Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
History Of Savings Banks.
A HISTORY OF BANKS FOR SAVINGS IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND,
Including
A Full Account of the Origin and Progress of
Mr. Gladstone's Financial Measures for Post Office Banks,
Government Annuities, and Government Life Insurance.
by
WILLIAM LEWINS,
Author of "Her Majesty's Mails."
London:
Sampson Low, Son, and Marston,
Milton House, Ludgate Hill, E.C.
[All Rights reserved]
London:
Printed by R. Clay, Son, and Taylor,
Bread Street Hill.
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, M.P.
_CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER_,
&c. &c. &c.
THE GREATEST LIVING AUTHORITY ON ALL MATTERS OF FINANCE,
WHOSE NAME IS NOW INTIMATELY AND DESERVEDLY
CONNECTED WITH ALL THAT RELATES TO
THE SUBJECT OF THESE PAGES,
This Work
IS BY PERMISSION
MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.
PREFACE.
The present volume is offered as a contribution to the history of a
number of provident schemes, which, though quietly working in the
country for many years, and affecting to no small extent the social
condition of great masses of the people, can scarcely be said to have
found an annalist. I think I may fairly consider that the ground
covered by this work has not previously been occupied. In saying so
much, I do not forget the only book which has hitherto emanated from
the British press on Savings Banks. Mr. Scratchley's _Practical
Treatise on Savings Banks_ deals, however, with the question
technically, and is meant avowedly as a text-book for actuaries and
those employed about Savings Banks. The present volume, on the
contrary, while it may be supposed to possess some interest even for
this limited circle, is not meant to take the place of the above, but
seeks its public amongst general readers, and amongst those who,
either from inclination in that direction, or through connexion with
them as employers, take an interest in the progress of the industrial
classes of our country.
Treating as this volume does of useful practical schemes and
matter-of-fact topics, I have sought to avoid all matters of
speculation, to speak in very plain terms and without waste of words,
and, whilst noticing in their proper order all the different proposals
having to do with the subject, to refrain from venturing upon any
myself. My aim has been to give a full and accurate account of the
early history of Savings Banks; and as subsequently to their origin
the discussions in Parliament with regard to them and kindred subjects
were no incorrect reflex of the feeling in the country at different
periods, I have also dealt fully with the parliamentary history of
these institutions. In this way Savings Bank reformers, both in and
out of Parliament, and their measures of reform--many of them ending
in the establishment of different kinds of supplementary banks--are
made to pass under review; and the names of those who framed the
original schemes, as well as of those who tried to improve upon them,
are rescued, for a brief space at any rate, from a state of obscurity,
if not of oblivion.
With respect to the latest modification of the Savings Bank principle,
as exhibited in the measures brought about within the past few years
by Mr. Gladstone, great efforts have been made--as great efforts have
been needed--to treat all the questions involved fully and
impartially, and to accord these important and far-reaching measures
their due place amongst the other wonderful provident schemes of the
present century.
Great pains have also been taken to ensure perfect accuracy, both as
to facts and figures, and my acknowledgments are due to many gentlemen
who are acquainted with the subject in all its bearings, who sent me
information, or answered my inquiries, with great readiness and
cordiality. It is less necessary to mention any of these gentlemen in
this place, inasmuch as reference is frequently made to their
assistance at the proper place in the body of this work; but it would
be wrong to omit to state that, with regard to Mr. Gladstone's recent
measures, I have had every facility granted me by the Post Office
authorities for obtaining the necessary and the most recent
information respecting these schemes, and that this assistance has
been rendered in a manner which calls for my heartiest thanks, as the
only sufficient or fitting acknowledgment.
Dealing as I have done with what Mr. Carlyle will allow to be one of
the "side sources" of history, I venture to hope that some of the
facts now gathered together may not be without their interest to the
student of human progress in some of its highest aspects; while to all
those who are directly concerned in such schemes, and to masters of
workmen, to whom the concluding parts especially are more particularly
addressed, this volume is offered, with some confidence that they will
find much new and original matter in it, and some old matter put in a
new light.
An Appendix is added, giving the Acts, or clear abstracts of Acts, at
present in force for all the different descriptions of Banks for
Savings, together with some of the latest statistical information
which may be thought of value.
W. L.
_London, May 24, 1886._
*.* Two questions connected more or less with my subject have been
brought into prominence by the action of Parliament since the present
work was completed, and to these questions it may not unreasonably be
expected that I should in some way refer. The first, or the Savings
Bank qualification in the new Reform Bill, concerns Savings Banks and
Savings Bank depositors very intimately; the second question, or the
proposal of Mr. Gladstone to employ a portion of the money of Savings
Banks in reducing the National Debt, can scarcely be said to have an
immediate bearing upon either.
With regard to the Savings Bank qualification, I may, perhaps, be
permitted to say that, though received with hostility in some quarters
and indifference in others, the balance appears to me to be in favour
of the proposal. In most respects, if not in all, the qualification
may be defended on the same grounds as the Forty Shilling Freeholds;
the investment is about the same; the one is open to much the same
objections as the other, and there are similar merits in each. Votes
may be manufactured under the one equally as under the other, and it
is not easy to understand why those who support the one "Bye
Franchise" should oppose the other. Little trouble will accrue to
Savings Banks under the Act; and the money forming the qualification
may oftentimes be allowed to remain in the bank, whereas under other
circumstances it might be squandered in unnecessary or unprofitable
expenditure. The distinction may be hard on others quite as worthy of
the franchise, but who may be in some way unfortunately circumstanced;
and it may seem arbitrary to those who have an equal amount invested
in some other shape: but these are the sort of arguments which may be
brought against Fancy Franchises of any kind with quite as much reason
as against this particular one. Working men who may claim the
Franchise on the Savings Bank qualification will not be able to keep
the fact secret that they are depositors, and that up to a certain
amount; and they must submit, on misfortune overtaking them, to be
deprived of a privilege which they may have learnt to prize: but,
notwithstanding all these and some other minor considerations, I
cannot help regarding the Clause as, on the whole, a fair and
reasonable acknowledgment of the merits and claims of many of the best
portions of the community, who were not influenced by the
consideration of this electoral qualification when they originally
commenced the practice of provident habits, and also of the claims of
others who may not be unduly influenced by the prospect of citizenship
which the Clause may henceforth hold out to them.
Mr. Gladstone's recent proposal to convert the 24,000,000_l._ of
Consols, invested by the nation in Savings Banks, into Terminable
Annuities concerns the Nation itself much more than Savings Banks. So
far, indeed, as the matter affects the trustees of Savings Banks, or
depositors in them, it was settled some years ago when the money was
made a book debt, and the Government became the banker, as it were,
for the sum in question. What the Government now does with the money
is no concern of Savings Banks. This is put so plainly by Mr.
Gladstone in his Budget speech, and is at the same time so
indubitable, that to quote his words is to say all that can be said on
this point. "They (the trustees) have nothing to do with the money;
that is a mere question of investing it with which we are alone
concerned. If we lost every farthing of it, we should have to pay it
to them; and if we made a profitable investment of it, it would be
entirely our own affair." In one respect only is Mr. Gladstone's
proposal specially satisfactory to Savings Bank officials and all who
take an interest in Savings Banks. Under the operations described by
the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Financial Statement, and now
familiar to every reader, the Balance estimated to be deficient, of
over three millions sterling--a deficiency which has long been a
bugbear in all considerations of the subject--will disappear as a
separate item in the National Accounts in the process of redemption
proposed. The entire scheme shows, especially and prominently, Mr.
Gladstone's anxiety to reduce our enormous burden of debt. He here
voluntarily proposes to cripple himself in no small degree in the
matter of his resources. Should his proposals become law--and it is
sincerely to be hoped they will--the process must go on, even when he
or his successors may require to raise money at an obvious
disadvantage; but if he be satisfied to throw the burden equally on
years of prosperity and adversity, surely this is a matter on which
the public generally should feel no fear.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER II.
ON THE ORIGIN OF SAVINGS BANKS 18
CHAPTER III.
EARLY LEGISLATION OF SAVINGS BANKS--1817 TO 1844 45
CHAPTER IV.
ON THE PROGRESS OF SAVINGS BANKS UP TO THE YEAR 1844 80
CHAPTER V.
LEGISLATION ON SAVINGS BANKS FROM 1844 TO THE PRESENT TIME 122
CHAPTER VI.
A CHAPTER ON SAVINGS BANK FRAUDS 183
CHAPTER VII.
ON THE DEFICIENCIES OF THE EXISTING SYSTEM, AND THE
ESTABLISHMENT OF SUPPLEMENTARY SAVINGS BANKS 226
CHAPTER VIII.
ON PROPOSALS FOR GOVERNMENT SAVINGS BANKS 269
CHAPTER IX.
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE POST OFFICE SAVINGS BANK SYSTEM 311
CHAPTER X.
ON GOVERNMENT INSURANCE AND GOVERNMENT LIFE ANNUITIES 345
CHAPTER XI.
CONCLUDING CHAPTER 377
APPENDIX 395
INDEX 437
HISTORY
OF
SAVINGS BANKS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
"Archimedes was wont to say that he would remove the world
out of its place, if he had elsewhere to set his foot, and
truly I believe so far that otherwise he could not do it.
I am sure that so much is evident in the architecture of
fortunes, in the raising of which the best art or
endeavour is able to do nothing, _if it have not where to
lay the first stone_."--SIR HENRY WOTTON.
The habit of laying something by in a prosperous season for the wants
of an adverse one is one of the very oldest customs in the world. All
our laws, Divine and human, enjoin the exercise of providence and
frugality as a social, and as a personal duty. These habits which are
inculcated in Scripture as positive duties, and which find ample
illustrations in many of the arrangements of nature and Providence,
have been common in one form or other to all people in every country
and in every age. In England, in almost everything relating to the
social advancement of the industrial population, there has been a
great and manifest improvement since the commencement of the present
century. In nothing is this more true than in the incentives and
appliances provided for the growth of provident habits amongst them.
An old stocking, a hole in the floor, or a crevice in the wall, was
formerly a sufficient bank for such of the poor as cared to save
anything; but were that mode of investment unsatisfactory to some few,
it was not possible to obtain better. The change which fifty years
have wrought in the means for saving and investing small sums of money
is remarkable. Not only have these savings assumed in consequence a
variety of different forms, but they represent a sum which in the
aggregate must be well calculated to astonish anyone who can remember
anything of the last century. Before dealing, however, with this as
our special subject, a few words may not be spent in vain in
endeavouring to trace the gradual advancement made among the poorer
classes, the causes that have led to the improvement in their
condition, and the means by which the difficulties in their position
have been encountered. After this it will not be inappropriate to
refer to what still remains to be done.
"The nineteenth century," as Mr. Gladstone, in addressing the working
men of Glasgow, has just said, "whatever else it is, is undoubtedly in
a new and peculiar sense the century of the working man." "It is the
century which has seen his position raised, his circumstances
improved, new means organised for his benefit, new prospects opened
for the future, and he has before him--I mean not the individual but
the class--a prospect which, I trust, nothing can mar--of increased
weight, increased consideration, increased usefulness, increased
happiness in the generations to come." The Chancellor of the Exchequer
might with justice have said that the second quarter of the present
century has seen this great improvement inaugurated and carried on.
Beginning with 1830, and letting the period of the removal of
political and fiscal burdens mark the commencement of the better order
of things, the progress of political economy, of social knowledge, and
the favouring circumstances of the times achieved the rest. In the
first quarter of the century the working population, left pretty much
to themselves, or given over to the tender mercies of political
demagogues, were either stolidly indifferent to any improvement, or
were kept in a constant turmoil of excitement and confusion. The
Reform Bill bringing political power to the better class of artisans,
gave a decided stimulus to the intelligence of the people, and an
impulse to the then existing means of education. This political power
brought its responsibilities, and it may be fairly assumed that
increased political knowledge was the result. Whether so much will be
granted or no, it is certain that schools and educational
establishments now began to multiply in a manner unknown to any
previous decade. It was now that there came demands for knowledge, and
that the demand brought forth supplies of the most practical kind. The
story of the popular literary ventures of 1832--the very first of
their kind--need not be repeated here, though a volume might well be
written on the subject, and showing the influence which they, and
other ventures to which they gave rise, have had on the intellectual
progress of the people. On the demand for knowledge there followed in
quick succession the removal of many barriers that stood in the way;
and more important still, the remissions of, to the poor man, enormous
fiscal burdens which pressed with great weight upon his energies.[1]
It would scarcely be too much to say that every year for the last
thirty years the working man has found himself better able to cope
with the disadvantages of his position, and, if he should so choose,
to place himself to a very great extent beyond the reach of absolute
want.
We have alluded to the necessity which began to be felt for the mental
improvement of the adult population; still more important were the
steps taken from time to time to educate the children who are the old
people and the adults of the present day. The present century, among
many wonderful changes which it has witnessed, has seen a complete
revolution in the means of education for the masses. Many generations
since, Milton, with that clear mental vision which was in him like a
kind of second sight, foretold that a time would come when the bulk of
the people would get a better education "in extent and comprehension
far more large, and yet of time far shorter, and of attainment far
more certain, than hath yet been in practice;" and although we may not
have exactly reached the point prefigured by the poet-seer, some
marvellous strides have been taken during the present century. A
dramatist of Milton's own period makes a man of substance reply, in
answer to the query, "Can you read and write then?" "As most of you
gentlemen do, my bond has been taken with my mark at it."[2] At the
beginning of the present century little had been done for the
education of the masses. Grammar schools for the children of the
middle classes, and Free schools, as they were called, for an
infinitesimal fraction of the poor of our towns had been long
established, and, so far as they went, with certain enough results;
but, if we except the establishment of Sunday schools by Mr. Raikes of
Gloucester in 1783, nothing had been done for the educational wants of
the general poor. Malthus in his "Essay on Population," published
twenty years after this date, says, "It is surely a great national
disgrace that the education of the lower classes should be left merely
to a few Sunday schools supported by subscriptions from individuals,"
adding at the same time, that the country "lavished immense sums on
the poor which we have every reason to think have constantly tended to
aggravate their misery." "In their education," he goes on to say, "and
_in the circulation of those important political truths that most
nearly concern them_, which are perhaps the only means in our power of
really raising their condition, and of making them happier men and
more peaceable subjects, we have been miserably deficient." What the
state neglected, private enterprise took up; earnest men like Raikes
and Pounds, the working shoemaker, not only set an admirable example
in their own spheres of labour, but roused to action other men who
applied to the work greater powers of mind and the benefits of greater
system. Dr. Bell and Mr. Lancaster were two of these, who nearly at
the same time expounded their views of a general scheme for educating
the people; and who were strengthened in their opinion, as one of them
tells us, of its necessity, by the clamour of many who held that the
stability of our institutions was only sure so long as the people were
kept in ignorance. Mr. Whitbread, a statesman whose name was very
prominent about this time for efforts to promote the interests of the
bulk of the people, tried to induce Parliament at this stage to take
the subject into its consideration, by proposing a plan for the
establishment of parochial schools "for the exaltation of the
character of the labourer," and it would have been well if he had met
with more success. As it was, the sage legislators of the day, led on
by Mr. Windham, considered that such a plan would be very liable to
give an education to these classes much above their condition, and Mr.
Whitbread's scheme, like many other of his wise proposals to which we
shall have subsequently to allude, was set aside. The work, however,
had begun and could not be stopped by the attitude of the government.
Dr. Bell commenced his system by the establishment of National
schools; Mr. Lancaster, supported by Nonconformists principally, set
up Lancasterian schools. Although there was for some time much
hostility displayed between the rival factions, both organizations
struck deep into the dense masses of ignorance in our towns and
villages. Then came Government assistance, and gradually that system
of Government education and supervision which, in spite of many
objections to it, has been an untold blessing to the land.
Within the last thirty years the wise legislation of the Government
has had a direct influence on the progress of the people in education,
and in their social well-being. No more powerful aid, for example, was
given towards the triumph of enlightenment than the passing, in 1839,
of the penny postage measure, when thousands of the poorer classes
became emulous of each other in learning the rudiments of education,
so as to be enabled to possess themselves of the untold advantages of
this wonderfully successful scheme. Mr. Laing, the celebrated
traveller, after visiting the Continent, declared that the system of
penny postage was far more likely to cause the spread of education
among the masses than the Prussian system of education, if it came to
be adopted in this country. Only second to the repeal of the taxes on
correspondence was that of the reduction of the newspaper stamp duty,
and, still more recently, the abolition of the paper duty. The
relinquishment of these taxes redounds to the honour of those who took
part in the agitation for their abolition, and who held that no
artificial impediment, such as a paltry consideration of revenue,
ought to stand between the people and the free circulation of thought.
Lord Brougham said on one occasion that, "if newspapers, instead of
being sold for sixpence, could be sold for a penny, there would
immediately follow the greatest possible improvement in the tone and
temper of the political information of the people." Lord Campbell once
expressed a hope that newspapers would be sold for a halfpenny. Much
of this has been realized, and the result has been powerful for good.
On this point no one can speak with anything like the authority of Mr.
Gladstone. Speaking of the repeal of the paper duty, this eloquent
statesman has said within the present year, "I did to the best of my
ability fight a hard battle for its repeal. And I find now that not
only in its repeal was there involved the liberation of a great branch
of trade, but there was involved a seed of social and moral good that
has sprung up with rapidity, producing a harvest such as, I confess, I
had hardly been sanguine enough to anticipate."[3] The cheap press now
finds its way into the homes of the poorest, keeps them informed of
the current public events, and makes them interested and anxious in
all that concerns their country and its institutions; and, inasmuch as
the press of the present day is, under proper conduct, well qualified
to enlarge the minds of those whom it must instruct, it is a "seed of
social and moral good" from which a constantly-increasing harvest of
good fruit may be obtained.
In view of such facts it cannot be said that, during the last quarter
of a century, the industrial classes have been entirely thrown on
their own resources for the means of their enjoyment and improvement.
Over and above the tendency of the legislation of the past thirty
years, the upper classes have felt it their duty, as it is
unquestionably their interest, to attend to the wants and requirements
of those at the bottom of the social scale. They are the safest when
the vast mass of our working population are the happiest. Dr. Chalmers
must have felt this when he wrote, "I would like to see a king upon
the throne, not like an unsupported may-pole among a level population,
but a king surrounded by a noble aristocracy and gradations below
them, shelving downwards to the lowest basis of the people." Society
has been very often and very truly likened to a pyramid, at the apex
of which is the throne; gradually descending, we have substantial
strata of the ruling, the upper, and the middle classes, the rough and
strong material at the base not inappropriately said to represent the
unpolished millions of our industrial population. How far it may be
considered true that the foundations of English society are laid in
this great class, and how much of the social superstructure they bear
on their broad shoulders, we will not attempt to decide. We will
content ourselves with saying that the well or ill-being of every man
forming this great social pyramid must have a direct or reflex
influence on every other man. _Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum._
Of the hundreds of charitable and benevolent agencies set on foot to
improve the condition of the English artisan we can only speak in the
aggregate. We have the clearest evidence of our senses, that many of
them have not been established in vain. Some of them, indeed, have
been born and carried on under serious misapprehensions, fatal to
their existence, and so have perished without doing half the good
which the expenditure of money and time would have warranted. But this
is the exception and not the rule. Under the influence of properly
organised and properly conducted societies of this nature, which have
been quietly working for years, there is a sensible improvement in
public morals among the masses of the people. Within the memory of the
present generation lewdness, profanity, and vulgarity polluted the
atmosphere of most large workshops, and the effect of all this on the
minds of the younger portions of the workers must have been utterly
demoralizing. Then their hours of idleness were hours of mischief; in
them the old proverb of "an idle brain" being "the devil's workshop"
was fully exemplified; bull-baiting, cock-fighting, low drinking, and
gambling were their amusements; Sunday nor weekday did their children
frequent any school, nor they themselves any place of worship; they
made no provision for want, sickness, or death, and in times of
enforced idleness they were a terror and reproach to the country, only
kept in order by the strong arm of the law. To say that all this is
changed would be idle, but that much of it is changed is beyond doubt.
Even humble society now quickly lays its ban upon those who would
think "to rule the roast" by proficiency in vulgarity and profanity;
in our large workshops we are assured that acquirements of this nature
get less and less appreciation, nor do their exhibition often escape
rebuke. Under better and happier influences, many of the rules and
social regulations among large congregations of workmen, such as fines
and footings, which have always offered great encouragement to
idleness and intemperance, have either been done away with or altered
for good;[4] masters not only see it to be their interest to encourage
their men where they can in habits of sobriety and prudence, but they
are now often enabled to enforce regulations tending to this end which
before they were almost powerless to effect.[5]
The good results of such habits to the industrial classes themselves
and to all portions of society are neither few nor doubtful. The
pursuit of economy and thrift will beget, as a matter of course,
self-dependence; and as soon as men become socially independent they
also become self-relying and self-supplying. "Few men come to the
parish who have ever saved money," said one large employer of labour
before a Committee of the House of Commons on Poor Laws. Another never
knew a man who had saved a pound out of his earnings who had in the
end become a pauper. But the good work does not stop here. "In
proportion as our men save money," said another large employer, "their
morals are improved; then they come to see that they have a stake in
the country, and behave better." Or, as Vegetius, describing the Roman
soldier, puts it, "knowing that his property is deposited with the
standards in the public chest, he never thinks of desertion, becomes
attached to his standards, and in battle fights more bravely for them;
according to the nature of man, who has always his heart where his
treasure is." Arrived at this stage of the upward journey, the
provident man feels the need of education, and must have it; he must
also take a part in exerting an influence among his fellows, and even
in the government of the country, and if his reading takes a
rigid-turn, higher principles of duty are superadded; he will do his
work, whatever it is, in every sense better. "I would rather have,"
said another well-known gentleman, to the Committee just referred to,
"a hundred men in my employ who save money than two hundred who spend
every shilling they get; the sober, saving man is always to be
depended upon, and the one lot in the long run will almost do as much
work as the other."
The improvement of which we have been speaking must not blind us,
however, to the darker side of the picture. Notwithstanding the
improvement which has been made, and the inestimable good which flows
from the practice and pursuit of frugality and economy, it is still
the exception and not the rule among the bulk of our labouring
population. For the hundreds who look to the exigencies of their life,
there are thousands who are utterly careless of such considerations,
and who, in the coarse enjoyment of the present, bury alike all
thought of the past and all expectation of and hope for the future.
The stigma of improvidence has long attached, and we fear must yet
long attach, itself to the generality of English artisans. But for
this stigma there would be no operatives in the world equal to the
English operative either in wealth, intelligence, or influence. No one
with any experience in the case, and with any care as to accuracy,
would venture to say that the English workman, _sui generis_, is not
industrious at his work,[6] but too many can say that he is not
provident in his home.[7] The English artisan has been said to be at
once the hardest worker and the hardest spender in the world. He works
like a horse and spends like an ass. So foolishly, indeed, is much of
this hard-earned money spent, or misspent, that it were a charity to
withhold it, or if it could be done, to throw it into the sea. The
consequences attending this riot of expenditure is as natural and as
inevitable as any of the laws of God's government. As one who knows
them well, and one who has done much for the intellectual culture of
the better portion of the artisan class tells us: "In a time of
prosperity they feast; in a time of adversity they _clem_." Any
depression of trade, be it even of the most transient nature, finds
them totally unprepared for it; those who have been accustomed to the
best wages invariably suffer the most; for, accustomed to the greatest
amount of indulgences, they can do worst without it. It is such
classes as these that must be reached by some means. In the
improvement brought about in the social habits of the people of late
years we have a happy augury of the future.[8]
It is time that we brought these introductory remarks to a close. We
have to enter upon the consideration of helps and accessories to the
spread of prudential habits among the working classes. We have to
direct attention to the history and working of some of those schemes
which, since the commencement of the present century, have been
started to teach men self-reliance and self-dependence, and how they
might best help themselves. Anxious not to over-estimate the
importance of the subject, we still think it not too much to say that
on our industrial classes depends very much the continued and onward
progress of the world. Let them but be thoughtful and sober, and these
classes, which are the direct agents in our wondrous and manifold
British industry, will, not only under circumstances of huge toil and
no inconsiderable danger, continue to provide all classes with the
necessaries or comforts of life, but they will yet strike out new
paths; they will become, in the future, as they have been in the past,
the skilful inventors of new instruments and new modes. No fact is
more capable of proof than that almost all the successful inventions
that have been given to the world to economize the strength of the
human hand have been either the productions of thoughtful and
industrious workmen, or of those who have risen from that class.
"Deduct all," says Mr. Helps, "that men of the humbler classes have
done for England in the way of inventions only, and see where she
would have been but for them." Nor is this all. The list would be a
long one of those who have risen by their own industry and
perseverance from the lowest ranks to fill the highest positions in
every department of life. "It is notorious," says Mr. Smiles, "that
many of our most successful employers, and some of our largest
capitalists, have sprung directly from the working classes, and to use
the ordinary phrase, have been 'the architects of their own fortunes;'
whilst many more have risen from a rank scarcely a degree above them.
It was the prudent thrift and careful accumulations of working-men
that laid the foundations of the vast capital of the middle class; and
it is this capital, combined with the skilled and energetic industry
of all ranks, which renders England, in the quantity and quality of
her work, superior to any other nation in the world."[9] And what the
humbler classes have done for England in past times they may do, and
indeed _must_ do in the future, if we would keep our country in the
proud position she now occupies in the world. It requires no prophetic
vision to foresee that labour must yet undergo many transformations;
and it is of paramount importance that the labourers themselves be not
only intelligent but sober and frugal, in order that they may always
compete on at least equal terms with the skilled workmen of any other
nation.
It is far more difficult to point out what course of action will tend
most successfully to secure the fair results of sobriety and frugality
than it is to show how necessary it is that these virtues should be
cultivated. "The difficulty of doing good," as one writer expresses
it, "is at least equal to its luxury." The task we have undertaken is
far from easy, and beset with perils, but we will endeavour to avoid
all occasion of dispute. The pointing out of safe and profitable
investments for the hard-earned savings of the frugal and industrious
need not and should not be regarded as an invidious task. It seems to
us that, as Savings Banks have to do primarily with the foundation of
the habit of saving money, and indeed scarcely ever can be considered
as competing with any of the numerous schemes for the investing of
money, the subject should never be regarded with any jealous feeling.
The principle upon which these institutions are founded "interferes,"
to use the words of one who has written most ably on such subjects,
"with no individual action, saps no individual self-reliance." "It
prolongs childhood by no proffered leading-string; it valitudinarises
energy by no hedges or walls of defence, no fetters of well-meant
paternal restriction. It encourages virtue and forethought by no
artificial excitements, but simply by providing that they shall not be
debarred from full fructification, nor defrauded of their natural
reward. It does not attempt to foster the infant habit of saving by
the unnatural addition of a penny to every penny laid by; it contents
itself with endeavouring to secure to the poor and inexperienced that
safe investment and that reasonable return for their small economies
which is their just and scanty due."[10] Strengthened by such
testimony, we will proceed at once to sketch the history, and, as far
as we are able, to show the benefits to be derived from the various
kinds of banks for savings established from time to time amongst us.
[1] The following table taken from the _Statistical Returns_,
presented by the Board of Trade, shows in a clear light how much
of the position of the working classes must have been improved by
the removal of fiscal burdens. Almost all the impositions of
taxation between 1850 and 1864 have fallen upon the wealthier
classes:--
+------------------------+------------+-----------+-------------+
| |Repealed or | |Diminution or|
| | Reduced. | Imposed. | Addition. |
+------------------------+------------+-----------+-------------+
| | £ | £ | £ |
|Customs | 12,208,604 | 3,291,820 |D. 8,916,784|
| | | | |
|Excise | 5,607,000 | 6,380,000 |A. 773,000|
| | | | |
|Property and Income Tax | 16,265,000 |14,764,000 |D. 1,501,000|
| | | | |
|Other taxes | 2,608,800 | 600,000 |D. 2,008,800|
| | | | |
|Stamps (including | 1,428,000 | 2,411,200 |A. 983,000|
| succession duty) | | | |
+------------------------+------------+-----------+-------------+
| Total |£38,117,404 |27,447,020 |D. 10,670,384|
+------------------------+------------+-----------+-------------+
[2] In 1846, according to the Report of the Registrar General for
that year, out of the persons married in that year, one man out of
three, and one woman in two, signed the register with marks. What
was being done for the children of that year may be gathered from
the return for 1864, where it is shown that only eighteen in 100
of those marrying in that year were unable to write their names.
[3] Speech at Newton-le-willows, July 22, 1865.
[4] By way of giving an example of our meaning, we would adduce
the case of the workmen employed in the large brass works of
Messrs. Guest and Chrimes, Rotherham. When one of their number,
for instance, gets married, instead of the accustomed
hard-drinking, the men and their wives drink tea together, and a
piece of furniture of substantial value is presented to the
newly-married pair, paid for out of the subscriptions by the men.
On one of these occasions it is related, that the head of the firm
was asked to present articles which had been bought for two
newly-married couples, and Mr. Guest complied and introduced the
business as follows: "The custom you have adopted deserves the
warmest commendation and support, and is well worthy of
superseding those footings, fines, treats, &c., which, until
recently, had become a source of the most cruel, heartless, and
unjust robbery to which workmen could possibly be exposed by each
other. Thank God that wicked system is fast passing away."
[5] In 1851-2 a large and well-known engineering firm in Leeds had
a serious struggle with their workmen on account of the masters
having determined to pay the men according to their merit and the
character of the work turned out. A determined strike was the
result, which, though the original difference was only with eight
men, threw eventually more than 600 out of employment. Fresh hands
were obtained with the usual difficulty, and these were subjected
to great annoyance and even danger; in eighteen months, however,
the works were again all going and were efficiently manned. The
masters henceforth made it a condition of employment under them
that no member of a trades' union should be engaged, and the
sequel was a better behaved and superior class of men. Not only
so, but the masters are now enabled to make their own regulations
for the benefit of those employed under them, which before, owing
to the interference of the trades society, they could not make.
They have instituted a sick and funeral fund to which the men
contribute by working _ten minutes additional time when
necessary_, an arrangement which we recommend to other large
employers of labour and large bodies of workmen. That the masters
should be acquitted of any selfish motive, they allow the funds to
be managed and applied by a committee of workmen appointed by
themselves from their own number.
[6] "No labourer," says Mr. Smiles in his _Workman's Earnings,
&c._, "is better worthy of his hire than the English one. It is
not merely that he works harder than the labourer of any other
country, but he generally produces a better quality of workmanship.
He possesses a power of throwing himself bodily into his
occupation, which has always been a marvel to foreigners;" and he
then recurs to the well-known example of the surprise created
among the French peasantry when gangs of English navvies proceeded
with the works of the Rouen railway, and worked amidst constant
exclamations, of "Voilà! voilà ces Anglais! somme ils travaillent!"
[7] We put the matter quite mildly here, though it is customarily
and very properly spoken of much more severely. For example, Mr.
Norris, one of the Government inspectors of schools, in speaking
of the well-paid miners and iron workers of Staffordshire--who
doubtless are little worse than the same classes throughout the
country--says in one of his able reports: "Improvidence is too
tame a word for it--it is recklessness; here young and old,
married and single, are uniformly and almost avowedly
self-indulgent spendthrifts. One sees this reckless character
marring and vitiating the nobler traits of their nature. Their
gallantry in the face of danger is akin to foolhardiness; their
power of intense labour is seldom exerted except to compensate for
time lost in idleness and revelry; their readiness to make
"gatherings" for their sick and married comrades seems only to
obviate the necessity of previous savings," &c.
[8] Much of what we have said in the foregoing pages is admirably
summed up in a sentence or two in an article on "Savings Banks,"
which we would not be far wrong in attributing to Dr. Wynter, and
which we had not seen before these pages were written:
"Contemporaneously with the growth of savings banks, we have seen
a growth of civilization among the poorer classes. Thrift has not
effected _all_ that amelioration of morals which contrasts so
happily the mid years of the century with its younger ones; but it
has been no mean confluent to the tide of progress, the softening
of manners, the spread of education, the humanising of popular
sports and pastimes, the wakening up of the natural dignity and
self-reliance of the people,--the broad and indispensable basis of
every other virtue."--_London Review._
[9] _Quarterly Review_, 1859.
[10] Mr. W. R. Greg in the _Edinburgh Review_, 1853, p. 406.