Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, December 16, 1913, Image 4

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., c £?' 1 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. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE Twelve months 75c ■Six months 40c Three months / 25c The Semi-Weekly Journal is published on Tuesday and Friday, and is mailed by the shortest routes for early delivery. It contains news from all over the world, brought by special leased wires into our office. It has a staft of distinguished contributors, with strong departments of special value to *he home and the farm. Agents wanted at every postoffice. Liberal com mission allowed. Outfit free. Write R. R. BRAD LEY. Circulation Manager. The only traveling representatives we have are J. A. Bryan, B. F. Bolton, C. C. Coyle, L. H. Kim brough, W. W. Blackburn and J. W. Brooks. We will be responsible only for money paid to the above named traveling representatives. THE ATLANTA SEMI-WEEKLY JOURNAL, ATLANTA, GA., TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1913. NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS. The label used for addressing your paper shows the time your subscription expires. By renewing at least two weeks before the date on this label, you insure regular service. In ordering paper changed, b^ sure to mention your old, as well as your new address. If on a route please give the route numDer. We cannot enter subscriptions to begin with back numbers. Remittances /should be sent by postal order or registered mail. Address all orders and notices for this de partment to THE SEMI-WEEKLY JOURNAL, Atlanta Ga. \ 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.