers, keeping a regular balance of twenty-odd millions, which varies little and on which the Bank of England pays no interest, were a source of comfortable income and no anxiety to it. But in the first place it is obvious that a liability which is regarded as cash by the rest of the banking community requires special treatment by its custodian, and in practice it is so specially treated that the Bank of England maintains a proportion of cash to liabilities which is fully twice as high as that of the strictest of the other banks. This proportion rarely is allowed to fall below 33 per cent. and generally ranges between 40 and 50 per cent., and it need not be said that this high level of cash holding tells heavily on the earning power of the Bank of England. Moreover, it is its position as bankers' bank that exposes the Bank of England to the responsibility of maintaining the gold reserve for English banking and being prepared to meet, in gold, any draft on London that any one abroad who has acquired or borrowed the right to draw wishes to turn into metal to be s.h.i.+pped to a foreign country.

The amount of the bankers' balances is not separately stated, but is wrapped up in the total of the other deposits in the Bank of England's weekly return. It is believed to average about 22 millions in these days, and it is often contended that valuable light would be thrown on the monetary position if this item were separated from the balances of the other customers of the bank. Many of the outer bankers are in favor of this change, but there is a serious practical objection to it, in that a dangerous impression might be created in the public mind if at any time it were seen that the bank's cash reserve was below its liability to its banking customers; and the separate publication of the bankers' balances might thus check the readiness with which the Bank of England creates emergency credit. Another suggestion that is sometimes made by the many critics of the existing order of things in English banking is that the banks should keep their cash reserves themselves; but this very revolutionary change would deprive the system of its two great advantages, a centralised organisation with a centre which specialises on the duties involved by acting as centre, and the extreme elasticity with which the present arrangements work. At the same time it must be admitted that the system by which the other banks treat their balances at the Bank of England as cash leads to the existence of a vast amount of "cash" in England which on being looked into is found to consist of paper securities or promises to pay.

3. The Bank of England's monopoly of note issue, which once gave it the monopoly of joint-stock banking in London, is now a matter of comparatively minor importance, owing to the change in English banking habits by which the cheque has ousted the bank note for the purpose of daily commercial payments, and the regulations which were imposed on the note issue by the Bank Act of 1844. This monopoly was conferred on the bank in 1706 and was maintained until 1826, when the implied monopoly in joint-stock banking was restricted to a sixty-five-mile radius around London. In 1833 joint-stock banks were established in London itself, since it had been discovered that the Bank of England's alleged monopoly only reserved to it the privilege of note issue, and the private bankers in London had already found that it was more convenient to banker and customer to work by the system of deposit and cheque.

The development of this system was quickened by the provisions of Peel's act of 1844, which, under the influence of banking disasters that had arisen out of reckless note issuing by private banking firms in the counties, laid down an iron rule for the regulation of note issues in England. None of the other note issuers were allowed to increase their issues under any circ.u.mstances, and the Bank of England, for every additional note issued beyond 14,000,000, was to hold metal in its vaults. Under the terms of Peel's act one-fifth of this metal might be silver, and in the early returns issued by the bank under the act a certain amount of silver is found among the a.s.sets of the issue department. But since 1853, no silver has been held in the issue department of the bank, and in 1897, when the influence of the bimetallists on the existing Government led to a proposal that the proportion of silver allowed by law should be held by the bank as backing for its note issue, public opinion expressed itself so vigorously that the suggestion was promptly buried. The bank's fiduciary note issue, thus fixed at 14,000,000, was only allowed to increase by the lapse of the issues of the existing issuers, the bank being empowered to increase it by two-thirds of the amount lapsed. The lapsing process has proceeded steadily by the amalgamation of country banks with banks which have London offices and so are prohibited by the bank's monopoly. And the bank's fiduciary issue has thus been raised from the original 14,000,000 to 18,450,000. Above this line it can not go except by means of the suspension of the Bank Act, which has been found necessary occasionally in the past. The English currency system is thus, as far as the law can rule it, entirely inelastic, but it has already been shown that even when the law of 1844 was pa.s.sed, the cheque currency, over which the law exercises no restriction, was already driving out the note, and banks without any right of note issue had been eleven years established in London. The Bank of England's note issue is now chiefly used by other banks as "till money," or part of the store of legal-tender cash they keep to meet demands on them. It has thus become part of the basis of credit in England, since the other banks roughly base their operations on their holding of cash in hand and at the Bank of England. Their cash at the Bank of England has already been discussed above: their cash in hand consists of coin and notes, and since the latter have thus become part of the foundation on which the deposit liabilities of the other banks are based, there is reasonable ground for the contention often put forward by practical expert critics of the English system, that the fiduciary note issue should be reduced by the repayment by the Government of the whole or part of a government debt of 11,000,000 to the bank, which backs the greater part of it, and its replacement by gold. It is evident that the amount of metallic backing for a note issue which is intended to circulate as currency is a different matter from that required in the case of a note issue which is held by bankers as a reserve and used by them as a foundation for a pyramid of credit operations.

4. By the ease with which the Bank of England provides emergency currency, it gives the English banking system the great advantage of extreme elasticity and adaptability; and it is enabled to do this by the fact that it acts as banker to the other banks, and that every credit which they have in its books is regarded by them and by the rest of the community as "cash" to be taken as practically equal to so much gold.

This cash at the Bank of England in the hands of the rest of bankers can be multiplied as rapidly as the Bank of England is prepared to make advances, and as the mercantile and financial community can bring it bills for discount or securities to be borrowed on. There is no legal restriction of any sort or kind, and the close relations between the bank and its borrowing customers enable the necessary operations to be carried through with a celerity which is unrivalled, at any rate in the eastern hemisphere. The process works as follows: In every English bank balance sheet there will be found an item among the a.s.sets "cash at call or short notice," though in a few cases the slovenly habit is adopted of including this entry along with the cash in hand. This "cash," as it is called, really consists chiefly of loans made by the banks to the discount houses, and regarded by the banks as the most liquid of their resources. As such, it is at once made use of when for any reason, such as the many payments which have to be made on quarter days, or at the end of the half year when the preparation of balance sheets by firms and companies require an abnormal amount of cash for more or less ornamental purposes, the banks are subjected to extra pressure by their customers, who both withdraw actual currency from them for smaller payments, and require advances in order to show cash with bankers in their balance sheets.

The banks in order to meet this pressure, and at the same time to preserve an adequate amount of cash in their own statements, call in their loans from the discount houses; the discount houses, at a point, can only repay them by borrowing from the Bank of England and transferring the credit raised with it to the bankers, whose cash at the Bank of England is thus increased. This book entry takes the place in their balance sheets of the legal-tender cash that their customers have withdrawn, and is used as the basis for the increased deposits that have been created by the loans of the bankers to their customers for ornamental purposes. Similarly at the time of year when the transfer of the taxes to the Government's balance reduces the cash at the Bank of England held by the other banks the gap is filled by the loans made by the Bank of England to the customers of the other banks. In short, by discounting and making advances the Bank of England can at any time create book credits, which are regarded as cash by the English banking community, and on which the latter can base the credits which give the right to draw cheques, which are the most important part of the English currency. The extent to which the Bank of England can create this credit is a matter for its own discretion, but any creation of it diminishes the proportion that it shows in its own weekly returns between its reserve and liabilities. Consequently when it is applied to for amounts which bring that proportion too low the Bank of England has to take steps to reinforce its cash reserve.

5. It has been shown that the Bank of England keeps the balances of the other banks, and from this it follows that the latter look to it for gold or notes at times when the local commercial community requires an extra supply. At the end of every month, especially at the ends of the quarters or at times of national holidays, the bank's note circulation expands and coin is taken from it. The duty is thus thrown upon it of keeping an adequate supply of cash for home purposes, and, as has been already stated, its normal proportion of cash to liabilities is very much higher than that of the other banks. But these movements are tidal and regular, and though times of active trade increase slightly the demand for coin and note currency in England, the extensive and ever-growing use of the cheque reduces the importance of this part of the bank's duties.

6. Much more important is the Bank of England's duty as custodian of the gold store for international banking. London is the only European centre which is always prepared to honor its drafts in gold immediately and to any extent. Consequently the Bank of England has to be prepared to meet demands on it at any time from abroad, based on credits given to foreigners by the English banking community, and it has thus to observe the signs of financial weather in all parts of the world and to regulate the price of money in London so that the exchanges may not be allowed to become or remain adverse to a dangerous point. The difficulties of this task are increased by the extent to which the English banking community works independently of it, by accepting and discounting finance paper, and giving foreigners credits at rates which encourage their further creation. For the low and wholly unregulated proportion of cash to liabilities on which English banking works, enables the other banks to multiply credits ultimately based on the Bank of England's reserve, leaving the responsibility for maintaining the reserve to the bank. This it does by raising its rate when necessary, and so, if it has control of the market and its rate is "effective"--a phrase which will be explained later--raising the general level of money rates in London.

When its rate is not effective, the Bank of England finds itself obliged to intervene in the outer money market--consisting of the other banks and their customers--and control the rates current in it. This it does by borrowing some of the floating funds in this market, so lessening their supply and forcing up the price of money. By means of this borrowing it diminishes the balances kept with it by the other banks, either directly or indirectly--directly if it borrows from them, indirectly if it borrows from their customers who hand the advance to it in the shape of a cheque on them. The result is that so much of the "cash at the Bank of England," which the English banking community uses as part of its basis of credit, is wiped out, money--which in London generally means the price at which the bankers are prepared to lend for a day or for a short period to the discount houses--becomes dearer, the market rate of discount consequently tends to advance, the foreign exchanges move in favor of London, and the tide of gold sets in the direction of the Bank of England's vaults, and it is enabled to replenish its reserve or check the drain on it. That the Bank of England should have to go through this clumsy ceremony of borrowing money that it does not want, in order to deprive the outer market of a surplus which depresses discount rates in a manner that is dangerous owing to its effect on the foreign exchanges, arises from the want of connection between bank rate and market rate. In former days the London money market never had enough money to work without help from the Bank of England. Bagehot, in his great work on Lombard Street, published in 1873, says that "at all ordinary moments there is not money enough in Lombard Street to discount all the bills in Lombard Street without taking some money from the Bank of England."

As long as this was so, bank rate--the price at which the bank would discount bills--was at all times an important influence on the market rate. Since then, however, the business of credit making has been so quickly and skillfully extended that Lombard Street is frequently able to ignore bank rate, knowing that it will easily be able to supply its needs from the other banks, at rates which are normally below it.

Currency in England consists of cheques drawn against deposits which are largely created by the loans and discounts of the other banks. There is no legal limit whatever on the extent to which these loans and discounts can be multiplied, and the only limits imposed are those of publicity, which is applied rarely in all cases and in some not at all, and of the prudence with which the banks conduct their business. Hence it follows that compet.i.tion between the banks often impels them to continue to make advances or discount bills at low rates when the Bank of England, as custodian of the English gold reserve, thinks it advisable in the interests of the foreign exchanges to impose a higher level. This it does by borrowing some of the credit manufactured by the other banks, in order to create artificial scarcity of money, and make its own official rate effective.

It thus appears that the Bank of England's official rate is often through long periods a mere empty symbol, bearing no actual relation to the real price of money in London; and only becomes effective, and a factor in the monetary position (1) when the trade demand for credit is keen enough to tax the credit-making facilities of the other banks to their full extent, (2) when the payment of taxes transfers large sums from the other banks to the Government's account at the Bank of England, so reducing the "cash at the bank" on which they build credit operations, and (3) when, owing to foreign demands for gold, the Bank of England takes measures, by borrowing, to restrict credits in the open market and to make its rate effective. In other respects its official rate differs materially from the rates quoted by ordinary dealers in credit. It does not fluctuate according to the supply and demand for bills, but is regularly fixed once a week at the meetings of the Bank of England court on Thursday morning. It is extremely rare for any change to be made in the Bank of England rate on any day except Thursday.

Instances occur rarely when some sudden change of position makes it essential, as at the end of 1906, when the bank rate was raised to 6 per cent. on a Friday morning. In normal times the rate which is fixed on one Thursday is maintained until the next, though the rate is only a minimum and the Bank of England occasionally takes advantage of this fact and refuses to discount at its minimum, which still remains ostensibly the bank rate, while the bank actually makes a rather higher charge, which is usually made the official rate on the next Thursday.

But it must not be supposed that when bank rate is ineffective the Bank of England is doing no business. It discounts bills and makes advances at market rates at its branches, and also at its head office to its private customers. Bank rate may be described as the price at which the bank is prepared to discount in its official capacity as centre of the London market, and it is because appeal is only made in exceptional circ.u.mstances to the bank to provide credit in this capacity that bank rate is often ineffective.

THE JOINT-STOCK BANKS

The most obvious function of the joint-stock banks of England is the business of taking care of money for customers and meeting cheques drawn against their balances. Customers place money with them either on current or deposit account. On current account it can be withdrawn at any time and earns, as a rule, no interest. Many banks make it a condition that unless the current account is maintained at a certain figure, generally 100, a charge shall be made for keeping it. A usual charge is 1 5_s._ 0_d._ each half year, but arrangements vary according to the terms agreed with different customers, and the keen compet.i.tion now prevalent enables many to obtain the convenience of a bank account for nothing. Sums left on deposit are generally placed for a week or longer, and if placed for a week the rate paid on them by the banks is generally 1-1/2 per cent. below bank rate.

Out of this function of meeting checks drawn by customers against the sums deposited has grown the banker's chief duty, which is now the provision of cheque currency for the mercantile and financial community.

Currency in England consists of coins, notes, and cheques. The note issues are almost obsolete as currency, the Bank of England's being used chiefly as reserve by the other banks, while the issues of the country banks are so small as to be negligible. Most of the commercial and financial transactions of England to-day are settled by cheques drawn on the banks by their customers. These cheques are not legal tender, since it would obviously be impossible that a cheque drawn by an individual on a bank could be legally made acceptable by a creditor whether he wished to take it or not.

There is no legal obligation of any sort on them to maintain any regular proportion between cash and liabilities, and as their position in this respect is only subjected to occasional publicity they are not obliged to consider even the effect upon their customers of any considerable variation in the proportion between cash and liabilities which they keep. The system thus works with extreme elasticity and banking facilities can be provided in England with extraordinary ease. It has of late years been frequently contended that the ease and elasticity with which it works have carried the English banking machinery to a somewhat extreme length in the matter of the economy of gold and legal tenders and the extent of the credit pyramid which it builds up on them. After the crisis of 1890, Lord Goschen seems to have been strongly imbued with the conviction that the system had been carried too far. He therefore urged upon the London banks that they should make a monthly statement of their position, and this suggestion was adopted by the majority of them.

The result was that they published a monthly statement showing how they stood on one day at the end of each month, and it thus followed that on one day at the end of each month the banks showed a proportion of cash to liabilities which they considered sufficiently adequate to stand the light of publicity. But the system has long been seen to be faulty, and a certain amount of abuse has grown up round it. It is strongly suspected, for example, that some of the banks which publish these statements make preparations for them by calling in loans or reducing their discounts for the day on which the statements are drawn up. As far as this is done the statement is to a certain extent misleading, and this practice of "window dressing," as it is called in Lombard Street, has been subject to frequent criticism, so much so that one of the leading London banks--the London and County--adopted early in 1908 the practice of showing its daily average cash holding, thus demonstrating that it was not in the habit of preparing a statement which did not represent its position fairly throughout the month. It has been stated by a president of the English Bankers' Inst.i.tute that the proportion of cash to liabilities shown by country banks ranges down to a point as low as 2.2 per cent. No one can contend that this is an adequate cash basis for banking to work on, and as long as certain members of the banking community conduct their business on these lines an obvious hards.h.i.+p is involved on those which keep a more prudent and strong reserve of cash.

It is contended by the big strong banks that their smaller brethren compete with them by providing more credit than they have any right to create, relying on their a.s.sistance in times of difficulty.

Apart from this danger of the over-multiplication of credit on an inadequate cash basis, the complete absence of any legal or other restrictions on the operations of English banking enables it to work with extraordinary ease and readiness. As long as good unpledged security, whether in the form of bills of exchange, commodities, or Stock Exchange securities, are available in the hands of customers the banks can advance against them to any extent that they consider prudent.

Prudence dictates in the case of a great majority of them that a certain proportion of cash to liabilities shall be maintained, but, as was shown above in dealing with the Bank of England, the cash of English banking consists partly of credits with the Bank of England. These credits with the Bank of England, and consequently the cash credits of English banking, can be multiplied as rapidly as the Bank of England is prepared to make advances or discount bills, and so give credit in its books. The Bank of England must publish its account weekly, and it watches over its proportion of cash to liabilities with a vigilance which is greater than that of the rest of the banking community as a whole. Nevertheless, its prudence in this respect is the only restriction on it, and we thus arrive at the conclusion that the chief function of the English joint stock banks, that of providing the mercantile community with currency and credit, can be carried out to any extent as long as their customers have security to offer and their proportion of cash remains adequate to their sense of prudence. And further, their proportion of cash can be increased as rapidly as the Bank of England is prepared to make advances, which it can and does to an extent which again is only limited by its own prudence.

Besides this absence of outside regulation, the English monetary system is also distinguished by a remarkable lack of cohesion and co-operation among the members of its own body. Except to a certain extent in the country districts, where the rates allowed to depositors and charged to customers are to a certain extent a matter of convention, English banking works almost entirely at the mercy of very keen internal compet.i.tion. This extreme development of compet.i.tion leaves the market liable to p.r.o.nounced depression in rates at times when slackness of trade or other causes decrease the demand for credits. At these times the adroit bill brokers and discount houses, which are in some respects the most important borrowing customers of the banks in London, are enabled by the use of this weapon of compet.i.tion to obtain loans from the banks at rates which are often below the price that the bankers are paying to their depositors. Hence, it follows that in these times of monetary ease the credit machine goes on turning out its product at rates which are quite unremunerative and have a detrimental effect on the market rate of discount, and so on the foreign exchanges, thus increasing the difficulties of the Bank of England, which at these times of extreme ease is without any control of the position. Against this weakness of the system, however, must be set the advantage which the unrestricted and fiercely compet.i.tive manufacture of credit confers on the mercantile and trading community.

A few words should be said concerning the form of cheques with which the English banks provide their customers as currency. Legally a cheque is a bill of exchange drawn on a bank and payable on demand. That is to say, it is an order signed by a customer of the bank directing it to pay a certain sum to another party or to himself. The form, however, can be varied in various methods, increasing or diminis.h.i.+ng the ease with which the cheque can be turned into cash. The cheque can be made payable to A B or bearer, and in this form can be taken to the bank drawn on and immediately turned into cash. When drawn to A B or order, a cheque has to be indorsed, or signed on the back, by A B before the bank drawn on will pay it. A still further restriction is the English system of crossing cheques, that is to say, of drawing two lines across the face of the cheque, by which mark it is shown that the cheque is not to be paid in cash across the counter by the bank drawn on, but must be paid into a bank by the payee, and so only becomes credited to him in his own banking account through the operations of the clearing house. It is evident that this protection greatly increases the safety of the cheque, since if it fell into the wrong hands its chance of being made fraudulent use of is greatly diminished. As the lines drawn across the face of the check by the bankers' customers are often faint and irregular, it has been found in practice that they lend themselves to the ingenuity of the fraudulent, who are easily enabled to erase them and so obtain possession of money that is not meant for them. Some of the banks therefore print these crossing lines on all of the cheques that they issue to their customers to be filled in, and when the customer wishes to obtain cash from his bank on one of these cheques he is consequently obliged to write upon it "Please pay cash," and sign this note upon it. The extensive use of crossed cheques thus tends to make the cheque still further an instrument which merely transfers banking credits from the books of one bank to another, since every crossed cheque implies that it can not be turned into cash directly, but can only transfer credit with one bank to credit with another. Another restriction with which custom has protected the English cheque is the system of writing "Not negotiable" on the face of it. These words do not mean that the cheque is really not negotiable, but their legal effect is that the holder of the cheque can not establish a better right to it than the party from whom he received it. If therefore the party from whom he received it had no right to it, his claim against the paying bank is _nil_. With these safeguards, and with the enormous convenience of being drawn to any amount to fit the exact requirements of each transaction, the cheque, although not legal tender, has been enabled to supersede the bank note in English currency.

The chief function of the joint stock banks having thus been shown to be the provision of currency for the English community, it may further be noted that a remarkable development of their activity has been the rapidity with which they have covered England with branch establishments. It was estimated in 1858 that the total number of bank offices in the whole of the United Kingdom was just over 2,000; at the present moment the aggregate branch offices of four of the English joint stock banks which are richest in respect of branch establishments have exceeded this total. One bank in England has over 600 offices, one has over 550, two have over 400, three have more than 200, twelve have more than 100. This multiplication of branch offices has been carried out partly by the absorption by the joint-stock banks of the smaller inst.i.tutions in the country, whether private or joint stock, and partly by the rapidity with which they have opened branches in the great provincial centres and their suburbs, and to a moderate extent in the small country towns. The result of it is to give the English monetary system the power of easily supplying the needs of the various parts of the community as the requirements of others ebb and flow. At the same time this rapid development increases the compet.i.tion between the various English banks, which we have already shown to be carried to an almost excessive degree, and by the wide local distribution of their liabilities enhances the possibility of strain on them in times of difficulty.

Some of the banks include under the heading "cash at call and short notice" advances which they make to the Stock Exchange for the fortnightly periods that elapse between its settlements. The funds that they so use obviously have an important effect upon the marketability and price of securities in London. On the first day of every settlement it is usual to see rates quoted as those at which the banks are lending to their stock exchange clients for the financing of speculative commitments. In the arrangement of these rates a certain amount of combination and co-operation among the banks, or some of them, has grown up as a matter of custom, but since for this cla.s.s of accommodation the bankers are subject to compet.i.tion on the part of the agencies of the foreign banks and the big finance houses it is often found difficult to maintain even this amount of harmonious working among the bankers.