knew about--would be paid.

What was more, the money system of the United States was only then
beginning slowly to emerge from something approximating chaos to
something more nearly approaching order. The United States Bank, of
which Nicholas Biddle was the progenitor, had gone completely in 1841,
and the United States Treasury with its subtreasury system had come
in 1846; but still there were many, many wildcat banks, sufficient
in number to make the average exchange-counter broker a walking
encyclopedia of solvent and insolvent institutions. Still, things
were slowly improving, for the telegraph had facilitated stock-market
quotations, not only between New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, but
between a local broker's office in Philadelphia and his stock
exchange. In other words, the short private wire had been introduced.
Communication was quicker and freer, and daily grew better.

Railroads had been built to the South, East, North, and West. There was
as yet no stock-ticker and no telephone, and the clearing-house had only
recently been thought of in New York, and had not yet been introduced in
Philadelphia. Instead of a clearing-house service, messengers ran daily
between banks and brokerage firms, balancing accounts on pass-books,
exchanging bills, and, once a week, transferring the gold coin, which
was the only thing that could be accepted for balances due, since there
was no stable national currency. "On 'change," when the gong struck
announcing the close of the day's business, a company of young men,
known as "settlement clerks," after a system borrowed from London,
gathered in the center of the room and compared or gathered the various
trades of the day in a ring, thus eliminating all those sales and
resales between certain firms which naturally canceled each other. They
carried long account books, and called out the transactions--"Delaware