Showing the Increase in the Deposits of the Savings Banks in each English[57] county, between 1834 and 1841, and the Decrease in the Poor Rates during the same period:—
In every county, as may be seen from this table, there is a decided increase in the number and amount of Savings Banks deposits between the two periods; and in every instance, except two, there is a decided decrease in the amount spent on the relief of the poor. Not only so, but taking the two exceptional cases, we find that in the one case, a small county, there had not up to this time been any Savings Bank established; and in the other instance, that of the large and populous county of Lancaster,—which shows an increase instead of a diminution on the two years in the amount of poor relief,—it is not less curious that its industrial population have never patronised the Savings Banks to the same extent, in proportion to their number and earnings, as the same classes have done in the country generally. Further, the three counties of Kent, Middlesex, and Norfolk, which in 1841 had the greatest number of depositors in Savings Banks in proportion to their population, also exhibit the pleasing fact of the greatest diminution in the amount spent in the relief of the poor. It may be said that many considerations ought to enter into such calculations as those we are making, and that at best such statistics only prove that the same causes, such as abundance of work, good harvests, &c., will contribute to the increase of surplus funds, and the decrease in measures of relief. But it must be borne in mind that prosperous trade does not necessarily produce frugal people and provident habits, though it often enough leads to unnecessary and vicious expenditure. By far the greater part of the decrease in the sums given for relief is unquestionably owing to the operations of the Poor Law Amendment Bill already referred to, which Lord Althorp carried through Parliament. Truly stigmatized before his time as “the great political gangrene of England,” the old Poor Laws of this country first made paupers, and then promptly maintained them. It is, however, the relative proportion in which the increase of Savings Bank deposits stood to the decrease of the sums for relief that we wish here to impress upon the reader, leaving him to form his own conclusions. And with all respect to those who framed the measure of 1834, which was very beneficial to the country and only just to the independent poor, we think the results have been rather too much magnified. From the year 1820 we can plainly trace a manifest improvement in the condition of the poor, and we have not scrupled to ask for a place for the Saving Bank system among those important agencies which have led to this improvement. Still, taking the measures of Poor Law relief as a good criterion of their condition, we find that the sum total paid for the ten years between 1811 and 1821 was 68,000,000l., giving a yearly average of 6,800,000l. In the ten years ending 1832, the amount of poor rates was 62,900,000l., or a yearly average of about 6,200,000l. Thus we have, in spite of what was considered the iniquitous system of relief, and in spite of an increase of population amounting to 16 per cent., a clear reduction of 5,000,000l. within ten years. The advancement is still more clear, if we take the case of the large centres of population, but this is perhaps, unnecessary.
The Returns, however, of the Registrar General may be supplemented by Revenue Returns for the same period, from which the improvement in the condition of the industrial classes may be made still more palpable. In 1814 the consumption of tobacco was 15,000,000 lbs.; in 1832 it had increased to 20,000,000 lbs., an augmentation of 31 per cent., while the population only showed an increase of 24 per cent. during the same interval. The amount expended upon articles which, like tobacco and intoxicating drinks, are not, to say the least, of the first necessity, forms no incorrect measure of the progress of the nation, and of the ability of the people to bear the national burdens which must be imposed. In 1814 the consumption of sugar was 1,997,000 lbs.; in 1832 it amounted to 3,655,000 lbs., an increase of 83 per cent. to be set against the above rate of increase in the population. The tea consumed in 1814 was 19,224,000 lbs.; in 1832 it had increased to 31,568,000 lbs., or an increase of 65 per cent.; and coffee increased from 6,324,000 in 1814 to 22,952,000 lbs., or an increase of 183 per cent., in 1832. The increased consumption of such articles, (not forgetting reductions in price,) was an evidence of nothing, if not of the growing prosperity of the people. Such items show that the people, as a mass, enjoyed a greater command over the comforts of life than formerly. The rich man, of course, added little or nothing to his ordinary consumption of the articles that were necessary to his comfort or convenience, but with the poor it was very different. For example, the amount of silk imported during the period of which we have spoken varied but little, while the imports on the article of cotton wool, the staple fibre of the masses, increased from 152,000,000 lbs. in 1820 to 259,000,000 lbs. in 1832, or an increase of 70 per cent.[58]
Enough has been said, we hope, to show the gradual progress made in these years in all that relates to the social advancement and well-being of the people, and to what extent Savings Banks played a part on that advancement. Because these institutions have been proved to create frugal habits—in much the same way that the supply of intoxicating drinks creates in many cases a demand for them—as well as to give them direction and encouragement, we have endeavoured to prove their right to a foremost place among the many other mighty engines of civilization which have made Great Britain what it is. And now we must conclude this chapter with a less pleasant task, and refer briefly, at present, to two foes to Savings Banks, one without and one within, both of which had a very powerful effect as hindrances on the progress of these useful institutions. We refer to the doubts which began to be cast on the utility of Savings Banks by portions of the public press, and the serious frauds which now for the first time began to engage public attention. In 1844, when Mr. Goulburn's bill was under discussion and subsequently to that, several newspapers began to dispute that Savings Banks were either so useful or so wise as had been generally thought up to that period. The Times newspaper, with an hostility which Dr. Chalmers characterized as “most glaring” and “likely to mislead every artisan from the path of his true interests,” laughed at and ridiculed the system long after it had proved its usefulness in numerous ways. That paper, which opposed the new Poor Law of 1834 with great bitterness, and had treated with manifest injustice other schemes for the social amelioration of the poor, devoted several editorial articles in 1844 to throw discredit on the institution of Savings Banks. The articles in question were calculated to work a mischievous practical influence on many readers, especially on those who gave little attention to the subject of political economy; they were meant to create a spirit of opposition to Savings Banks, but in many cases they must have had the opposite effect and failed to convince all who were not equally perverse. To show the kind of argument indulged in by the leading journal at a time when it was equally as now the greatest newspaper power in the land, when its rebuke or praise had a weighty effect on any important measure, and when Cabinet Councils debated whether it should be propitiated or defied,[59] we need only give the following extracts:—
“A labourer sixty years of age has, by hook or crook, saved 500l. We know such a case. The 500l. is the plague of his life. It would be a mercy to swindle him out of it, except that he would probably feel a good deal at the loss. Could he forget it, he would be both a happier and better man. To begin with, it is a guilty possession. His father is maintained by a distant Union; his sons and daughters are all but forbidden his cottage. He invests it in secret.... When he dies his children will squander it, not in dissipation, but in the mere feebleness and incontinence of ingrained poverty.”
Another extract striking at the root of all habits of providence and thrift:—
“When a labourer has saved 50l. or 100l. then the greatest difficulty comes: what is he to do with his money? He has caught a tartar. His usual course is a very natural one, because it is the first course that offers—to open a public house. He does so, and generally and happily loses his money. A labourer with 200l. in his pocket has a very fair prospect of the union workhouse before him. He is not commercial enough to open a shop, and small farms are obsolete. He may, to be sure, shut his doors against all his kith and kin, and buy a selfish annuity with the sum, which will just keep him while he rots and dies. But will he, and who is to advise him to do so?”
Granted that things are very different now to what they were when these remarks were penned, and that investments of any sort may now be made with comparative ease, it seems to us that the argument of the Times was based throughout on false assumptions; that it is a mistake to suppose that the primary or sole object of Savings Banks was to build up capitals for investiture in business or trade, and not for expenditure on the necessaries or comforts of life; nor to make every labourer a capitalist, in the usual acceptation of that term, but to enable him to end his days in some sort of independence, and in some degree of peace and comfort. Savings Banks at their establishment were, always have been, and still are, meant for accumulations, not to be traded with,—though, of course, there is no prohibition,—but always have had and still have a homelier aim. They are meant to inculcate the habit of laying by for an evil day, for old age, the winter of life, or as Dr. Chalmers, we believe, strikingly puts it, “for those mishaps and sicknesses which might be termed its days of foul weather.” In such case the money will not be traded with, but in right season spent. The answers to some of the arguments of the Times are indeed so obvious that it seems superfluous even to state them. Money in hand is all the world over better than beggary. That the inculcation of such a principle will tend to fill our towns with paupers is monstrous absurdity. The object and design of Savings Banks are, of course, primarily, to seek to get hold of the surplusage of money in the hands of the poorer classes, to rescue it from vicious or unnecessary expenditure at the best seasons, in order to its forming a reserve for needful subsistence or additional comfort at another period. “A domestic servant,” says another article of the Times,[60] “at the age of fifty-five or sixty, finds she is incapable of further employment. She has saved 80l. Very creditable to her, of course, and very stingy she must have been to her nephews and nieces to have done so much. But what is she to do with her 80l.?... Across the Channel such a sum would be a mine of agricultural wealth. On this side the Channel it would be a snowball in the sun.” This is, by the way, an extreme and unfortunate case, and one we would hope not often, in all the particulars, occurring. But were it frequent, surely 80l. in hand is better than nothing and an immediate resort to the parish. To say that the 80l. would always remain 80l. and would not melt away like snow before the sun, would be ridiculous; but if there be any virtue in self-reliance, and in self-dependence, it surely would not be ridiculous to say that that which enabled a woman to minister to her own wants in a greater or less degree, and in the same degree to rescue herself from becoming a burden upon other people, was, so far as it went, a solace and a blessing to her. Once, and only once more, the Times declared that “investing money in Savings Banks was mere hoarding,” nothing more than the creating of misers.
“It is most melancholy to notice the few helps and encouragements to thrift and husbandry which our present condition allows the labourer. We tell him to save. We put it as the most indispensable moral duty; the great commandment of our law. We build prisons (sic) for those whom age or calamity have proved transgressors against it; yet, having laid this heavy burden upon the labourer, where is the 'little finger' of help contributed by society. We refer him to the Savings Banks and to Friendly Societies, i.e. we tell him to hoard his money, or to secure an annuity, on the chance of old age. There cannot be two modes of investment less interesting, less social, less suited to the condition of the mind of a labourer. Where it is practised, we can only say that it is an act of faith and prudence so dry, so pure, so transcendental, as to be above humanity, especially that very form of humanity found in the English agricultural labourer.”