In the 19th century small business folk traded gold and money. And then the banks took over.

One Spring Monday in 1852 around thirty gold buyers gathered for the evening at Mrs Black’s Royal Hotel in Bathurst, which was (and is) just on the other side of the Blue Mountains from Sydney. Probably not ordinarily the most collegiate of petty capitalists, the gold buyers gathered to debate the role of the local branch of the Union Bank of Australia in undercutting their business. The bank had begin purchasing gold at a slightly higher rate than individual gold buyers could do, bringing diggers in from the gold fields to Bathurst where they would get a better deal – and (so rejoiced the local storekeepers) use some of their earnings to buy some Fancy Goods. Some gold buyers thought this was fair of the bank, which added gentlemanly respectability to what was recently a frontier townships. Others noticed that the bank was cutting out the middleman. And since they were the middlemen, that was pretty uncool. Mr Samuel, certainly one or the other of the Messrs L & S Samuel, gold buyers…