4 
POSTAL SAVINGS 
1907 was over, and while currency was still at a 
premium in New York, the newly created State 
of Oklahoma passed a law, December 17, 1907, 
providing for the guaranty of bank deposits; and 
in the course of the next two years four other 
States, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and 
Texas, passed deposit guaranty acts. 7 Presi 
dent Roosevelt in his Messages of December, 
1907, and March, 1908, favored a postal savings 
bank system. 8 In June, 1908, the Republican 
national convention included in its platform a 
plank favoring “the establishment of a postal 
savings hank system for the convenience of the 
people and the encouragement of thrift.” The 
Democratic platform, adopted a few weeks later 
at Denver, after expressing a desire for govern 
ment guaranty of bank deposits, said: “We 
favor a postal savings bank if the guaranteed 
bank cannot be secured, and that it be consti 
tuted so as to keep the deposited money in the 
communities where it is established. But we con 
demn the policy of the Republican Party in pro 
posing postal savings banks under a plan of con 
duct by which they will aggregate the deposits 
7 Cf. Thornton Cooke, Insurance of Bank Deposits in the 
West, in Quarterly Journal of Economics, XXIV, pp. 85- 
108, and XXV, pp. 327-390. 
8 Cong. Rec., Dec. 3, 1907, p. 77, and Mar. 25, 1908, p. 
3854.