The only topic on which there is abundant material available is that of commercial organization. See Cheyney, **Eur. background, chap. 7 (chartered commercial companies), chap. 8 (typical American colonizing companies); Hewins, **English trade, chap. 3 (trading companies); Hunter, Hist. Brit. India (East India Co.). R. B. Westerfield, *Middlemen in English business, Trans. Conn. Acad., May, 1915, 19; 111-445, is a scholarly study of the development of the organization of marketing, and W. R. Scott, *The constitution and finance of joint-stock companies, Cambridge Univ. Press, 3 vol., 1910-1912, is an authoritative work on the history of that subject. CHAPTER XVII CREDIT AND CRISES =168. Growth of credit business and of banking.=—The rise of the joint stock companies was a great step in the development of the power of capital and of credit. Individual savings, which before might have been hoarded and made useless to society, were drawn from their hiding-places to form the capital and loans by which the great companies extended the scope of commerce in this period. Another step in advance, which deserves notice here, was the extension of banking north of the Alps. The medieval doctrine that it was wrong to take interest on loans lost its force when it appeared that loans were wanted by merchants who would put them to a good use; and society concluded that it was wise to encourage the lending of money by permitting the lender to take interest for it. There is a great difference, however, between the lending by an ordinary individual, who has more than he knows what to do with, and the business of lending as practised by a banker. The difference is this, that an ordinary individual lends his own money, while a banker lends that of somebody else. When credit operations have become sufficiently extensive the banker appears as a man who makes dealing in credit his profession. He steps in between the people who have capital but lack the ability or inclination to employ it profitably, and the people who have the ability and inclination to conduct business enterprises but lack the desirable amount of capital. The banker is a specialist in this profession, and by his special knowledge can do more than any one else could to collect the surplus capital and place it where it can be used to the best advantage.