Volume 2 - ElectricCanadian.com

1867 TO 1901 51to open an account with the Bank of the Republic.In June,1867, arrangements were made through Mr. J. Short McMasterfor the opening of an account with the London and CountyBank in London, a service for which Mr. McMaster receivedthe thanks of the directors. Within a few months, thecashier, Mr. Archibald Greer, who had been so active alieutenant of the president in setting the enterprise in motion,took ill and died, and the Board selected Mr. R. J. Dallas,manager of the Montreal branch of the Bank of Toronto, ashis successor.One of the early acts of the directors was to decide upon acorporate seal. On April 7, 1868, they adopted a devicedesigned and executed by Mr. Joseph T. Rolph, one of thefounders of a well-known firm of engravers in Toronto. Afacsimile of this seal appears opposite page 48. It continuedin use until June, 1891, when it was replaced by the designwhich faces page 198. The present official seal 1 was adoptedin March, 1908, and is the work of Messrs. Ramsden and Carr,St.Dunstan's Studio, South Kensington.Brown in "A Hundred Years of Merchant Banking" (1909, p. 281) says: "With theoutbreak of the Civil War and the suspension of specie payment it wasno longer safe to leave exchange transactions uncovered from day to day. Noone could tell what the premium on gold would be within the next twenty-fourhours. Indeed it is hard for one who has not lived through those days to understandthe difficulty with which all foreign business was transacted, Quotationsfor exchangewere always given both in gold and currency. If the buyer elected to pay in currency,it was necessary at once to cover the transaction by the purchase of gold, and thefluctuations were so rapid and so constant that it was almost impossible to avoidserious loss. Year by year the premium on gold advanced, and with it, of course, thequotations in currency. The highest prices for both gold and sterling hi currency werereached in the summer of 1864, and on July 13, a good line of our sixty-day bills onLiverpool was sold in currency at 306, and some of these bills bought back again a fewdays later at fifteen or twenty points less. This extreme rate lasted but a short time."In a foot-note to this passage he adds: "This quotation [306] is according to the oldmethod, and represented a premium on gold of about 172 per cent With exchangefor gold at 109% and gold at a premium of 172, say 272, the exact equivalent quotationin currency would be 298J/6. The difference between 298^ and 306, 7^ points,extreme as it may seem now, represented then only a fair margin to cover the risk inthe sudden fluctuations of gold before a purchase could be made.highest premium, 185 per cent., say 285, on July 11, 1864."MDpposite page 306.Gold reached its