Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact....

Without a means of crediting and debiting accounts worldwide and the non-physical transfer of funds, the rapid global economic integration of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would have been impossible....