THE NATIONAL SAVINGS MOVEMENT 269
country has been carried out by a large body of voluntary workers,
numbering over 200,000 who carry on the work of 1,700 Local Com-
mittees and 25,000 Associations or Savings Clubs. Further new
Associations are being formed at an average rate of 90 per month
among Factories, Works, Schools, and social organizations.
¢ We are of opinion that this system and organization bring in real
savings very largely contributed from sources hitherto untapped and
that it encourages thrift. In these circumstances, we recommend the
continuance of the organization provided that the Head-quarter’s staff
is constantly kept under review.’
From this consideration of the organization of the move-
ment we may pass to an account of the schemes adopted by
the Savings Associations which carried out the actual collection
of the money.
It was recommended by the Montagu Committee that the
original Advisory Committee should consider all schemes put
before it, and sanction any which appeared to be sound. This
course was followed at first, and out of a large number sub-
mitted a few were approved, but subsequent experience showed
that great advantages attached to making the schemes to be
adopted as few and as uniform as possible.
The task of examining the many schemes proposed was not
without its humorous side. Hundreds of people seemed to be
ander the impression that they had a panacea for the financial
difficulties of the nation. The great majority of course were
hopelessly impossible, and it was not without interest to find,
from the examination of the private papers of a Chancellor
of the Exchequer of more than a hundred years ago, that
many of the suggestions put forward during the great war were
‘dentical in character with those which had been made over
a century previously.
For a short time the Savings Committee gave its approval
to schemes for the purchase by instalment of War Loans and
War Bonds; but in the long run these proved comparatively
ineffective, and attention was concentrated on Savings Certifi-
cates. A feature of the schemes was payment by instalments,
in which a slight advantage, which proved surprisingly popular,
attached to © co-operative investment’ through Savings Associa-
