CHAPTER XXIII

CREDIT

Analysis and description are much more important than definition. Definition at the beginning of a study is frequently a fetter, rather than an aid to thought. This is especially true in a field where phenomena overlap and interlace, and where the "pure principle," "essence" or "_Wesen_" of the thing defined never presents itself, but is only to be reached by violent abstraction. To pick out one element--as "futurity"[503]--as marking off credit from other things would be an illustration of this. Or to take the notion of _promise_, or contract obligation, in connection with futurity, is likewise to limit the field unduly, on the one hand, and to include things which do not belong there on the other. Thus, a contract whereby A is to build a house for B by the end of a year, receiving at that time, or in instalments as the work proceeds, a sum of money, is not a credit transaction. We have, however, promise, futurity, and a future payment of money all called for in the contract. On the other hand, if A sends B a telegraphic order for money, which B receives three minutes after the money is entrusted by A to the telegraph company, we have a credit transaction, with no element of futurity in it. Certainly there is less of futurity there than in the case where a laborer, working all day, is paid only at night for work done in the morning. Futurity enters into the values of all goods which are not destined for immediate consumption--capital values of long-time goods are discounted present worths of _future_ values. Contracts, promises, and beliefs in promises run through the whole range of economic life,--the domestic servant, paid weekly, illustrates all three. Yet only a special class of these economic activities are commonly counted as credit transactions. Credit is really a part of the system of economic value relations not easily marked off in economic nature from the rest. Its clearest _differentiae_ are juridical rather than economic. It will be the purpose of the present chapter, in part, to blur, rather than to make precise, the line between credit and non-credit in economic phenomena, and to assimilate the laws of credit to the general laws of value.

This will involve, however, a careful analysis and precisioning of certain phenomena commonly counted as credit phenomena. Buying and selling on the one hand; borrowing and lending on the other: the distinction seems clear. It is in law. But what is it in economic nature? When a merchant discounts his own note at the bank, it is borrowing. When he discounts the note of another, his debtor, it is selling. If he writes before his endorsement of the note, "without recourse," (unusual at a bank, but common enough with real estate mortgage-notes) he has made a perfect sale, and is entirely out of the transaction. Is it, however, in economic nature a different transaction from the original one in which he got the note from a borrower? Legally bonds are credit instruments, and stocks are not. Stocks represent _ownership_. But practically, as an economic matter, both represent the alienation of control, on faith, to a small group of men, and practically, too, the difference between preferred stocks and bonds is often very slight. Whatever the legal rights of a bondholder, under the terms of his contract, the legal fact itself often is, under the growing practice of receiverships, that he cannot exercise his right to foreclose without such difficulty that it doesn't pay to do it. Very frequently indeed the junior bondholder will come out of a reorganization as simply a preferred stockholder--which is what he practically was all the time. He couldn't vote as a bondholder, but his voting rights as a stockholder commonly mean little! As a bondholder, if he held enough bonds, he might even have more influence on the affairs of the corporation than as a stockholder. The market is moved by other forces than the legal distinctions in corporate contracts! And market facts are not necessarily correctly told by the accountant's categories either. I shall trouble myself little, in what follows, with the juridical and accountancy problems of credit, save in so far as these bear directly on the more pertinent economic aspects of the matter. I am interested in the question of credit as a part of the problem of value and prices--and particularly from the standpoint of the problem of the value of money.

What difference is made in values and prices by lending and borrowing? What kinds of lending and borrowing are there? What shall we say of bank-notes, of bank-deposits, of bills of exchange? What difference is made by the money market? Behind the legal forms and the technical methods, what are the psychological forces at work? How are these psychological forces modified by the technical forms and methods? What are the economic differences between long and short time loans? How shall we draw the distinction between the "money-rates" and the long time interest rate on "capital?" Why can some things serve as collateral in the money market when others cannot? What sorts of credit are appropriate to commerce, to manufacturing, to agriculture? Is credit capital? Is an increase in credit an increase in values? The last two of these questions imply that we have a definition of credit. Perhaps the answers to some of the other questions may have given us such a definition. But analysis and description will precede definition.

The etymology of "credit" has sometimes been taken as the clue to the meaning of the word for economics, and the idea of confidence, or belief, has been made the heart of the matter. A man has good credit when others have confidence in his integrity, etc. Men lend to others when they can trust them to repay. Doubtless something of this sort was responsible for the original choice of the word. But when loans are made on good mortgage security, or on collateral security, the personality of the borrower may count for little or nothing. Confidence there is, but not confidence in the intentions of the borrower. The confidence is in the "goodness" (_i. e._, the value and marketability) of the collateral. The same questions are raised by the lender here which he would raise if he were going to buy the thing, instead of lending with it as security. None the less, I think that in the etymology of the word we have an important clue. We must generalize the notion, however, beyond the limits of confidence in personal intentions. It involves confidence in the general economic situation, in the future of business, in the permanence of values, in the certainty of future incomes, etc. Thus viewed, the element of confidence, though important in highest degree, is not peculiar to the phenomena which we call credit phenomena in economics. It appears wherever there are values which depend on future events. One does not need much confidence in buying potatoes or apples or meat--though in the case of meat quite a lot of confidence may be involved--and misplaced! But whenever the future is involved, whenever capital values of any kind are involved--lands, stocks, bonds, houses, horses, manufacturing equipment, etc.--the element of belief, confidence, hopeful attitude toward the future, is quite as much present as in the case of a loan. Nor is the element of personal confidence less present, often, in these things than in the case of a loan. Very often the value of a horse may depend in considerable degree on the integrity of the man who offers it for sale; the value of a piece of land may be much enhanced if a trustworthy owner makes certain statements as to the yields he has got from it; the values of stocks (really credit instruments, from the angle of economic analysis) may depend very much on the personality of the organizers and managers of a corporation. Personal prestiges may count for much more in these cases than in the case of a collateral loan.

Further, in connection with the element of belief, or confidence. Borrowing is expensive, and men do not borrow for amusement. That borrowing and lending may increase, it is not enough that lenders have confidence in the ability of borrowers to repay. Borrowers must also have confidence in the future of their businesses, in their ability to make enough out of the loan to pay the expense involved, and have a surplus left over. I abstract here from consumption loans. They play a very minor role.[504] The analysis in an earlier chapter, based on Kinley's figures, showing that retail trade is less than one-eleventh of the total pecuniary transactions in 1909, and that the percentage of credit instruments used in retail trade is much lower than in other transactions, will justify us, when quantitative questions are involved, in abstracting from consumption loans. Since such loans will be chiefly employed in retail buying, and since we know that most retail buying does not result from loans for consumption purposes, we may conclude that modern credit is overwhelmingly of a different sort. Most of it arises from business activities of one kind or another, and rests on expectation of profit and loss.[505] Such loans are not made when borrowers, as well as lenders, have not confidence in the transactions they mean to put through.

So far the thing has run in terms of individual calculation of profit and loss. But even the most sagacious business men do not play a lone hand. No one is uninfluenced by the expectations and feelings of others. In general, business confidence is in large degree a matter of social psychology, resting on suggestion, contagion, etc., as well as on cool calculation of profit and loss. Even where men are able in considerable degree to free themselves from the prevailing optimism or pessimism, they must take it into account. The man who extends his business when nobody is in the mood to buy, when no one will make contracts with him, runs a very fair chance of bankruptcy, even though there be, in the technical facts of industry, no reason for the prevailing pessimism. A man with large resources, which are not fully employed, seeing that the prevailing "bad business" is "largely psychological" may, indeed, take advantage of the fact, get his labor and raw materials cheaply, and produce some staple in advance of his market. If he can afford to hold his surplus, he may make large profits by so doing. But usually business men will not, in such a situation, have the surplus resources to enable them to put through such an undertaking, and hence, even though they may recognize that the rest of the business world is irrational, they must, perforce, conform to its irrationality, and their sober estimate of the prospects of a given undertaking may be just as much adverse as if they shared the feeling of gloom which all about them feel. They meet it from the banker from whom they wish to borrow. Even if able to borrow, they meet it from the dealers to whom they are accustomed to sell their products. The prevailing gloom is as much a fact with which they must reckon as is the price of their raw materials, or the technical qualities of those raw materials.

Further, business confidence is not a matter in which each man counts one! There are centers of prestige, men and institutions whose attitude toward the future counts heavily indeed in determining the attitudes of others. These prestiges may arise from various causes. Recognized wisdom and probity may give a man great prestige in economic matters. There are financial writers and students of the market, not necessarily men of great wealth, whose opinions are exceedingly influential in making business confidence. The wisdom without the probity is not enough. Some men, known to be sagacious students of the market, have been known to succeed in their plans by telling the truth, with the result that everybody else did the wrong thing! They made business confidence, but not the sort that was complimentary to them. Other men have prestige, influence in making business confidence, by virtue of possession of large wealth. They are, first, in position to lend largely. Their decisions count directly for more than the decisions of thousands of other men. The very fact that they have confidence in the future, apart from anything else, means a tremendous increase in _effective_ business confidence--which we are here concerned with. The optimism of a man who can neither buy nor sell nor borrow nor lend, because he himself has no economic resources, and no prestige, is like the desire of a penniless beggar for an economic good--its effect on the market is not great! But further, the fact that a rich man is lending makes possible activities which would not otherwise be possible, and so justifies confidence on the part of those who wish to deal with those to whom he lends. Such a man may, on the other hand, borrow. His borrowing, for business activity, justifies confidence on the part of those who would deal with him. Quite apart, therefore, from any influence on the opinions of others growing out of respect for his judgment, or less rational reaction to him, he can do much to make or unmake business confidence. But commonly, also, such a man is a center of prestige, as well as a controller of economic power by virtue of his wealth. Men look to him for their cue. If _he_ has confidence enough in the future to risk his great wealth, surely smaller men with smaller interests need not be afraid. Vitally important centres for the making and controlling of business confidence are the banks. Having intimate knowledge of the affairs of many business men, of business men in many different lines, they are in a position to judge wisely of business prospects. Having great power to make or refuse loans, they can encourage or chill the enthusiasm which business men may independently develop. The whispered word of a banker may well count for more than the half-page advertisement of a promoter. But the banker is not all powerful. His influence is much greater, often, in restraining than in evoking business confidence. Bankers may during long periods be quite unable to increase their loans, though they tempt borrowing by easy rates.

Business confidence is a fact of social psychology. It is an organic phenomenon, with radiant points of control. It is a matter of inter-mental activity, rather than a thing in which each man makes an independent choice.

But this is to say nothing of credit phenomena that is not true of all value phenomena. All economic values are social values. The values of wheat or sugar or bicycles are social values. There are centers of power and prestige, growing out of the distribution of wealth, or various other social factors, which have a dominating influence on economic values, as a rule. Credit phenomena are merely part and parcel of the general system of economic motivation and control.

In _Social Value_ (pp. 102-103) I have denied the doctrine of Meinong and Tarde that explicit belief, existential judgments, are essential to the existence of values, taking value in the generic sense, which includes aesthetic value, religious and patriotic value, legal, moral, and other values. I have pointed out that we do, at times, value ideal objects, the creatures of our imaginations. The dead sweetheart, or the Beatrice that never was (or that never was what she was imagined to be) may have tremendous value. Not merely things hoped for, but things hopelessly gone, as "The Lost Cause" to the Southerner, may be objects of value so high that other things, known to be real, may sink into insignificance beside them. Even in these cases, however, there must be a "reality-_feeling_" an unconscious presumption or assumption that the object valued is real. Indeed, belief, as distinguished from mere ideation, is an emotional "tang," an essentially emotional, rather than intellectual, fact. If it be present, the ideation and explicit judgment may be dispensed with.

It is, however, characteristic of economic values, particularly of the values of instrumental goods and of the goods with which business men make profits, that the tendency to raise the question of reality, to require explicit judgment, is strong. The successful business man is necessarily the man who does this, who does not too highly value the creatures of his imagination, when he imagines a vain thing. One need not, perhaps, seriously raise the question as to the reality of the loaf of bread he buys. Explicit judgment there would be superfluous. But very serious questionings come in whenever lands or houses or securities or bills of exchange come in. One needs to know what the facts are, and to make judgments based upon them. Hence, for all values of capital goods and income-bearers, for the values which pass in wholesale and speculative trading in general, the matter of _belief_ is vitally important. Here, again, then, we have nothing in the psychological principles underlying credit phenomena to mark them off from the general field of value phenomena.

The general laws of value, then, apply in the case of credit phenomena. We find nothing unique in essence in them. The juridical relations, also, in so far as they have economic significance, shade into one another. To buy a bond from a bondholder is purchase and sale. To pay a borrower money for his personal note is lending. But from the standpoint of the theory of value and prices this distinction may be ignored. We may extend the idea of buying, selling, and price to cover all contracts where values are balanced against values, and expressed in terms of each other. Future money has its price in present money, just as much as present wheat has its price in present money. Really it is not future money against present money. It is a case of _rights_, which involve the payment of money in the future, sold for money, and priced in money. In general, it is _rights_, rather than _things_, which pass in economic exchange. Physical delivery does not constitute selling. Delivering a load of wheat to a railroad does not constitute sale of the wheat to the railroad; selling a farm does not involve any physical moving of the farm. Rights, _in personam_ or _in rem_, are objects of economic value, and the exchange of these rights makes up the bulk, if not the whole, of economic exchange. (Exchange may be limited to the transfers of juristic rights, without value being so limited. I have discussed the relations of value and exchange in the chapter on "Value," above.) Property rights are commonly conceived of as the proper objects of buying and sale. Contracts involving the future services of free men stand legally on a different footing from contracts regarding physical goods. But economic analysis is not greatly concerned with these distinctions, except in so far as they affect the values of the things exchanged, and so the terms of the exchanges. I do not believe that the legal distinctions can be made to run on all fours with any significant economic distinctions, and shall not undertake to make them do so. In the phenomena we have simply cases of buying and selling (in a generalized sense of those terms) of _rights_, at _prices_ (by a very slight extension of the term, price, to which the market is well accustomed). The terms of these exchanges, the prices, are governed by values, social economic values, in no wise different from the values which govern the prices in exchanges which we do not class as credit transactions. I say that credit phenomena are exchanges of rights. This is true of all exchanges. We do not exchange rights for money. We exchange rights to other things for rights to money. The mere physical transfer, even of money, does not give rights to the money. I may merely be giving you the money for safe keeping, or for use for my purposes. While the law makes the rights to money that has left the hands of its owner less lasting, as against innocent third parties, than in the case of other objects, and while the right to money is always, or almost always, met by returning other money of equal amount, even in the case of money it is a right, and not a mere physical transfer, that is significant.

Our problem regarding credit is, then, much simplified. We have simply to pick out certain economic exchanges to which the name of credit transactions has been applied,--a various and heterogeneous set of exchanges, in many ways--and study them, to find their peculiarities. These peculiarities will not make them exceptions to the general laws of value. They will make them merely special cases. To find essential principles marking off credit transactions, at large, from non-credit transactions is an exceedingly difficult thing. There are more differences among credit transactions themselves, than there are between the genus, credit transactions, and the class of things not called by that name.

Thus, monthly payments of rent, of wages, of college professors' salaries, are not commonly called credit transactions. The monthly payment of grocery bills, or of telephone bills, involves credit. Where is a real difference to be found? On the other hand, between book credit between grocer and patron on the one hand, and a bank-note or deposit credit on the other, the difference is large, in many practically important ways. Between a call loan and a ten year agricultural mortgage-note, the differences are even greater.

One may be disposed to find the differences between credit transactions and non-credit transactions in the fact that the former stipulate a definite sum of money, due at definite times. This would partly differentiate a bond, say, from a stock. The bond not merely calls for stipulated yearly payments, but also calls for a definite payment at the end. This would, however, exclude British Consols from the list of credit instruments! British Consols differ from safe preferred stocks in legal, rather than in economic, ways. Legally they are alike in that no terminal payment is called for. Practically they are alike in that annual regular sums may be expected. It may at least be said of credit transactions that stipulated money payments, either at a different time or a different _place_, are called for. This would include the telegraphic transfers of funds, and would exclude the case where A, a farmer, does a day's work for B, a neighbor, for the promise of a day's work in return at a later season. The latter transaction involves many of the elements that definitions of credit have included, but I think that we may at least limit our conception of credit transactions to transactions within a money economy, where money, as a measure of values, functions in the calculations. Shall we, however, limit credit transactions to cases where a stipulated _amount_ of money is named in the contract, for a stipulated time?

Shall we exclude contracts where the payment of money is made contingent on anything? By contingency here I mean legal contingency. This test would exclude the highest grade preferred stock. It would include the shakiest bonds that contained, in the terms of the contract, no contingency. But where, then, would one place such an instrument as the Seaboard Airline Adjustment 5% Bonds, which may default in a given year half of the interest, if it is not earned,[506] and which yet call for the payment of the principal at a stipulated time?

What shall we say of "borrowing and carrying" transactions on the stock exchange? Is not the loan of stocks a real credit transaction? Ordinarily, when stocks are put up as collateral, one thinks of the money as being lent, and the stock merely as a pledge. But in the case of borrowing stocks by a bear to deliver next day, the transaction is definitely thought of as a loan of stock. It is sometimes paid for, the bear paying the bull a premium, instead of receiving interest on the money he has turned over to the bull as a "pledge." The more usual thing, is, of course, for the bull to pay the bear interest. But in a contract like this, there are many contingencies. As the stock rises in value, the bear must lend more money to the bull; if the stock falls, the bull must return part of the money to the bear. Both times and amounts are here contingent, even though in the end the amounts lent and repaid balance. Call loans, of course, do not call for payment at a stipulated time, and the same is true of bank-deposits and bank-notes, and of many other forms of credit. Interest on deposits in mutual savings banks is contingent, legally, as to amount. Are insurance policies credit instruments? What of endowment policies?

It is easy to draw legal distinctions in all these cases, but to show that definite and uniform economic consequences flow from these legal distinctions is quite impossible. Rather, it is easily possible to show that uniform or certain economic consequences do not, in general, flow from them.

I shall refrain from the effort to give a general, fundamental definition of credit. I shall rather discuss certain of the more important types of what have been called credit, with a view to seeing what bearing they have on the problems with which this book is concerned; the value of money, and prices. The general class of transactions to which the name, credit transactions, has been applied may be roughly designated as transactions in which the consideration on one side, at least, is the assumption of a debt, running in terms of money (though not necessarily to be paid in actual money), payable either at a future time or at another place. Objections can be found to this definition. It does not meet the fundamental test of a definition that, for the purpose in hand, it should seize upon the essential and unique characteristic of the things marked off. I am not sure that it meets the tests of inclusiveness and exclusiveness even for those transactions which we call credit transactions. Thus, if A and B go to the bank together, and A there buys B's horse, standing in front of the bank, giving B in return a check, which B immediately cashes in the same room where the check is drawn, the idea of different time or different place is not realized in any but a technical sense. A, in drawing the check is, of course, assuming a debt. The check, if repudiated by the bank, becomes a note, which A must pay. A, moreover, is paying B, not with money, but with the transfer of a claim on the bank, and the fact that his check, if unpaid, becomes a note is not the main fact about the check. Understanding our definition of credit to cover this case also, however, and attaching no fundamental importance to the definition save as a means of marking off a class of more or less related phenomena which we mean to discuss, the definition will serve.

Thus defined, we have in credit a concept susceptible to quantitative treatment. Debts, in terms of money, can be summed up, and we may have the concept of the "volume of credit" as the sum of such debts at a given time, or through a given period of time, or as an average through a period of time. We may distinguish credit transactions from credit, defining credit as the volume of debts, and credit transactions as transactions in which the debts are passed in exchange. This would be to broaden the notion of credit transactions beyond the usual conception, since it would include transactions in which A sells ("without recourse") B's note to C. It would also include cases where bonds are sold. It would exclude cases where stocks are sold, since they are not legally debts. Some would prefer to limit the notion of credit transaction to transactions in which there remains some contingent responsibility on the part of the one who uses the credit instrument, but this would be to deny the name, credit transaction, to cases where bank-notes or government paper are used in payments, as well as to deny it to the case where bonds are sold. It is not important, for my purposes, to draw a sharp line about the concept, credit transaction, however. And about the concept credit itself I have drawn a line resting on a legal, rather than an economic, distinction.

Within the field of credit, thus defined, we may single out for especial consideration certain forms of demand or short time credit, particularly bills of exchange, bank-notes and bank-deposits, and merchants' book-credit. We shall also have something to say regarding long-time credit, including bonds, and mortgage-notes that have no general market.

All these debts in terms of money, to which, in the aggregate, we have given the name, volume of credit, have grown out of _exchanges_. Exchange is here used in a wide sense, and is not confined to the case where goods or services are bought and sold. It is an exchange, if a man gives his note to a banker in return for a deposit credit. But, on the assumption that exchanges are made only when gains are to be realized, it follows that all debts, and so all credit, have been created in view of anticipated gains (or to avert anticipated losses). In a society where everything is in equilibrium, a "static state," where there are no "transitions" to be effected, where there is no occasion for speculation, and where exchanges of lands, etc., are negligible, the volume of all exchanges, including those where debts are passed in exchange, would be small. The occasion for the creation of the debts which make up the volume of credit would not be nearly so numerous as under dynamic conditions. The _volume_ of credit, in other words, is largely a function of dynamic conditions, even though credit would exist in a static condition of economic life. The bulk of credit, as the bulk of exchanging, grows out of dynamic conditions, transitional changes, and the like.

This will be clearer when we raise the question as to _why_ debts are created, as to what function debts perform in economic life. Why should a man borrow? Let us suppose that a farmer has 600 acres of land. He wishes to sell 100 acres, and use the proceeds in buying equipment for his farm. But he finds it difficult to sell the 100 acres. There is no ready market. He can sell it immediately only at a great sacrifice. By waiting, and looking industriously for a customer, or by engaging a real estate dealer to do so, he could finally find a buyer, but the thing is slow and uncertain, and he wishes to get the equipment at once. He borrows, therefore, giving his farm as security, or a part of the farm as security. He exchanges a claim on the future income of the farm for present money, and with this he can buy the equipment he needs. The net result has been that the credit transaction has transformed his unmarketable quantum of value into a marketable form of value. He has been able, by an indirect step, to do what he could not do directly--to trade a part of the farm (which in its economic essence is a prospect of future income) for the equipment. In this illustration, _credit has functioned as a means of increasing the marketability or saleability of non-pecuniary forms of wealth_. Credit is primarily a device for effecting exchanges that could not otherwise be effected, or for effecting exchanges more easily than they could otherwise be effected. This means that credit transactions are a part of the productive process, and that they increase values. It is the function of credit to universalize the characteristic of money, high saleability. It is the function of credit to "coin," so to speak, rights to goods on shelves, lands, etc., etc., into liquid rights, bearing the dollar mark, which are much more highly saleable than the rights in their original form were, and which often become as saleable as money itself, functioning perfectly as money.

Credit thus tends to universalize that characteristic which Menger[507] considers the unique characteristic of money. By means of credit transactions, a man borrows up to 50% of the value of the farm, makes his farm in effect, 50% saleable or fluid. The man who owns livestock may not be able, on a given day, to market them without loss, but he can use their value in the market, up, say, to 75%, by a loan. The man who owns a hundred shares of United States Steel may not be able, at a given time, to market them to his satisfaction--though in the case of articles and stocks dealt in the speculative markets saleability is very high indeed, and in the case of United States Steel, in particular, the "spread" between "buying price" and "selling price" is very narrow--but he can borrow, with the stock as security, up to 80% of its value. On a bond of the United States government, he may borrow up to 100%.[508] The process of creating credit is a process of transforming rights from unsaleable to saleable form. Often this means the subdivision of rights, preferential rights to a _portion_ of the value of a piece of wealth being more saleable, because of greater certainty, than the total right to the whole. Another reason why partial rights may be more saleable is that the value represented by each partial right is smaller. It is easier to market things worth a thousand dollars than things worth fifty thousand, as a rule. In any case, a chief economic function of credit is,--_the_ chief function for our purposes--to make fluid and saleable articles of wealth other than money; to universalize the quality of saleability.

This justifies us in our contention made before that _all_ corporate securities, whether stocks or bonds,[509] are, in economic nature, alike. Driven to a legal concept for a definition of credit, we were obliged to exclude stocks from our rough definition. But corporate organization does precisely what the various other transactions that we have called credit transactions do. Lands and buildings and machinery, or the roadbed and rolling stock of a railroad, are highly specialized, often unfit for use in any form other than that in which they now appear. As concrete instruments of production, they would be highly unsaleable. In their totality, as a going concern, they are highly unsaleable, because in the aggregate so very valuable. Grouped together, however, but still subdivided, the objects of many thousands of partial rights, represented by stocks and bonds, they become saleable in high degree.

As objects other than money gain in saleability, they tend to gain in value, also. This is not necessarily true, always. If wealth is already in the best place, at the proper time, and in the proper hands, no point is involved in further exchanges. Additional saleability--or an increase in the qualities that make for saleability--could make no difference. But when objects could be employed to greater advantage if in different hands, if, in other words, there is occasion for exchange, then whatever adds to the saleability of a good adds to its value. What would otherwise have gone into the trouble and expense of marketing now is saved. In general, items of wealth tend to gain in value as they gain in saleability--though not in any definite proportion.

Further, as objects of value other than money gain in saleability, money tends to lose its _differential advantage_ in this respect, and so tends to lose that part of its value which comes from the money-uses. If all things, including gold, were equally saleable, there would be no _raison d'etre_ for money, and gold would have only the value that comes from its commodity functions. In so far as credit-arrangements give to partial rights to wealth the capacity to serve as a medium of exchange or for other money purposes--and this is true to a high degree of bank-credit--this tends to cut under the sources of value of money. Credit thus, from two angles, tends to raise prices; it raises the values of goods; and it tends to lower the value of money. The limits on this, however, are reached when gold ceases entirely to function as money, and when all items of value are perfectly saleable. Then credit has done its perfect work for prices, and can do no more. No incentive remains for further borrowing, if all items of value that need to be exchanged are perfectly saleable.

These theses will meet objection, particularly from those who are accustomed to quantity theory reasoning, and who look upon the volume of credit as something independent of the volume of trade. On the logic of the quantity theory there is no reason why prices might not mount indefinitely, if only credit could increase indefinitely. The causes controlling the volume of credit are, on this view, quite independent of the volume of trade. I have given this line of thought sufficient criticism, perhaps, in Part II, but shall find occasion to recur to it at a later point in this chapter. However, writers not bound by quantity theory ideas, may still find reason to question these theses, and it is necessary that I should take account of various complications, and make what may well be called substantial qualifications and modifications, before the theses are acceptable.

First, objection will be offered to the doctrine that all credit is merely rights to wealth, that credit rests on wealth. It will be urged that many loans are made without collateral, or mortgage security, that the "personal credit" of the borrower is the only security, and the only basis of the loan. This objection is not serious. There are, doubtless, loans which are disguised benevolences, where the lender gets nothing good in return for his loan. I abstract from such cases. Quantitatively they are not important, and qualitatively they are not really commercial transactions. In general, when a good merchant borrows at the bank on his personal note, the bank knows very well what goods he has in stock, what prospects he has for marketing them, what other debts he has, what his "net worth" is. And the bank knows that it has legal claims, even though not preferred claims, on his wealth. When a young business man borrows capital from a neighbor, giving no security because he has no marketable wealth which would serve as security, he is, none the less, exchanging a valuable right for the loan. He is giving the lender a right to a preferential share in his future income. The lender has considered the young man's abilities as sources of income, in conjunction with the capital lent. Incidentally, the lender retains rights, preferential rights as against the young man himself, in the quantum of value he has turned over to him. If a young man borrows the resources with which he buys a farm, the lender takes a mortgage on the farm itself. Transactions of this sort frequently have in them the element of benevolence, and the considerations are not always strictly commercial. In the case of a young man of unusual ability, however, who insures his life for the benefit of the lender, such transactions may be perfectly good commercial transactions, value balancing value in the exchange. The thing traded is commonly present money (or its equivalent) for rights to future money income.

Public loans present no exception to our rule. They represent the transfer of present wealth for the future income which the government, by virtue of its public domain, or, more commonly, its taxing power, may expect to receive. With a strong government, this future income may be a very substantial part of the total income of the people. Public loans may often be for commercial purposes, as when municipalities borrow to build or extend municipal enterprises. In cases of this sort, the market frequently will consider the prospects of commercial success of the enterprises in fixing the value of the municipal bonds. Where the proceeds of the loan are for non-commercial purposes, as war, the question of the future income of the government will still, ordinarily, be a dominant factor in determining the value of the securities. Often, however, there is the direct action of patriotic fervor, etc., enhancing the values of government securities. We have seen this in the case of government money. It is no part of our theory to maintain that men's calculations are always rational, or that the whole of the value of a long-time income-bearer rests on the anticipated income. But this is no peculiarity of credit phenomena. The same thing is true of lands, for example. Capital values often get independent in part of their "presuppositions," as we have seen in the chapter, _supra_, on "Economic Value." War security issues often represent the effort of the government--as at the present time--to bring into the present every possible bit of future values, as a means of increasing their power in a desperate struggle. The high prices of goods in such a situation represent the concentration of future values into the present, an increase in the motivating power which stimulates the people to unwonted exertions. In war time, moreover, many _ideal_ values,--those whose fate is dependent on the outcome of the war--enter into and increase the values of those goods which are needed for carrying on the war. This leads to larger sacrifices of future income than would ordinarily be tolerated. It is not so much a case of present goods rising because of extra credit, as of extra credit because present goods are more valuable.

A second objection would be raised that in many cases, the values pledged by the borrower could not exist if the lender did not make the loan. This would be particularly the case with credit granted for the starting of a new or novel enterprise, which as yet exists only in idea. The established merchant, with goods on his shelves, or with a bill of lading for goods which he has sold, has a very tangible, concrete basis for a loan, whose value is independent of the decision of any given banker. If my doctrine is to be taken as holding that all credit rests on concrete physical goods, very many exceptions indeed could be found. But this is not my doctrine. It is that credit rests on valuable _rights_. These rights may be rights to existing concrete goods; they may be rights to future incomes. In any case, it is the values, rather than the physical quantities, that are significant. Witness cotton before and after the outbreak of the World War. Ultimately, in general,[510] economic values come from the "primary values" or "first order" values of consumption goods and services. These values are reflected back, by the imputation processes, to the various "factors of production" which have made the existence of the goods and services possible, in accordance with well-known laws which need not be here elaborated. But the category of "factors of production" is far from exhausted when we have named land, labor, and produced instruments of production! Some writers have rejected the notion of "factors of production" largely or altogether, and prefer such a term as "agents of acquisition."[511] I certainly have no intention to give to the term, factor of production, any ethical connotation. Even though a factor of production be, like land or labor, a _sine qua non_ of production, it does not follow that the owner of that factor gets his proper, or ethically just share, under the laws of economic imputation. Many of the "factors of production," in the sense of factor which derives a value from the economic laws of imputation, may well be parasitic from the angle of ultimate social welfare. The only test is as to whether, under existing social arrangements, a portion of the income _of a given establishment_ would cease to exist if that factor should disappear, or be reduced. From the angle of this test, monopoly power, trade-marks, established trade connections, the big idea of an entrepreneur, a dynamic personality, capacity for winning other men's confidence and good will, and sometimes that brutal selfishness which makes other men shrink from conflict, or the reputation of being a dangerous and vindictive man, may be equally "factors of production" with land, labor, and produced instruments of production. In Part IV of this book, "The Reconciliation of Statics and Dynamics," we have discussed the "intangible capital items" of this class, and have indicated that many of them perform really important and necessary social functions. Others are doubtless pernicious. Production involves leadership, organization, the making and maintaining of "interstitial connections," as well as the technology of muscle and machine. But credit is based on values, rather than on concrete goods as such, and if these "intangibles" have value, they may have credits based upon them.[512]

That some of these values exist only by virtue of the fact that credit is granted is no marked peculiarity. The granting of credit is an exchange of the rights of the creditor for rights to the future income of the borrower. If the exchange were not made, in certain cases, the borrower would have no future income to which he could give rights. The entrepreneur with a big idea cannot actualize that big idea unless he can bring it into conjunction with land, labor, capital, and a market for the products. The exchange of rights to the value of the products for the banker's deposit-currency, or the private lender's money is merely one of many necessary exchanges required to bring about the combination which will create the products. If there were no possibility of marketing the products, he would be equally helpless, and his idea be equally valueless. The general range of values, under our present system of division of labor, private property, private enterprise, etc., depend on the possibility of exchange. Men produce for the market, rather than for their own consumption, or for the consumption of a communist society. Without exchange, many values would persist, but most values would at least be diminished. Exchange is part of the productive process. The only peculiarity in the case under discussion is that the man getting credit for the exploitation of a big new idea commonly has a very limited market--is dependent on the decision of one bank or lender, or at most of one out of a few possibilities. The narrower the market, the more dependent are the values of things that must be exchanged upon the decisions of a few men. Wheat is free, virtually, from individual caprices, though even there a big operator may organize a pool and temporarily affect the value very greatly. But the immediate power of a few men on values is increasingly great as we get closer to those things which are unique, which are capable of only specialized employment, and which call for the cooeperation of elaborate and expensive systems. And, of course, the influence of individual caprice, or individual decisions, on all values grows greater as wealth and power are concentrated. Economic social value is an institutional value, specially weighted and controlled by individuals, classes and institutions.[513]

Joseph Schumpeter, in his _Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung_, has made much of the role of the banker in economic evolution. He sees in the banker a creator of "_Kaufkraft_," by means of which an entrepreneur, a dynamic man who has a new idea which he wishes to actualize, is able to wrest from the unwilling "static economic subjects" their land, labor and instrumental goods for the purpose of putting his new plan through. This new _Kaufkraft_ is the true _Kapital_ which the new enterprise requires. Capital, thus defined, is not an accumulation of goods, is not embodied in goods. It is an _agent_, a _power_, which the banker creates. It makes dynamic change possible. Schumpeter is particularly anxious, in clearing the way for his new theory of interest, to get rid of all the notions of saving, accumulations of stocks of goods, etc., which have commonly been made prominent in the discussion of capital and interest. We need not here discuss his theory of interest.[514] He maintains that the new dynamic credit, credit granted by a banker for a really new enterprise, as yet not concretely in existence, represents something new in the world, anomolous from the angle of static values, and static credit. Indeed, he regards credit as unessential for the static analysis, and banishes it from the "_Wesen_" of his static state. But this new credit is different from such credit as there may be in the static state, because, he holds, the new credit does not rest on goods, and has no _Deckung_. Schumpeter himself calls these doctrines "heresies." They become less dangerous, however, when we learn that by "saving" Schumpeter means mere trenching upon accustomed expenditure, so that the entrepreneur who saves part of unusual profits is really not saving at all, and when one discovers that his contention that there need be no accumulation of goods prior to the starting of a new enterprise means merely that there need be no special accumulation of goods _ad hoc_. Of course if saving means trenching upon accustomed expenditure, it is banished by hypothesis from the static state, but there may still be plenty of capital (in the ordinary sense of accumulated produced means of production) for Schumpeter's entrepreneur to get hold of by means of his new _Kapital_. His contentions that the new credit does not rest on goods, that it has no _Deckung_, and that we have a new thing in the world since in dynamic credit we have a case of temporal discrepancy between the making of obligations and the ability to pay them, calls for further analysis.

It is true that there is a time during which the new credit has no basis in concrete goods. Very speedily, however, the new credit is exchanged for concrete goods, and the enterprise is started. Further, the banker commonly insists on a margin at the start. Further, the claims of the borrower on the banker are themselves, prior to their expenditure for the things needed in the enterprise, assets to which the banker may look as a basis for his confidence in the goodness of the entrepreneur's promise to pay him. There is never a moment when the new credit does not rest on _values_. The loan by the banker to the borrower is, essentially, like the case of the purchase of any bearer of future incomes, say a machine, or a factory. The machine is, after all, in economic nature, merely a "promise" of future goods and future values, as an Austrian economist should be quick to recognize, and machines are almost as frequently poor performers as borrowers--indeed, most commonly, the borrower's inability to repay comes from the failure in the value of the goods which his physical equipment produces. The _raison d'etre_ of the new credit is the new values which have come into existence: the new plan of the entrepreneur, _validated by the banker_, attains a value equal to the present worth of the extra products which it promises. I repeat that it is values which are significant as the basis of loans, that values are not all embodied in physical goods, and that value is essentially a psychological thing.

The banker's validation of the plan may be an essential factor in its value. _Belief_ is often an essential factor in values. The new value, and the new credit, have a large element of belief in them. The value of the new plan rests proximately in the belief of the banker, manifested by his granting of credit. But the value of the _bank-credit_ rests ultimately in the _prestige_ of the banker, which is a fact of social psychology, resting in a massing of belief on the part of the public in him, in the validity of his bank-notes and deposit-currency, coupled with support from legal and other institutions. But this is to anticipate the discussion of the nature of bank-credit. The point involved is sufficiently illustrated by the case where a man who is not a banker lends his money to an entrepreneur of a new undertaking. Here again the enterprise is impossible without the loan. Here the loan is made on the basis of an anticipated income. Here again the anticipated income is made possible only by the loan; one of the values that enters into the exchange exists only because the exchange is possible. None the less, the credit rests on value. It is a right to an anticipated income. The man who has made the loan has his security in the value which he has lent, plus the present worth of the extra income which the new idea is expected to create.

Now a great practical difference is made in the course of economic life by the decisions of lenders to lend to men who plan new things, instead of to men who plan old things. It makes an enormous difference whether or not new plans appeal to the imaginations of those who control the economic resources of society. It makes a great difference whether static values (the capital values of incomes to be created in familiar ways) or dynamic values (capital values of incomes to be created in novel ways) win out in the competition for loans from those who have loans to make. But _as values_, the two are of the same psychological stuff and substance: futurity and belief are essential elements in both of them.

Stable belief, and strong belief, are easier to evoke in the case of the established and the familiar. New ways of creating wealth must promise larger returns, and make more dramatic appeals to the imagination, than old ways. Schumpeter indicates that it is the essential function of the banker to give preference to the new ways, that the mass of men are "static" in their attitude, and that, for some reason which he does not clearly indicate, the banker is not. This has not been our American experience, on the whole. The contrast which Schumpeter makes between the timid, static masses, and the few highly important dynamic entrepreneurs, holds very much less true in America than in Continental Europe. There it is doubtless true that new industrial enterprises have had their main encouragement from bankers. Here, such enterprises have appealed largely to the mass of men, to the investing and speculative public. Our commercial banks have lent largely upon stock exchange collateral, which means that, indirectly, bank-loans have gone to finance industry. The extent of this is enormous, as will later appear. However, the banks, as banks, have not been large _buyers_ of stocks. They have guarded themselves by requiring "margins" from those to whom they have lent on such collateral. Seasoned bonds have been bought in great volume by our commercial banks, but few stocks. Even the underwriters and investment bankers have been primarily intermediaries, expecting to pass on to private buyers the securities they hold temporarily. My point here is, merely, that there is nothing in the distinction between static and dynamic credit, when by that is meant the distinction between credit for new enterprises and credit for old enterprises, to mark off a peculiar or essential province for bank-credit. The need for bank-credit does arise out of dynamic conditions, primarily, but it is not the need for credit to _start_ dynamic changes, even though bank-credit may do, and does do, that. The chief reason for bank-credit is to enable economic society to readjust itself quickly and readily to dynamic changes, by putting through without friction the necessary exchanges that such readjustment requires, and by holding in liquid form a fund of rights which can meet the emergencies and unexpected occurrences which dynamic conditions involve. To this we now turn.

Bank-credit is the debt of responsible institutions, payable on demand in money. It may take the form of notes, or of the right to draw checks. Long evolution has begot a system of legal relationships, and of banking technique which makes these promises easily performed. The same process of development has led to social reactions toward banks and bankers which give them enormous prestige. Legal regulation, in the case of many banks, requiring adequate capital, and, in this country, requiring minimum cash reserves, have added to that prestige. The promise of the bank is commonly so liquid and saleable that the banks are not called upon to fulfill it by the actual payment of money--the promise alone is an object of value which is perfectly saleable, which runs in terms of money, and which functions as a perfect substitute for money in almost every use except for very small retail transactions. Even there, it is very much used.

Among the features of banking technique to which we must give especial attention are the following: (1) the banker has substantial resources of his own, his "capital," which constitutes the "margin" of protection which he offers to those who give him valuable things in return for his promises to pay money on demand; (2) the banker exchanges his promises to pay on demand, as far as possible, for those things which have a high degree of "liquidity," _i. e._, for those things which he can quickly dispose of for cash, or for the promises of other bankers which are the equivalent of cash. Farm mortgages are not good assets for a banker to hold in large amount. They are long-term obligations, with a very limited market, and they will not help him in emergencies to meet his obligations to pay on demand. Agricultural loans, and other mortgage loans are made in considerable volume by our State banks and trust companies. All classes of commercial banks make many non-liquid loans, as we shall later see. But all of them get as high a proportion of liquid loans as they can. Bills of exchange, running ten, thirty, sixty or ninety days, growing out of commercial transactions which automatically terminate themselves in the payment of cash or the promises of other bankers, constitute admirable assets. In return for these, the banker may give his promises freely. This is especially true where there is, in the banking practice, a wide "rediscount market," in which he can sell these bills before maturity if he wishes to get even more liquid assets. Promissory notes, for short periods, thirty, sixty, or ninety days, growing again out of commercial transactions, which, like those for which the bills of exchange were drawn, automatically bring in cash or the promises of other banks, are in many respects like the bills of exchange, even though the rediscount market for such notes has not been so highly developed as the market for bills of exchange in Europe. Whether such notes are as available for rediscount as bills of exchange is a question of technical banking which we need not here discuss in detail, though I venture the opinion that bills of exchange are superior decidedly for this purpose, especially "documentary" bills. The element of personal credit is commonly larger in the promissory note, and that limits the market. Banking organization, and particularly our new Federal Reserve System, may greatly reduce the disadvantages of the promissory note from this angle, but it seems not unlikely that the bill of exchange may be a factor of increasing importance in our internal banking arrangements. The general test, however, of what is available for a banker's assets depends on varying conditions, and is not to be answered by a simple formula. A bank in a rural region which loads up heavily with the safest local bonds is little better off than with farm mortgages. For neither is there a quick market in an emergency. A city bank, near the stock exchange, may very safely buy in large amounts highly saleable as a profitable substitute for part of its cash reserve. Even country banks may, and do, safely own such bonds. Short loans on stock and bond security, constitute the most important single type of bank-loan in the United States, as we shall later see. (3) The third feature of banking technique to which attention must be given is the reserve policy. The banker must keep some actual money on hand (how much we have in part considered in Part II, and shall again discuss).

I shall give attention to these points in what follows. The first point needs little discussion. Large "capital" for a bank gives prestige and security. Some capital is a _sine qua non_ for a bank which expects its notes or deposit currency to have general acceptability.

It will be well to consider further the circumstances determining the form which a bank's assets shall take. Though commercial banks own enormous quantities of high grade bonds, it is rare for commercial banks in America to buy stocks of corporations.[515] They will often lend to owners of such stocks with the stocks as collateral, up to a high percentage of the value of the stocks, but they will rarely trade their demand obligations for the stocks directly. In general, a bank wishes to have its assets in the form of obligations of other people, expressed in terms of dollars, and having a definite term to run (or callable on demand).

One reason for this is a bookkeeping reason. "Par value" of stocks has little meaning any more. Market-prices of stocks, even the best stocks, are not absolutely fixed. They fluctuate, even though within narrow limits. This fact presents complications to the bookkeeper! Of course, the bank's buildings and fixtures, listed among its assets, fluctuate also, in value, and in the price that could be obtained on a given day, but the bookkeeper can abstract from that, since the bank has no intention of selling its buildings and fixtures. The notes and bills held in the bank's portfolios also in fact fluctuate in value, and in the price at which they might be sold on a given day, but they are expressed in terms of dollars, and the bookkeeper commonly has no need to look beyond the figures written on them. At irregular intervals, a small percentage of them may be marked off the books as "bad," but usually the minor fluctuations are abstracted from. The bank does not like to have assets whose published prices fluctuate. But this is, I suppose, not the main objection which banks have to stocks as assets since it does not prevent their buying bonds. I abstract from the legal restrictions that prevent many banks from buying stocks. The fundamental reason is to be found elsewhere. The point is to be found here: the transaction whereby property rights in roadbed, rolling stock, etc., were collected into property rights in a going, organic whole increased the saleability of all these rights; the further subdivision of these rights into many thousands of equal parts enormously increased the saleability of these rights, especially when coupled with listing in an organized market; the further transaction, by which a preferential claim upon these subdivisions of rights is embodied in a collateral note still further increases the saleability of the value of these rights. The whole of the value embodied in a share of stock has not the certainty and saleability which a banker wishes for his assets. It might not be possible to market the stock on a given day without loss. But a collateral note, embodying 80% of that value, with provision for additional collateral in case the margin is reduced, is highly liquid and the banker has no doubt that, with watchfulness, he can always realize the full face value of such a note. It becomes saleable enough for his purposes. The transaction by which this note is exchanged for the banker's demand obligation gives the drawer of the collateral note a perfectly saleable form of value with an almost universal market, which he can convert without loss into practically anything that money can buy. We have here a series, a scale, saleability of rights growing steadily greater, through a series of transformations and exchanges, till at last the virtually perfect saleability is reached. Again we are reminded of Menger's analysis[516] of the methods of primitive barter, whereby the man who possesses a good of low saleability, through successive exchanges, gradually gets goods of higher and higher saleability, until he finally reaches his goal. Bank-credit, this most highly saleable of all forms of rights except the rights to actual money in hand, and in general not inferior to money, cannot usually be had by direct offer to the bank of crude property rights. These must be refined and distilled, till a central core of highly saleable value emerges, and then they may enter the bank's assets in return for bank-credit. The best bonds likewise offer such a central core of highly saleable value.

A further point is to be noticed about this scale of saleabilities. At each stage of the exchanges of less saleable for more saleable rights, the holder of the less saleable rights must make concessions to the holder of the more saleable rights. And the degree of his concession is, in general, correlated with the lack of saleability of what he offers. Commonly this takes the form of giving up a right which has a higher yield for one which has a lower yield. Or, viewed more fundamentally, from the angle of the capitalization theory, income-bearers of low saleability are capitalized at a higher discount rate than income-bearers of higher saleability, with the same yield. Farm lands may be capitalized on a 10% basis. (There will be great differences between regions in this, depending in considerable measure, often, on the activity of farm sales. I would refer here to the facts mentioned in my chapter on "The Quantity Theory and International Gold Movements," contrasting Cass Co., Iowa, with Yazoo Co., Mississippi. Of course, the risks of agriculture count heavily, also, and the prestige of owning land as compared with other forms of property.) The farmer's mortgage note may bear 7%. A merchant who holds that note may use it as collateral, with a margin, backing his own note, and get accommodation for three months at 6%. The bank may rediscount the note of the merchant, giving it its own endorsement, on a 4-1/2% basis. The coal mine owned by a small company may yield 12%; sold to a large iron company, which combines mining and smelting and manufacturing, that mine may be represented by 7% stock; a collateral loan, for sixty days, based on 80% of the value of the stock may be had for 4%; the demand liability of the bank given in exchange for the collateral note will either yield nothing at all, or else yield a low per cent, one, one and a half, or 2%, on large checking accounts. If the collateral note be a call note, the rate will be lower, in general, than on a time note. I here refer to what was said in the chapter on the functions of money with reference to the relation of short loans, especially call loans, to the "bearer of options" function of money. Part of the yields of these loans is in the bearing of options. This function grows out of the uncertainties of a dynamic market. It would disappear if uncertainties, "friction," and dangers disappeared.

The importance of liquidity and saleability in the assets of a banker needs little discussion. It has been reiterated by virtually every writer on the subject. Its connection with the need for meeting demand obligations is obvious. The point that I would here emphasize is, however, that this, too, grows out of dynamic changes, uncertainties, etc. An economic life in "normal equilibrium," in static balance, with all things going smoothly, in anticipated ways, could dispense in large measure, or wholly, with such liquidity. Obligations which matured at the time that the holders of the obligations had maturing obligations, would serve their purpose perfectly. Again I would emphasize the fact that the theory of money and bank-credit is essentially a dynamic theory, and that the notion of "normal equilibrium" which underlies the quantity theory has no bearing whatever on these fundamental matters.

The market where fluid bank-credit is exchanged for less fluid rights has been given the name, "the money market." The prices fixed in this market are "money-rates," figured as percentages on the amounts of bank-credit exchanged for the less fluid rights. It is, of course, strictly speaking, not a money market. Money, as the term has been used in this book, has been taken to mean gold coin, subsidiary coin, government paper, and for the United States, bank-notes. In a country where much bank-credit is elastic bank-notes, it is better to distinguish money from bank-notes. The term, money, is not one easily defined in a logical manner. A good logical definition should seize on some essential characteristic of the object defined, should include all the objects of that class, and should exclude all others. We can meet the tests of inclusiveness and exclusiveness in a definition of money, but we can hardly meet the first test. The differences between gold money, for example, and gold bullion are less than the differences between gold money and government paper. The differences between bank-notes and bank-deposits are less than the differences between bank-notes and government paper, or bank-notes and gold. The term, money, covers a group of more or less miscellaneous things, concerning all of which few general laws are possible. Gold, or other standard money, in particular, may obey different laws from other forms of money. I have been careful, in the foregoing, to avoid the danger of letting the argument rest on any ambiguity in the meaning of the term, however, and for the present shall not attempt further definition. For the present, we shall use the term, "money market," in its familiar sense, as meaning that market in which bank-credit is exchanged for less fluid rights. An organized money market commonly appears only in larger cities. In smaller places, relationships between banks and customers are much more personal, and indeed, even in larger cities, regular business houses have particularly intimate relations with special banks. A fluid, impersonal market, to which men may repair without reference to anything but the marketability of the collateral they have to offer, is a distinctively metropolitan affair. Only large dealers commonly have relations with more than one or two banks. Larger houses in the big cities often do sell their "commercial paper" through brokers, and some of the big New York mercantile houses have had their paper scattered a good deal throughout the country. The lack of protection which houses which sought such credit faced during the Panic of 1907 tended to check the practice in some measure, but it has revived, and even increased.[517] In the matter of a wide market for commercial paper, however, an impersonal market, with great fluidity, we are well behind not only England, but also Continental Europe. The London acceptance house has especially contributed to an impersonal market. The American money market is _par excellence_ a New York market, and the primary type of paper discounted in the American money market is stock exchange paper, and foreign bills of exchange. For commercial paper, however, there are innumerable more personal, more restricted, markets, and commercial paper constitutes a very considerable part of banking assets, though much less than is often supposed. But this we shall discuss in the next chapter.