Knox : Banking in the United States 379 and diminished that of the states. In this way a strong and centralized government might have been more quickly brought about. The First United States Bank is termed a great monopoly, useful no doubt, but a foreign importation and as a monopoly opposed to the genius of Amer- ican institutions ; the removal of the deposits by Jackson and the issue of the specie cjrcular were acts of financial recklessness ; and Tyler is char- acterized as narrow and mediocre. The chapters on the national banking system are naturally the best in the book. Mr. Knox clearly appreciated the fundamental signifi- cance of the long continued struggle after the Civil War to substitute treasury notes in place of bank notes, and more than this, understood the administration influences which in unsuspected ways contributed to the support of the greenback in its rivalry with the bank notes. "With legal tender notes, the Treasurer's office, which had charge of the preparation, signing, issuing and redemption of these notes, grad- ually acquired more power. The Treasurer was a much more important official with greatly increased patronage. The handling of the United States notes caused him to be in more frequent consultation with the Secretary. The office of the Comptroller of the Currency did not tend to establish so close relations. In fact, there were from a very early day two factions in the Treasury Department, the legal tender faction and the national bank faction. The former, whenever they had opportunity, did what they could to prevent the retirement of legal tender notes and the substitution therefor of national bank currency. Many of the most effec- tive arguments against the banks were furnished to members of Congress from this source " (p. 149). Part II. of the work treats of banking under state laws. The history of each state is taken up separately, there being no attempt to bring these several local experiences into one comprehensive survey or series of generalizations. The data will be serviceable to the future historian, but this portion as it now stands is of little interest as a narrative. Use has been made of the Sound Currency Monographs issued by the Reform Club of New York. This material will supplement the volume on United States banking prepared by Professor Sumner for the encyclopedic history of banking in all countries. The following errors have been noted : The date 1781, on page 39, should be 1791 ; Woodbury was not Secretary of the Treasury in 1833, as mentioned on page 70, but Secretary of the Navy ; Boutelle is written for Boutwell, on page 149 ; Jurdan for Jordan, on page 222 ; the date on page 96, January 8, 1863, should be changed to 1862 ; and on page 125, the dollar sign has slipped in before the figures 6, 505, 930. The most serious error, however, is the confusion occasioned by Chapters 14- 16 on the national banking system, which repeat much of what appears in previous chapters. The reader would have a more correct understand- ing if this matter had been incorporated into the main narrative. Davis Rich Dewey.
