The same is true, in fact, of all purchases on credit. Even when the purchase is made by means of a note at the bank, the actual transfer of property is from the owner of the farm to its prospective owner, the bank simply acting as agent, and interposing its credit or capital only to promote the exchange. In many instances no money in any form is used, and where it is employed at some stage of the transaction, it is used, as in any other exchange, simply as a machine of transfer. Even the final settlement is likely to be made through the ordinary channels of trade, without the intervention of money in any of its forms. The deferred payment takes its place when the time of payment comes in the ordinary everyday transactions of the universal credit system, illustrated in banking. Even if the farm is paid for by instalments, those instalments are simply ordinary transactions in trade, the farmer transferring the check which he receives from the sale of his steers or his wheat to the former owner of the farm. The money involved is simply money of account, referring to a well understood standard of value. The importance of this standard in reference to deferred payments has already been referred to. It cannot be overestimated. But any estimate of the currency needed, or to be needed for the transaction of business, founded upon the amount of deferred payments, is wholly fallacious. It is equally wrong to suppose that the bankers are the principal money-lenders. The real lenders are those who have sold their produce, the use of their tools or their time, at a price to be paid next week, next month or next year. Every man who has wages due him is as truly a money-lender, to the extent of the wages due, as any banker who accepts a promise to pay in the future for service or value given in the present. Even where the borrowed articles have been consumed or wasted, the promise to pay is simply a promise to return so much of value as the articles received were estimated to be worth. This may be easily seen in thinking of a running account at the store for the ordinary supplies of the family. It may amount to five hundred dollars, if one’s credit is sufficient, and seem only the actual articles used, and yet to be paid for; but if settled by a note fixing a future definite time of payment, the debt at once becomes in thought borrowed money, though no change whatever has been made in the actual facts. If the same purchases had been made by means of credit at the bank, gained by discounting a personal note, the same articles exactly would have been borrowed, the bank instead of the merchant being the lender. In all probability the bank has been the means in the first case of enabling the merchant to meet these current wants on credit, for he himself has gained the credit of the bank by discounting his own note. In either case the bank has been the means of serving both the borrower and the lender. It is simply a machine for accommodating both.