Volume 2 - ElectricCanadian.com

64 HISTORY OF THE BANKits London correspondents. The National banks of theUnited States, with rare exceptions, did not attempt to carryout foreign banking transactions, and as at that time theFederal Reserve System had not been thought of,much lesscreated, the result was that the Canadian banks with offices inNew York, and a few private banking houses, held the leadingplace in the field of foreign banking. Not only did they buya very large proportion of the bills drawn against cotton, grainand prepared cereals, cattle and provisions, lumber andwooden wares, kerosene, steel billets and rails, agricultural andother machinery, and other exports from the United States,but the American importer had to come to them when hewished to make arrangements to pay for his purchases offoreign merchandise. He might require to cable money topay for metals or other staples sold only for cash, or he mightneed a letter of credit to enable a shipper in some remotecountry to draw on London at sixty, ninety or one hundredand twenty days for the cost of goods shipped to the UnitedStates. Thus did he finance his purchases of coffee andsugar from various countries; dried and citrus fruits, olivesand grapes from the Mediterranean, long before they weregrown in California; phosphates and other fertilizers fromGreat Britain and Germany, before the cotton-growing Stateswere able to produce the needed supply at home; brimstone,before other minerals displaced its use; wool, hides and goatskinsfrom many lands; cinchona bark from South America;and drugs, medicinal plants, spices and rugs from Persia andAsia Minor. The letters of credit issued by The CanadianBank of Commerce covered jute, gunny bags, printed cottons,coffee, rubber, and many kinds of spices, essential oils and gumsfrom India and China, hemp and sugar in large quantitiesfrom the Philippines, ebony from Madagascar, ivory fromZanzibar, and rubber, mahogany and sisal from Latin America.Out of sixty or seventy different kinds of merchandise importedfrom Japan and China may be mentioned tea, coffee, raw andwoven silks, soya beans, porcelain, rugs, fibre mattings, rattan