Volume 2 - ElectricCanadian.com

296 HISTORY OF THE BANKthe fire, the keys of the inner doors operated the locks withoutdifficulty. Owing to the fact that the majority of the customersof The Canadian Bank of Commerce were manufacturerswhose establishments lay on the outskirts of thecity and were therefore not seriously damaged, the losses theyexperienced were comparatively light. The banks generallydid not resume ordinary business until May 23, and TheCanadian Bank of Commerce was unable to get into itsoffice until May 25. In the meantime, acting on theadvice of the banking community, the Governor of Californiahad helped to solve the problems of the financial situationby declaring a legal holiday from day to day. To relievethe situation the banks generally had begun, within tendays after the disaster, to make advances of $500 each toresponsible customers. Small supplies of gold, silver and paperand these werecurrency had been obtained from other cities,doled out in the interest of the community at large at thediscretion of the managers of the various banks.The optimistic character of the reports sent by the bank'sofficers to the head office, during the weeks following thecatastrophe, as to the ability of San Francisco to recuperatewould have gratified every patriotic citizen. They wereemphatic in the view that the city of the Golden Gate wouldregain and hold her pre-eminence on the Pacific Coast, andthese forecasts were amply justified by the outcome.Another important American city where an agency of TheCanadian Bank of Commerce was established in 1896 is theromantic old city of New Orleans, founded by the French in1718, the centre of the cotton trade of the south, to which theforeign exchange business growing out of cotton shipmentsattracted the bank as soon as a policy of international expansionhad been decided on.Probably few are aware of theextent to which in those days the cotton and other exportbusiness of the United States was financed by the New Yorkand New Orleans agencies of the bank. The bills drawnagainst cotton shipments to Europe, purchased by the bank