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40 in regard to the amount of their issue; all enjoyed the unjust privilege of exemption from taxes and the odious power to apply special primitive laws for their own benefit. The concessions for the establishment of banks of issue were granted without providing a logical and proper co-operation between them, but giving rise to an unreasonable competition ruinous for themselves and for the Republic. The intervention which the Government used to express in institutions of credit never was more than merely nominal, and among many other cases can be cited this: The banks of issue figured their own shares of stock among the securities that could be realised upon. As a consequence of their unreasonable management and of their bad organisation, the complete failure of the old system of institutions of credit could be foreseen when the international crisis began in 1913. In effect the first manifestations of revolution actually were enough to cause the banks to ask the government of the usurper for the privilege to suspend payments which was conceded to them, in exchange for the privilege the banks of issue made a large loan to the usurper.

"When the economic situation of the country became grave and before the Constitutionalist Government made any decrees at all on institutions of credit, the situation was getting more