In this fashion the currency, whereas maintaining its quality, has been vastly expanded; so that the precise currency (counting checks) circulating in the United States to-day is perhaps one hundred instances what it was in 1845. Banks and using checks additionally save the lack of gold arising from shipwreck and other accident, and, by storing it quietly in vaults, save the loss by abrasion which might happen if it had been truly used in enterprise. Fifty years since comparatively little enter...