THE POST OFFICE SAVINGS BANK.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 10, 5 October 1937, Page 6

THE POST OFFICE SAVINGS BANK.

During the cotirse of the still proceeding debate on tlie Budget, more than one Labour speaker, among them the Minister of Finance himself, have made proud reference to Ihe growth, since the present Government took office, of the aggregate of deposits in the Post Office Savings Bank. This they claim to be sure proof of the ben'eficence of Labour rule. It was, of course, hardly to be expected that any of these Government spokesmen would be frank, stili less mhgnanimous, enough to point out that this improvement in the Savings Bank iigures was well under way long before Labour attained power. That this was the case is, however, clearly shown in a table appended to the annual report on the Post and Telegraph Department recently issued by the PostmasterGeneral, the Hon.- F. Jones. According to this table the total amount standing to tlie credit of open accourits fell to its lowest level for the last ten years in the financial year ending 31st. March, 1933, Ihe depth of the depression. At that date it stood at very little over ^42,-million. From then 011, however, with the clouds of the depression beginning to break, a marked increase every year is shown. A year later the figure had gone up by little short of ^3-million, • the next following year by • another ^^-million, the next by yet another ^'3^-million. Thus, during the last three years of the Coalition Government's term of office, with the return of prosperity beginning to dawn clearly upon us, the Savings Bank deposits showed an aggregate improvement of very little less than ^,'1 i-niillion, As a matter , of f act, too, the percentage increase for the financial year 1934-35 was greater than that for the first full year of Labour' s miracle-working rule, After all the loud talk we have had from Labour orators, it may be difficult for their followers to credit that all this happened under a Government that, according to them, was everything that was mean and contemptible. However, there the undeniable figures are as published over the signature of a Labour Minister, who could not very well suppress them without making a very significant departure from established ministerial custom in such connection. They are certainly such as to rub a very great deal of the gilt off the Labour gingerbread. t There are probably very few, especially among the small- 1 er depositors, who realise that when they pay their money \ into their Savings Bank accounts they are virtually lending it to the Government at interest, just as do customers of the trading banks when lodging money with them on fixed deposit'.Jn years that are past it was customary for the Minister' s annual report to indicate how the depositors' money was reinvested by the Government, but in Mr Jones's report there is no such indication. It has, however, we believe, been the long-established practice to invest the very great bulk of it in State securities, loan stock and the like, and doubtless that has been the case with the present Government. Indeed it is now pretty generally understood that it has been from this source that the present Government has derived the major part of the vast sums which it is spending on public work's, many of them of worse than doubtful utility or profit, and such as the depositors themselves could scarcely approve. It may, for instance, be asked how many individual Hawke's Bay depositors would readily lend their money to the Government on the understanding that it was to be spent on such a wild-cat and almost certainly losing venture as the South Island Main Trunk Railway. Yet that is what they have virtucally been doing. In what has been thus said there is to be implied no possible suggestion of doubt as to the safety of the depositors' money. For that they have the practical guarantee of the whole big body of unhappy taxpayers, themselves, of course, included. It is Ihe taxpayers, embracing the whole community, who in the end will have to bear the losses incurred, while the depositors may rest secure. What, l^owever, those depositors, along with the rest of the people, have to realise is that once their mony is paid into the Savings Bank, it can be commandeered for any rash, reckless or spendthrift purpose to which the Government for the time being in office may choose to put it.