Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-xq9c7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-26T04:28:23.218Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Statistics of American Commercial Banking, 1782–1818

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

J. Van Fenstermaker
J. Van Fenstermaker
Affiliation:
Kent State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In spite of its importance to economic development, much remains unknown about commercial banking in early America. The Historical Statistics of the United States gives the number of banks, their capital stock, bank note circulation, deposits, and specie for only four years prior to 1830, and these data are far from complete. Economic and financial historians generalize about this period from statistics presented in Albert Gallatin's Considerations on the Currency of the United States and from the reports of the Treasury Department, summarized in the Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency, 1876.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , September 1965 , pp. 400 - 413
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1965

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1960).Google Scholar

2 Gallatin, Albert, Considerations on the Currency of the United States (Philadelphia, 1831).Google Scholar

3 Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency, 1876 (Washington, 1876).Google Scholar

4 Under the assumption that more primary data on American commercial banking could be found, the author, with the support of an Earhart Foundation grant, made a search for early bank records in state and university archives, house and senate journals of state legislatures, national periodicals, and local newspapers. The data found for the period 1819–1837 are presented in a monograph, The Development of American Commercial Banking: 1782–1837 (Kent, Ohio: Bureau of Economic and Business Research, Kent State University, 1965).Google Scholar

5 Blodget, Samuel, Economica: A Statistical Manual for the United States of America (Washington, 1806)Google Scholar; Brewster, David, ed., the American edition of the New Edinburgh Encyclopedia (Philadelphia, 1813).Google Scholar

6 “We have subjoined a list as far extended as we have been able to collect information, of their numbers and capital, but … this list is not complete” (Blodget, p. 158). “We believe that the following table, exhibiting at one view the names of those most deserving of notice, the time of their institution, and the amount of their capital, will be deemed, by most of the readers, sufficient for their information” (Edinburgh Encyclopedia, p. 299).

7 The author made an unsuccessful attempt to determine the number of private banks in existence each year. Cursory investigation indicated that only the names of famous private banks, such as Girard's Bank, or of those which failed, were mentioned in early newspapers. In the latter case no information was found on the dates of operation.

8 P. 40.

9 The bank reports gathered for this study did not make a distinction between time and demand deposits. In light of contemporary views on the use of checks as a means of payment, all the deposits are considered payable on demand and as part of the money supply.

10 Pp. 228–29.

11 Hammond, Bray, “Banking Before the Civil War,” in Banking and Monetary Studies (Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, 1963), p. 4.Google Scholar

12 Ibid.

13 The annual reports of condition for banks of individual states between 1803 and 1818 can be obtained by requesting a copy of “A Statistical Summary of the Commercial Banks Incorporated in the United States prior to 1819” from the bureau of Economic and Business Research, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio.