Half a billion dollars is the value of the buried talent
(hoarded money) of the United States, according to
investigations made by the Federal Government, the conclusions
of which recently were made public by Postmaster-General Meyer
in _The Woman’s World_.
Even at the rate proposed for postal depository savings, 2 per
cent, the idleness of the $500,000,000 costs its possessors
$10,000,000, a sum equal to the entire public debt of the United
States in 1839, and almost as much as the Government spends
annually in maintenance of Indians.
However, money is accounted worth in business not less than 4
per cent, and very few securities, particularly in the West,
earn less than 4 per cent. The basis of computation of the
$20,000,000 annual loss caused by the safety-deposit sort of
security was that rate. In the industrial world money--and the
very money that is now “hoarded”--is worth more than 4 per cent.
The money panic of 1907 never would have happened if the buried
talent of $500,000,000 had been in circulation, according to
financial authorities.
As the buried talent is loss financially, so it is in every domain of
possibility. In the moral and spiritual life it is even worse; the
disinclination to use becomes in time inability to use. (Text.)
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