62

POSTAL  SAVINGS

letters  and  in  transmitting  money  to  their  families ­
  or  others  in  the  homeland  the  foreign  born  are
frequently  brought  to  the  post  office.  The  unskilled ­
  laborers  among  the  foreign  born  would
rarely  be  brought  to  an  American  savings  bank
or  commercial  bank  by  anything  but  the  desire
to  deposit  or  withdraw  money.  Foreigners  become ­
  familiar  with  the  post  office  and  not  with
the  bank.  (3)  Adi  of  the  first  five  countries  in
the  list  have  postal  savings  banks,  and  immigrants ­
  from  those  countries  have  been  familiar
with  such  banks  at  home.  (4)  The  European
war  through  its  interference  with  “immigrant
banks,”  and  with  the  sale  of  international  money
orders  (an  explanation  of  which  is  given  by  the
Postmaster-General  in  his  annual  report  for
1915,  pp.  27-28),  has  encouraged  the  foreign
born  to  keep  their  savings  in  the  United  States.
Of  course  the  small  per  capita  deposit  of  native ­
  born  Americans  does  not  signify  any  lack  of
thrift  on  their  part.  It  means  rather  that  the  two
per  cent  interest  paid  by  the  postal  savings  bank
is  too  small  to  appeal  to  the  native  born,  and  that
for  this  and  other  obvious  reasons  of  less  importance ­
  they  place  their  savings  elsewhere.
Inasmuch  as  the  avowed  object  of  the  establishment ­
  of  postal  savings  banks  in  the  United
States  was  the  encouragement  of  thrift,  it  is  nat-