There is greater use of money in the cities of the outlying countries than in the rural districts. In the cities of Mexico banks and credit agencies are employed as in the American cities. The rural districts are more backward and make far less use of money than is the case in the United States. The great ports of China are provided with all the facilities of modern banking. In the great cities of India one can get a bank draft that will be paid in any part of the world. But go a very little way out of the cities of China and India, and conditions greatly change; money is far less used and principally as a storehouse of saving. [Sidenote: Slight use of money in the Middle Ages] 3. _In a historical view the European nations are seen to begin with a barter economy and to pass through great changes as regards the use of money._ Here the view shifts from a comparison of different nations at the same moment to a comparison of the same nation through a period of centuries. To understand, even in a measure, what is about them men must know out of what it grows. In the early Middle Ages money was used chiefly in cities, and there only to a limited extent. Almost universally a "barter economy" prevailed, or, as it has been called, a "natural economy," a term taken from the German "Naturalien," which means natural products, enjoyable things, as opposed to money. Natural economy, therefore, means that condition of society in which things are exchanged in kind. In the Middle Ages land was the great and dominant form of wealth. The prince himself was dependent on land for his income. The conquering chief or invader took possession of the land and parceled it out to his followers, and they in turn to their vassals. The income of the rulers was in the form of "Naturalien" (wheat, chickens, eggs), the kind and amount of which was fixed by contract or by immemorial usage. The landlord had land as his wealth and income-getter; the tenant received the use of the land in payment for his labor. [Sidenote: Land, the main form of wealth, was rented without the use of money]