People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 March 1897 — POSTAL BANKS. [ARTICLE]

POSTAL BANKS.

Their Success and How They Are Operated in Other Countries. The crush of national bonks in the past few years has made many converts to the postal savings banks scheme, and many who heretofore were actually In love with the national banking system have learned by a dear experience that such institutions are not safe repositories for the hardearned dollars of the people. It has taken some people half a century to see what Andrew Jackson saw when the national banking system was a young thing, and some have not seen it yet. The most impressive way to make them see it is by having a dear experience with some national banker who takes a notion to go under; fools will never learn except in the school of experience.

Like all other reforms, though, the postal savings banks would naturally be opposed by capital; it is a scheme to put off one of its thieving fingers, and it can be depended upon that if the money power can prevent it postal savings banks will never become an attachment to the postoffice service. Should such a law be passed the supreme court would no doubt be prevailed upon to declare it unconstitutional. The supreme court of late is becoming peculiarly fitted for that particular function, and seems to have no hesitancy in exercising it whenever prevailed upon by the money gods of Wall street. Nothing is more feasible than this plan of protecting the deposits of the people and cannot be righteously opposed by anyone save those who expect to profit by the continuation of the stealing and plundering system of national banks. The consummation of this scheme would add very little extra expense to the postoffice department, while its benefits to the people would be almost incalculable. The scheme is not a new or unheardof idea, but has been tested and found to work to a nicety. In 1867 the Dominion of Canada passed an act creating postofflce banks, limiting its operation to the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, but in 1885 it was extended to New Brunswick and Nova Sootia. The number of these banks reached 494 in 1890, and on June of that year they reported 112,321 depositors, with total deposits amounting to $21,900,653. This was an increase of $19,000,000 in the ten years preceding. The rate of interest paid was 3% per cent. The plan was found to work so well that further extensions were made, including the maritime provinces, Manitoba and British Columbia, with forty-one branches that are being rapidly merged into full-fledged savings banks of the postal character.

You never hear of depositors in these banks losing their money. It is the only safeguard that the American people can throw around themselves for the protection of what little wealth they happen to have saved. With Uncle Sam handling the money of the country, panics would soon become an unknown evil, and hundreds of shylocks who only go into the banking business to “bust” and skin unwary depositors, would then have to look for greener fields in which to ply his trade—a trade it has come to be, and some are very skilled at their trade, always succeeding in making way with the swag and escaping the clutches of the law.—St, Louis Journal.