Page 57 - Industries_of_San_Antonio

REPRESENTATIVE BUSINESS HOUSES.

SAN ANTONIO NATIONAL BANK—Corner Commerce and St. Mary's
Street.
Eight hundred years before Christ, the Prophet Ezekiel, chapter xxvii,
drew a vivid picture of the commercial splendor of Tyre, the metropolis of
Phcenecia, which then transacted a commerce (traditionally) greater than
that of the present day, directly controlling the whole known world, and
from her people Europe received the rudiments of civilization and imbibed
her first inspiration of what political economists term the mercantile sys-
tem, and a taste for the facilities and elegancies of life. These people,
the historian (Herodotus) tells us, were in the very zenith of their great-
ness 2,000 years before Christ, and in the development of measures neces-
sary for directing the movements of society, so that men might act in
harmony with each other in their efforts to acquire commercial pre-emi-
nence; directed especial attention to finance, recognizing that this great
agent regulated the nature, production and distribution of commerce and
inductively wealth. They excelled in the manufacture of gold and silver
coin and had bankers regulating exchange, and from them the ancient
Romans, who were experts in banking, learned the system of banking,
exchange, discount, drafts, checks, etc. ; very similar to the system of
to-day. So the very elements which contributes to commercial supremacy
to-day, obtained nearly 4,000 years ago, and the chiefest of those elements
was in facilitating the transfer of the great sinews of trade—money and
credit—and this was accomplished by a general banking system. The
blank thrown over history by the decay in civilization, which prevailed in
the Middle or the so-called Dark Ages, also threw banking into disuse; but
it revived with the revival of civilization—the Bank of Venice being the
first on record, 1171. It was a bank of deposit, the deposits being subject
to draft. The Bank of Genoa was founded in 1345. The first continued
in active existence until. 1797, the latter until 1800. The Bank of Barce-
lona was established in 1401; this bank introduced into modern Europe
the system of negotiations of bills of exchange. The Bank of Amsterdam
was founded in 1609; it was established to give a standard or certain value
to bills drawn by or upon that country, coin having depreciated. The
Bank of Hamburg was established in 1019, and it differs essentially from
any other banking institution in the world; its circulation is based upon
fine silver in bars, and the difference at which it receives and pays out the
silver deposits, about one-half of one per cent., constitutes the charge for
its custody of funds. History repeats itself in a wonderful manner, veri-
fying the apothegm that "there's nothing new under the sun." Four