333.WHAT WAS THE FIRST BANK?
A grocer deals in food, a hardware store in household items, and a banker in money. The main business of banks is to lend money and to handle money which has been deposited with them. Of course, banks today provide many more services than just these, but it all has to do with the handling of money.
Ever since man had a kind of money, it has been necessary for someone to hold it for him safely, or to lend him some when he needed it. For example, in ancient Babylon, even before coins had been invented, there were men who made a business of borrowing, lending, and holding money for other people. They might be called bankers, though they were considered moneylenders. Some of that business was in the hands of the priests in the temples, and there were laws that regulated this business.
332.WHAT WAS THE FEUDAL SYSTEM?
Today Europe is divided into many countries. But from about the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, it was like a single country. It was divided into great estates, and the people who lived on them didn’t think of themselves as Frenchmen, Germans, or Englishmen. Instead, each man owed loyalty to his landlord, and the landlord owed it to a still greater landlord, and the greatest of all owed it to the king.
The local lords who ruled over vast estates did not wish to have the trouble and expense of administering the whole of their estates.
331.WHAT IS “WALL STREET?”
We are always hearing about how what happens on Wall Street somehow affects the lives of People all over the world. What is actually meant by “Wall Street,” and how can it influence the lives of millions of people?
Wall Street is literally a street in the lower part of New York City. On it or near it are concentrated the chief financial institutions of the United States.
