ESTABLISHMENT  OF  THE  SYSTEM  15

tions  throughout  the  country:  “Resolved,  that
it  is  the  sense  of  this  association  that  we  should
condemn  in  unqualified  terms  the  proposition  for
the  establishment  of  postal  savings  banks  or  any
other  system  by  which  the  government  enters  directly ­
  into  banking  relations  with  the  people.” 24
In  reply  the  advocates  of  postal  savings  banks
asserted  that  existing  banks  had  nothing  to  fear
from  governmental  competition;  that  they  had
the  advantages  of  an  established  clientèle,  higher
interest  rates,  higher  limits,  if  any,  in  the  amounts
that  could  be  kept  on  deposit,  and  of  the  close
personal  and  advisory  relation  which  so  often
Colt  at  you,  say:  ‘I  am  shooting  these  bullets  at  you,  but  I
do  not  intend  to  hurt  you  in  any  way.’
“[The  advocates  of  postal  savings  banks]  would  have  the
Government  cast  loose  from  its  moorings  of  protection  for
the  individual  and  plunge  into  the  frightful  slough  of  socialism. ­
  The  American  people  may  well  pause  before  they
take  this  step,  for  the  real  persons  injured  are  not  the
bankers  in  their  individual  capacity,  but  the  nation  at  large.
Socialism  is  not  a  mere  harmless  dream,  impossible  of  fulfilment, ­
  to  be  tolerated  as  the  well  wishings  of  people  more
poetical  than  practical—it  is  a  hideous  growth  of  positive
malevolence,  and  it  is  directly  opposed  to  every  fundamental ­
  principle  of  our  government.  It  is  an  ingrate  knocking
at  our  doors,  a  thief  at  night  creeping  into  our  domiciles.
It  takes  from  industry  its  every  reward  and  dampens
energy  and  ambition  with  the  stifling  of  the  incentive  for
success.  Well  may  we  wake  to  the  hidden  currents  of  the
stream  of  socialistic  banking,  before  we  take  the  fatal
plunge  !”
24  Chron.,  A.  B.  A.  Conv.  Suppl.,  1908,  p.  131.