Professor Gide undoubtedly ranks amongst the great leaders of co-operative thought on this planet, and his book on " Consumers' Co-operative Societies" must be a source of knowledge to all these co-operators who take a real curiosity within the working of their motion. The notions on which the system was based mostly, and that are mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph, are proved to have been delusions, disastrous to everybody concerned, including those that tried to profit by them. States which offer coinage of probably the most perfect kind win no revenue from it; quite the opposite, it comes beneath the pinnacle of a useful and essential public expenditure. Within the meantime, the factions produced by various dogmas about the foreign money, by interests engaged in it, and by celebration intrigues to profit by it, have grown fierce and stubborn. The banks have however a really subordinate share in it, and are not to blame for any part of it. There have been east of the Mississippi, 2,611 banks with $527 hundreds of thousands capital; west of it, 1,104 with $135 millions capital.
