In the large cities where securities speculation has taken deep root, it is usually possible for the bank to employ some of its funds in loans upon collateral security - that is to say, to allow borrowers to use its funds in carrying on speculative operations. Custom has made these loans generally subject to call - that is to say, has made them demand rates, with constant revision of the rate, thus establishing what is ordinarily termed the call market. This use of funds is quite outside the commercial-paper field, and, as in the case of other branches of business, the call rate depends upon the relative amount as compared with the demand for loans in that field. If at any given time the amount of funds offering in the call market is moderate as compared with demand, the rate will be high, and vice versa. High call rates are believed to draw into the market funds which would otherwise have been used in the purchase of commercial paper, and to some extent this is probably the case, but the call rate is in many respects noncompetitive, and there is ground for a question regarding the extent to which its influence is directly felt in diverting funds from other uses. Then, too, it should be remembered that the total amount of funds normally applied on call is much more limited than is usually supposed. It may be estimated that for the country as a whole the amount of time and call loans is perhaps $1,000,000,000, in times of good average business, while the commercial-paper market perhaps requires about the same amount. Taking the loans and discounts of the banks as being, in round numbers, $36,000,000,000, it would appear that the call market ordinarily represents about one-thirty-sixth of the total loans of the banks, and the commercial-paper market (open market) another thirty-sixth. These fractions, while they seem small, are found to act at.all times as an equalizer of rates. It is an important economic service of the call market that it tends to "even up" rates between other branches of business and as between different sections of the country. In most large cities, and particularly in New York, funds are loaned to a considerable extent by money brokers, and there is a "money post" on the Stock Exchange at which call rates are fixed day by day. Bankers make rates direct to their own customers, and to a considerable extent arrangements are consummated between out-of-town and in-town bankers whereby the latter lend funds transmitted to them by the former on a basis of participation - that is to say, the total amount of funds in hand is loaned by the city bank, but with the understanding that a certain proportion is for the account of the out-of-town correspondent. Competition as between supply and demand fixes the rate on the Stock Exchange each day, but it often happens that the outside market furnished by the direct loans made by money brokers to their customers or by banks to their customers is below or above the official rate on the Stock Exchange. When these discrepancies occur it does not take long to reconcile them, since competition speedily sets in and the official quotations of the next day or two are usually brought into harmony with those of the outside market, or vice versa.