After the speculative boom of the mid-1890s, which had focused the public's attention on the City, the early twentieth century brought in a less eventful period. Though the stock market continued to rise and fall and companies continued to be promoted and to fail, there was nothing akin to the craze for gold that had gripped the nation in 1895. Instead, the City of London continued to build up its position as the most important financial and commercial centre in the world. Turner, writing in 1902, claimed that

On the commercial front, Beavan, writing in 1901, saw the City as ‘…the Mart of Nations’, with Mincing Lane at its heart. This very range and extent of the City's activities defied easy generalization, beyond such statements about its role as a money market or a commodity market. Similarly, the complexity of the functions performed on behalf of global trade and finance made it difficult for the non-specialist to understand what the City actually did. Many of the familiar landmarks of the past, such as the private banks, had virtually disappeared, leaving the City inhabited by a vast mass of people and businesses carrying out tasks unintelligible to the lay person. Also, there was now little reason to visit the City, beyond St Paul's Cathedral, unless on business, for it had ceased to possess any retail activities apart from those meeting the needs of those who worked there.