The Canadian banking system differs materially from the standard central banking systems of Europe, being without any central banking organization and consisting of seventeen large specially chartered banks dating from various periods, all authorized to issue notes in established branches and several of them maintaining large networks of branches throughout Canada. The note issue of Canadian banks is limited to an amount equal to the capital of each issuing institution, and a joint guaranty fund is established through a fund deposited with the Canadian government and kept constantly on deposit for the purpose of redeeming the notes of any bank that may fail. In the event of a bank failing, its notes become a lien upon the assets of the bank and may be redeemed out of the guaranty fund. The notes also draw interest from the time of the suspension of the bank issuing them. Of late years the extension of credit by means of deposit accounts on books of the Canadian banks has increased, but the notes continue to be the characteristic form of bank credit over a large part of Canada. During the war the Dominion government issued government circulating notes secured by bonds deposited by the banks under approved conditions, while gold redemption was suspended both as to bank notes and as to Dominion notes (government legal-tender notes). Dominion notes were not issued, however, in very large amount at any time, and the main effort of Canada was to conserve her supply of gold and, as in the United States, to further the raising of war loans by providing for their discount on liberal terms at banking institutions. Apart from the method of note issue, the most striking phase of Canadian banking, as well as the one to which reference is most frequently made in the description of banking systems, is the extensive creation of branch banks. This has gone so far that, notwithstanding only seventeen banks exist in Canada, they with their branches constitute a number of banking offices open to the public which is fully as large in proportion to the population as is provided by the independent banking system of the United States. The branch banking system has had two great merits, that of easily shifting funds from one part of the country to another as wanted, and the other that of equalizing rates of discount as between different parts of the country. Both factors have proved exceedingly beneficial and helpful in the course of Canada's economic and financial growth.