The real function of the banker, then, in these Commercial Credit transactions is to open up the international loaning market to the importer. Through the system now in force this is accomplished by a banker in New York issuing a credit and by a banker in London putting his "acceptance" on drafts drawn under that credit. The combination makes the drafts _good_; makes the great discount market in London willing to take them, and absorb them, and advance real money on them. And for the opening up of this great reservoir of capital the importer here has to pay an interest rate of but from one to two per cent. per End of Project Gutenberg's Elements of Foreign Exchange, by Franklin Escher