href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@42583@[email protected]#footnote_4" class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[4] masters not only see it to be their interest to encourage their men where they can in habits of sobriety and prudence, but they are now often enabled to enforce regulations tending to this end which before they were almost powerless to effect.[5]

The good results of such habits to the industrial classes themselves and to all portions of society are neither few nor doubtful. The pursuit of economy and thrift will beget, as a matter of course, self-dependence; and as soon as men become socially independent they also become self-relying and self-supplying. Few men come to the parish who have ever saved money, said one large employer of labour before a Committee of the House of Commons on Poor Laws. Another never knew a man who had saved a pound out of his earnings who had in the end become a pauper. But the good work does not stop here. In proportion as our men save money, said another large employer, their morals are improved; then they come to see that they have a stake in the country, and behave better. Or, as Vegetius, describing the Roman soldier, puts it, knowing that his property is deposited with the standards in the public chest, he never thinks of desertion, becomes attached to his standards, and in battle fights more bravely for them; according to the nature of man, who has always his heart where his treasure is. Arrived at this stage of the upward journey, the provident man feels the need of education, and must have it; he must also take a part in exerting an influence among his fellows, and even in the government of the country, and if his reading takes a rigid-turn, higher principles of duty are superadded; he will do his work, whatever it is, in every sense better. I would rather have, said another well-known gentleman, to the Committee just referred to, a hundred men in my employ who save money than two hundred who spend every shilling they get; the sober, saving man is always to be depended upon, and the one lot in the long run will almost do as much work as the other.

The improvement of which we have been speaking must not blind us, however, to the darker side of the picture. Notwithstanding the improvement which has been made, and the inestimable good which flows from the practice and pursuit of frugality and economy, it is still the exception and not the rule among the bulk of our labouring population. For the hundreds who look to the exigencies of their life, there are thousands who are utterly careless of such considerations, and who, in the coarse enjoyment of the present, bury alike all thought of the past and all expectation of and hope for the future. The stigma of improvidence has long attached, and we fear must yet long attach, itself to the generality of English artisans. But for this stigma there would be no operatives in the world equal to the English operative either in wealth, intelligence, or influence. No one with any experience in the case, and with any care as to accuracy, would venture to say that the English workman, sui generis, is not industrious at his work,[6] but too many can say that he is not provident in his home.[7] The English artisan has been said to be at once the hardest worker and the hardest spender in the world. He works like a horse and spends like an ass. So foolishly, indeed, is much of this hard-earned money spent, or misspent, that it were a charity to withhold it, or if it could be done, to throw it into the sea. The consequences attending this riot of expenditure is as natural and as inevitable as any of the laws of God's government. As one who knows them well, and one who has done much for the intellectual culture of the better portion of the artisan class tells us: In a time of prosperity they feast; in a time of adversity they clem. Any depression of trade, be it even of the most transient nature, finds them totally unprepared for it; those who have been accustomed to the best wages invariably suffer the most; for, accustomed to the greatest amount of indulgences, they can do worst without it. It is such classes as these that must be reached by some means. In the improvement brought about in the social habits of the people of late years we have a happy augury of the future.[8]

It is time that we brought these introductory remarks to a close. We have to enter upon the consideration of helps and accessories to the spread of prudential habits among the working classes. We have to direct attention to the history and working of some of those schemes which, since the commencement of the present century, have been started to teach men self-reliance and self-dependence, and how they might best help themselves. Anxious not to over-estimate the importance of the subject, we still think it not too much to say that on our industrial classes depends very much the continued and onward progress of the world. Let them but be thoughtful and sober, and these classes, which are the direct agents in our wondrous and manifold British industry, will, not only under circumstances of huge toil and no inconsiderable danger, continue to provide all classes with the necessaries or comforts of life, but they will yet strike out new paths; they will become, in the future, as they have been in the past, the skilful inventors of new instruments and new modes. No fact is more capable of proof than that almost all the successful inventions that have been given to the world to economize the strength of the human hand have been either the productions of thoughtful and industrious workmen, or of those who have risen from that class. Deduct all, says Mr. Helps, that men of the humbler classes have done for England in the way of inventions only, and see where she would have been but for them. Nor is this all. The list would be a long one of those who have risen by their own industry and perseverance from the lowest ranks to fill the highest positions in every department of life. It is notorious, says Mr. Smiles, that many of our most successful employers, and some of our largest capitalists, have sprung directly from the working classes, and to use the ordinary phrase, have been 'the architects of their own fortunes;' whilst many more have risen from a rank scarcely a degree above them. It was the prudent thrift and careful accumulations of working-men that laid the foundations of the vast capital of the middle class; and it is this capital, combined with the skilled and energetic industry of all ranks, which renders England, in the quantity and quality of her work, superior to any other nation in the world.[9] And what the humbler classes have done for England in past times they may do, and indeed must do in the future, if we would keep our country in the proud position she now occupies in the world. It requires no prophetic vision to foresee that labour must yet undergo many transformations; and it is of paramount importance that the labourers themselves be not only intelligent but sober and frugal, in order that they may always compete on at least equal terms with the skilled workmen of any other nation.

It is far more difficult to point out what course of action will tend most successfully to secure the fair results of sobriety and frugality than it is to show how necessary it is that these virtues should be cultivated. The difficulty of doing good, as one writer expresses it, is at least equal to its luxury. The task we have undertaken is far from easy, and beset with perils, but we will endeavour to avoid all occasion of dispute. The pointing out of safe and profitable investments for the hard-earned savings of the frugal and industrious need not and should not be regarded as an invidious task. It seems to us that, as Savings Banks have to do primarily with the foundation of the habit of saving money, and indeed scarcely ever can be considered as competing with any of the numerous schemes for the investing of money, the subject should never be regarded with any jealous feeling. The principle upon which these institutions are founded interferes, to use the words of one who has written most ably on such subjects, with no individual action, saps no individual self-reliance. It prolongs childhood by no proffered leading-string; it valitudinarises energy by no hedges or walls of defence, no fetters of well-meant paternal restriction. It encourages virtue and forethought by no artificial excitements, but simply by providing that they shall not be debarred from full fructification, nor defrauded of their natural reward. It does not attempt to foster the infant habit of saving by the unnatural addition of a penny to every penny laid by; it contents itself with endeavouring to secure to the poor and inexperienced that safe investment and that reasonable return for their small economies which is their just and scanty due.[10] Strengthened by such testimony, we will proceed at once to sketch the history, and, as far as we are able, to show the benefits to be derived from the various kinds of banks for savings established from time to time amongst us.

[1] The following table taken from the Statistical Returns, presented by the Board of Trade, shows in a clear light how much of the position of the working classes must have been improved by the removal of fiscal burdens. Almost all the impositions of taxation between 1850 and 1864 have fallen upon the wealthier classes:—

[2] In 1846, according to the Report of the Registrar General for that year, out of the persons married in that year, one man out of three, and one woman in two, signed the register with marks. What was being done for the children of that year may be gathered from the return for 1864, where it is shown that only eighteen in 100 of those marrying in that year were unable to write their names.

[3] Speech at Newton-le-willows, July 22, 1865.

[4] By way of giving an example of our meaning, we would adduce the case of the workmen employed in the large brass works of Messrs. Guest and Chrimes, Rotherham. When one of their number, for instance, gets married, instead of the accustomed hard-drinking, the men and their wives drink tea together, and a piece of furniture of substantial value is presented to the newly-married pair, paid for out of the subscriptions by the men. On one of these occasions it is related, that the head of the firm was asked to present articles which had been bought for two newly-married couples, and Mr. Guest complied and introduced the business as follows: The custom you have adopted deserves the warmest commendation and support, and is well worthy of superseding those footings, fines, treats, &c., which, until recently, had become a source of the most cruel, heartless, and unjust robbery to which workmen could possibly be exposed by each other. Thank God that wicked system is fast passing away.

[5] In 1851-2 a large and well-known engineering firm in Leeds had a serious struggle with their workmen on account of the masters having determined to pay the men according to their merit and the character of the work turned out. A determined strike was the result, which, though the original difference was only with eight men, threw eventually more than 600 out of employment. Fresh hands were obtained with the usual difficulty, and these were subjected to great annoyance and even danger; in eighteen months, however, the works were again all going and were efficiently manned. The masters henceforth made it a condition of employment under them that no member of a trades' union should be engaged, and the sequel was a better behaved and superior class of men. Not only so, but the masters are now enabled to make their own regulations for the benefit of those employed under them, which before, owing to the interference of the trades society, they could not make. They have instituted a sick and funeral fund to which the men contribute by working ten minutes additional time