Found the banking statistic I was looking for. It’s not exactly the same quote but it agrees with the proportions.
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Gen. James A. Garfield, in speaking on the Resumption Act in the House of Representatives, November 16, 1877, stated that while Chairman of The Committee on Banking and Currency in 1871, he requested the Comptroller to secure for him data on this subject. Regarding the results of this inquiry, he said:
“I selected three groups; the first was the city banks, the second consisted of banks in cities of the size of Toledo and Dayton in the State of Ohio. In the third group, if I may coin a word, I selected the ‘countriest’ banks, the smallest that could be found, at points away from railroads and telegraphs. The order was that those banks should analyze all their receipts for six consecutive days, putting into one list all that can be called cash: either coin, greenbacks, bank notes or coupons; and into the other list all drafts, checks or commercial bills.
What was the result? During those six days $157,000,000 were received over the counters of the fifty-two banks, and of that amount $19,370,000 (twelve percent only) was in cash, and eighty-eight percent, that vast amount representing every grade of business, was in checks, drafts and commercial bills.
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Summing up: In 1871, 12% of banking transactions were coins and paper, and 88% were checks and similar instruments. Our notion that gold was the primary currency in earlier times is just flat wrong.
Note also that banking by telegraph was well established by 1871, so only the ‘countriest’ banks were not on the wire.
We think digital currency is new? Ha.
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Irrelevant sidenote: Garfield advanced from congress to president a few years after he made this report. He knew the towns and banks of his state thoroughly. Would any modern politician know enough about his alleged home state to classify the banks and towns? Modern politicians, like modern athletes and modern beauty pageant contestants, are global and fungible. They move to where the opportunity is best, never stopping to know the location they’re pretending to represent.
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