A number of the public school scholars of Atlantic City, N. J., were able to take a course in the State normal school by means of their school savings, and from Norristown, Pa., comes this word:

Good habits

A whole book of incidents could be readily collected of the help and advantage the thrift habit has been to our former pupils, who are now men and women. and a good bank account are fine assets.

Mr. A. D. Call, former principal of the Henry Barnard school, in Hartford, said of the work there:

It has decreased the use of cheap candy and things that are hurtful to children. A candy shop near the entrance of the school building has been closed for lack of trade. The attention of the scholars is more carefully on their studies. Seventy-five per cent of them are depositors. I believe fully in the efficiency and the efficacy of school banking.

Mrs. A. R. Cowles, of Barton, Vt., for 10 years W. C. T. U. superintendent of school savings banks in that State, where the work has been successful in Newport, Middlebury, Barton, Brattleboro, and St. Johnsbury public schools, writes under date of March 8, 1914:

Our State superintendent of education very much approves of school savings banks. At the teachers convention just held in Barton the teachers were anxious to get school savings literature, and the system has been taken up in Newport Center, Westfield, and North Troy schools and in one school in Montpelier. Our people now see the value of training boys and girls to good habits and frugality.

Interesting evidence as to the economic and educational value of thrift-teaching in small country schools comes from Miss Helen Garrett, secretary of the Edgemoor (Del.) Iron Works, who established the school savings system as an economic help to the 50 scholars in the public school there in 1898. The children were chiefly those of the employees of the iron works and have deposited since that time $5,533.64, as their school savings.

Several people who started saving in the school have moved to other places, but a great many of these continue to make deposits in the savings bank, though independent of any school records. Through the school work some of the parents have started accounts, influenced by the children's example, and now one of the mothers in our village has over $600 deposited in her own name.

From Birmingham and Leeds, England, where school savings are collected in all the public schools, comes this:

Bits of money and bits of time are put to better uses. Boys and girls are learning the bearing thrift has on cleanliness and industrious habits.

These opinions of educators and others from different points where school savings banks have been long in use may give some idea of the general estimate of thrift-teaching where it has been tested.

Mr. John Henry Thiry, who was so deeply impressed with the economic and educational value of the work to which he devoted himself, said, in one of his many prints on the subject:

If school savings banks were generally established and well managed, there would be fewer mendicants on the streets asking for alms, fewer aged and infirm people in

65756°-15-2

charitable institutions through improvidence, fewer devotees to the liquor habit, and less discontent and destitution everywhere. Thoughtlessness is a great tributary to improvidence and want. Surely the masses need education in thrift. This is the province of the school savings banks system. It is an educational factor. It claims to teach virtue, because all virtues require self-control and husbanding of strength and resources, and these things invariably lead to thrift. The saving of time, of strength, of health, of intellectual force, of moral integrity, are all allied to the saving of money.

POSTAL SAVINGS AND SCHOOL SAVINGS.

There can be a stimulating relation between postal savings banks and school savings banks. In the short time in which the postal savings plan has been in operation, it has amply demonstrated its effectiveness in offering a wide-open opportunity for people of all ages over 10 years to deposit conveniently and safely small amounts of money. There were 10,903 offices where patrons could deposit postal savings on January 31, 1914, and $4,500,000 on deposit. That about one-tenth of the depositors were children from 10 to 14 years of age exemplifies the willingness of children to accept and profit by the opportunity of saving money they might otherwise waste. It also indicates the propriety of giving systematic instruction in thrift and allowing children to deposit their pennies before they are 10 years of age. The school savings bank is the guiding, training force; the postal savings bank the safe-guarding force. Both are requisite.

Instruction in conserving money and applying it wisely can not be impressed too early on a child; the early lessons in the employment of money belong to the schoolroom. The postal savings directors and receivers, be they ever so anxious to help the children, have little opportunity to do so. Children who have expended their pennies, nickles, and dimes in candy shops and moving-picture shows until they are 10 years old, with no thought of self-denial, may later go to the post office with a dime and buy one of the cards, but they are very likely not to have the perseverence to hold the card until they accumulate the $1 that is to be exchanged for a certificate of deposit. School savings banks are needed to prepare young people, especially those who have no careful home training, to profit by the postal savings opportunity.

II. THE SCHOOL SAVINGS MOVEMENT IN FOREIGN

COUNTRIES.

School savings banks are in use in all the public schools in France and Belgium, and in some of the schools in England, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Australia, Switzerland, and Canada. In Reykjavik, Iceland, the savings system was introduced by the Women's Christian Temperance Union in 1908, and the savings of

750 scholars average 2,500 Danish crowns yearly. In Parral, Mexico, it was established by the aid of a missionary in 1898, and it was introduced into the schools of Summerfield, Prince Edward Island, in 1891.

Beginnings.-Francois Laurent, born in Belgium 1810, who spent most of his life as professor of civil law in the University of Ghent, dying there in 1887, formulated the system of teaching children thrift through school savings. He was a voluminous writer, publishing 18 volumes on "The History of Humanity," 33 volumes on "The Principles of Civil Law," and several works on saving, thrift, and cognate - subjects. He won the Guinard prize, 10,000 francs, for his pamphlet "Conferences sur l'Epargne dans les Ecoles" (Lectures on Savings in the Schools) in 1873. The Guinard prize was founded by Dr. John Baptist Guinard, who died in 1867, bequeathing to the city of Ghent a legacy with the provision that every five years a prize of 10,000 francs should be awarded to the person who should produce a work or make an invention for elevating and placing the proletaire in the ranks of the bourgeois. The first prize awarded by the Government under the provisions of this legacy was given to Prof. Laurent; 12,000 copies of his pamphlet were published in Flemish and French by the Government and sent to the magistrates and schools throughout the Kingdom. This treatise on savings in the schools served not only to multiply school savings banks, but to increase largely the depositors among the laboring classes in other savings banks.

Prof. Laurent's work in Belgium attracted the attention of leaders of education in other countries. Articles were published in the newspapers of London and Paris and other places regarding the work. At the World's Exposition in Vienna in 1873 there was a conference of leading educators-Ferencz Deak, of Hungary; M. de Malarce, of France; and Prof. Laurent. The chief subject considered was the adaptability of school savings banks to further the purposes they had in view the amelioration of poverty and the improvement of individual and national life. In comparing notes they found there were no school savings banks in existence at that time, except in Belgium. M. de Malarce claimed-and not unjustly-that the idea of establishing such institutions originated with M. Dulac, a teacher in La Mau, France, who inaugurated it in his school in 1834 and continued it until 1870. Other attempts had been made by teachers in different countries, but they were isolated instances, and it remained for Prof. Laurent to formulate and popularize the plan that held and attracted the attention of the world.

School savings banks were organized throughout France in 1874, and the school or penny bank opened in England. In England it was decided to leave the introduction of school savings to the local

school boards and the voluntary action of the teachers, and the work is still conducted on that basis, being used in all the schools of some cities, but more often in certain schools and districts.

The bureau of education in France printed and distributed 22,000 copies of "A Manual of School Savings Banks," written by M. de Malarce in 1875 for the information and instruction of the teachers, and the innovation was given much popularity thereby. In a few years thereafter school savings banks were reported in 25,000 schools. The system had greater early use in the schools of Italy than in any other country, except Belgium and France.

In Canada the Victor Mission, with the approbation of the school board, began the collection of the school savings as a well-directed charity in 1894, and sent collectors or agents into a number of schools weekly for several years to receive the children's deposits and speak to them on the benefits of saving their pennies. It was entirely a charity mission and had devoted officers and members who collected and cared for the school savings, doing much good in the city of Toronto. School savings banks were established in the public schools of Winnepeg, Manitoba, and Galt and Barntford, in Ontario, in 1899, and the system continues to date in most successful use with them.

The Penny Bank of Toronto has branches in different cities and has largely aided in the extension of the work in Canada, especially in Ontario. By their latest report, for the year ending June 30, 1913, they have received as the children's school savings $266,522.77, the amount coming from the public schools of Toronto, Barrie, Belleville, Berlin, Bowmanville, Brampton, Campbellford, Carelton Place, Cobalt, Collingwood, Galt, Guelph, Hamilton, London; Midland, Montreal, North Bay, Oakville, Orangeville, Oshawa, Ottawa, Paris, Port Hope, Preston, Prince Albert, St. John (N. B.), Smiths Falls, Stratford, St. Thomas, Swansea, and Woodstock. The increase in deposits was $49,815 over those of last year. Mr. M. A. Mackenzie, manager of the penny bank of Toronto, writes: "School savings have been established in 12 new schools during the year."

As to the present status of school-savings teaching in England, reports show that teachers are advised and expected, in reading lessons and so on, to inculcate in children the importance of thrift. In Hull the work is pronounced a great success. The actuary of the bank cooperating wrote:

The educational authorities arranged with this bank to establish school savings banks in the Hull schools, to be worked by the head teachers, and they are a great success. Interest on individual deposits of a scholar is allowed when his deposit amounts to £1. The interest on the aggregate undivided school deposits forms a scholarship fund, which opens out the higher or secondary schools to some of the children in the elementary schools. These scholarships are eagerly competed for each year, and examinations for them are managed by a cooperative committee.

Advices received late in 1913 from Baroness Emilie von Hausen, of Dresden, indicate that the school savings banks, on different systems, are much in use in Germany. In Dresden, as in France and Belgium, the card system is used. In Munich a system of automats is in vogue. In the regular schools of the latter city 15,500 scholars have saved 45,000 marks, while in the continuation and trade schools 869 students deposited 6,400 marks.

III. THE SCHOOL SAVINGS MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED

STATES.

The first systematic attempt at a school savings bank plan in the United States, so far as is known, was that of Sereno F. Merrill, superintendent of schools of Beloit, Wis., who introduced the system in his schools in 1876. In 1873 Mr. Merrill had gone as State commissioner to the Vienna exposition and had there attended the conference on elimination of poverty at which Prof. Laurent's plan of school savings used in the schools of Ghent had been strongly indorsed.1 Mr. Merrill thus had his interest aroused in the problem of systematic thrift-teaching, and it was the card system of thrift-teaching, originated by M. Dulac, perfected and exploited by Prof. Laurent, that he introduced into the Beloit public schools in 1876.

Although various newspaper articles were written about the plan and benefits of school saving for children by Mr. Merrill, Mr. John P. Townsend, of New York City, and others, apparently the work did not extend beyond the Beloit public schools, where it was used for five years.

Inquiry was made of Mr. Merrill as to why the system had been dropped in the Beloit school. He replied that the principal, Mr. Beach, had been called to Madison; and his successor did not continue the work. Mr. Beach was then asked for his estimate of the effect of school savings on the children. His reply was highly favorable:

The boys and the girls acquired industrious habits-were looking for and doing work in vacation. The system led to economy of time and energy, as well as of money. It made better and more faithful students. It promoted liberality in as much as it insured means with which to be generous when occasion presented.

In the winter of 1879 Capt. R. H. Pratt, superintendent of the Carlisle (Pa.) Indian Training School, established a saving system for the Indians under his supervision. The boys and the girls kept an average of $10,000 to their credit for years, and took trunks, clothing, and books purchased with their own earnings back to their western homes, as well as some accumulations of their own school savings in money.

1 See p. 11.