40 
POSTAL SAVINGS 
With reference to the claim that the right of 
Congress to create a postal savings bank was im 
plied in the power conferred by the Constitution 
to establish post offices and post roads, Senator 
Bailey said: "There is absolutely no pretence 
that the deposit of private money with a post 
master, and the redeposit of it by him in a bank, 
has, or is intended to have, any connection with 
the use of the mails. It is a fiscal operation pure 
and simple, without the remotest relation to a 
post office or a post road as they were understood 
by the fathers when they framed our Constitu 
tion or as they are understood by us today. The 
Congress of the United States has just as much 
right and power to require our postmasters to 
act as commission merchants as it has to require 
them to act as bankers.” 26 
The constitutional status of the hill seemed 
weak even to many of its proponents, and a num 
ber of amendments were proposed calculated to 
give it a firmer position. These amendments for 
the most part undertook to make the bank more 
of an instrument for the borrowing of money by 
the Federal Government, and thereby to bring it 
more fully under the constitutional power "to 
borrow money on the credit of the United 
States.” Some of these amendments went much 
26 Cong. Rec., March 3, 1910, p. 2688.