CONCLUSION

129

currency  and  credit.  The  meaning  of  this  was,
in  part,  that  reserves  and  bank  credit  were  kept
too  much  at  home  when  the  public  interest  demanded ­
  a  cheap  and  expeditious  machinery  for
their  prompt  movement  from  places  of  redundancy ­
  to  places  of  scarcity.  But  even  under  our
defective  banking  system  in  1910,  money  and
bank  credit  were  the  most  fluid  forms  of  capital
in  the  country,  and  were  continually  “leaving
home.”  They  are  much  more  fluid  in  1917  than
they  were  in  1910,  thanks  to  our  Federal  reserve
system,  our  developing  American  discount
market,  and  the  rapid  growth  of  the  note  brokerage ­
  business.  The  great  bulk  of  the  postal  savings ­
  deposits  is  in  large  cities.  For  example,
on  June  30,  1916,  New  York  City  (including
Brooklyn  and  Long  Island  City)  had  24  per
cent  of  the  total  postal  savings  deposits  of  the
country.  Does  any  one  think  that  it  is  possible
“to  keep  money  at  home”  in  our  large  cities  by
merely  depositing  it  in  commercial  banks,  or  that
it  would  be  socially  desirable  to  do  so,  if  it  were
possible?
A  Larger  Use  of  Savings  Banks  as  Depositories
of  Postal  Savings  Funds  Desirable
This  brings  us  to  the  last  point.  Six  years  of
postal  savings  history  in  the  United  States  has