From the above it is seen that the proportion per cent of the number of adherents to the service of clearing rises gradually in the later years;—after having from 1890 to 1893 been nearly uniformly from 69 to 70%, it rises in 1895 to 73.2%.
The classification of the adherents from the point of view of conditions and profession reveals the elasticity peculiar to such an institution. Advocates, notaries, doctors, even professors appear in great numbers. Manufacturers and traders united represent nevertheless more than half the total number of members; 339 bankers and money-changers, 362 associations for savings and loans, 220 private savings banks, 1,490 associations or corporations,—public establishments of which 185 were communes and administrative bodies,—271 benevolent associations, funds, establishments and foundations, 175 agricultural and forestal associations and 175 religious associations, 266 assurance societies, and 204 journals or periodicals serving as media for the Savings Bank. The administration of the State forests and domains have recourse to the Savings Bank in order to bank the produce of the forestal sales, and the administration of taxes is now experimenting as to its intervention for the getting in of duties. This institution thus presents a marvellous flexibility, invading by degrees the whole domain of exchange and enveloping one by one all the organs of the collective life.
Let us first explain the modes of operating payments to the profit of every member affiliated to the cheque and clearing service. In the first of these modes, the instrument employed is the certificate or attestation of receipt and of deposit (empfang erlag scheine). (Fig. 1.)
Books containing blank certificates are issued by the Central Office at the low price of a kreutzer the piece, to every person adhering to the cheque and clearing services; these are books of 10, 20, 50 and 100 pieces, and to meet the needs of various holders they are drawn up either in German or in some other of the tongues spoken in the Empire. All these certificates bear the number of the account to the operations of which they are destined and carry the name and the address of the account holder.
Each of the certificates presents three parts which are separated one from the other in the course of the operation: the first, the counterfoil, remains attached to the book and in the hands of the holder of the account; of the two others, one, the attestation of the payment, has to be returned by the Post Office receiver to the person who makes the payment; the third the certificate of the deposit has to be transmitted to the Central Office at Vienna, which returns it to the holder of the account. To make a payment it is necessary to fill in the certificate of receipt and the certificate of deposit, and to present them at a Post Office with the sum to be paid into the holder's account. The receiver of the Post Office will bank the sum, and will sign the receipt, imprinting on it the stamp of the office, and will remit it to the person making the payment; he will then detach the certificate of the deposit and will send it to the Central office at Vienna with the daily account of his operations. The central administration will immediately credit the person in whose favour the payment is made, in the account that it has opened for him, and it will then transmit to him the deposit certificate with an extract of his account.
Such is the series of operations which result from empfang erlag schein.
Suppose for example that the holder of an account is a merchant who has furnished supplies to a customer in the provinces to the amount of a hundred florins, net. He fills up a leaf of the account book, bearing a certain number, on which he indicates the amount payable, and which payment is to be placed to his account; he sends this leaf to his customer, keeping the counterfoil with the customer's name written on it: the customer forwards the leaf to the Post Office where he lives with the sum due: the postal receiver separates from the leaf the certificate of receipt (empfang schein), which he signs and returns to the customer, he sends the certificate of deposit to the Central Office at Vienna, where the sum is carried to the account of the merchant. After which the deposit certificate bearing the name of the person making the payment is forwarded to the merchant with an extract from his current account, enabling him thus to exercise strict control.
Figure I.