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 de 
positor 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 de 
positor can have to his credit, there is no limit to 
the number of certificates he may hold. The cer 
tificate 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