Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/175

Rh as to be easily accessible to most of the people; in others there are many communities which are inconveniently remote from any savings institution. Outside of New England, none of the States are well supplied. Even New York, with its one hundred and twenty-seven banks, contains large sections of populous country in which there is not a single savings-bank. The other States are still worse off. In 1882 there were in the Southern States only nine, and in the Western States, outside of Ohio, Indiana, and California, only twenty-one savings-banks. Pennsylvania, with its great manufacturing and mining industries, employing regularly several hundred thousand laborers, is very badly supplied. A few years ago there were a number of savings-banks doing a large business in various parts of the State. Many of these were loosely or dishonestly managed, and their affairs were wound up, sometimes with loss to depositors or stockholders, or both. There still exist a few old and perfectly sound savings institutions, and there are, besides, many private banking concerns which receive large sums of working-men's earnings, but, on the whole, the lack of facilities for the secure investment of small savings is deplorable.

Where the population is dense and conveniently grouped about a number of centers, as is the case in some parts of New England, the ordinary savings-banks may be made to furnish adequate facilities for the small savings of the people. Most sections of this country are, however, rather sparsely populated, and it would not be possible to maintain a good savings-bank in every small town. Some of the savings-banks have been so well managed and are so strong that it would be hard to find better security than that which they offer. In general, the savings-banks of New England have been well managed. Occasionally there has been bad management, and general financial depression has brought disaster upon some of them. Three out of every eight of the savings-banks of Maine suspended between 1872 and 1870. While the losses to depositors were probably less, as a rule, than those sustained by men who had invested their money in land or other securities, the value of which shrank greatly during those years, still these suspensions greatly impaired the confidence of the people in the stability of savings-banks. New York has some very solid savings institutions. The losses, however, to depositors from the failures of twenty-two savings-banks in that State between 1872 and 1879 amounted to $4,475,061. These losses have led many people to distrust perfectly sound institutions. In some parts of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania great hardship and suffering have been caused by savings-bank failures, and great distrust and discouragement have followed.

None of these organizations or institutions, excellent as they may be, furnish the masses of the people throughout the country with convenient facilities for depositing their savings, nor do they, as a rule,