Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/174

164 and to so invest portions of their earnings as to make some provision for the future. Mutual benefit societies are among the oldest of these organizations, and are very numerous. Some of them confine their operations mainly to giving temporary relief in time of sickness or misfortune, or on the death of their members; others have become practically co-operative life-insurance companies. The sums annually paid into these organizations are in the aggregate astonishingly large. None of these societies, however, enable their members to accumulate capital, and many of them are very unstable and unreliable. The better class of them is not accessible to the masses of the people.

Co-operative societies for production and distribution are not numerous in this country. Many co-operative enterprises have been started, but most of them have failed. The interest in such enterprises seems to be increasing, but at present they furnish but few of our working-men with opportunities for the investment of their surplus earnings.

Building and loan associations have done excellent service in some parts of the country by encouraging persons of small incomes to save money and to invest it in houses for their families. In some parts of Pennsylvania these associations have been particularly beneficial. Large sections of Philadelphia, and of some of the smaller cities of the State, have been built up by them, and thousands of working-men have been led to save portions of their wages, and enabled to own their homes through their agency. In some parts of the country, however, they have not been so well managed, and poor people have sometimes suffered loss and hardship in consequence. These hardships and losses have created great distrust of these associations in some communities. Excellent as is the service which they do, they do not furnish facilities for saving which are available for all classes of the people, nor, with their liability to careless or dishonest management, do they furnish anything like an absolute security for money. The necessity of making regular payments to them and to the mutual benefit and co-operative insurance societies is sometimes an additional incentive to economy, but in other instances it is productive of inconvenience and hardship.

The ordinary savings-banks have furnished all classes of the people in some parts of the country with good facilities for saving small sums, and have especially encouraged habits of thrift among the poorer classes. In 1882 there were in the entire country 667 savings-banks, the average deposits of which amounted to $1,003,737,087. At that time the New England States and New York together had about eighty-one per cent of the savings-banks, and eighty-three per cent of the savings-bank deposits of the entire country.

The New England States are, on the whole, fairly well supplied with savings-banks, having, on the average, one for every ten thousand of the population. In some of these States the banks are so