WORLD THRIFT DAY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 November 1939, Page 6

WORLD THRIFT DAY

FIFTEENTH CELEBRATION. 5,000 SAVINGS BANKS TAKE PART. On October 31. 1929, World Thrift Day was celebrated in nearly every country for the fifteenth time. The idea of the Day was launched at the First International Thrift Congress held in Milan in 1924 and was unanimously approved by 500 delegates representing the savings institutions of 27 countries. From the very first, it was a singular feature of World Thrift Day that it was not in the nature of an idle festivity, being on the contrary a working day on which to diffuse the principles of foresight and thrift by every means. The celebration does not therefore take the form of a glorification of thrift in the abstract, but aims at focussing public opinion all over the world on the fundamental importance of thrift for the advancement and welfare of individuals and nations and for the economic and moral reconstruction of the world.

World Thrift Day is promoted by the Savings Banks; i.e.. by non-profit institutions chiefly engaged in the collection of deposits from the smallest amounts upwards, the investment of which is made primarily for the depositor’s safety and for the social and economic progress of the community. Actually, more than 5.000 savings institutions in some 30 countries take part in the celebration.

It would be a great mistake to think that the savings banks advocate the putting by of money at all costs, or an individual policy of renunciation and privation. For them thrift is by no means opposed to consumption and spending. Wise saving and wise spending are two closely related things that should be harmonised in the life of individuals as in the life of nations. That is why the savings banks try to bring more forcibly home the constructive philosophy of saving viewed as a proportioning of moans to an end, as a wise distribution of income among present and future wants. They are carrying on an active campaign against every form of waste, not only of money, but of time, energy, and everything else, and also against sterile hoarding, which withdraws from the economic life of the country one of the elemoiFs most necessary for its normal development. The celebrations are co-ordinated the international field by the International Thrift Institute, which was founded in 1925, following a resolution ol the First International Thrift. Congress. as a centre of co-operation for the savings banks of the whole world and a clearinghouse for their ideas, experiences and material. At P 1 sav'" (lions s ■" ■ IS