ABSTRACT
The United States of America, and the newly-developed self-governing dominions of the British Empire, which had developed a banking system of their own, had adhered to the plan of relying on decentralized banking reserves. This meant that each individual bank kept its own reserve for use in time of difficulty, which 'Was sound enough as it tended to encourage careful banking. The difficulty was, however, that there was no central institution to which individual banks could turn when their own resources became unduly strained.
