d and contract with the needs of business.

It may be conceded that there is much truth in this view, but not the
whole truth. For, in reality, when bank notes are in common use, every
one is compelled to take the money that is current. This offers a
constant temptation to the reckless and unscrupulous promotion of
banking enterprises, as has been repeatedly shown (notably in America
in the days of "wild-cat" banking before 1860). The average citizen
cannot know the credit of distant banks, and thus has not the same
power of judging wisely in taking bank notes that he has even in
making deposits in the bank of his own neighborhood. Between bank
notes and ordinary promissory notes there are other differences. Bank
notes pass without endorsement and thus depend on the credit of the
bank alone, not, like checks, on the credit of the person, from whom
received. Unlike ordinary promissory notes, they yield no interest
to the holder. They go into circulation and remain in circulation for
considerable time by virtue of their monetary character in the hands
of the holders. Thus they approach political money in their nature,
and the banks are near to exercising the sovereign right of the issue
of money.

At the other extreme of view have been those who consider bank notes
to be essentially of the nature of political money. If they are so, it
is argued, the power of issue should not be exercised by any but the
sovereign state. In this view it is overlooked that bank notes, unlike
inconvertible paper money, depend for their value on the credit of the
bank, not on their legal-tender quality and on political power.[11]
They must be redeemed on penalty of insolvency; government notes need
not be, and yet will circulate at par if properly limited. Adequate
provision for the prompt return and redemption of bank notes makes
them "elastic" in their adaptation to monetary needs, which fluctuate
with changes in commerce and industry from season to season and even
from day to day.

The predominant opinion to-day is that in their economic nature bank
notes share to some extent the character both of private promissory
notes and of political paper money. They stand midway between the two.
Everywhere it has come to be held that the issue of paper money of any
kind is in its nature a public monopoly, and yet everywhere the
bank note policy has come to be that of permitting the issue only to
certain institutions, under strict public legislatio