The Sedalia Weekly Bazoo

The attention of Congress has been turned in an unusually profitable direction in the consideration of the best means of affording a secure investment for savings of small amount in individual cases, but amounting to large sums in the aggregate. The American people have in the past been conspicuous for a lack of frugality and a disposition to spend money freely as fast as it was made, and trust to luck for the future. This tendency has been encouraged by the want of safe and convenient investments for small sums, such as the people of many less advanced nations possess. Savings banks have in too many instances proved a mockery and a delusion, and the American disregard of small things has been conspicuously shown in the absence of any provision by which the government could avail itself of the results of the economy and thrift of the masses of the people, even when it was urgently in need of advances, and prepared to pay a high rate of interest for large sums from abroad. The hard times have taught the virtue of frugality in a way in which it was never inculcated before. The example of France extricating herself from her indebtedness to Germany by appealing for a popular loan, in which "the smallest contributions thankfully received", has shown how much can be accomplished in this direction. The proposition at present before Congress for the establishment of Postal Savings Banks is clearly a step in the right direction, whatever theoretical objections may be raised as to the government's exceeding its proper functions. It is the function of the government to do anything that will add to the prosperity and advance the true interests of the public.

The bill drafted by the House Committee on Banking and Currency, authorizes the receipt of money on deposit at all postoffices having money order departments in sums not less than twenty-five cents, of which account will be kept in passbooks, as in ordinary savings banks. No interest will be allowed until the sum of ten dollars has been accumulated, when the deposits may be converted into postal savings bonds, which are to be issued in denominations of ten, twenty, fifty and one hundred dollars. They will bear interest at three and sixty-five one-hundredths per cent. per annum. The postal savings bonds are in turn convertible into ordinary four per cent. bonds. The merit of this system is that it offers absolute security to depositors, and will inspire a confidence which in too many localities is lacking, so far as savings banks are concerned, and with just reason. The scheme is to be commended moreover on broad grounds of public policy, as giving a large class of the people a direct, tangible interest in the maintenance of the national credit. It will convert the thrifty laborer into a "bloated bondholder" on a small scale before he is fairly aware of it, and from the moment he begins to acquire property of this description his sympathies will be instinctively ranged in favor of law and order. It is not probable that the scheme will be accepted without some modifications, as other plans have their advocates. The bill that has passed the Senate in favor of the issue of $100,000,000 in coupon bonds of the denominations of $25, $50 and $100, with interest at four per cent., though independent of the Postal Savings Bank measure may not improbably modify the latter, as its tendency is in the same direction.

As soon as the mints are fairly at work it will be in the power of the Secretary of the Treasury to increase our monetary resources to the extent of the coining capacity, say at the rate of $4,000,000 per month. It need no commentary to show that this is what the law provides. As to how the money will be put into circulation, that is a very simple matter. There has been a great deal of ingenuity expended in showing how he may keep it locked in the vaults of the Treasury and avoid issuing it at all, but the sophistries offered will not prevail. The Secretary of the Treasury will take the coin from the mints and buy bullion with it to make into more coin. That is the whole story. Congress desires that a certain amount of silver bullion shall be made useful and available as money. So many minted dollars will be exchanged for so much bullion, and the bullion will then be minted and a further exchange made. Silver notes of denominations of ten dollars and upwards will take the place of coin for circulation, so the denunciations of "heavy loads to carry" will prove to be unwarranted, and with the silver note in circulation we may see the real silver, secured by the note, but seldom. It is a very straightforward transaction, and it will be very straightly carried out.