The New York herald., 1875-12-13
The Savings Banks.

philanthropic savings bank; and imagination
cannot picture any source of poignant misery
more fruitful than the abuse of popular con-
fdence through one of these institutions.
They are institutions, therefore, in which
every community has very lively interest,
derived equally from the advantages they
procure and the calamities they may cause.
BY means of these institutions it is possible
for legislation to affect the character of the
people; for the law that guarantees the
security Of the boarded mite directly culti-
Yates thrift. 1t gives a good reason for abb
stinence from present indulgence and en-
courages the provision for future safety The
economical effects of these banks are all
good. They secure the constant circulation
of coin that would otherwise be buried in
cellars and SO utilize for public benefit
capital that would be unproductive; and
they reduce largely the number of those who
but for them would in old age or misfortune
become burdens upon public charity.
Savings banks came into operation at about
the time the world lost confidence in the
tontine as a financial contriyance, and they
/
the older scheme, since the essential concep-
tion Of each is the provision against rainy
day-the advantage to accrue ultimately
from the present deposit of an insignificant
4 sum. But the tontine deposit was made once
for all the savings bank deposit. to be made
freely at any time and as often as need be-
though the extent of deposit is limited in
France and England-offered to every thrifty
person the attraction Of a tontine popular
lied, made more accessible, more readily re-
alizable and more certain of advantageous
results In the tontine there was also the
gambling element of the benefit to the sur
vivor-the increase of each subscribers in
terest upon the death of any other subscriber.
Logically this element exists in the savings
banks also in the form of unclaimed de-
posits, which have sometimes become for
midable sums but in no case so far as we
are aware, have these ever been looked upon
as held in the interest of other depositors,
except, of course in so far as, if considerable
in amount, they afford guarantee for the
stability of the institution. In France these,
after thirty years, become the property of
the State In this city they should be
funded for the benefit of the city poor.
Priscilla Wakefield organized at Totem
ham, England, in 1898, the first savings
bank identical in character with the institu-
ton as now known to US, and thus proved
that no particular rights under the law are
necessary to enable good woman to affect
the world with one philanthropic thought.
Priscilla was the great granddaughter Of
Robert Barclay, of Ury the "Governor of
East Jersey, in America" the famous author
of the Apology for the Quakers." She came
legitimately, therefore, by philanthropic inn
pulses. This lady travelled in England,
Asia, Africa and America. She even wrote
book about Us (''Excursions in North
America, 1907. Her grandson, Edward
Gibbon Wakefield, wrote England and
America: q Comparison Of the Social
and Political State of Both Nations" and
founded the New Zealand colony. In her
travels Mrs. Wakefield probably observed
the institutions for savings that existed in
Switzerland and Hamburg, and adapted
from them whatever elements they pos
tenham scheme. Her scheme was taken mp
by Henry Duncan, a Scotchman, who wrote
on the subject and organized bank, and
this seed Of charitable labor terminated so
rapidly that already in 1917 the deposits in
savings banks in Great Britain were seventy
two million dollars. Parliament encouraged
the growth by various enactments aimed to
prevent abuses and to secure the depositors
against the possibility of loss.
In 1913 savings banks were organized in
Paris, and thence rapidly spread to the prin-
cipal cities of France, and in 1919 the
Chambers Street Savings Bank was organized
in this city. Within but little more than
twenty years from 1898, the date of the last
tontine organized by national government,
the modern system of boarding small econo-
mics in financial reservoirs had spread into
all the fully civilized countries. Great
Britain, France, Germany and the United
States are the countries in which the system
is most effectively and most extensively car
ried out, simply because these are the coun-
tries in which the people know their own
interest and in which legislation can be af-
fected to develop and protect that interest.
In France the government assumes in the
beginning the control of these institutions,
which is Characteristic, for there everything,
from a bank to a playbill, begins or ends
with the government. But this generally
guarantees protection and security; for, if
the government sometimes fails itself, it
never permits any one else to fail. Thus,
although the revolution of 1S4S involved
catastrophe for the banks, that was but ono
calamity while, if free from government
guidance as with Us, there would probably
have been several such calamities within
that period. The worst feature Of the sys-
tenn of guarantee by government is that the
government refuses to assume too large q re-