DEPOSITORS AND DEPOSITS 
91 
would be greatly increased, to the great relief of 
the deficit. 
Arguments Against Removal or Lightening of 
Restrictions on Deposits 
1. During the debates in Congress concerning 
alterations in the restrictions on postal savings 
deposits, the argument in the opposition that 
played the chief rôle, an argument which under 
lay many of the others, was that the changes pro 
posed would make the postal savings system a 
stronger competitor of existing banks. There 
was a great deal of opposition on the part of 
bankers for this reason, and the banking com 
munity made its opposition felt in Washington. 
It was claimed that, even if the postal savings 
system had not been a competitor of the banks 
under the existing limitations on deposits, it did 
not follow at all that it would not become a com 
petitor when the limitations were lightened or 
removed. Senator Weeks, of Massachusetts, 
feared that the raising of the limits would put the 
postal savings system into competition with the 
mutual savings banks of the East, 32 and Senator 
Lodge, of Massachusetts, thought that the pro 
posals were a move in the direction of putting the 
Government into competition with the banks in 
32 Cong. Rec., April 14, 1914, p. 6672.