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reduce its note issue. The private banks ‘instead of following the…lead, issued fifty per cent more notes than before’. There was ‘a great failure in Ireland’, presumably the Agricultural Bank (Barrow 1975:136). The Independent Treasury The United States government was still without proper banking arrangements. President Van Buren summoned Congress on 4 September 1837 and stated: it is apparent that the events of the last few months have greatly Augmented the desire, long existing among the people of the United States, to separate the fiscal operations of the Government from those of individuals and corporations. Congress considered three schemes, a new National Bank, continuing the deposit system established on 23 June 1836, and the Independent Treasury. This had originally been proposed by Senator Gordon in 1834 and was revived by Senator Silas Wright of New York. It was supported by Gouge (1837) who reckoned that thirty-six depositories would be needed, and that the cost would be $101,600, less than the banks were charging. He put forward in support of his case two decidedly odd and unconvincing arguments: there was less risk from robbery, as thieves would be able to carry little of the heavy metal, and that the system would decrease executive patronage! (Kinley 1910:38–9). Daniel Webster and Albert Gallatin opposed the plan. It was impossible, they said, to separate public and private finance. To insist on specie payment while the government hoarded gold and silver would be a deflationary attack on the credit system. As Webster said on 12 March 1838 ‘The use of money is in the exchange. It is designed to circulate, not to be hoarded…. To keep it that is to detain it…is a conception belonging to barbarous times and barbarous governments’ (Webster Senate speech 1838). After a long political battle the Bill to introduce the Independent Treasury was passed on 30 June 1840 (Doc. Hist. vol. ii: 177). From that date, one quarter of government dues had to be paid in specie, increasing by a quarter each year until full specie payment was due from 1843. Public money was already largely held by collecting officers. The sub-Treasury Act was repealed on 13 August 1841 (Doc. Hist. vol. ii: 189) and state banks were once more to be used as depositaries. The banks were now (it was said) safer. It seems that government agents continued to act as depositaries. There were later developments. The Democrats regained office in 1845, with the extreme anti-bank ‘Loco Foco’ faction dominant. A new sub-Treasury Bill was pased in 1846. Secretary of the Treasury Walker instructed all government offices to accept only gold and silver coin and treasury notes, but Congress had made no provision for the extra costs (Myers 1970:132). In 1847 the government issued 20 million of treasury notes to finance the Mexican war, A HISTORY OF MONEY 179 and in May 1854 the ubiquitous William Gouge was appointed special agent to examine the condition of the sub-treasurers. 180 AFTER THE BANK WARS: 1836 TO 1839 20 PRIVATE BANKING IN THE EARLY UNITED STATES PRIVATE BANKING BEFORE 1837 Chapter 18 concluded with the demise of the Second Bank. This was the end of a series of attempts to set up a public banking system in the United States. Meanwhile, what of the private banks? Most of this chapter is concerned with the period after 1837, but the earlier history is also relevant. The Panic of 1819 placed great strains on the US banking and financial system. The crisis exposed a basic inconsistency between two goals…specie convertibility… and liberal extension of farm credit…Economists since the time of Adam Smith had understood that banks which issued convertible notes…could not safely lend to farmers…loans were typically long term, illiquid and relatively risky. (Russell 1991:49) This led, in the agrarian South and West, to experiments with the issue of inconvertible notes. The banks could only stop runs by suspending payments. Notes continued to circulate, but at varying discounts leaving the holders with financial losses. The Western States (for this purpose, essentially Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri: Pennsylvania and Ohio were also sometimes counted as ‘Western’) had large numbers of small banks, most of which were, following the Panic, insolvent. The States reacted by revoking their charters, and their role was taken over by State controlled ‘relief banks’. Their inconvertible notes were given a constitutionally dubious quasi-legal tender status. Their history was ‘brief, controversial and generally undistinguished’ (Russell 1991:50) and most collapsed after court challenges, some orchestrated by the Second Bank. In the South (mainly North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, but also perhaps Virginia and Alabama) banks were typically larger and better capitalized, with branch networks. Although they suspended payment, they continued to operate and the discounts were much smaller. Russell argues that this was a successful experiment, with noteholders carrying part of the portfolio risk. The Second Bank eventually forced resumption: Virginia and South Carolina in 1823, and the others during the following five years. In 1828 Georgia established a Central Bank to deal with the problem of short term bank credit. The southern States were actively to oppose the renewal of the charter of the Second Bank. The demise of the Second Bank also had substantial consequences for the future of private banking. Standard works on American financial history tend to concentrate on the big public banks and have relatively little to say on the private banks which were proliferating during the period. Contemporary sources give much more information, and it has proved well worth the effort of tracking them down. There is in fact a long and complicated history of State chartered banking, and the issues were now brought into sharp focus. After 1834 there was no longer anything of the nature of a Central Bank—and indeed it was not until 1913 that the Federal Reserve took up this role. Bank regulation was a State matter, but the mood of the country favoured hard money and treated all banks, and all paper money, with suspicion. Three methods of bank control were adopted at different times and in different places. All have their parallels in Europe, and all have lessons for the modern world: The Safety Fund system; The Suffolk Bank system; and ‘Free Banking’. William Gouge and other writers One of the classic works on the private note issuing banks at this period is The Curse of Paper Money and Banking, or a Short History of Banking in the United States of America published by William Gouge of Philadelphia in 1833. (The full text was also reprinted in the successive issues of The Journal of Banking edited, and probably mainly written, by Gouge. These appeared in Philadelphia from July 1841 to July 1842, and is the version referred to in subsequent notes.) It was republished a few months later in England by William Cobbett, M.P., a determined opponent of paper money. In his introduction he says: The following history is the work of an apparently exceedingly dull and awkward man: the arrangement of the matter is as confused as it can well be made, the statement of facts is feeble and there is as little of clearness as can well be imagined in anything coming from the pen of a being in its senses. There was a TIRST PART consisting of the moral and philosophical and economical…lucubrations of the author; but I am very sure that if my reader could see these he would thank me for leaving them out, especially as the omission is attended with a deduction from the price of the book. (Cobbett 1833:ix) 182 A HISTORY OF MONEY Cobbett was wrong. The first part is, at least to a modern reader, more readable than the second, which, as an accumulation of facts, is rather heavy going. Van Deusen (1959) quotes from it with approval, claiming that his own paragraphs are based on a careful study of the book, and regarding Gouge as the principal economic theorist of Jacksonian democracy. Gouge thought that gold and silver were natural money, but that bank notes constituted an artificial and dangerous inflation of the currency. He argued that this caused booms and panics (an argument reflected in the English discussions of the time) and that it gave bankers an unfair opportunity for making profits. Gouge disliked banks both because they made inflationary issues of paper money and because they were corporations. Corporations, he said, …are unfavorable to the progress of national wealth. As the Argus eyes of private interest do not watch over their concerns their affairs are much more carelessly and much more expensively conducted than those of individuals. Corporations are obliged to trust everything to stipendiaries, who are often less than the clerks of the merchant… (Gouge 1841–2:80) He quotes ‘A celebrated English writer’ (in fact Lord Thurlow) as saying ‘corporations have neither bodies to be kicked, nor souls to be damned’. Various sources give figures for the number of banks at various dates. Goddard lists, with details of paid up capital and dividend record, 137 banks operating in twenty-four cities in 1831, but does not give incorporation dates from which a pattern could have been derived. Gouge gives a table (Cobbett 1833:184–5) showing the number of banks in the various states at different dates. He comments ‘While so much uncertainty hangs over Bank accounts, the reader will be content with an abstract of the tables and statements of Mr Gallatin’. Some figures from various sources are given in Table 20.1 These figures do not include banks which had failed by the date given. Gouge mentions 165 ‘broken banks’ by 1830. There was, by any test, a huge expansion after 1812. Many of these new banks were in the South and West, and these were formed mainly to give credit to farmers (Russell 1991:49). This was important for later developments. Gouge also summarises information on banks in existence and bank notes in circulation, but cautions his readers about the sources of his information. His list of banks by states, shows fifteen were in Massachusetts and thirteen in Rhode Island in 1811. His rather tedious and repetitive discussions of the histories of different banks, indicates a lot of activity. Many banks failed and the notes of others which were probably solvent circulated at a discount. New charters in this period had to be granted individually by the State legislatures and, said Myers, ‘obtaining a charter from an unfriendly PRIVATE BANKING IN THE EARLY UNITED STATES 183 legislature was sometimes difficult if not impossible’. Banks typically extended loans as notes and these were used even for small payments. ‘Not until 1813 did the law of New York forbid the issues of notes of less than $1 in value’ (Myers 1970:69–70). Robert Tucker’s (1839) The Theory of Money and Banks Investigated is much more readable, but is more in the tradition of the learned tracts then being published in England. Tucker was born in Bermuda (The family is one of the ‘Forty Thieves’ said to run the island). He became successively an American lawyer, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy in the University of Virginia, and chairman of the East India Company. Thomas Goddard (1831), in spite of his title, deals only briefly with European banks, and reproduces at length key documents from the history of the Second Bank. He wrote just before the Bank War. He appends considerable information on the capital and dividend of a long list of banks as at 1831, and on insurance companies and other institutions. McCullough’s contribution on ‘Money’ to the eighth edition (1858) of the Encylopaedia Britannica contains a few pages on banking in the United States. It has been the uniform practice of the different States of the union to allow banks to be established for the issue of notes payable in specie on demand. In cases where the liability of shareholders in banks was to be limited to the amount of their shares, they had, previously to 1838, to be established by acts of local legislatures. But in general, these were easily obtained, and down to a comparatively late period, it may be said that banking was quite free and that practically all individuals or associations might issue notes provided they abided by the rules laid down for their guidance and engaged to pay them when presented. Under this system the changes in the amount and value of the paper currency of the United States have been greater than in any other country and it has produced an unprecedented amount of bankruptcy and ruin. (McCullough 1858:491) Table 20.1 Growth of US Banks and circulation of US$: 1792 to 1813 184 A HISTORY OF MONEY Hildreth (1837), begins with a brief and readable account of John Law, English and Scottish banking, and of the ‘suspension’ during ‘Pitt’s anti Jacobin war’. It is interesting as an expert American view in 1837. He argues that the Bank of Amsterdam was needed because of a depreciated circulating medium. Hildreth’s History ends on an optimistic note: since which time [1831, the beginning of his fourth period] we may reckon a new era in the commercial history of America. It is not to be supposed that business will continue to go on with the same rapid progression for which the last six years have been distinguished. But though its progress will not be so rapid still business will go on; and unless war returns again to curse the earth and barbarize its inhabitants, the science and industry of the present age will accumulate stores of wealth, and the means of comfort and pleasure, hitherto unknown. (Hildreth 1837:91) As so, eventually, it was. Weeks after the words were written, the 1837 crash, already described in Chapter 19, hit the country. Jackson’s second term Jackson’s veto message had been deliberately ambiguous, as he feared that too much emphasis on the hard money aspect of opposition to the Bank might alienate some of his supporters. In 1833, re-elected with strong Western backing, he had the confidence to embark on his real programme, or rather that of Taney and Benson. The motives were partly political ‘Democracy implies a government by the people…aristocracy implies a government of the rich’. In his view this meant destroying the Bank: …the centre and the citadel of the moneyed power…A national bank is the bulwark of the aristocracy, its outpost and its rallying point. It is the bond of union for those who hold that Government should rest on property. (Schlesinger 1945:125) There was also a coherent economic policy, largely set out by Gouge, whose book circulated widely. He was to work for a time for the Treasury from 1835 and felt the need to explain, in his 1841–2 ‘Journal’ version, that it had been written before he was a public servant. The economic arguments divided into two. Honest money benefited the working man, who had often been cheated by being paid in depreciating bank notes. Excessive paper issues may have stimulated trade, but by profiting the moneyed classes at the expense of the others. The other argument appears to have been based on a primitive, but broadly sound, theory of the trade cycle. PRIVATE BANKING IN THE EARLY UNITED STATES 185 New York safety fund system All banks chartered by New York had, since 1829 subject to certain regulations, to subscribe to a ‘safety fund’ out of which the notes of failed banks could be redeemed: ‘it does not level the root of the evil; and has the obvious defect of taxing the honest for the sins of the fraudulent’ (Hildreth 1837:75). The early history of private banks, as described above, parallels the attempts to develop an official ‘Bank of the United States’; attempts defeated by Andrew Jackson during the dramas of the Bank Wars. The system is also discussed at length in a paper by Robert Chaddock, prepared for and published by the National Monetary Commission. New York, not surprisingly, had a long tradition of private banking, which goes back certainly to 1800. ‘Sound banking develops slowly out of experience. The charters from 1800 to 1825 show certain common provisions to which others were added as experience dictated’ (National Monetary Commission, Chaddock 1910: 243). There was, for instance, an innovation in 1811 by which the State legislature in chartering the Union Bank and two others retained the right to appoint the first directors. In the same year another bank, the Middle District, had Commissioners appointed mainly by the legislature to distribute the stock and arrange the first election of directors. ‘This latter method by commissioners, continued to be followed under the safety fund system for several years and was the source of much complaint and abuse.’ Other specific provisions are discussed on the following pages. There was a debate on the renewal of bank charters in 1827 in which the Speaker of the House said that the profits of City banks ‘do not depend upon the circulation of their bills but arise from the discount of notes’, distinguishing their activities from those of the country banks. Chaddock’s chapter 2 discusses the idea of the Safety Fund which had been first mooted in 1829. Martin van Buren (at that time Governor of New York) pointed out that, of the forty banks operating in the state, the charters of thirty-one expired within four years and that it was necessary either to arrange promptly for the renewal of the charters of the sound banks or ‘to anticipate the winding up of their concerns by the incorporation of new institutions’. He rejects in a sentence the prospect of living without banks or relying only on Federal ones and in a few more words, the idea of a state bank. If by a state bank it is intended an institution to be owned by the state and conducted by its officers it would not seem to require much knowledge of the subject to satisfy us that the experiment would probably fail here as it has elsewhere. (Doc. Hist. vol. i: 319) 186 A HISTORY OF MONEY Successful and beneficial banking ‘must be conducted by private men upon their own account’. Van Buren goes on to expand on the right basis for renewing charters and granting new ones. ‘The policy…of requiring the payment of a large bonus to the state for performance of some special service as the price of bank charters is condemned by experience’. The conditions for the grant should therefore ‘refer exclusively to the safety and stability of the institution’. The legislature must ensure that the citizen when he exchanges his ‘property or services for bank paper may rest contented as to its value’. The plan he himself puts forward with real or pretended dividends to the independent legislators is intended ‘to make all the banks responsible for any loss the public may sustain by a failure of any one or more of them’ (collective responsibility). A few days later he goes into more detail and the Act itself, the New York Safety Fund Act, was passed on 2 April 1829 (Doc. Hist. vol. i: 325 ff). According to Chaddock (1910:259) Joshua Foreman had devised the safety fund proposals. The banks, he argued ‘had the exclusive privilege of furnishing a paper currency by which they made a profit. Therefore the state would lack a guarantee for the soundness of that paper. The banks should in common be answerable for it’. Foreman had also argued that public injury caused by the management of solvent banks in lending excessively and then suddenly calling in their loans to the inconvenience and sometimes ruin of their customers were greater than the losses from bank failures. (Chaddock comments that the discussion assumed that banking was identified with note issue, rather than deposit banking.) Under the proposals subsequently enacted each bank was required to pay in a sum equal to one half per cent of its capital each year into a safety fund, such payments to continue for as long as the assets of the fund did not exceed 3 per cent of such capital. The interest on the fund after expenses was to be paid to the banks and the fund itself was to be used to meet debts (but not the capital stock) of failed banks. The administration was in the hands of three bank Commissioners, one appointed by the governor of the state and two by the banks. They required to visit each bank quarterly and more often if requested by any three other banks. A ‘monied corporation’ as the Act referred to banks, could by Section 28, be wound up if it was three months in arrears with its sinking fund contribution if it should have lost half its capital stock, suspended payment of its bills in specie for ninety days or refused access to the commissioners. A rejected proposal was that all bank notes should be countersigned by a central agent to prevent fraudulent over issues. This caused problems, of which more later. There continued to be provisions by which capital had to be paid up before a bank could open: the officers of the bank had to declare on oath that no arrangements had been made to finance the purchase of stock with money borrowed from the bank. In 1829 sixteen charters were renewed and eleven new ones granted. There was some resistance from the New York City banks PRIVATE BANKING IN THE EARLY UNITED STATES 187 who argued that they were less profitable because of competition with the Bank of the United States. There was little provision for debts other than bank notes. The City banks actually had a substantial deposit business and there were some arguments in 1841 as to whether the deposits were effectively covered by the guarantee. A free banking system was inaugurated in 1838 but the safety fund system appears to have continued. The later appears to have worked well until 1838. It had to deal with five cases of insolvency but most of the losses were eventually recovered. There was a procedural meeting in 1837 involving three Buffalo banks. It was found that the fund intervened after the liquidation was completed and the final deficit known. This could result in loss to note holders and an Act of May 1837 enabled the authorities to take measures to pay the notes of failed banks at once out of the fund and thus prevent depreciation and loss to note holders’ (Chaddock 1910: 302). After the crash of 1837 The 1837 law, while bringing forward the date at which the safety fund could intervene did not permit it to top up its funds until liquidation of the insolvent bank was complete. An 1841 law repealed this and permitted calls at a rate of one half per cent per annum to top up the fund. This was construed to mean that banks which had not yet paid up their full 3 per cent would have to contribute at the rate of 1 per cent per annum. There were also provisions for permitting banks to make their contributions in the notes of failed banks. During 1840–2 there were eleven bank failures in New York State, listed in Chaddock (1910:309) and described individually on his following pages. In 1842, when it was discovered that failed banks had debts other than notes of over $1 million the law was changed to relieve the safety fund of responsibility for deposits or any debts other than notes. The table in Chaddock (1910:383) shows how between 1836 and 1860 the character of banking had changed because of the growth and eventual dominance of deposits and the decrease in the use of bank notes. He comments ‘evidently banks did not realise until the panic of 1857 that deposits now constituted the danger point in banking and must be covered by a reserve as well as notes’. See also Rockoff (1991:91). Free banking In New England, where the monopoly of banking privileges had always been least complete, and where the banks had been well managed the number of banks had gone on increasing. In 1830 Hildreth says there were 230 banks in the United States, of which 170 were in New England. The safety Fund proved inadequate to cope with the 1837 crisis, and Free Banking legislation was introduced in 1838. 188 A HISTORY OF MONEY [...]... required about £100,000 instead of £200,000 From that day we had a market of comparative ease (Evans 1848: 87) The Bank did in fact make substantial advances at 8 or 9 per cent but there was (as promised) little actual demand for notes The fiduciary issue was not in fact exceeded and the bill of indemnity was unnecessary As the country bankers had pointed out the demand was not in fact for notes but for facilities... step was for the public to perceive bankers’ deposit receipts as ‘bank notes’, and as a perfectly adequate and acceptable form of money At the end of the seventeenth century the Western world was ready for this step In England and elsewhere the coinage was inadequate and in a bad state, while in any case expanding trade called for a more efficient means of payment As we have seen in Part II, the way forward,... central bank and no Federal banking law, but some States at least seem to have filled the gap remarkably well Soon, though, there was to be a major upheaval, described in Chapter 27 21 THE BANK CHARTER ACT OF 1844 AND THE CRISIS OF 18 47 THE BANK CHARTER In 18 37 Colonel Robert Torrens had put forward a proposal to separate the Bank of England into two departments He followed Ricardo on wanting, eventually... Chapter 22 For a definitive account of this period we must await work in progress by Antoin Murphy The early history of John Law John Law was born in April 1 671 , the son of William Law, an Edinburgh goldsmith and banker He showed a precocious talent for mathematics, for extravagance, and for charming ladies There are several accounts of his life, mutually contradictory but good stories all His father... INTRODUCTION—LAND BANKS 203 the gold/silver ratio and in the silver price of the guinea, an event that could hardly have been ignored by a writer on money It must also have been before the National Land Bank legislation of 1696 Money and Trade Considered The above apart, John Law’s first pamphlet Proposals and Reasons for Constituting a Council of Trade was published in Edinburgh in 170 1 This was followed by Money. .. purchase agricultural land at 20 years’ purchase, and ground rents at 22 years Interest was 2 pence per £100 per day, or just over 3 per cent per annum Schumpeter (1954) says that John Briscoe ‘claimed to have been plagiarised by Barbon and Asgill and was himself accused of having plagiarised Chamberlen’ Barbon, he says, renounced theoretical metallism on the grounds that money is a value made by law’... Mississippi Company, the Company of the West (Compagnie d’ Occident) was incorporated in August 171 7 with a capital of 100 million livres in 200,000 shares of 500 livres each The whole of this was payable in Billets d’Etat at nominal value These were currently at a discount to specie: (Murphy gives a range of 68 72 ) so that the effective cost per share was about 140–160 livres A substantial part of the assets... Money and Trade Considered ( 170 5) His Land Bank proposals were sent to and discussed, but eventually rejected, by the Scottish Parliament Money and Trade Considered with a Proposal for Supplying the Nation with Money is a general tract on economics with a strong bias towards suggesting that the problems of Scotland are those of a shortage of money Chapter V discusses land banks and points out the fall... effect of the 18 57 crisis, which resulted in a suspension of specie payments He also discusses wild cat banking One method of generating a multiplier effect was to deposit State bonds purchased at a discount: the State insisted that its bonds be valued at par By the Civil War, some semblance of order had taken the place of the chaos of early unregulated wild cat banking There was still no national banking... commentary on the Bill that the desire of landowners to raise money on their land and indeed to increase its price was as much a motive as the need to augment the coinage which was at that time being reformed by Isaac Newton The landed gentlemen of the House of Commons…did not take kindly to arguments about the difference between a bill and a mortgage A land 202 A HISTORY OF MONEY bank that among other . technical reasons. Any advance made to a country bank gave that bank the right to withdraw notes from the Bank of England, and the Bank’s right to issue notes was limited by the Bank Charter Act of. ordered payment by way of precaution. And after the notice we only required about £100,000 instead of £200,000. From that day we had a market of comparative ease. (Evans 1848: 87) The Bank did in fact. at least to a modern reader, more readable than the second, which, as an accumulation of facts, is rather heavy going. Van Deusen (1959) quotes from it with approval, claiming that his own paragraphs