It was a remedy for this evil, which had become unendurable, and in response to the persistent demands of the important commercial interests of the chief city of the state that the legislature, in 1857, chartered seven banks of issue, with branches conveniently located for the accommodation of business. These banks were promptly organized in the spring of 1857, immediately after the Act authorizing them was passed; for the state was prosperous, and offered a fair field for legitimate investment. The monetary crisis which was impending but not discerned fell upon the country shortly after they had opened for business; but they stood the strain well; two of them, the Mechanics and the Exchange of St. Louis, refused to suspend specie payment, and continued to redeem in coin through the panic; and when the Civil War broke upon the country four years later, these two banks again refused to join in the general suspension, and maintained coin payment under all conditions that followed. The system of banks organized under the Act of 1857 rendered the important service of partially displacing the uncertain and variable currency issued by the banks of other states and territories which had found so easy a field in Missouri. The legislature had also authorized the old banks in the state to establish additional branches and to issue notes for $5.00, and in a short time every considerable town in the state had a bank, and the notes of Missouri banks, issued at the rate of $3.00 to every dollar of specie on hand, afforded a local currency better than that brought in from the outside, which had for years almost monopolized the field. The "Wild Cat" money nevertheless made a stubborn contest, and the last of it did not disappear until the National Bank Act went into operation. In the wild, reckless period, when almost anything in the shape and appearance of an engraved bill, with the name of a bank on it, was good enough to buy public land with, and good enough, therefore, for all other purposes--and in the latter period when other western states _authorized banks to issue notes based on various kinds of bonds_ with the place of redemption out of the way and difficult of access--sometimes in a forest or in a swamp--the legislature of Missouri refused to charter institutions to multiply such currency within the limits of the state. The notes of the Bank of the State of Missouri were preferred to specie in New Mexico, Utah and on the Pacific coast, and the same high character marked the issues of the system of banks authorized by the general law of 1857. The capital in 1863 was $11,247,000; specie, $3,666,000; circulation, $4,037,000; deposits, $3,434,000. Everything I have just said I have taken from John Jay Knox's "History of Banking."