Social Comptabilism / The Cheque and Clearing Service in the Austrian Postal Savings Bank. Proposed Law laid before the Chamber of Representatives of Belgium

by Ernest Solvay; Hector Denis

In looking into the official statistics we become convinced that the one most fixed idea of Frère-Orban is there definitely brought into operation; that of the common participation of all classes of society in the Savings Bank.

Out of 100,000 savings-books, if 50% be set on one side as children's books, it will be seen that the surplus may be divided into nearly equal proportions between the class of manual workers on the one hand, and on the other that of the shopkeepers, the heads of industrial or agricultural enterprises, officials military men, proprietors, stock holders and professional persons. If to this division according to the number of account-books be added, the classification of the account-books according to their total sum, the conviction is soon arrived at that it is to the members of the working-classes that the cheques and the clearing of cheques will directly render the least service. In effect, if one ought to attribute to the working-class all the account-books of 1 to 1,000 francs, their total importance would represent hardly a quarter of the sum total of the account-books of the Savings Bank. This point will be rendered more clear by the publication of the book of Messrs Hamande and Burny.

However, if putting the consideration of individuals on one side we consider the different forms of working class associations, the conviction is arrived at that, in the service of cheques and clearing they will have a valuable intermediary: the mutual aid societies, the cooperative societies, the professional unions themselves will find in this organ of circulation, the same help as the multitudinous associations of every kind connected with the Savings Bank of Vienna, the popular banks and the rural Savings Banks, specially carried on with a view to small industrial agricultural and commercial enterprises, and in a higher degree the unions de credit, will connect themselves by organic threads to the service of the Savings Bank; they will find in it a means of bringing their efforts to a common point.

It may be added that, to the leading idea of the monetary benefit, is, in our idea united that, of assuring to the workers in this great movement of association one of the indispensable organs to a general and truly democratic financial service and a powerful instrument of economic education, for it will accustom the working-class societies which connect themselves with it to the invaluable discipline of a strict and permanent bookkeeping.

The articles of the proposed law only reproduce the general conditions of this new institution as they result from experience.

The cheques and clearing service ought to have a distinct existence, its accounts being kept separate from those of the savings service, understanding the term savings in the sense which the law of 1865 has given to it.

The Austrian law of November 19^th 1887, the complement of the law of May 28^th 1882, has laid this down. This condition is bound up with the liberty and spontaneity which ought to characterise the association; nothing can oblige the depositors in the Savings Bank to give their adhesion to this service, to run the risks, small though they be, of these operations, to submit to the working out of its special conditions. Its utility ought to be freely appreciated and the Savings Bank will on the other hand have to fix the regulations which the adherents must satisfy.

Thus those affiliated to the service will not be necessarily confounded with the whole mass of the depositors in the Savings Bank. In carrying out this law it will be necessary to fix a minimum deposit enabling anyone to become a participant in the institution and to have an account; and until the withdrawal of the depositor he will not be able to dispose of this sum; this is the fundamental guarantee the Austrian law imposes and it is a legitimate one: the risks are in other respects insignificant; however it is wise to render this guarantee complete by the formation of a reserve fund; all those who adhere to the service will participate in it; the mode of its formation, and the amount will be fixed by subsequent ordinances. Thus the stability of the institution will be completely assured. Free to adhere to the service, the depositor ought to be free to withdraw from it, only the regulations will have if this occurs, to determine the consequences of withdrawal, from the point of view of responsibility.

The working of the system absolutely requires the complete centralisation of the accounts of the adherents.

The account-books ought to be preserved as well as the accounts kept at the central office of the Savings Bank. What enlargement will be required in number of persons employed must be left to the future. This centralisation is the absolute condition of the regularity of the entries, the certainty of the control and of the preservation against error and fraud; without it the transferring of the entries and of the clearing could not be carried out; by it alone the exact state of the balance of every adherent can be known at any moment; by it alone exact information can be had at each operation of the situation and consequently of the extent of the capital which can be disposed of. The secret of the way in which the surplus is employed will moreover be kept from the knowledge of outsiders.