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82 molded into bars ready for commercial uses or for coinage in the mint. In foreign bullion and foreign coins upward of $90,000,000 in value were melted during the year just past. On one occasion, not so very long since, foreign bullion to the amount of nearly $80,000,000 was in the vaults ready for shipment to the mint for coinage. In the cool, spacious, elegantly appointed moneyed institutions of Wall Street, it is difficult to realize that fiery furnaces are in constant use under a near neighbor's roof, and that huge kettles of liquid gold and silver, enough to pave the whole street, are stewing and steaming from morning until night. But the Assay Office is in its proper atmosphere. It is a money region. From Wall Street in every direction within the radius of a third of a mile, the business of life is finance in one form or another.



The steady growth of banks and banking houses since the beginning of the present century would have driven Jefferson to despair, could he have peered into the future. He had a chronic prejudice against banks. He said they were "monarchical inventions," and ruinous in their tendencies. Until 1799 there was but one, the Bank of New York. In 1840 thirty banks existed in the city, of which six were banking institutions formed under the general banking law; and the grand total of capital employed was not far from twenty-nine and one-half millions. Within the next forty years, notwithstanding all the vicissitudes of banking enterprise, the number reached upward of one hundred, independent of loan and trust and safe deposit companies. The first half dozen on the list struggled into existence under great opposition. These were all established in Wall Street. The Manhattan Company originated with Aaron Burr. Its ostensible object was to supply water to New York City. Burr matured his scheme with marvelous dexterity, determined to found a bank for his political party that should be as great a power as the New York Bank was to Hamilton's party. He drafted the charter himself, and it was granted