ABSTRACT
A number of the characteristics of the relationships between capital and American agriculture in the last three decades of the 19th century can be delineated more clearly than they have been during the hundred years of often vigorous debate on the subject. The National Banking System was also blamed for interregional loan rate differentials and illiquidity of interbank obligations in credit stringencies. Usury laws represent a legislative response to capital needs of a different sort than the National Banking System, and their effect has been extensively discussed. Smaller country national bank systems kept smaller bankers' balances, and tended to lend to state banks. Country national banks as a group tended to lend to state banks in the early years of the period. Later, in the years of agricultural decline, they tended to borrow from them, and increase their loans to other national banks as well as their securities holdings.
