The Portland daily press., 1872-01-29
Savings Banks.

have been careful reader of everything
that has appeared in our Portland papers about
savings banks, having had general interest IN
them for many years, and for a few years have
been manager of one. They are in my opin-
ion. very important to the public interest IN
many ways, Everybody knows as much as
this of them-that their effect is to induce
habits of saving in a very numerous CLASS Oh
people. who, without them, would spend as
they go.
1 know that persons who have mvested
few dollars in a savings bank, are induced
thereby to be more industrious ana more saw
ing, SO as to increase their little store laid by
against.a rainy day. 1 have many men in my
employment, working regularly at good wages,
who have been doing SO for years, some of them
for as much as twenty years, without losing a
day, except by sickness I always use my in
fluence with all these, to induce them to lay by
in the savings bank, every dollar they can
spare in their years of health and strength;
and have reason to know that the accumu-
lated savings of these men amount to large
sum.
Sometimes, when sickness has visited their
families, so that their weekly pay was INSULT
cient 1 have heard them express grateful
thanks that they had been persuaded to change
their old habit of spending everything as they
went, for the better one of saving against
day of need.
These men know little or nothing of modes
of safely and proftably investing money; they
could not do this, week by week or month by
month, with their weekly or monthly savings.
Without these banks, they would have no re-
source but to put away their little boards, in
some trunk or drawer, or closet, exposed to
risk from thieves, or fire, or the greater one
perhaps, of the temptation to spend what
would be SO near at hand. Even if safely kept
in that way, they would be..earning nothing for
them, nor doing any any useful work in society;
but in the savings bank they are doing both.
The managers of these banks have no pecuni-
| airy interest in them whatever; they spend their
time and assume the great responsibility in
volved in this work, only as a matter of public
duty, in helping on great public good. They
| ought to know something about the place these
institutions occupy in our monetary and fiscal
system, and about their influence upon the gen.
eral business prosperity of the community, in
| which all the managers of the savings banks
among us are personally and deeply interested
Their first duty is to their depositors to see
| that whatever is confided to them, shall be
safely kept and proitably employed. Beyond
that, their duty as well as their personal inter-
ests are bound up IN the general welfare of the
community, and they may be relied upon,
think, to do nothing and to consent to nothing
inconsistent with this. I am not aware that
any of the writers in the papers, who have
been proposing many and various restrictions
upon these banks, have had any conference
with their managers, or have made any inquir-
les of them, as to the actual effect upon the use
fulness of these Institutions, of these proposed
| measures, sf
One man proposes to tax them; another to
compel the managers to make returns to some
official body, either State or municipal, of the
names of all depositors and of the sums held by
them. Others propose that the amount of each
deposit shall be limited by law; and others that
| savings banks shall be stock banks, and the
managers held personally liable for all losses
| that shall occur in the course of business 9th
ers propose that no savings bank funds shall be
loaned on any securities but those originating in
the State; others that loans may be made on
names without collateral; others that no divi-
dend shall be paid of more than six per cent. a
year-but that all accrued surplus shall be di-
vided among the depositors at long intervals
say every three, four or five years.
10 all these propositions and many Others
made by honest men no doubt, with honest in
tentions, and desiring only the best thing-and
very intelligent men, no doubt in all matters
that they understanding all of them have
only one remark to make, and it is this, that be-
fore meddling with matter SO delicate as these
great fiscal operations have now become, and
so intimately interviewer as they now are with
the interests of a very large number of people,
and with those of the business community, the
experimenters would do well to inquire of some
of the managers, who have made the study of
their affairs a speciality-what would be the
possible, probable or certain effect if these
propositions should be adopted and enforced by
1ax.