The money-order department of the Post Office had suggested to Mr. Sikes, as it had already done to other observers, that the organization already existed for making Post Office Savings Banks practicable throughout the kingdom. Wherever the local inspector found that as many as five money-orders were required in a week, the practice was to make that branch of the Post Office a money-order office. It was estimated that such an office was established on an average within three miles of every working man's door in the kingdom. The offices were open daily. They received money from all comers, and gave vouchers for the amounts transmitted through them. They held the money until it was drawn, and paid it out on a proper voucher being presented. The Post Office was, in fact, a bank for the transmission of money, holding it for periods of from twenty-four hours to weeks and months. By enabling it to receive more money from more depositors, and by increasing the time of holding it, allowing the usual interest, it became to all intents and purposes a National bank of deposit.
The results of the Post Office Savings Banks Act have proved entirely satisfactory. The money-order offices have been largely extended. They are now about four thousand in number; consequently the facilities for saving have been nearly doubled since the banks were established. The number in the London district is now about four hundred and sixty, so that from any point in the thickly populated parts of the metropolis, a Savings Bank may be found within a distance of a few hundred yards. The number of the depositors at the end of 1873 amounted to more than a million and a half; while the amount of deposits reached over twenty-one millions sterling.[1] At the same time the amount deposited with the original Savings Banks remained about the same.
[Footnote 1: The amount reached £23,157,469 at the end of 1874.]
Post Office Savings Banks possess several great advantages which ought to be generally known. The banks are very widely diffused, and are open from nine in the morning until six in the evening, and on Saturdays until nine at night. Persons may make a deposit of a shilling, or of any number of shillings, provided more than thirty pounds is not deposited in any one year. The Post Office officers furnish the book in which the several deposits are entered. The book also contains the regulations of the Post Office Savings Banks. Interest is allowed at the rate of two pounds ten shillings per cent, per annum.
Another most important point is, the Security. Government is responsible for the full amount paid in; so that the money deposited with the Post Office Savings Bank is as safe as if it were in the Bank of England. The money saved may also be transferred from place to place, without expense, and may be easily paid to the depositor when required, no matter where it was originally deposited. All that is done, is done in perfect secrecy between the depositor and the postmaster, who is forbidden to disclose the names of the depositors.
We have frequently alluded to Mr. Charles William Sikes in connection with Penny Banks and Post Office Savings Banks. His name must always hold a distinguished place in connection with those valuable institutions. He is the son of a private banker in Huddersfield. When at school he was presented, as a prize, with a copy of Dr. Franklin's Essays and Letters. He perused the book with avidity. It implanted in his mind the germs of many useful thoughts, and exercised a powerful influence in giving a practical character to his life. Huddersfield is a busy manufacturing town. Although workmen were well paid for their labour, there were many ups and downs in their business. When trade became slack, and they had spent all that they had earned, numbers of them were accustomed to apply for charity in the streets or by the wayside. Young Sikes often wondered whether these people had ever heard of Dr. Franklin, and of his method of avoiding beggary or bad times by saving their money when trade was brisk and they were well off.
Early in 1833, Mr. Sikes entered the service of the Huddersfield Banking Company. It was the second joint stock bank that had been established in England. The prudence and success with which the Scotch banking companies had been conducted induced the directors to select a Scotch manager. One of the first resolutions the directors adopted, was to give deposit receipts for sums of ten pounds and upwards, for the purpose of encouraging the working classes in habits of providence and thrift. Mr. Sikes, being somewhat of a favourite with the manager, often heard from his lips most interesting accounts of the provident habits of the Scotch peasantry, and was informed by him of the fact that one of the banks at Perth paid not less than twenty thousand pounds a year as interest on deposits varying from ten to two hundred pounds each.
In 1837, Mr. Sikes became one of the cashiers of the company. This brought him into direct contact and intercourse with the very class which, from the direction his mind was taking, he so much wished to understand,—namely, the thrifty portion of the industrious classes. A considerable number of them had sums lying at interest. As years rolled on, Mr. Sikes often witnessed the depositor commencing with ten or twenty pounds, then make permanent additions to his little store, until at length the amount would reach one, two, or, in a few instances, even three hundred pounds. Mr. Sikes would often imagine the marvellous improvement that would be effected on the condition of the working classes, if every one of them became influenced by the same frugality and forethought, which induced these exceptional operatives to deposit their savings at his bank.
About that time, trade was in a wretched condition. The handloom weavers were almost entirely without employment. Privation and suffering prevailed on every side, and these were often borne with silent and noble heroism. Various remedies were proposed for the existing evils. Socialism, chartism, and free trade, were the favourites. Theories of the wildest and most impracticable character abounded, and yet even in those dark days there were instances of men who had to some degree made the future predominate over the present, who could fall back upon their reserve in the Joint Stock or Savings Bank to tide them over into better times. Believing in the beneficent results of free trade, Mr. Sikes was equally convinced that national prosperity, as well as national adversity, might be attended with great evils, unless the masses were endowed with habits of providence and thrift, and prepared by previous education for the "good time coming" so eloquently predicted by the orators of the League.
Many discussions with working men, in his homeward evening walks, convinced Mr. Sikes that there were social problems with which legislation would be almost powerless to grapple, and of these the thriftlessness of the masses of the people was one. An employer of five hundred handloom weavers had told Mr. Sikes that in a previous period of prosperity, when work was abundant and wages were very high, he could not, had he begged on bended knee, have induced his men to save a single penny, or to lay by anything for a rainy day. The fancy waistcoating trade had uniformly had its cycles of alternate briskness and depression; but experience, however stern its teachings, could not teach unwilling learners. It was at this period that Mr. Sikes was reading the late Archbishop Sumner's "Records of Creation," and met with the following passage: "The only true secret of assisting the poor, is to make them agents in bettering their own condition."