By H. K. Brooks.*

While foreign-exchange transactions are generally regarded as being quite complicated, and there are some operations requiring experience and patient study, the system as a whole cannot be said to be any more intricate than many of the problems daily arising in mercantile business.

Comparatively few persons have a thorough knowledge of the subject and this may perhaps be attributed to the fact that until recent years the business was confined to the leading banks at large trade centers. Other banks having call for foreign drafts, letters of credit, or other foreign paper would obtain the same from the large banks mentioned or refer customers to them direct.

The enormous growth of our import business, the large increase in foreign travel, and the extension of our trade to nearly every country in the world so greatly increased the volume of foreign exchange transactions that it naturally invited competition, and today almost every bank and financial institution at a place of any importance is equipped with the facilities necessary to meet the demand for this class of business of its patrons.

* Mr. Brooks is manager of the Western Financial Department of the American Express Company and the author of a work on Foreign Exchange which is widely used as a text book on the subject.