[421] This is strictly true only of the part of T which comes from the figure for M´V´, 353 billions. In calculating MV, Professor Fisher introduces more complexities, into which we shall not enter, as the absolute amount is small—only 34 billions!—and the possible error from this source not great enough to affect a calculation where 20 billions one way or the other is within the "margin of error."
[422] Vide Annalist, Feb. 17, Feb. 21, March 6, March 13, and March 20, 1916, for a discussion of this point by Professor Fisher and the present writer.
[423] Op. cit., pp. 112-113. It is interesting to note that Kemmerer's argument takes the form of proving, not that bank transactions do not overcount trade, but merely that they do not undercount trade. With this contention I am in hearty agreement! The overcounting is worse in Kemmerer's figures for 1896 than for Fisher's in 1909, since the 1896 figures included deposits made by one bank in another, while the 1909 figures do not. Cf. Kemmerer, p. 105, and Kinley, in Report of the Comptroller for 1896 and in the 1909 monograph, passim.
[424] Vide the present writer's discussion in the Annalist, March 6, 1916, p. 313.
[425] I am informed by Mr. B. F. Smith, Treasurer of the Cambridge Trust Company, that the practice of having separate dividend accounts is a very widespread one, especially with the larger corporations.
[426] Statistics of Railways, 1909, p. 71.
[427] Professor Fisher, in his Annalist article of Feb. 21, 1916, quotes Dean Kinley (The Use of Credit Instruments, p. 151), as holding that duplications have largely been eliminated from his 1909 figures. Professor Fisher overlooks the fact that Dean Kinley is here referring, not to money value of trade, but merely to volume of checks. Dean Kinley merely indicates that by eliminating deposits made by one bank in another, he has avoided having the same check counted in deposits made in two or more banks on the same day. Even this is not wholly avoided. (Ibid., pp. 158-159.) It was extensive in the 1896 figures. Dean Kinley thinks, properly enough, that he has a sufficiently close approximation to the volume of checks, for the reporting banks, but what the checks were drawn for he does not undertake to say. His problem was payments, not trade. From the angle of volume of trade, he finds duplications even in the retail deposits (Jour. of Polit. Econ., vol. 5, p. 165).
[428] Annalist, March 13, 1916, p. 344.
[429] Chapter on "Volume of Money and Volume of Trade," pp. 241-248. We really did not "find" nearly that much. The figures assigned to retail and wholesale trade rest on figures for retail and wholesale bank "deposits," and are, especially the wholesale figures, much too large.
[430] Annalist, Feb. 21 and March 13, 1916.