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Excerpt from Acceptances Their Importance as a Means of Increasing Simplifiying Domestic Foreign Trade In presenting the subject of Acceptances for the consideration of the business interests of the United States, we do so with a feeling of pride in the part that this bank has played in the commercial development of the nation. The American Exchange Bank was organized in 1838, antedating by many years the National Banking System. In 1865, it was converted into a National bank, and was one of the first banks to enter the Federal Reserve System. George S. Coe, who served as president of this bank from 1860 to 1894, clearly foresaw the time when material changes in our banking system would be needed. In 1881, Mr. Coe predicted the change from bond-secured currency to currency secured by commercial assets, and then declared that, after all, the latter was the most natural, useful and reliable basis. He also said: "The condition of a bank is soundest and its power most effective when its assets are composed of notes, drafts and obligations of the people - the title deeds to those commodities or articles most demanded for the subsistence and necessities of men, and for their comfort and convenience - together with a due proportion of ready money, into which all these things are exchangeable. "Commercial banks are the oldest and safest financial institutions in the United States, or in the civilized world. They have, in all nations, outlived the changes of the governments that formed them, and they have uniformly given support to States in their greatest emergencies, rather than received it, because commercial banks are the embodiment and the reservoirs of the active industrial power of the people. Always, they are greater than the State itself." The American Exchange National Bank, having at all times taken an active interest in the commercial development of the country, desires to do its utmost to encourage the use of Bank and Tr