著者

須藤 功

出版者

政治経済学・経済史学会

雑誌

土地制度史学 (ISSN:04933567)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.27, no.1, pp.1-15, 1984-10-20

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This study deals with the development of the Chicago Money Market from 1863 to 1894. The main goal of this study has been to determine Chicago's financial position, which has often been disregarded, and to understand the American banking structure in this period. To do so, we began by analyzing the correspondent banking system, which became general under the National Banking System (1863). The system of correspondent banking was reinforced by interbank borrowing (or loan) and by the commercial paper market resulting in the establishment of a national money market with New York as its center. New York banks acted as mediator of the internal and international flow of funds. Next we examined Chicago's position in the American money market. By the 1890's, after it became established its pre-eminence as a commercial, agricultural and manufacturing center, Chicago became the major financial fulcrum of the Midwest; second only to the New York money market. With its industrial base, the position of Chicago as a money market was different to New York. While Chicago bankers had acquired, like New York bankers, the accounts of numerous country banks, they could not help but lend these funds to the Midwestern industries because New York monopolized the security market and because business in the Midwest made increasingly larger demands for credit. In the process of the formation of big business and the development of agriculture in the Midwest and in the West, therefore, bankers in Chicago forecast the rise of their city to surpass New York as the top-ranking American financial center. These competitive relations between Chicago and New York became even keener with the intended reform to the financial structure after the panic of 1893. Directly after the panic, the Midwestern city bankers organized a plan for a new currency based upon a bank's general assets. It was called the "Baltimore Plan" (1894), and it met with strong opposition from Eastern bankers, and was never passed into law. Though the powerful New York bankers were aware of the dangers in the existing banking system, their first thought was to protect their pre-dominance, and they rejected the reform. Subsequently, and ironically, many country bankers joined "Wall Street" because they feared Chicago banks would dominate them. It is the formation and breakdown of the Baltimore Plan that we consider as epitomizing the American banking structure in the late-nineteenth century. Following the collapse of the Plan, the movement for financial refom formalize the conflict among New York, Chicago and other country bankers, and finally the Federal Reserve System, the American central banking system, is established.