ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SYSTEM 15 
tions throughout the country: “Resolved, that 
it is the sense of this association that we should 
condemn in unqualified terms the proposition for 
the establishment of postal savings banks or any 
other system by which the government enters di 
rectly into banking relations with the people.” 24 
In reply the advocates of postal savings banks 
asserted that existing banks had nothing to fear 
from governmental competition; that they had 
the advantages of an established clientèle, higher 
interest rates, higher limits, if any, in the amounts 
that could be kept on deposit, and of the close 
personal and advisory relation which so often 
Colt at you, say: ‘I am shooting these bullets at you, but I 
do not intend to hurt you in any way.’ 
“[The advocates of postal savings banks] would have the 
Government cast loose from its moorings of protection for 
the individual and plunge into the frightful slough of social 
ism. The American people may well pause before they 
take this step, for the real persons injured are not the 
bankers in their individual capacity, but the nation at large. 
Socialism is not a mere harmless dream, impossible of ful 
filment, to be tolerated as the well wishings of people more 
poetical than practical—it is a hideous growth of positive 
malevolence, and it is directly opposed to every fundamen 
tal principle of our government. It is an ingrate knocking 
at our doors, a thief at night creeping into our domiciles. 
It takes from industry its every reward and dampens 
energy and ambition with the stifling of the incentive for 
success. Well may we wake to the hidden currents of the 
stream of socialistic banking, before we take the fatal 
plunge !” 
24 Chron., A. B. A. Conv. Suppl., 1908, p. 131.