¹ On the business cycle, see Calomiris, Charles W., and Hubbard, R. Glenn, “Price Flexibility, Credit Availability, and Economic Fluctuations: Evidence from the United States, 1894–1909,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 104 (August 1989): 429–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bordo, Michael D., Rappoport, Peter, Schwartz, Anna J., “Money versus Credit Rationing: Evidence for the National Banking Era, 1880–1914,” in Goldin, Claudia and Rockoff, Hugh, eds., Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History: A Volume to Honor Robert W. Fogel (Chicago, 1992), 189–223Google Scholar. On national money markets, see Davis, Lance, “The Investment Market, 1870–1914: The Evolution of a National Market,” Journal of Economic History 25 (September 1965): 355–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; James, John, Money and Capital Markets in Postbellum America (Princeton, N.J., 1978)Google Scholar; Odell, Kerry A., “The Integration of Regional and Interregional Capital Markets: Evidence from the Pacific Coast, 1883–1913,” Journal of Economic History 49 (June 1989): 297–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bodenhorn, Howard, “A More Perfect Union: Regional Interest Rates in the United States, 1880–1960,” in Bordo, Michael D. and Sylla, Richard, eds., Anglo-American Financial Systems: Institutions and Markets in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1995), 415–54Google Scholar. On the instability of the banking system, see Mankiw, N. Gregory, Miron, Jeffrey A., Weil, David N., “The Adjustment of Expectations to a Change in Regime: A Study of the Founding of the Federal Reserve,” American Economic Review 77 (June 1987): 358–74Google Scholar; Calomiris, Charles W., and Gorton, Gary, “The Origins of Banking Panics: Models, Facts, and Bank Regulation,” in Hubbard, R. Glenn, ed., Financial Markets and Financial Crises (Chicago, 1991): 109–73Google Scholar; Mishkin, Frederic S., “Asymmetric Information and Financial Crises: A Historical Perspective,” in Hubbard, R. Glenn, ed., Financial Markets and Financial Crises (Chicago, 1991): 69–108Google Scholar; Bordo, Michael D., Rockoff, Hugh, and Redish, Angela, “The U.S. Banking System from a Northern Exposure: Stability versus Efficiency,” Journal of Economic History 54 (June 1994): 325–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² In contrast, there are several studies of antebellum banks. See, for example, Adams, Donald R. Jr., “The Bank of Stephen Girard, 1812–1831,” Journal of Economic History 22 (Dec. 1972): 841–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bodenhorn, Howard, “Private Banking in Antebellum Virginia: Thomas Branch & Sons of Peterburg,” Business History Review 71 (Winter 1997): 513–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bodenhorn, Howard, “An Engine of Growth: Real Bills and Schumpeterian Banking in Antebellum New York,” Explorations in Economic History 36 (July 1999): 278–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crothers, A. Glenn, “Banks and Economic Development in Post-Revolutionary Northern Virginia, 1790–1812,” Business History Review 73 (Spring 1999): 1–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wright, Robert E., “Bank Ownership and Lending Patterns in New York and Pennsylvania, 1781–1831,” Business History Review 73 (Spring 1999): 40–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Schweikart, Larry, A History of Banking in Arizona (Tucson, Ariz., 1982), ch. 2Google Scholar; and Doti, Lynne Pierson and Schweikart, Larry, California Bankers, 1848–1993 (Needham Heights, Mass., 1994), ch. 2Google Scholar.

⁴ James, Money and Capital Markets, 40–4; and Eugene N. White, The Regulation and Reform of the American Banking System, 1900–1929 (Princeton, N.J., 1983), 36–7Google Scholar.

⁵ James, Money and Capital Markets, 40–4.

⁶ A. Levy: A History (Virginia Beach, Va., 1991), 1–5Google Scholar; Kramer, William M. and Stern, Norton B., “A. Levy of the Bank: From Beans to Banks in Ventura County,” Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly 7 (Jan. 1975): 118–25Google Scholar.

⁷ Kramer and Stern, “A. Levy of the Bank,” 118–19.

⁸ U.S. Bureau of the Census, Eleventh Decennial Census of the United States, 1890, vol. 1: Population, part one; vol. 5: Report on the Statistics of Agriculture; vol. 6: Report on Manufacturing, part one (Washington, D.C., 1892–1997)Google Scholar.

⁹ Kramer and Stern, “A. Levy of the Bank,” 131.

¹⁰ It's Been A Great 100 Years! Bank of A. Levy, 1882–1982 (Bank of A. Levy, 1982), 3–4Google Scholar.

¹¹ A. Levy: A History, 13–19.

¹² A. Levy: A History, 14.

¹³ Unfortunately, bank records that would have revealed the origins of the bank's capital and the composition of its liabilities have apparently not survived.

¹⁴ Kramer and Stern, “A Levy of the Bank,” 119–21.

¹⁵ Schweikart, A History of Banking in Arizona; Schweikart, Larry, Banking in the American South from the Age of Jackson to Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, La., 1985)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ A. Levy: A History, 24–5.

¹⁷ Kramer and Stern, A. Levy of the Bank, 127–8. Like most California bankers, Levy's correspondent was in San Francisco, the established regional financial center. Banks in the city served as correspondent banks for most banks in the Pacific region, a fact acknowledged by the selection of San Francisco as the reserve city for the Far West in the national banking system. See Odell, “The Integration of Regional and Interregional Capital Markets,” 299–302.

¹⁸ A. Levy: A History, 46–7, 52–3.

¹⁹ It's Been A Great Hundred Years, 8.

²⁰ The Bank of William Collins and Sons failed, having overextended its mortgage loans. Fairbanks, F. L., “Early Day Banks and Banking in Ventura County,” Ventura County Historical Society Quarterly 8 (May 1963): 3–7Google Scholar.

²¹ U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, Annual Report (Washington, D.C., 1896), vol. 2Google Scholar.

²² A. Levy: A History, 46.

²³ Ventura Free Press (Dec. 1895), souvenir edition.

²⁴ Kramer and Stern, A. Levy of the Bank, 127–9; A. Levy: A History, 25–7.

²⁵ “A. Levy, County Pioneer is Called,” Moorpark Enterprise (Feb. 23, 1922).

²⁶ One contemporary Ventura bank officer remembered that the commissioners were “all political appointments, men without banking experience, and many of them could not even balance the cash.” Fairbanks, “Early Day Banks and Banking,” 6.

²⁷ Doti and Schweikart, California Bankers, 57–61.

²⁸ Russell Carroll, as told to Pfeiler, Robert, “The Bank of A. Levy,” Ventura County Historical Society Quarterly 4 (Nov. 1958): 10–13Google Scholar; and A. Levy: A History, 17.

²⁹ Bolles, Albert S., Practical Banking, 7th ed. (New York, 1884), 144Google Scholar.

³⁰ Moulton, H. G., “Commercial Banking and Capital Formation,” Journal of Political Economy 26 (May 1918): 484–508, (June 1918): 638–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; (July 1918): 705–31, (Nov. 1918), 849–81; Brief, Richard P., “The Origin and Evolution of Nineteenth-Century Asset Accounting,” Business History Review 37 (Spring 1966): 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; White, Eugene N., “Were Banks Special Intermediaries in Late Nineteenth Century America?” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 80 (May/June 1998): 13–32Google Scholar.

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³² U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, Annual Report (Washington, D.C., 1880), 90Google Scholar.

³³ In this period, liquidity meant that an asset would immediately be paid off at maturity, not that it was easy to market. White, “Were Banks Special?” 16–25.

³⁴ For more details, see James, Money and Capital Markets, 59. It is interesting to note that Pacific and western banks had a high percentage of single- to double-name paper.

³⁵ This type of one-day loan, known as a “call loan,” was common in England at least as early as the eighteenth century. These “call loans” should not be confused with “call loans” in the United States, which were loans of similar duration but collateralized by securities.

³⁶ There were thirteen loans for which it was not possible to determine when the loan was repaid.

³⁷ The average actual term of Levy's borrowed funds was 199 days in 1895.

³⁸ James, Money and Capital Markets, 61.

³⁹ Moulton, “Commercial Banking and Capital Formation,” 707.

⁴⁰ James, Money and Capital Markets, 67.

⁴¹ For twenty-one loans, it was difficult to calculate the annual rate of interest, as interest was calculated “from date” or “from maturity.” Many of these loans had been purchased.

⁴² For a description of state usury laws, see Holmes, George K., and Lord, John S., Report on Real Estate Mortgages in the United States. Eleventh Census, vol. 11 (Washington D.C., 1895), 170Google Scholar.

⁴³ For five loans it was not possible to determine whether the loans had been paid off.

⁴⁴ National Bureau of Economic Research, http://www.nber.org/cycles.html.

⁴⁵ Friedman, Milton and Schwartz, Anna J., A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 (Princeton, N.J., 1963), 107–12Google Scholar.

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⁴⁹ Comptroller of the Currency, Annual Report, 1893.

⁵⁰ Breckenridge, “Discount Rates in the United States,” 126.

⁵¹ Davis, “The Investment Market,” 365–6. San Francisco was a distinct regional market, not completely integrated with the East. The regional banks in California, Oregon, and Washington interest rates moved more closely with the rates of San Francisco than with New York or Chicago, even though there was convergence over time See Odell, “The Integration of Regional and International Capital Markets.”

⁵² James, Money and Capital Markets, 253.

⁵³ Bodenhorn, “A More Perfect Union,” 450.

⁵⁴ For a similar study of antebellum banks, see Bodenhorn, Howard, “An Engine of Growth: Real Bills and Schumpeterian Banking in Antebellum New York,” Explorations in Economic History 36 (July 1999): 278–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁵ Board of Governors, Banking and Monetary Statistics, tables 120, 448.

⁵⁶ Friedman and Schwartz, A Monetary History, 111. They date the end of the panic in August, but restrictions on cash payments were gradually lifted in September. The dummy variable includes this month, when bankers may still have been cautious. Levy's modal rate continued to be higher in October, a month not included in accounts of the panic. Including October in the dummy variable did not alter the results.

⁵⁷ The variable and the square will indicate the shape of the yield curve.

⁵⁸ Characterizing the dependent variable, the interest rate, as a continuous variable is not quite appropriate because there were only nine values. Thus, an alternate approach is to use a limited dependent-variable model, where interest rates are characterized as either high risk or low risk.

⁵⁹ In the probit regressions, the transformed coefficients denoting the marginal effects are reported.

⁶⁰ This pattern is expected for a serially correlated independent variable.

⁶¹ Lamoreaux, Naomi R., Insider Lending: Banks, Personal Connections and Economic Development in Industrial New England (New York, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶² See, for example, Ferrie, Joseph P., Yankees Now: Immigrants in the Antebellum U.S., 1840–1860 (New York, 1999), ch. 2Google Scholar.

⁶³ For all California state-chartered commercial banks and savings banks in 1893, over 7 percent of real-estate loans were backed by real-estate collateral located in Oregon and Washington, with smaller amounts on real estate in Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. See Odell, “The Integration of Regional and International Capital Markets,” 302.

⁶⁴ One other loan for $100 had, as a second borrower, Adolfo Camarillo.

⁶⁵ Levy's spelling of Spanish names was unconventional at times.

⁶⁶ Jennings, Margaret, “The Chinese in Ventura County,” Ventura County Historical Society Quarterly 29 (Spring 1984): 9Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Fairbanks, “Early Day Banks and Banking,” 15; and Jennings, “The Chinese in Ventura County,” 21.

⁶⁸ Lamoreaux, Insider Lending, 157–65; and Wright, “Bank Ownership and Lending Patterns,” 40–2.