Note 427 — Chapter XIX

Professor Fisher, in his Annalist article of Feb. 21, 1916, quotes Dean Kinley (The Use of Credit Instruments, p. 151), as holding that duplications have largely been eliminated from his 1909 figures. Professor Fisher overlooks the fact that Dean Kinley is here referring, not to money value of trade, but merely to volume of checks. Dean Kinley merely indicates that by eliminating deposits made by one bank in another, he has avoided having the same check counted in deposits made in two or more banks on the same day. Even this is not wholly avoided. (Ibid., pp. 158-159.) It was extensive in the 1896 figures. Dean Kinley thinks, properly enough, that he has a sufficiently close approximation to the volume of checks, for the reporting banks, but what the checks were drawn for he does not undertake to say. His problem was payments, not trade. From the angle of volume of trade, he finds duplications even in the retail deposits (Jour. of Polit. Econ., vol. 5, p. 165).