Simultaneously an offer was received from a Berlin bank to buy 90 d/s bills on London at 2032, or 20 Marks 32 pfennige per £, which price included stamps, brokerage and discount. However, the money was needed in London and not in Berlin, so enquiry elicited the fact that telegraphic transfers on London could be bought at 2048f thus:

If remitted to Berlin for discount and exchange sold there-against in New York, the result would have been as follows:

The disposal of the exchange in Berlin being the more profitable by £53.15, it was sent there. Another case, where the operation is reversedForemost among the exchange centers of the world stands London, with the Bank of England, surrounded by a most wonderful group of Joint Stock and private Banks. The other European centers are Paris with the Bank of France, and Berlin with the Imperial Bank. These three institutions stand guard over the financial destinies of the world, and their weekly statements are eagerly scanned by financiers as the true trade barometer. So sensitive, indeed is the world of finance that when occasionally a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Bank of England is extended a few minutes beyond the usual time this fact immediately becomes a cause for apprehension, and it is said that the discussion of an irrelative subject among the directors after the close of a board meeting at a critical period almost caused a panic on the Stock Exchange. These centers are engaged in a constant warfare, one against the other, and while the hostilities are of a peaceable nature, the methods employed are quite drastic at times; still, when a common danger threatens, these three great institutions are ever ready to extend to each other a helping hand.

Owing to the peculiar features of the banking laws of the United States, conditions in this country are somewhat different and not so easily regulated in times of stress as they are abroad. Our clearing houses act as a unit and are the determining factors when decisive steps have to be taken for the protection of the commercial community.

Gold, as has clearly been demonstrated, performs the function of settling international trade balances best, and upon reference to the financial papers of the day it will be seen that there is constantly a movement of the metal - flowing regularly through the arteries of trade, subject to natural laws as unalterable as those in the material world, and after having performed its duties in revivifying commerce returning to the exchange centers of the world.

Ebb and Flow of Gold

Exchange Centers only to be ready at a moment's notice to again go forth on its mission to benefit the human race, by developing the resources of distant parts of the world, - perhaps the wilds of Canada or the rice fields of India, or to supply the sinews of great enterprises such as transcontinental railroad lines.