SMALL SAVINGS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 342, 18 January 1881, Page 2

SMALL SAVINGS.

An English paper says :—" Mr Fawcett's experiment in the direction of encouraging poor people to make small savings has, after nearly two months' trial proved most sucoeassful,. and his scheui" has now been extended over the whole country. The essential feature of the plan is, as many will remember, an arrangement whereby the post-office savings banks are virtually turned into penny-ban s. As the expense of keeping ah account of extremely small deposits is great, the post-office has up till now refused to receive any sum under a shilling. Strictly speaking 1 it will still act upon this rule, only under a modification which will enable the penny depositor to do business with the department. Forms are to be issued gratituously, each of the siz« of aa ordinary cheque, on *hich there will be 12 printed spaces whereon penny postage stamDS can 03 gummed. When a form is filled up, it will be received by any post-office bank as a shilling deposit. The plan has been in operation in 10 selected counties since September 13th, and the result is that through theagency of these foims 700 new vecounta have been opened. Mr Fawcett reckons, that if the scheme had been •• orking all over the country during the period referred to upwards of 70.000 new accounts would have been opened.. Clearly, if this estimate be correct, the post-office savings banks must nV r p epare for a vast extension of tfjfi? « business, and a great increase number of juvenile depositors. J*' ie scheme, indeed, seems, well adaptect tft work into the system of school banlu founded m many parts of the country—more especially in Scotland and the north of England, in fact it almost appears as if the plan were devised #f the express purpose of aiding the benevolent efforts of those who for many years past have urging that it was hopeless to make the people cf England tin ifty unless they were trained to be frugal in the plastic years of child-