While the Second Bank of the United States had been running its course, the various states had been experimenting with different kinds of banking systems, some successfully and others disastrously. In the course of this experience almost every type of banking was attempted, and the result was the accumulation of a great fund of experience as to the best way in which not to conduct banking. Among the distinct types of banking systems developed during the first half century of our national life were the so-called New England system, the bond-secured system of New York, the "state banks" (banks owned and operated by state governments or, at all events, very closely controlled by them), and the so-called "credit systems" of banking. Of all these systems the one that stands out as having been conspicuously successful was that established in New England.