DEPOSITORS  AND  DEPOSITS

57

his  certificates.  Upon  this  envelope  is  printed  a
certain  amount  of  postal  savings  information,  and
a  blank  ledger  for  keeping  account  of  deposits
and  withdrawals.  With  each  deposit  the  depositor ­
  secures  an  additional  certificate.  As  a
matter  of  convenience  to  the  depositor,  however,
the  post  office  will  exchange  a  certificate  of  large
denomination  for  a  number  of  certificates  of
small  denominations.
Aside  from  the  limitation  of  the  amount  a  depositor ­
  can  have  to  his  credit,  there  is  no  limit  to
the  number  of  certificates  he  may  hold.  The  certificate ­
  system  has  been  eminently  successful,  and
the  advocates  of  a  pass  book  plan  for  postal
savings  banks  are  now  very  few.
Nativity  of  Depositors
The  most  striking  fact  in  our  experience  with
postal  savings  banks  is  the  large  extent  to  which
they  have  been  patronized  by  persons  of  foreign
birth.  In  the  United  States  the  postal  savings
bank  is  to  a  large  degree  an  immigrant’s  bank—
a  situation,  so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  learn,
peculiar  to  this  country.  Mr.  Carter  B.  Keene,
Director  of  the  Division  of  Postal  Savings,  in  an
address  before  the  Savings  Bank  Section  of  the
American  Bankers  Association  on  September  26,
1916,  said  that  375,000,  or  60  per  cent  of  the  total