England for the financing of various kinds of industry.
Bills discounted perform the same function to some extent; but in the first place they probably contain a large proportion of Treasury bills and thereby finance the Government rather than industry; and in the second, it is likely that a large part of the commercial bills held are drawn to finance foreign trade, and so, though of enormous importance to a country which could not live without foreign trade, are less directly a home product, though at the same time widening still further the diversification of risks which is provided by investment in bank shares.
Money at call and short notice means loans to discount houses, bill-brokers and—stockbrokers engaged in financing the floating mass of bills of exchange and securities which form the stock-in-trade of Lombard Street and Capel Court.
It is interesting to look back at our investigation of an industrial balance-sheet, and to compare the assets shown by a bank in the light of the difficulty that we found in the case of a well-known brewery of being certain as to the likelihood that the assets if realized would fetch the sums set against them.
The assets of Messrs. Bass came to a total
