# Imperialism, the Last Stage of Capitalism/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II. The Banks and Their New Role
The first and most fundamental function of banks is to serve as an intermediary in payment. In so doing they transform inactive capital into active capital, that is, into capital producing a profit; and, collecting all kinds of revenues, they put them at the disposal of the capitalists.
In proportion as banking operations develop, and as they become concentrated in a small number of establishments, the banks become transformed, and instead of being modest go-betweens they become powerful monopolies dealing with almost all capital, and with almost all capitalists (and small proprietors); and similarly dealing with the biggest part of the means of production and of the sources of raw materials of a country or of several countries. The transformation of numerous little intermediary concerns into a handful of monopolists constitutes one of the essential elements of the change from capitalism to capitalist imperialism. And so we must begin by dwelling on this question.
In 1907-08, the deposits of all the German private banks (joint stock companies), which handled a capital of more than a million marks, amounted to 7,000 million marks, while in 1912-1913 they amounted to 9,800 million marks. They had thus increased by 40 per cent. in five years. Let ​us add that, of the 2,800 million increase, 2,750 million was divided amongst 57 banks with a capital of more than 10 million marks. The distribution of the deposits between big and small banks was as follows:—
Percentage of the total deposits. :
| | | In the big Berlin banks (9) | In the 48 other banks with a capital of more than 10 millions | In 115 banks with a capital from 1 to 10 millions | In the small banks with a capital less than 1 mill'n |
| 1907-8 | ... | 47 p.c. | 32.5 p.c. | 16.5 p.c. | 4 p.c. |
| 1912-13 | ... | 49 p.c. | 36 p.c. | 12 p.c. | 3 p.c. |
The small banks are being eliminated by the big banks, of which nine concentrate in their own hands almost half the total deposits. And we do not consider here many important details, for instance, the transformation of numerous small banks into dependents on the big ones. Of this we shall speak later on.
At the end of 1913, Schulze-Gaevernitz valued the deposits in the nine big Berlin banks at 5,100 million marks, out of a sum total of 10,000 million marks. Taking into consideration not only the deposits, but also the capital of these banks, the same author wrote: "At the end of 1909, nine big Berlin banks, together with the establishments linked up with them, handled 11,300 million marks, that is, about 83 per cent. of the total banking capital of Germany. The Deutsche Bank, which, together with the banks under its control, handles nearly three milliards of marks, constituted with the Prussian State Railways the biggest and also the most decentralised accumulation of capital in the Old World."
​We have emphasised the word "linked-up" as applied to certain banks, for it has relation to one of the most important characteristics of modern capitalist concentration. Big enterprises, especially the banks, not only absorb small ones, but they attach or subordinate them to themselves. They cause them to enter into their groups, or their concerns (to use the technical term) by "participating" in their capital, by purchasing or exchanging shares, by controlling them through a system of credits. Professor Liefmann has devoted an important work of about 500 pages to a description of modern companies of financial "participation." He has, unfortunately, added to these data theoretical reflections of a very poor quality We obtain a better idea of the results, from the point of view of the concentration of capital, which issue from the system of participation, in a book by the financier, Riesser, on the big German banks. But before examining these data, let us quote an example of the system of "participation."
The Deutsche Bank group is one of the most important, if not the most important, of such groups. In order to see at a glance the principal ties which bind together all the banks in this group, it is necessary to distinguish between participations of the first, second and third degree, or what amounts to the same thing, between dependence (of the lesser establishments on the Deutsche Bank) in the first, second and third degree. We then obtain the following table:
The "Deutsche Bank" Participates: :
| | I. CONSTANTLY | II. FOR AN INDEFINITE PERIOD | III. OCCASIONALLY | IV. ALTOGETHER (Total) |
| 1st degree | in 17 banks | in 5 banks | in 8 banks | in 30 banks |
| 2nd degree | of which 9 participate in 34 others | | of which 5 participate in 14 others | of which 14 participate in 48 others |
| 3rd degree | of which 4 participate in 7 others | | of which 2 participate in 2 others | of which 6 participate in 9 others |
Included in the eight banks dependent in the first degree, there are three foreign banks: one Austrian and two Russian. Altogether, the Deutsche Bank group comprises, directly and indirectly, partially and totally, no less than 87 banks; and the sum total of capital—its own and others'—which it handles varies between two and three milliard marks.
It is obvious that a bank at the head of such a group, and entering into relation with a half-dozen other groups, which yield little to it in magnitude, for big and profitable enterprises such as State borrowings, is no longer a mere intermediary for payment of transactions, but has reached the stage of being an alliance of a small number of monopolisers.
The following data, which we borrow in an abridged form from Riesser, will show how rapidly banking concentration was effected in Ger​many at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries:—
Six big German banks had:
| In the years | | Branches in Germany | Savings Bank and Exchange Offices | Participation in other banks (by shares) | Total No. of Establishments |
| 1895 | ... | 16 | 14 | 1 | 42 |
| 1900 | ... | 21 | 40 | 8 | 80 |
| 1911 | ... | 104 | 276 | 63 | 450 |
We thus see the rapid extension of the network of financial canals which cover the whole country, centralising all capital and all sources of revenue, transforming hundreds of scattered economic enterprises into a national capitalist unity, then into an international capitalist unity. The decentralisation that Schulze-Gaevernitz speaks of in the passage previously quoted (this author being an exponent of bourgeois political economy), consists in the subordination to one single centre of an increasing number of enterprises which were formerly autonomous or rather of a strictly local importance. In reality there is centralisation, an increase in the importance and power of the monopolies.
In the older capitalist countries this "banking network" is still more fine in mesh. In Britain (including Ireland), in 1910, there were 7,151 branches of banks. Four big banks had each more than 400 of these (from 447 to 689); four had more than 200 branches; and eleven more than 100.
In France, the three most important banks (the Crédit Lyonnais, the Comptoir Nationale d'Escompte and the Société Générale), extended their operations and their network of establishments in the following manner.
| | | | | Capital belonging to the banks (millions fr.) | Deposits (not belonging to them) in millions |
| | NUMBER OF BRANCHES & OFFICES | NUMBER OF BRANCHES & OFFICES | NUMBER OF BRANCHES & OFFICES | | | Capital belonging to the banks (millions fr.) | Deposits (not belonging to them) in millions |
| | i. In Paris | ii. In the provinces | Total | Capital belonging to the banks (millions fr.) | Deposits (not belonging to them) in millions |
| Year | | | | Capital belonging to the banks (millions fr.) | |
| 1870 | 17 | 47 | 64 | 200 | 427 |
| 1890 | 66 | 192 | 258 | 265 | 1,245 |
| 1909 | 196 | 1,033 | 1,229 | 887 | 4,363 |
In order to give an idea of the business relations of a big modern bank, Riesser gives some figures on the number of letters that it dispatches and receives. The Disconto Gesellschaft, one of the most important banks in Germany and in the world, the capital of which amounted to 300,000,000 marks in 1914, had a correspondence the size of which is indicated by the following figures:
| | | | Letters received. | Letters dispatched. |
| 1852 | ... | ... | 6,135 | 6,292 |
| 1870 | ... | ... | 85,800 | 87,513 |
| 1900 | ... | ... | 533,102 | 626,043 |
In 1875 the Crédit Lyonnais (Paris) had 28,535 open accounts. In 1912 it had 633,539.
These figures show, better than long explanations, how the concentration of capital and the extension of business is radically altering the importance which must be assigned to the banks. Thanks to them, scattered capitalists are now forming a collective capitalist unity. In running the current account of a certain number of capitalists, the bank may seem to be undertaking only a technical process; but when these operations assume extensive proportions, the result is that a handful of monopolists control all the operations, both commercial and industrial, of capitalist society. They can, by means of their banking connections, by means of knowing the state of current accounts, by means of ​knowing financial operations, first ascertain exactly the position of isolated capitalists, then control them, act on them by restricting their credits or, on the contrary, by extending them; at length they can entirely determine their fate, deprive them of capital, or, on the other hand, permit them to increase their capital to enormous proportions, etc.
We have just mentioned the 300,000,000 marks capital of the Disconto Gesellschaft, of Berlin. The increase of the capital of this bank to this high figure was one of the incidents of the struggle for hegemony between two of the biggest Berlin banks—the Disconto and the Deutsche Bank.
In 1870, the Disconto, a new enterprise, only had a capital of 15,000,000 marks, while that of the Deutsche Bank was as much as 30,000,000.
In 1908, the first had already amassed 200,000,000; while the second only had 170,000,000. In 1914, the Disconto raised its capital to 250,000,000 and the Deutsche Bank, by abosorbing a very important bank, the Union of Schaffhausen, raised its capital to 300,000,000. This struggle for the upper hand between the two banks, naturally, goes on side by side with a series of agreements between them which become more and more frequent and lasting.
This development of banking leads specialists in the study of banking questions, who view economic questions from a standpoint which in no way goes beyond the bounds of moderate and careful bourgeois reformism—to the following conclusions:
"The other banks will follow this example," wrote the German review, Bank, on the subject of the raising of the capital of the Disconto Gesellschaft to 300,000,000 marks—"and the three hun​dred financiers who to-day govern Germany economically, will gradually be reduced to fifty, twenty-five, or less still. It cannot be expected that this move to concentration will be confined to banking. The close relations between certain banks involves the bringing together of the manufacturing combines whom they support. . . . One fine morning we shall wake up in surprise to see nothing but trusts before our eyes, and to find ourselves faced with the necessity of substituting State monopolies for private monopolies. However, we shall have nothing to reproach ourselves for, excepting for having allowed things to follow their own course, gently hastened by the use of stocks and shares."
This is a very good example of the impotence of bourgeois opinion, from which bourgeois science is only distinguished by less sincerity and a tendency to obscure things.
To be "surprised" at the results of concentration; to "reproach" the German capitalist government or society ("ourselves"); to fear that the use of stocks and shares might "hasten" concentration; to fear the American trusts (as a German specialist, S. Tschierschky, does), and to "prefer" the German cartels to them on the grounds that the trusts are capable of "hastening technical progress to an excessive degree"—what other name can be applied to all this except impotence?
Meanwhile, the facts remain facts. There are no trusts in Germany; there are only cartels—but Germany is governed by 300 magnates, and the number of these is constantly diminishing. The banks, in any case, in all capitalist countries, and whatever may be the varieties of legislation regulating them, are strengthening and hastening the ​concentration of capital and the formation of monopolies.
"The banks are creating in the social structure, the form and precisely nothing but the form, of a general stocktaking and a general re-partition of the means of production." So Marx wrote a half-century ago in Capital. (Vol. III., section 2.)
The figures that we have quoted on the development of banking capital, on the increase in number of the branches of banks, and the increase in number of their open accounts, etc., show us that this "general bookkeeping" is that of the whole capitalist class; and is not only of the capitalists. For the banks collect, even though it may be temporarily, all kinds of financial revenues of small property-holders, of civil servants, and of a small upper stratum of the working class. The "general distribution of the means of production" is what happens from the formal point of view, as a result of the development of modern banks, of which the chief, numbering from three to six in France, and from six to eight in Germany, are handling billions.
But in substance distribution of the means of production is by no means general, or social; it is private, i.e., in conformity with the interests of very big capital, and first and foremost of monopoly capital: in which the masses of the population have barely enough to live on, the development of agriculture is far surpassed by that of industry; and heavy industry levies a tribute on all other branches of production.
The Savings Banks and Post Offices are beginning to compete against the banks in the matter of socialising capitalist economy. These are more ​"decentralised" establishments, i.e., their influence extends to a greater number of localities, to more neglected spots, to wider fields. An American commission has collected the following data on the growth of deposits in banks and saving banks.
Deposits in milliards of marks. :
| | BRITAIN | BRITAIN | FRANCE | FRANCE | GERMANY | GERMANY | GERMANY |
| Year | In Banks | In Savings Banks | In Banks | In Savings Banks | In Banks | In Credit Ass'tns. | In Savings Banks |
| 1880 | 8.4 | 1.6 | | 0.9 | 0.5 | 0.4 | 2.6 |
| 1888 | 12.4 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 2.1 | 1.1 | 0.4 | 4.5 |
| 1908 | 23.2 | 4.2 | 3.7 | 4.2 | 7.1 | 2.2 | 13.9 |
As they pay interest at the rate of 4 per cent. (4¼ per cent. on deposits), the Savings Banks must seek profitable investments for their capital, they must go in for speculation, mortgages, etc. And so the frontiers between the Banks and the Savings Banks become more and more effaced. The Chambers of Commerce at Bochum and Erfurt, for example, demand that Savings Banks should be prevented from engaging in "purely" banking business, such as endorsing bills of exchange. They also demand the limitation of the "banking" operations of the Post Office.
The banking kings seem to be afraid lest the State monopoly should unexpectedly catch them up. But it stands to reason that this fear does not make them go any further than the limits of competition between two department managers in the same office, if we may use the comparison; for, actually, it is still the same set of banking magnates who handle the billions entrusted to the Savings Banks, while State monopoly in a capitalist society is never anything else than a means of guaranteeing the income of millionaries who are ​on the point of going bankrupt in one branch of industry or another.
The replacing of the old type of capitalism, in which free competition flourished, by a new capitalism in which monopoly reigns, is notably expressed by a decrease in the importance of the Stock Exchange. The German review, Die Bank, wrote: "For a long time now, the Stock Exchange has ceased to be the indispensable intermediary of exchanges that it was formerly, when the banks were not yet able to place with their clients the biggest part of the scrip issued."
"Every bank is a Stock Exchange"—this modern saying contains more and more truth as the bank becomes greater and greater, and as capitalist concentration makes greater progress in the realm of finance. "If formerly, in the '70's, the Stock Exchange, flushed with the exuberance of youth" (a delicate allusion to the crash of 1873, and to the bucket-shop scandals), "opened the era of the industrialisation of Germany, nowadays the banks and industry are able to transact their own business without its aid."
'The domination of our big banks over the Stock Exchange. . . is nothing else than an expression of the completeness of organisation achieved by the German industrial State. If the domain of economic laws functioning automatically is thus restricted, and if the domain regulated deliberately by the banks is considerably increased, then the national economic responsibility of a very small number of directors is being increased to a formidable extent"—so wrote Professor Schulze-Gaevernitz, one of the defenders of German imperialism, who is looked upon as an authority ​amongst the imperialists in every country. This author naturally tries to mask one "detail": that the "deliberate regulation" of economic life by the banks consists in a robbery of the public by a handful of "completely organised" monopolists. For the task of a bourgeois professor is not to lay bare the whole financial system, or to divulge all the intrigues of the finance monopolists, but rather to cover them up.
In the same way, Riesser, a still more eminent economist and a financier himself, disposes of facts which he cannot deny, by means of some hollow phrases: "The Stock Exchange is losing, to a greater and greater extent, its character, indispensable to economy as a whole, and to the exchange of securities in particular, of being not only the most exact means of measuring, but also of being an almost automatic regulator of economic movements, which are centralised in it."
In other words, the old capitalism of free competition and its indispensable regulator the Stock Exchange, are passing away. A new capitalism is succeeding it, which seems to have a somewhat transitory nature, and representing a kind of mixture of free competition and monopoly. The question crops up naturally: to what is this transitory capitalism leading? But the bourgeois scholars are afraid to face this question.
"Thirty years ago, employers freely competing against one another carried out nine-tenths of the economic work which does not belong to the sphere of manual labour. At the present day, nine-tenths of this 'brain work' is performed by paid officials. Banking gives a lead in this evolution." This admission by Schulze-Gaevernitz leads us once ​more to the question: what does this tendency of modern capitalism, of capitalism in its imperialist phase, lead to?
Amongst the few banks which, as a result of the process of capitalist concentration, remain at the head of all capitalist economy, there is to be seen a natural tendency, becoming more and more clear and strengthened, towards the agreement, the monopoly, the trustification of the banks. In America, there are no longer nine, but only two of the big banks, those of the billionaires Rockefeller and Morgan, who reign over a capital of eleven milliards (in marks). In Germany, the absorption of the Union of Schaffausen by the Disconto Gesellschaft, was commented on in the following terms by the Frankfurter Zeitung, one of the official organs of the Stock Exchange:
"The concentration of the banks is narrowing the circle of establishments from which it is possible to obtain credit, and consequently is increasing the dependence of large-scale industry directly upon a small number of financial groups. The close relations between industry and the financial world being granted, it follows that the free movement of manufacturing companies in need of capital is restricted. And so large-scale industry is viewing the growing concentration of banks into trusts with mixed sentiments. And we have several times seen the beginnings of agreements amongst the big financial concerns, which aim at limiting competition between them."
Once more, the last word in the development of the banks, is monopoly.
As for the close ties between the banks and industry, it is precisely on this ground that it is ​possible to estimate the new role of the banks. If a bank negotiates a bill for an industrial firm, opens a current account for it, etc., these operations, separately considered, by no means diminish the independence of the industrial firm, and the bank plays no other part than that of a modest intermediary. But when such operations are multiplied and become continuous, when the bank "collects" in its hands enormous sums of capital, when the running of a current account for the firm in question enables the bank—and this is what happens—to become better and better informed of the economic position of the client, then the result is a more and more complete dependence of industrial capital directly on the bank.
Parallel with this process there is being developed a very close personal connection between the banks and the biggest industrial and commercial enterprises, the fusing of one with another through the acquisition of shares, through the entry of bank directors into the boards of management of industrial and commercial enterprises, and vice versa.
The German economist, Jeidels, has compiled very complete data on this form of concentration of capitals and enterprises. Six of the biggest Berlin banks were represented by their directors in 344 industrial companies; and by their managers in 407 other companies. Altogether, they supervised a total of 751 companies. In 289 of these they had either two representatives on the board of directors, or the presidency of the Board. Amongst these industrial and commercial companies, the most varied kinds of undertaking are represented: insurance, transport, restaurants, theatres, artistic production, etc. On the other ​hand, there were on the Board of Directors of six banks, in 1910, fifty-one of the biggest manufacturers, amongst whom were the directors of Krupps, the Hamburg-Amerika Line, etc. From 1895 to 1910, each of these six banks had "participated" in the share issues of several hundreds of industrial companies. (The exact numbers vary between 281 and 419).
The close connection between the banks and industry is completed by the close connection of both with the State. "Seats on the Advisory Board," wrote Jeidels, "are freely offered to reliable persons, especially to ex-civil servants, who are able to do a great deal to facilitate (!) relations with the authorities . . . . There is generally a member of parliament or a Berlin city councillor on the Advisory Board of a big bank."
The extension and the manufacture, so to speak, of the great capitalist monopolies is, therefore, going ahead at full steam, by all means, "natural" and "supernatural." The result is a fairly systematic division of labour amongst some hundreds of kings of finance who reign at present over modern capitalist society.
"Accompanying this extension of activity of individual industrialists" (sharing in the management of banks) "and together with the allotting to provincial bank managers of a definite industrial region, there is a growth of specialisation amongst the directors of the great financial institutions.
"Generally speaking, this specialisation is only possible when banking is on a large scale, and particularly when it has widespread connections with industry.
​"The division of labour follows two directions: on the one hand, the relations with industry as a whole are entrusted to one manager, who has special charge of them; on the other, each director assumes the supervision of several enterprises or groups of enterprises, whose interests are allied, or whose work is almost similar." (Capitalism has reached the stage of an organised supervision of firms). "One specialises in German industry—sometimes even in West German industry" (the West is the most industrialised part of Germany) "others in relations with foreign States and foreign industry; in information about industrial personalities; in what is happening on the Stock Exchange. Besides, each director is often charged with managing a locality or a branch of industry; one works mainly in the Advisory Boards of electric companies, another in chemical, brewing or the beet sugar industry; a third in several isolated undertakings, and at the same time in insurance companies. . . In short, there can be no doubt that, in proportion as the big banks develop and diversify their operations, the division of labour amongst their directors becomes increased with the object (or with the result) that they are raised to some extent above purely banking matters, and become more and more capable and competent in industrial matters, and in special questions affecting certain industries; better and better prepared for exercising, in industry, the influence of the banks. This system is completed by the tendency of the banks to appoint in managerial posts only men who know industry well, such as factory owners, and former officials, especially those who have belonged to the staffs of mines or railways, etc."
​We find the same system, with only a slight difference, in French banking. For instance, one of the three biggest banks, the Crédit Lyonnais, has organised a financial information service, which permanently employs about 50 engineers, statisticians, economists, jurists, etc., at an upkeep cost of six or seven hundred thousand francs annually.
The service is in turn divided into eight sections, of which one deals with industrial establishments, another with general statistics, a third with railways and navigation, a fourth with funds, a fifth with financial relations, etc.
The result is twofold: on the one hand a fusion, or, as N. I. Bukharin aptly calls it, a growing together, becoming more and more complete, between industrial and finance-capital; and on the other, a transformation of the banks into institutions of a truly "universal character." On this question we think we should quote the exact terms used by Jeidels, who has best studied the subject:
"After an examination of all their relations with industry," he writes, "we perceive the universal character of the financial establishments working on behalf of industry. Contrary to other kinds of banks, contrary to the requirements often laid down in text books—according to which banks ought to specialise in one kind of business or in one branch of industry so as not to lose a firm footing—the big banks are striving to make their industrial connections as varied and far-reaching as possible, and are tending to remedy the disproportion, that is to be seen in following up the history of certain banks, in the distribution of capital between areas and branches of industry. . . ​There is one tendency which hopes to make the fusion with industry a general phenomenon; another tendency is working to make this fusion very closely-knit and solid. Both tendencies are given effect to, as vet incompletely, but already to a considerable extent and to an equal degree, in the six biggest German banks."
Quite often industrial and commercial circles complain of the "terrorism" of the banks. We are not surprised, for the big banks "command" as will be seen from the following example:
On the 19th of November, one of the big Berlin "D" Banks (such is the name given to the four biggest banks whose name begins with the letter D), wrote to the board of directors of the German Central-North-West Cement Company, a letter which ran as follows:
"We learn, from the advertisement that you have published on the 18th instant in a certain newspaper, that the next general meeting of your company, fixed for the 30th of this month, may be called upon to take measures which are likely to effect alterations in your undertakings which we cannot possibly agree with. We deeply regret that, for these reasons, we are obliged henceforth to refuse you the credit which has been hitherto allowed you. If the next general meeting does not decide upon measures inacceptable to us, and if we receive suitable guarantees on this matter for the future, we have no objection to negotiating with you the opening of a new credit."
In truth, this is the same old complaint of little capital oppressed by big capital. Only, this time, it is a whole syndicate which has fallen under the heading of "little." The old struggle be​tween big and little capital is beginning on a new and infinitely higher plane.
It stands to reason that undertakings, financed by the big banks handling milliards, can hasten on technical progress also infinitely more than those of the preceding period. The banks are founding, for instance, societies of technical research, whose work, be it noted, goes to benefit only "allied" industrial concerns. To this category belong, in Germany, the Electric Railway Research Association, and the Central Bureau of Scientific and Technical Research.
The directors of the big banks themselves cannot fail to see that in this way new conditions of economic life are being created. But they are powerless before these phenomena.
"Anyone," wrote Jeidels, "who has watched, in recent years, the retirement and election of directors and managers of the big banks, cannot fail to have noticed that financial power was passing into the hands of men who consider the active intervention of the banks in the general development of production to be indispensable and of daily increasing importance. It often happens that, between these new men and the old bank directors, disagreements occur on this subject, and sometimes personal quarrels. The question arises, in reality, as to whether it is certain that the banks, as institutions of credit, will not suffer from these interventions in production, as to whether they are not sacrificing tried principles and an assured profit in a field of activity which has nothing in common with their role as intermediaries of credit; and which is leading them into a field where they depend still more than formerly on the state of ​trade. This is the opinion of a number of the older bank directors, whilst most of the young men consider intervention in industry to be a necessity, as great as that which gave rise, simultaneously with big modern industry, to the big banks and modern industrial finance. The two parties in this discussion are only agreed on one point. They recognise that the new activity of the five banks has not got solid principles for a basis, and has not got a concrete objective in view."
The old form of capitalism has had its day. The new represents a transition towards something or other. To find "solid principles and a concrete objective" to harmonise monopoly and free competition is obviously to seek for the solution of an insoluble problem. The confessions of the practical men impress us differently from the enthusiastic periods of the official apologists of "organised" capital, such as Schulze-Gaevernitz, Liefmann and similar theoreticians.
To what period is the "new activity" of the big banks to be definitely ascribed? Jeidels gives us a fairly exact answer to this important question:
"The bonds between the industrial enterprises with their new elements, their new forms and their new organs; more precisely, the great banks which are organised on both a centralised and a decentralised basis, do not become a characteristic economic phenomenon before 1890, and the following years; in one sense, indeed, this initial point may be advanced to the year 1897 with its huge amalgamations of businesses, which for the first time introduced a new form of decentralised organisation, corresponding to the economic policy of the banks. This commencing point may be put ​even further on, for it was only the crisis of 1900 which enormously accelerated the process of concentration of industry and banking, consolidated that process and for the first time gave to the great banks a monopoly of the connection with industry, which had become much closer and more active."
Thus, the beginning of the twentieth century marks the turning point at which the old capitalism gives place to the new, at which control by capital in general gives place to control by finance-capital.
* ↑ 21.—Jeidels, p. 108.
* ↑ 22.—Alfred Lansburg: "Fünf Jahre des Bankwesens" in Die Bank, 1913, p. 728.
* ↑ 23.—Schulze-Gaevernitz: "Die deutsche Kreditbank" in "Grundriss der Sozialökonomik," Tübingen, 1915, pp. 12 and 137.
* ↑ 24.—A. Lansburg: "Das Beteiligungssystem im Deutschen Bankwesen." Die Bank, 1910, i. 500.
* ↑ 25.—E. Kaufmann: "Das französischen Bankwesen," Tübingen, 1911, pp. 356 and 362.
* ↑ 26.—Jean Lescure: "L'Epargne en France," Paris, 1914, p. 52.
* ↑ 27.—A. Lansburg: "Die Bank mit den 300 millionen," Die Bank, 1914, p. 426.
* ↑ 28.—S. Tschierschky, p. 128.
* ↑ 29.—From the "National Monetary Commission" (U.S.A.), Die Bank, 1909, p. 1200.
* ↑ 30.—Idem, 1913, pp. 811, 1022; 1914, p. 743.
* ↑ 31.—Die Bank, 1914, i. 316.
* ↑ 32.—Dr. Oskar Stillich: "Geld und Bankwesen," Bremen, 1907, p. 109.
* ↑ 33.—Riesser, op. cit., p. 630.
* ↑ 34.—According to Schulze-Gaevernitz, in "Grundriss der Sozialökonomik," p. 156.
* ↑ 35.—Jeidels and Riesser, op. cit.
* ↑ 36.—Jeidels, p. 157.
* ↑ 37.—Article by Eug. Kaufmann on the French Banks in Die Bank, 1909, pp. 2, 851.
* ↑ 38.—Oskar Stillich, p. 148.
* ↑ 39.—Jeidels, p. 184.
* ↑ 40.—Idem, p. 181.
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