"For a full generation before the war, the amount of ultimate loss to noteholders was too small to be reckoned as an appreciable percentage on the amount of currency outstanding, while the delays and minor inconvenience in the prompt cashing of the bills of broken banks were the result rather of the imperfect communication and exchange facilities of those days than of material defects in the banking system itself; indeed, so satisfactory had been the workings of what is known as the 'Suffolk Bank Redemption Plan'--that the need even of the most modest guarantee fund for instant redemption of broken bank bills was not felt until after the panic of 1857; and even then the total loss was petty when compared with the total circulation, and such as the most moderate plan of subsidiary guarantee would have forever obviated." MR. MANUFACTURER: That is most astonishing, actually astounding; they went through identically the same experiences during the first fifty years of this country that we have been going through during the last fifty, and they perfected a banking system which we killed by the 10 per cent tax on bank notes. Now we are gradually, whenever necessary, even in defiance of law coming back to the same principle of credit currency, for certainly, whatever may be said of the Clearing House loan certificates, generally speaking, all those $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 Clearing House checks were nothing but a pure credit currency, and we do not seem to have sense enough to see it, and adopt that principle. New England redeemed all her currency at the Suffolk Bank at Boston, the financial centre of that commercial zone. New England did before the war, precisely in the redemption of her bank currency what she has been doing since 1899, in redeeming New England checks at Boston. We must take our hats off to New England. All we want to do is to adopt the currency system which she worked out, and her free zone system for check redemptions. Canada obtained her original banking law by copying the statutes of Massachusetts before the war. She has improved upon them in detail, but the great underlying principle is the same. MR. MERCHANT: The total amount of certificates in one form or other, cash checks, etc., issued in 1907, was stated by the Comptroller of the Currency to be $248,279,700. It is a most interesting fact to note that just prior to the panic Hon. Charles N. Fowler, then Chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency, of the House of Representatives, introduced a bill for the purpose of allowing the banks to issue $250,000,000 of bank notes of the pure credit currency character, and urged its adoption, as a measure of relief for the impending crisis. You will note the amount was only one million and three quarters in excess of the amount actually issued, or an estimate within three-fifths of one per cent of the amount actually used.