14 
POSTAL SAVINGS 
The following resolution of the American 
Bankers Association at its convention of 1908 is 
fairly representative of the attitude of that as 
sociation and of numerous State bankers’ associa- 
Savings Bank bill was before Congress, the committee sent 
a letter to bankers throughout the country, urging them to 
oppose the bill through their local newspapers and through 
their influence with members of Congress from their dis 
tricts. The letter was accompanied by five exhibits: (1) a 
copy of the Carter bill; (2) a copy of an address in opposi 
tion to postal savings banks delivered by a banker who had 
been a Director of the Mint; (3) a copy of the report in 
opposition to postal savings banks adopted by the American 
Bankers Association at its convention in Denver; (4) a copy 
of an address by a Nebraska banker before the Wyoming 
Bankers Association and (5) “A condensed synopsis of the 
arguments against postal savings bank legislation to be 
used as a basis for newspaper articles.” 
The extremes to which this propaganda went are illus 
trated by the following quotations taken from the address 
referred to above as item 4 : 
“The postal savings bank, that scheme which has been 
the dream of well meaning people with philanthropic ten 
dencies for these many years, in the belief that they were 
conferring a blessing upon the race, and quickly supported 
by the great body of the American people, who are inclined 
to applaud enthusiastically anything done by the Govern 
ment, may be engrafted upon our financial system. Never 
asked for by the thriftless whom it is desired to teach thrift, 
nor by the Slavic or Latin races who are pictured as sending 
so much money home, . . . never requested as a personal 
desire by one single individual of our nearly ninety millions, 
[that scheme] threatens to be enacted into law.” 
“. . . The Postmaster General naively says: ‘These 
postal savings banks will not compete in any way with our 
present banks.’ He thinks he is stating a fact, doubtless, 
but as well might a highwayman, emptying a repeating