The accumulation and safe keeping of funds, their investment with
the triple guarantee of security, productiveness and easy and prompt
realization are regarded as the fundamental functions of Savings Banks,
and it is in these directions that their development has especially
been accomplished.
The comparative studies on these institutions, such as the works of
Rostrand and the fine account of Messrs Hamande and Burny testify to
the increasing ingenuity of the means of drawing out and gathering up
savings, and of the great expansion Savings Banks well conducted can
give to divers forms of credit, and will finally be obliged to give
them.
But such is the flexibility of this institution that in carrying the
spirit of reform into the means of assuring to the depositor the most
prompt and convenient disposal of his savings, there ought, in order to
apply it to his payments, to be accomplished in the Savings Bank, an
evolution equally fecund in a new direction.
A savings bank like that of Vienna having at its command the powerful
lever of the postal service, combining in a few years with singular
ability, the centralization of the accounts of its depositors with the
post office functions,--at once receptive and distributive, centripetal
and centrifugal, cannot fail to appear one of the most ingenious,
stable and perfect organs of modern circulation.
There is no need to discover in this functional evolution the
realisation of any new principle--undeniable bonds of filiation attach
it manifestly to the Bank of Amsterdam, whose system of clearing
accounts Adam Smith has so admirably described, and in a still more
distant past to the Bank of Venice, which, more perhaps than the Bank
of St-George, served as a type to the Bank of Amsterdam; only like the
most advanced modern institutions of credit and settling up, it has,
over the primitive institutions, the advantage of perfections of means,
of rapidity, and of an ever-growing importance in its operations, and
of an ever increasing economy of money;--it has as its own peculiar
features conditions of special expansion, valuable means of control and
specially a capacity of adaptation to a system of credit institutions
which can make it one of the instruments of the transformation of the
monetary system.
The Austrian Imperial Government in carrying out the reforms which are
the subject of this paper does not directly pursue the solution of the
monetary problem, but is primarily occupied with the financial interest
of the Savings Bank. As its able secretary, M. Tobisch, has explained,
the law of May 28^{th} 1882, of which the text is given further on,
in organising the Postal Savings Bank, caused no doubt a considerable
number of deposits to be made, but their average importance was so
feeble and they involved such general expenses, that the cost almost
completely absorbed the results of the investments. In order to
distribute these general expenses over a greater mass of monies and
to realise a larger clear profit, that is to cause more considerable
deposits to be made by especially interesting tradesmen and working-men
to have recourse to the medium of the Savings Bank, a notice of the
Minister of Commerce of Oct. 29 1883, authorised the depositors of over
100 florins to draw cheques on the Central Office at Vienna. Originally
the depositor remained the holder of his account-book, but from Dec.
1 1886, the deposit of all such books at the Central Office in Vienna
became obligatory for those who wished to take advantage of the cheque
service. The institution of this service had a considerable influence
on the progress of the amount of deposits; before the reform in 1883
the total deposits amounted to 8,176,889 florins, a year after in 1884,
they reached 56,586,461 florins, of which 46,223,539 was connected with
the cheque service.
The natural corollary of the centralisation at Vienna of the accounts
of all those who adhered to the cheque-service was the organisation
of the service of clearing accounts, for the more the number of its
adherents increased, the more frequently it happened that one depositor
drew a cheque in favour of another depositor. The cheque, up till then
payable in specie, became a clearing cheque realisable by a simple
transfer in writing. This complimentary service which is destined to
become the principal one, was instituted Sept. 1 1884.
The Austrian institution is only at present an element in the vast
modern system of credit and the balancing of accounts and no one is
ignorant that the system entirely rests on metallic money, as Stanley
Jevons, Francis A. Walker and Macleod have elsewhere clearly shown.
Macleod makes the striking comparison of modern circulation to the
movement of a peg top which spins round on a very fine metallic point.
The Postal Savings Bank, as it is organised and works, has not yet
any kind of purpose of freeing circulation from its metallic basis,
but like all other credit institutions, it contributes to this end by
economising more and more the use of money; with extraordinary powers
of expansion, it enables an ever increasing number of respectable
persons, associations or bodies, to effect all their payments without
the least risk, almost without loss of time and without having to
keep any metallic money in their possession. And if one tries to
conceive the future ideal evolution of an instrument so flexible as the
Savings Bank, one may expect as I shall attempt to show in subsequent
papers, that in combining its circulatory function with its function
of investment it will be led into concurrence with the radical
transformation sought by M. Solvay in the definitive elimination of the
metallic instrument.
The sources from which the materials of this account have been drawn,
are the laws, regulations and instructions of which the translation
is appended, the statistics of the cheque and clearing service in the
last official report (Zwölfter Rechenschaftsbericht des postsparcassen
Amtes) the remarkable studies of M. Tobisch, secretary of the Savings
Bank, and finally direct observation. Guided by one of the most
enlightened officials of the Savings Bank, Inspector L. Kotschy, I
have been able to penetrate into the inner life of this admirable
institution. The Vienna Central Postal Bank occupies the old palace of
the University; there, distributed in its antique halls, a population
of 1,300 employés, among them 150 ladies, working after a skilfully
organised plan, pursue silently now for thirteen years, with inflexible
method, an experiment of very great interest for science and for
the economic life of societies. Bound by invisible threads to more
than four thousand secondary organs:--the post offices, which plunge
directly into the torrent of the exchanges,--the Central Office records
each day with extraordinary precision the minutest changes that the
ever increasing number of its adherents accomplish in the social
movement of wealth.
All the operations of which it thus fixes the traces arrange themselves
into two great classes which recur as the two essential aspects of
the rhythmic movement of a central organ of circulation; one joins in
the formation of the property of every adherent of the system, in the
constitution of his credit at the Central Bank; the other leads to
different modes of disposing of his property and to the formation of
his debit.
The services of cheques and account-clearing[H] of the Austrian Savings
Bank enable on the one hand every person to make, under conditions
fixed by law, in any Post Office in the Austrian Empire, payments on
account, or to the profit of all those who participate in the service;
on the other and they enable every adherent to assign by means of
a payment cheque, a part of his property to anyone, physically and
morally, or by means of a clearance cheque to cause the transfer to be
made to the account of another participator in the service.
The Austrian terminology bristles with difficulties, the name of
_cheque verkehr_ is here given to the first of these services,
_circulation of payment cheques_ resulting in the end in the use of
metallic money, and to the second service, the name of _clearing
verkehr_, circulation of _clearing cheques_, which resolves itself, as
far as the Savings Bank is concerned, into the transference from one
account to another, in the substitution of one creditor for another.
The cheque service may exclusively be adhered to, or the cheque and
_clearing_ service.
For affiliation to the cheque service it is necessary to request the
Office of the Postal Savings Bank in Vienna to open an account, to send
a cheque book and a book of _certificates of receipts and deposits_,
of which we are now about to speak. The cheque book costs 1 florin 50
kreutzers, the certificates of deposit 1 kreutzer a piece.
The Post Office can refuse the request without having to give any
reason. If an account is opened to the grantee, he receives cheque
books and certificates, but he is bound within a month to effect a
deposit of 100 florins as security. Neither the law nor the regulations
fix any maximum of deposit. The minimum of 100 florins will remain in
the hands of the administration, without the person entitled to it
being able to dispose of it as long as he has an account open in the
Post Office. The adhesion to the _clearing_ circulation is at once
requested by the Post Office, of adherents to the cheque service.
The number of adherents to the cheque service is not identical with
that of adherents to the service of _clearing_. For the thirteen years
that these services have been instituted the first has always taken
precedence of the second, but the divergence which exists between
the two numbers is being reduced and the number of adherents to the
_clearing_ service tends to blend and will finally blend with the
adherents to the cheque service.
The geographical distribution of those who have accounts in the two
services is of much interest. In 1895, out of 28,363 adherents to the
cheque service there were 27,820 in Austria, 353 in Hungary, and 190
abroad,--163 in the German Empire, 5 in England, 1 in France, 3 in
Holland, 5 in Italy, 3 in Switzerland, 2 in Belgium--an interesting
fact.
The twelfth report: _Zwölfter Rechenschaftsbericht des postsparcassen
Amtes_, insists on the important number of Hungarian commercial
firms, affiliated to the Austrian Bank, all of whom have an account
open in the Post Office Savings Bank instituted in 1887 at Budapest;
it announces the approaching inauguration of a direct and regular
service of account-keeping between the two Banks, a service to which
the traders in both countries attach great importance. It will mark a
new phase in the evolution of the institution; and form as it were the
preface to its internationalisation.
It is curious to note that out of 543 residing in Hungary and abroad
who have cheque accounts, there are 434 who are affiliated to the
_Clearing_ at Vienna, that is 79.9%, a proportion very much larger than
is seen in all those in the various Austrian provinces.
The number of those having accounts has successively been:
In the In the
cheque service clearing service
In 1883 167
» 1884 2,520 1,283
» 1885 6,877 4,733
» 1886 10,553 7,274
» 1887 12,981 8,758
» 1888 14,296 9,836
» 1889 16,046 11,025
» 1890 17,808 12,200
» 1891 19,391 13,331
» 1892 21,365 14,955
» 1893 23,471 16,197
» 1894 25,834 18,250
» 1895 28,363 20,750
From the above it is seen that the proportion per cent of the number
of adherents to the service of clearing rises gradually in the later
years;--after having from 1890 to 1893 been nearly uniformly from 69 to
70%, it rises in 1895 to 73.2%.
The classification of the adherents from the point of view of
conditions and profession reveals the elasticity peculiar to such
an institution. Advocates, notaries, doctors, even professors
appear in great numbers. Manufacturers and traders united represent
nevertheless more than half the total number of members; 339 bankers
and money-changers, 362 associations for savings and loans, 220
private savings banks, 1,490 associations or corporations,--public
establishments of which 185 were communes and administrative
bodies,--271 benevolent associations, funds, establishments and
foundations, 175 agricultural and forestal associations and 175
religious associations, 266 assurance societies, and 204 journals or
periodicals serving as media for the Savings Bank. The administration
of the State forests and domains have recourse to the Savings Bank in
order to bank the produce of the forestal sales, and the administration
of taxes is now experimenting as to its intervention for the getting
in of duties. This institution thus presents a marvellous flexibility,
invading by degrees the whole domain of exchange and enveloping one by
one all the organs of the collective life.
Let us first explain the modes of operating payments to the profit of
every member affiliated to the cheque and clearing service. In the
first of these modes, the instrument employed is the _certificate or
attestation of receipt and of deposit_ (_empfang erlag scheine_). (Fig.
1.)
Books containing blank certificates are issued by the Central Office
at the low price of a kreutzer the piece, to every person adhering to
the cheque and clearing services; these are books of 10, 20, 50 and
100 pieces, and to meet the needs of various holders they are drawn up
either in German or in some other of the tongues spoken in the Empire.
All these certificates bear the number of the account to the operations
of which they are destined and carry the name and the address of the
account holder.
Each of the certificates presents three parts which are separated
one from the other in the course of the operation: the first, the
counterfoil, remains attached to the book and in the hands of the
holder of the account; of the two others, one, the attestation of the
payment, has to be returned by the Post Office receiver to the person
who makes the payment; the third the certificate of the deposit has
to be transmitted to the Central Office at Vienna, which returns it
to the holder of the account. To make a payment it is necessary to
fill in the certificate of receipt and the certificate of deposit,
and to present them at a Post Office with the sum to be paid into the
holder's account. The receiver of the Post Office will bank the sum,
and will sign the receipt, imprinting on it the stamp of the office,
and will remit it to the person making the payment; he will then
detach the certificate of the deposit and will send it to the Central
office at Vienna with the daily account of his operations. The central
administration will immediately credit the person in whose favour the
payment is made, in the account that it has opened for him, and it will
then transmit to him the deposit certificate with an extract of his
account.
Such is the series of operations which result from _empfang erlag
schein_.
Suppose for example that the holder of an account is a merchant who has
furnished supplies to a customer in the provinces to the amount of a
hundred florins, net. He fills up a leaf of the account book, bearing
a certain number, on which he indicates the amount payable, and which
payment is to be placed to his account; he sends this leaf to his
customer, keeping the counterfoil with the customer's name written on
it: the customer forwards the leaf to the Post Office where he lives
with the sum due: the postal receiver separates from the leaf the
certificate of receipt (_empfang schein_), which he signs and returns
to the customer, he sends the certificate of deposit to the Central
Office at Vienna, where the sum is carried to the account of the
merchant. After which the deposit certificate bearing the name of the
person making the payment is forwarded to the merchant with an extract
from his current account, enabling him thus to exercise strict control.
[Illustration: FIGURE I.
[1]Coupon
den ____ 189__
[2]Empfang-Schein
pr. ____ fl. __ kr.
gesendet an: