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THE SEMI-WEEKLY JOURNAL
ATLANTA, GA., 5 NORTH FORSYTH ST.
Entered at the Atlanta Postoffice as Mail Matter of
the Second Class.
JAMES R. GRAY,
President and Editor.
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THE ATLANTA SEMI-WEEKLY JOURNAL, ATLANTA, GA., TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1913.
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The Decisive Stage
Of the Currency Bill.
The promise of an early vote on the banking and
currency bill comes like a shaft of cheering sunlight
to the country’s business interests. Suspense over
this measure has been heavier and more disquieting
than in the case of the tariff; there has been little
apprehension as to what might be done, but a deal
of restlessness in the fear that nothing might be done
and that an issue which touches all business at vital
points might be infinitely prolonged.
Indications now are, however, that the debate in
the Senate will end the latter part of the current
weelj and that a final vote will be taken Saturday.
In that evept, it is believed, the differences between
the two Houses can be adjusted speedily and the bill
sent to the President for his signature before
.Christmas.
'.This hope ought to be realized. There are no
fundamental clashes of opinion to be reconciled. In
ssential points, the report from the Democratic
branch of the Senate committee and that from the
Republican branch were in agreement. To he sure,
there was a desire on the part of some Republicans
to provide for a central federal bank but the advo
cates of this plan have realized that it is a political
impossibility. The points on which members of both
parties agree are far more numerous and more im
portant than those on which they differ.
If, then, there is no effort to delay simply for the
sake of delay, the bill can he perfected in short
order. Democratic Senators have shouldered their
party’s responsibility and are determined to bring
the measure to a decisive vote in the immediate fu
ture. In this purpose, they seem to have the support
of several leading Republican Senators.
When the bill is passed, the country will settle
into normal financial temper again and business in
every field will move confidently forward.
The Pith of the Rural Problem.
In a single summarizing paragraph, Secretary
Houston, of the national Department of Agriculture,
has put the gist of a particularly interesting annual
report: “Increased tenancy, absentee ownership, soils
still depleted and exploited, inadequate business meth
ods and relative failure to induce a great majority of
farmers to apply existing agricultural knowledge warn
us of our shortcomings and incite us to additional
efforts to increase production. There is no ground
for thinking that we have yet approximated the limit
of our output from the soil; we have just begun to
attack the problem and have not reached the end of
the pioneering stage; in only a tew localities has
development reached the point where reasonably full
returns are secured. We have unmistakably reached
the period where we must think and plan.”
“Increased tendency and absentee ownership” are
ill omens for the country’s agricultural life and, in
deed, for every sphere of its material interest. “A
nation of tenant farmers,” we are admonished? “would
be another Ireland;” and England’s hardest problem
today is that of restoring the land to those who must
till it. - The situation in the United States, however,
is free from many entanglements that perplex Old
World governments. There is no tyrannous system
of landlordism to be overthrown; it is here simply a
matter of persuading the people back to the soil. In
the South alone, there are thousands of fertile acres
which men of modest means can acquire. In Georgia,
there are broad opportunities for the purchase of
small farms on easy terms.
This problem will be simplified, if not solved, in
the United States, when rural life is made duly at
tractive. That means not only that farming must he
profitable but also that it must be surrounded with
those advantages which make for tite enrichment
and contentment of the home. , The Springfield Re
publican aptly observes in this connection that the
exodus from farms in the past fifty years has been
due in largs measure “to the revolt of mother.” “Nor
was it merely the drudgery of the farm she rebelled
against. Make the women of the farm more content
with what country life can'offer their children, and
tlte problem of farm tenancy and absentee ownership
will solve itself.”
Perhaps, the prime essential in this regard is
good schools, schools that will become community
centers and minister to the soeial needs for book
learning. There are some such schools in Georgia;
and wherever they are established, we find prosper
ous, neighborly, contented people.
Another essential is good roads. The county that
lacks adequate highways is shut off from the world
about it; visits among its own families are few and
far between; its homes are dreary with isolation;
naturally it loses those citizens who are alert to their
children's interests.
While it is important to improve methods of culti
vation, it is more important to enlarge and illumine
the human side of farm life. Better homes, better
schools and roads, wider opportunities for companion
ship and social contact—these are among the funda
mental needs of agricultural stability and progress.
Good Work by the Western
and Atlantic Commission.
The Legislative Commission appointed to study
the future interests of the Western and Atlantic rail
road is moving steadily forward with its important
task. It has already gathered a rich store of facts
and observatiohs on several phases of the State’s rail
road property and when its inquiry is com pie: > it
will be prepared to submit ! a report comp rebelling
all sides of this weighty question and affording the
Legislature trusty guidance to a businesslike decision.
Thus far the Commission seems to have arrived
at two definite conclusions: first, that any contract
for a new lease of the road should provide for the
road’sgeneral improvement and particularly for a
double track between Atlanta and Chattanooga; sec
ond that in order to secure these improvements a rea
sonably long-term lease will be necessary.
With this opinion, thinking citizens will agree.
The State’s, that is to say, the people’s interest, in
the Western and Atlantic is not temporary or remote
but permanent and direct. Of prime concern, there
fore, is the question of preserving and increasing the
road’s value. It should be worth far more ten years
hence than today; its equipment and facilities for
handling traffic should constantly improve; it should
grow apace with Georgia’s expanding commerce and
be continually more serviceable to the people.
These considerations are much more important
than that of the road’s mere revenue; indeed, they
embrace the revenue question. Tlte end most to be
desired is that the Western and Atlantic shall he
steadily developed and handed down to future genera
tions as an ever-increasing heritage. If, then, a long
term lease is necessary to encourage or justify the
lessee in double-tracking the line between Atlanta
and Chattanooga and in otherwise upbuilding the
road’s efficiency and value, such a lease is distinctly
a good business proposition. On these terms, accom
panied by an ascending scale of rental, the State will
be assured of its property’s permanent value and de
velopment.
The Commission does well to look carefully into
the question of terminal sites at Atlanta and Chatta
nooga. The Western and Atlantic property consists
not of a railroad alone but also of valuable lands
apart from the road itself and evidently not essential
to the road’s operation. It i® much to be hoped that
some plan will be devised whereby in a renewal of
the W. and A. lease, these lands may he excluded
from railroad purposes and opened for business de
velopment. If that is done, the State will thenceforth
have two sources of income—that from the lease of
the railroad proper and that from the use of these
appurtenant lands—where it now has but one; and
such a plan can doubtless be perfected without in any
wise interfering with the railroad or lessening its
value.
The State is fortunate in having on its Western
and Atlantic Commission men of tested worth in busi
ness and civic affairs, men of practical foresight an(l
well-proved loyalty to the people’s welfare. This rail
road property is the State’s richest possession. Its
future disposition is the weightiest business problem
Georgia ever faced. It involves millions of dollars and
vital public interests. It must be settled in the near
future. The Legislative Commission has the oppor
tunity to render incalculable service; and we are
confident that it will measure fully up to its high
task.
And the oftener you look hack the quicker y6u
won’t get there.
Congress will probably resolve to hold no more
extra sessions.
We will not have a hard winter until the Florida
orange crop is reported killed.
The Adventure of Chang.
It is not surprising to learn that China is again
threatened with revolution. The remrakable fact is
that the Republic’s experimental days have been so
free from violence. A country, whose millions of peo
pie are divided by sharp boundaries of nature, by
speech and custom and tradition cannot be brought
into political concord except through long decades of
trial and patient leadership. Indeed, there are ob
servers who doubt that the problem of China will
ever be solved until the vast empire is broken into
several States, each with a government adapted to
its peculiar needs.
The latest disturbance, however, is ascribed, not
io old sectional animosities, hut to the adventurous
spirit of one Chang Hsun, a general of courage and
shrewdness, who cares nothing for politics but every
thing for war.
“During the revolution of 1911,” the New
York Herald interestingly relates, ‘he established
himself with a force of about eight thousand
soldiers, on the line of the Tienisin-jUukow rail
way, the main line of communication between
Peking anc. Nanking, then the capita' of the
revolutionists. Both sides made overtures to
him and at first he declared himself opposed to
both because both were against the Manchus, and
the only politics he knew was to be loyal to his
emperor. For a time it looted as if he were in a
position to turn the scale one way or the other.
General Chang was the proud owner of a sing
ing girl famous for her beauty. In an unlucky
hour this fair ane fell into the hands of the
southern republicans who sold her at public auc
tion at Nanking. This episode cleared away the
mists of doubt in the mind of General Chang.
His immediately cast his lot with Yuan Shi-Kai;
and the possibility of marching to Peking was
removed. It was General Chang who crushed the
second revolution. He drove Huang Hsing and
his army out of Nanking, recaptured his lady
love and now threatens to create there a little
empire of his own.”
Reports indicate that President Yuan has no little
anxiety over this new menace to the integrity of the -
republic and to his own supremacy. But Yuan has
proved himself wonderfuly resourceful in problems
far more tangled than this one. His rather auto
cratic methods have provoked enmity in some lesser
leaders, but the force of popular influence is appar
ently behind him. Hfe will doubtless bring the gov
ernment safely through this attack.
The Chinese republic has been thus far one of the
most interesting and amazing experiments in polit
ical history. So numerous aijd far-flung were the
difficulties besetting its establishment that had it
fallen in the first few months there would have been
n 0 occasion for wonder. Yet, it has moved steadily
and, for the most part, prosperously forward. Does
not this reveal an unsuspected genius in the Chinese
people?
AMERICA’S OPPORTUNITY
BY DR. FRANK CRANF.
(Copyright, 1913, by Frank Crane.)
In his first annual report, My. Daniels, secretary of
the navy for the United States, includes the following
paragraphs:
The suggestion of a vaqation for one year in
battleship building has met with hearty approval,
and I venture the earnest hope that this will bear
fruit in a well-considered plan by navy building
nations not to let the unnecessary competition go
to further lengths.
It is manifestly not possible for the proposed
cessation in battleship construction to be declared
at once. It is not a vacation we need, but a perma
nent policy to guard against extravagant and need
less expansions.- , -
I venture to recommend that the war and navy
officials and other representatives of all the na
tion be invited t ohold a conference to discuss
whether .they cannot agree upon a plan for lessen
ing the cost of preparation for war. I recommend
that this country take the initiative.
'i'he mature reader will remerpber the time not a
generation ago when the advocacy of any proposal to
disarm the nations or to reduce their armament was
confined to the Quakers, the parsons, and the other
“peace cranks.” It is a pleasure to see how a great
idea has fought its way through the opposition of pre
judice and ridicule and has acquired cogency enough to
he advocated by the first war lord of the British em
pire and now commended by the navy chief of America,
No official in this country at any time has lined up
with a proposition of more importance to all the people
of earth.
Mr. Daniels is wholly right. It is not # a vacation
in war madness we need; it is that we take immediate
measures to cure it. It is not an hour’s relief in our
long fever of folly; it is medicine to remove the fever’s
cause that we desire.
The whole program of military preparedness as
now followed by the leading nations is a piece of
medieval, craze, from which modernity has been unable
to rid itself.
The program of imperialism is impossible. No one
nation would be allowed to conquer the world. Al
ready the powers in concert limit the military dreams
of any one of them. And they could do this with small
armies and navies as well as with big. They could do
it at a thousandth part of the cost.
That they do nbt get together and arrange some
common-sense program for the relief of the world’s
workers from their intolerable blood and money tax is
simply due to that monumental stupidity which is the
chief fruit always of subserviency to custom and the
idiotic lust for national “glory.”
And in , the great movement to “ground arms” the
United States is the natural leader. For these reasons:
We are the wealthiest nation in the world.
We are the most self-sufficient in our natural re
sources.
We are by geographical position and by the nature
of our population the nation it would be most difficult
to conquer.
We are not tangled up in European diplomacy.
We are friendly with all other nations and are not
hampered by such traditional feuds as the hate that ex
ists between Fra,nee and Germany.
We fcave no dynastic rights to consider, but only the
welfare of the whole people.
T #
A State Law to Regulate
The Sale of Pistols.
The public safety committee of the Atlanta Cham
ber of Commerce has undertaken, among other ad
mirable plans, a line of reform that should appeal
particularly to the good sense and patriotism of all
Georgia; it is the enactment of a State law to reg
ulate the sale of fire arms.
For years past we have been reminded time and
again of America’s appalling record of hoipicictes; we
have been told that in several Georgia communities
more lives are thus sacrificed each year than in the
entire English kingdom; and it is commonly agreed
that one of the great sources of this monstrous evil
is the promiscuous carrying of pistols. Public senti
ment throughout the State is arrayed against the
“pistol toter” and such laws as we now have in this
regard are, for the most part, earnestly enforced. It
is evident, however, that further legislation is need
ed legislation that will control the sale as well as the
use of pistols and pistol cartridges.
At the last session of the General Assembly, vari
ous hills pertaining to this subject were introduced
but, owing to a congested calendar, they were not
given recognition. The public safety- committee of
tlte Chamber of Commerce is interested in this mat
ter from a State-wide point of view. It has enlisted
the support of good citizens in every part of Georgia,
hoping to secure at the next session of the Legisla
ture the passage of some well-designed measure that
will simplify the pistol problem.
Chairman Lowenstein and all the members of the
committee are working earnestly t 0 this end. Fur
thermore, they are working intelligently, bearing in
mind all aspects of the subpect before them. Their
cause merits the hearty support of everyone who
realizes the grievous need of reducing the homicide
record.
It’s easier to convince a woman than it is to keep
her convinced.
Woodmen, open the attack on that holly tree.
Ex-President Taft is doing some talking of his
own, now that Ex-President Roosevelt is prevented
from doing so by the expense of cable tolls.
The Value of Smoke.
It seems scarcely more absurd, at first thought, to
speak of the sweetness of vinegar or tile wholesome
ness of mosquitoes than the value of smoke. Mr. Carl
Snyder, however, assures us in Collier’s Weekly that
smoke is just as valuable as coal or gas or other
fuel, “because it is simply unburnt fuel.” He quotes
the estimate of the United States Geological Survey
that the loss from imperfect combustion amounts to
ninety million dollars a year in American cities Snd
adds that smoke waste together with smoke damage
will easily approximate a billion dollars.
'j’he smoke problem is generally viewed, and right
ly so, from a standpoint of public interest. Reforms
are urged on the ground of civic beauty and comfort
and health. Soot-belching chimneys are condemned
for the same reason that open sewers would he de
nounced; they are breeders of sickness and a taint to
the community’s welfare. Yet, if the smoke problem
were thoroughly understood, it would require no laws
or public campaigns to whip offending industries
into line; they would realize that self interest de
manded the prevention of excessive smoke and, mere
ly as a matter of good business, exert themselves to
that end.
Anti-smoke ordinances are distinctive in this re
spect; they serve the needs of the particular group
of people against whom they are enacted as well as
those of the community. They reduce heavy losses
in the manufacturing or heating plant and at the
same time protect the public against a nuisance and
peril. That is to say, well designed and consistently
enforced ordinances accomplish this twofold result.
There are pleasing indications in Atlanta that in
most instances the owners of plants are co-operating
with the smoke officials in carrying out the law. In
these circumstances, results will come all the more
quickly and substantially.
1 TOLD YOU SO”
By Savoyard
It was DeQuincey who maintained, “Rarer than the
phoenix is the virtuous man who would consent to lose
a prosperous anecdote because it was a lie.” That iis
almost as true as any decision we find in the multipli
cation table. It is a weakness of human nature, but
a frailty that came to us in the fruit oh which the
mother of us all fed the father of us all.
And there is another set, all too numerous and far
more vicious, who would welcome dearth and famine
and pestilence and want and woe that they might have
occasion to gloat over the opportunity to administer
the ignoble rebuke, “I told you so.”
* * * *
Professional jealousy is proverbial. Perhaps it is
most acute among the artistes of the operatic or his
trionic stage. Said Mrs. Jordan “I’m tired of filling
the theater for Mrs. Siddons to run away with all the
applause.” If our politer ears would tolerate it I could
relate you passages between Peg Woffington and Kitty
Olive that would bring a grin on tlie sever counte
nance of the deacon, over yonder.
And the doctors! There are all sorts of jealousy
and bickering among them. In their profession, 'how
ever, they have what they call an “etiquette” that has
fatted many a graveyard. If I thought i you would stand
it I would tell you a true tale—and it happened more
than fifty years ago in Barren county, Ky—when Alec
Butler, confronting a runaway team, had been run
through the brisket by a wagon tongue, or a big splin
ter from it, which was nearly the same thing. Alec
was given up for dead and was attended by three doc
tors, each first cousin to tne other two. A question
arose among them. The youngest, just out of medical
college, declared he was eying of peritonitis, what
ever that is. The other two swore that what ailed
Alec at that particular moment was physical exhaus
tion and what Alec needed was a stiff drink of apple
brandy. The brandy was administered Alec recovereu,
and lived long years after. Indeed, he survived one of
the doctors, who died many years later.
* * •
You do not find so much bf this professional jeal
ousy among lawyers, for they have a trade that is
more (nearly a science. But when it comes to verdicts
by jiiries it is different from judgments of courts,
and in nearly all communities you win imd jealousies
among lawyer^.
Mathematicians nave least jealousy, for theirs is an
exact science, capable of absolute demonstration, theo
retical and physical. -~nd yet that mischievous old
joker, Frederick ths Great, managed to foment and
prosecute a terrific war between two schools touching
mathematical measurements and mathematical calcu
lations.
• « ■
AnJ that brings us to the politicians—they, too, be-
lorg to the speculative philosophers, and they have
brought more misery on mankind than all the others
togethei—-millions of times moie. For ages the doc
trine of the politician was this and only this: “Thou
shalt do as I direct and mo else.” Moses, the Prophet
of God, sought to correct it and made laws, the most
of which have never been approached for the justice
and charity they’inculcate. His was the only genuine
democracy yet invented, and from Moses has sprung
ail that men like you and me call liberty. How did
the barbarian hordes that destroyed Rome get it? The
answer is, they were of the “lost” Ten Tribes. That,
however, is speculation. Moses was the inventer of
the thing, and that makes the Holy Bible the book
that all tongues and peoples should read, contemplate,
accept and follow.
If I should die tomorrow my last request would be
that thb Sunday after he heard I had been gathered to
my fathers, some good man, pastor of a southern
flock, wouid read to his assembled brothers and sis
ters St. Luke xv, and have the congregation sing the
hymji “The Ninety and Nine.” I court no other obse
quies.
But I was -led off—ill-manneredly. What I intended
to write about was the present attitude of the stand
patter In politics. After predicting a thousand times
that any measure lifting taxation off the people—such
as. the Underwood-Simmons tariff—would bring univer
sal disaster, wreck and ruin on the people, they find
that industry is so unpatriotic—so treasonable—as to
"keep on” and not close up shop, and so they take an
other tack and say. that reduction of taxation has not
reduced the cost of living.
The other day the Hon. Smoot, persha£>s the most
“amoosin’ cuss”—when he is serious—congress ever
saw, and the Hon. Gallinger, who thinks the only “sci
ence” of government there is, and that aosolutely per*
feet, is to tax one man to enrich another man, got Into
a shindy with Bill Stone, of Missouri, and John Sharp
Williams, of Mississippi.
The humor of the thing was that those two enor
mous and inveterate standpatters could not exclaim,
“I told you so!”
Washington, December 6.
The Last of the Great
Cambridge Group
In Norton I long saw the last of the great group of
Cambridge men whom I was privileged to know almost
in their prime, or a little past it when humanity is in
its autumnal richness and ripeness. In my mid-west
ern remoteness I knew these men only very dimly be
fore It was my good fortune to be among them, as I
never could be of them. I did not well imagine them
there, qualitatively or quantitatively, or scarcely after
ward in my Venetian remoteness.^ The man whom 1
was destined to see survive them all was, as I have
owned, not * of my surmise even when I had come to
live in New York, and I was £o feel his unstinted
kindness much before I could appreciate his wisdom.
He loved that beautiful and righteous world in which
he dwelt; he truly measured it in all its dimensions,
and in his tender memories of it he did not exagger
ate its importance. He had known more intimately
than any of the others the English world of poets ana
scholars, and I am sensible now of delicate cautions
rather than criticisms which from the first might well
have been for the instruction of my enthusiasm. But
this beautiful and righteous world was his home, ana
they who shared it with him were his kindred. He
was the youngest of the gfoup; the years counted ten
between him and Lowell, arid twenty between him ana
Longfellow; after they were gone he grew Into con
temporaneity with them, and then into a seniority
which could judge them paternally, as the present can
always Judge t\\e past
I suppose most people would not call him an opti
mist or me a pessimist, but I can testify that he llkea
more of the recent things than I did, and though he
was ten years older than I, he was, by his birthright
from that ever-youthful New England of his nativity,
a younger man. We talked that afternoon in the cool
light of the vernal or autumnal day, with the fire on
his hearth paling under it, and I should like to leave
him in it there, among his pictures and his books, the
equal of all the beautiful arts.—William Dean Howells,
in the December North American Review.
Quips and Quiddities
Not long ago a cub reporter on one -f the large
dailies was assigned by the city editor to ■ cover a
meeting of the board of trustees of a public library.
“Bring a story of about 400 words,” said the editor.
At a late hour that night, this story not being
forthcoming, the youngster was sent for. “How
about that story of the board meeting?” ashed the
editor.
“It isn’t finished yet. You told me to make 400
words of it. So fur I have managed to get only 300.”
"What did tne hoard do?”
“They met, caked the roll, and adjourned until
Tuesday : evening.”-4HL,ippincott’s.
It was a twenty-
But it takes a good cook to roast the janitor to a
frazzle.
"No, my man, thij is not mine,
dollar bill I lost.”
“But it was a twenty dollar hill before I got it
changed, sor.”
“Och, sure, so the owner could convayniently
reward me sor.”—Puck.
THE POSTAL SERVICE
V.—The Postal Savings Banks.
BY FREDFRIC J. HASKIN.
Founded for the purpose of encouraging thrift
among the people whose savings were too small to
make it seem worth while to the ordinary banking In
stitutions to go after their business, the postal savings
system of the United States is proving a greater suc
cess than even Its friends predicted. There are today
upward of 12,000 postoffices where the people may
bring their deposits for saving, and with every pass
ing month they are adding about $1,000,000 to their
permanent savings. Today they have upward of $84;-
000,000 on deposit with Uncle Sam.
* * *
A most pathetic and yet inspiring stpry is told by
the figures showing the sale of saving cards and
stamps. The law says the minimum deposit in a pos
tal savings bank shall be $1. But it does not close the
door of the bank to the girl or boy who cannot get
dollar together. It provides a method most effective
in helping them to amass their first dollar, their sec
ond, and so on. The government provides- a stamp
card with room on it for 10-cent stamps/ The person
who must save by pittances rather than by dollars, and
who has only a dime at a time to lay aside, goes to the
postoffice and pays a dime for a card and one stamp.
The (next time he getA a dime to spare he buys another
stamp, and so on until the card is full. Then he takes
it to the postqffice and gets credit for a dollarl and
opens an account with the government of the United
States in his own name, having the last cent of a na
tion’s credit pledged to return it when he needs it.
* * •
Every day thousands of poor people and little chil
dren, who cannot get a dollar together at a time, go
;to the postoffice and invest their dimes in stamps.
Last March 164,000 dimes were saved from candy and
soda and street car rides, and by other forms of self
denial, to be converted into postal favings stamps and
then into postal savings accounts. Could each of
those dimes tell of the frugality and| the self-denial
that brought them out; there would be, indeed, an
epic of the art of saving.
« ♦ »
And then there is another set of figures which
shows how patient are the poor in the development of
their savings accounts—how slowly, even with all
their self-denial and their frugality, they are able to
rise to the point where they have a dollar with which
to become a depositor known by name to Uncle Sam’s
saving institution. At the end of last March 113,606
dimes were represented in stamps that were held by
people who had not yet saved enough dimes to open
an account or to deposit another dollar. In other
words, it was taking the average small patron of a
savings bank three months to gather a dollar in dimes,
e • •
But all the savings do not come from those who
must save In dimes. There are those who can put
their money away in dollars, and while the dime savers
have been laying aside at the rate of nearly $160,006,
or a million and a half dimes a, year, the people who
save dollars saved them to the total of some $24,000,-
000 during the last year. There are about 831,000 de
positors, and the average account in June was $102.
. ...
Heretofore the postal savings system has been
somewhat handicapped by the provision of the law
which limits the savings that may be deposited in any
one month to $100, ahd, to a grand total of $600. Post
master General Burleson advocates that these restric
tions be abrogated, and that the only limitation be
made the provision that no account shall draw inter
est on any amount in excess of $1,000. Thousands of
deposits have been turned down because the bank
could not accept more than $100 in a month’s time, or
because the limit could not be more than $600. It is'
believed that this amendment will be passd by con
gress.
. • .
The postal savings system of the United States is
for individuals alone; no society or association can de
posit money. Any person ten years old or over may
maintain an account, and it shall be free from the con
trol of any other person. Every account is a confi
dential transaction oetween the depositor and the gov
ernment, and no employe of the government may reveal
any information as to the size or nature of an account.
Deposits are evidenced by certificates of different de
nominations, each bearing the name of the depositor,
the number of his account, the date of the deposit, and
the name of the depository office. The postmaster
and the depositor each hold a copy of each certificate
issued.
...
Interest is allowed at the rate of 2 per cent per
year, and a person may deposit his Interest at the end
of each year to his principal account. Money is with
drawn by presenting deposit certificates for the desired
amount. Where a deposit cannot be made in person it
may be made by registered mail or money order. New
accounts may not be opened by mail, but, may be
opened by a duly authorized representative. Deposits
may be withdrawn by others than the depositor only In
unusual cases, and then only upon the duly attested
order of the depositor. A woman who marries must
have her certificates indorsed by the postmaster in her
new name before her account may be continued as an
open one. Depositors may convert their money into
2 1-2 per cent registered or coupon bonds in sums of
$20 or multiples thereof, interest payable semi-annually,
and redeemable at the pleasure of the United States
after one year, and payable in twenty years.
’ * *
The government has provided methods whereby pos
tal savings are deposited in the banks of the communi
ties in which they originate, which banks are required
to pay 2 1-2 per cent interest on the dally balance of
these funds carried by them. There is no favoritism In
the distribution of ,these funds among the banks, and
such banks as are sound and willing to comply with
the regulations necessary to secure the funds, may be
come postal depositories.
...
The postal savings system is now approaching its
third birthday. On the plea of the people of Porto
Rico in general, and of the school children in particu
lar, it has been extended to that island, and it like
wise has been extended to Hawaii. It has proved
self an institution that helps many -,nd hinders none.
The art of saving is an art that must be taught. Peo
ple do not save by instinct. They learn to do so by
precept and example. And they will not save in
most instances where the instrumentalities of saving
are not present. There never was a demand for savings
institutions among those ne->ding them most. The in
stitution must create the demand rather than meet an
existing one, and so Uncle Sam’s postal savings insti
tution is more of a school in the art of saving and a
propaganda in favor ot saving than anything else.
• • •
The result is that it has called cut millions of dol
lars in its efforts to help teach the poor how to save.
It has no competitor as is revealed by the fact that a
careful inquiry has shown that practically not a dol- ’
lar has come from sources that have hitherto patron
ized other banks. On the other hand it has proved a
help to other banks, sinfce thousands have learned the
value ef thrift through it, have discovered that money
saved has an earning power, and, educated to save and
to do a banking business, have gone to the banka
where more Interest can be had. The postal savings
system, far from being, as the financial world had
feared, an engine of harm to existing institutions, has
proved to be the recruiting ground from whence is
coming the new business the old banks so earnestly
desire.
...
The most conspicuous service has been rendered to
the foreign population, it has taught them confidence
in the government, quickened in them an appreciation
of American institution, and pointed the way to good
citizenship. M ( ore than a third of the postal savings .
depositors are white persons of foreign birth; two-
thirds of the depositors in New York City are foreign
born. And as postal savings deposits have increased,
money orders have decreased, thus keeping at home
money that formerly went abroad.