ly with the depositors themselves. They encouraged the
industrious classes to rely upon their own resources, to exercise
forethought and economy in the conduct of life, to cherish self-respect
and self-dependence, and to provide for their comfort and maintenance in
old age, by the careful use of the products of their industry, instead
of having to rely for aid upon the thankless dole of a begrudged
poor-rate.

The establishment of savings banks with these objects, at length began
to be recognized as a matter of national concern; and in 1817 an Act was
passed which served to increase their number and extend their
usefulness. Various measures have since been adopted with the object of
increasing their efficiency and security. But notwithstanding the great
good which these institutions have accomplished, it is still obvious
that the better-paid classes of workpeople avail themselves of them to
only a very limited extent. A very small portion of the four hundred
millions estimated to be annually earned by the working classes finds
its way to the savings bank, while at least twenty times the amount is
spent annually at the beershop and the public-house.

It is not the highly-paid class of working men and women who invest
money in the savings banks; but those who earn comparatively moderate
incomes. Thus the most numerous class of depositors in the Manchester
and Salford Savings Bank is that of domestic servants. After them rank
clerks, shopmen, porters, and miners. Only about a third part of the
deposits belong to the operatives, artizans, and mechanics. It is the
same in manufacturing districts generally. A few years since, it was
found that of the numerous female depositors at Dundee, only one was a
factory worker: the rest were for the most part servants.

There is another fact that is remarkable. The habit of saving does not
so much prevail in those counties where wages are the highest, as in
those counties where wages are the lowest. Previous to the era of Post
Office Savings Banks, the inhabitants of Wilts and Dorset--where wages
are about the lowest in England--deposited more money in the savings
banks, per head of the population, than they did in Lancashire and
Yorkshire, where wages are about the highest in England. Taking
Yorkshire itself, and dividing it into manufacturing and
agricultural,--the manufacturing inhabitants of the West Riding of York
invested about twenty-five shillings per head of the population i