LOMBARD STREET TO-DAY
Bagehot's "Lombard Street" was begun, as he tells us in his "Advertisement," in the autumn of 1870. It is a wonderful achievement, that a book dealing with the shifting quicksands of the money market should still, after more than forty years, be a classic of which no one who wishes to understand the subject can afford to be ignorant. Since it is so, it is evidently desirable to give, for those of its readers who are not acquainted with the money market of to-day, a brief account of the chief movements and tendencies which have altered the conditions since Bagehot wrote.
This task is all the easier, since the most notable results of these movements and tendencies have amply confirmed what he said. Lombard Street has accepted the bill that Bagehot drew on it. There are two chief outstanding facts of modern monetary development. One is the reliance of the London money market and the money markets of the world on the Bank of England as the custodian of the central gold reserve.
