From The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, July 1911

Publications issued by and in preparation/or the National Monetary Commission of the United States. Washington, 1910–11.

This great series of publications, nearly fifty in number, will prove of the utmost value to all English-reading students of the history and practice of banking. The banking systems, past and present, of nearly all the important countries of the world are exhaustively dealt with, and a mass of material is now available which had to be sought previously in a great variety of sources in several different languages. Many of the volumes have been specially written, or the material in them collected, for the Commission by authoritative writers in each country; and in other cases standard works have been specially translated. The great bulk of the material thus presented is descriptive, and little attempt is made at comparison or co-ordination. It will be chiefly useful, therefore, to two classes of readers, those who desire detailed information respecting the banking system of some particular country, and those who wish to generalise from or to compare the banking experience of different parts of the world by quarrying in this rich mine of information. The volumes vary a good deal in the degree to which they are able to give up-to-date information; but on the whole they are as satisfactory in this respect as could be expected. The information in the statistical volumes is brought up to the year 1909.