Fourth: The bank accepting the draft is invariably good, or believed to be. But above and beyond that no bank will engage in such a transaction, without making itself absolutely safe in some way.
Mr. Merchant: Mr. Banker, if we should adopt that principle in this country, we would at once make every dollar's worth of goods in transit, or ready for shipment, a liquid asset, practically a cash asset, as we shall see, for the American merchant and manufacturer; because a large amount of capital would at once be attracted to this field for steady employment, or temporary investment.
Mr. Manufacturer: There is nothing so essential to relieve the constant strain upon individual credit and mobilize the really liquid wealth of the country, as the creation of the kind of paper you have just described. Think of it for a moment; there are the goods in transit, the shipper, the buyer and the banker back of the paper that will be coming due within the next sixty or ninety days. You can hardly imagine anything safer, and more quickly convertible into cash.
Money available for the purchase of such paper would come from many sources, among them the following:
First: Corporations would immediately be organized to deal in such paper.
Second: All strong business houses, merchants and manufacturers would prefer to hold such paper instead of stocks or bonds, for their surplus funds during their slack seasons.
Third: Bankers of all classes, both in the country and city, would find such paper preferable to any other form of investment for a secondary reserve, and for their surplus funds during slack periods in their respective sections.
Fourth: If acceptances are limited as they should be to goods in transit, or on the road to consumption, the adoption of this principle will mark, indeed will accentuate, the strong, the fundamental difference between liquid assets and the more fixed forms of investment, such as bonds and stocks. Banking capital employed in this way can far more readily adjust itself to the exigent demands of liquidation in the case of a panic, or a commercial crisis.
Fifth: Undoubtedly, to a very large degree, foreign capital would be attracted to our market for this kind of paper, because its strength and liquidity has already been proved to the bankers and capitalists on the other side of the Atlantic. And whenever capital was required, the rate of interest would be such as to be inviting. In other words, the rates of interest would rise, correspondingly with our needs, and the entire commercial world would be our possible market for the commercial paper representing the economic title to the five or six billions of finished goods that are always passing from the producer to the consumers in this country, and to the consumers abroad.
Mr. Banker: Undoubtedly, we should soon have right here a general market to take care of all this kind of paper; and it ought to become soon the strongest and broadest market in the world for this kind of an investment, considering our vast commercial resources. All of our Bills of Exchange would be drawn in dollars, not francs, marks or pounds sterling, and we would put upon them the stamp of the eagle, and not the lion and the unicorn.