This book, first published in 1985, is a study of the functioning of one sector of American capital markets – non-reserve city national banks – between 1870 and 1900. The unusually wide and deep expansion of the American economy in this period was impelled in part by the growth and development of agriculture, and this study examines the role of one source of loanable funds – banks chartered under the National Banking Acts – in providing American farmers with loans to expand and capitalize.