of its primitive aim, it keeps the accounts of over thirty thousand who are affiliated and who annually through this medium do business of which the figures are above a thousand millions of florins.

The Savings Bank exacts from those persons who wish to transact business through its medium, a fixed monetary deposit of 100 florins, without relation therefore to the importance of the transactions which they can effect; it opens for them an account and delivers them, upon request, cheque books which serve to effect the payments which they desire to make. All this is done by the intervention of any post-office of the Empire.

Each time that a cheque is paid by an affiliated person, the Central Office at Vienna is advised by post and returns immediately, also by post, an extract of their account to the two persons concerned. Each affiliated person's account is thus kept to date, and this as much for the Central Bank as for the person affiliated.

Here then are thirty thousand persons who could at a stretch do entirely without money—if their mutual relations were sufficient to permit them to do so for all the necessaries of life, and this result is obtained merely by the fact that an official establishment is willing to undertake to keep the banking account. But it is seen that these thirty thousand persons are but a select few in the mass of the population, since the Savings Bank admits them to carry on transactions merely upon the deposit of 100 florins, thus almost always at the risk and peril of the transactors, as has always been the case so far in regard to cheques. And it is evident that if it were desired to make the system general, it would be necessary to adopt the principle of comptabilism which would mean that the transactions were guaranteed by the property of the persons affiliated.

Here then, as I said, has the Savings Bank of Vienna become up to a certain point a comptabilistic establishment. I may add that the dangers that might threaten this institution, as far as it actually works, spring from its being not entirely comptabilistic, in so far as it still retains the metallic basis.

The deposits received are not left unproductive, they are placed in funds, public or otherwise.

Let a political crisis occur which should cause a rush of withdrawals of these deposits from the Bank and it would be exposed to the greatest dangers. Solely because the institution is based upon current ideas and not upon the comptabilistic system.

In effect, in this latter system, the individual who is affiliated does not make a deposit of monetary unities having a value in themselves, he gives as a pledge a commodity, and according to the value of this commodity he is permitted to make use of more or less unities.

Here then is the ground on which the institution ought to be based. Under these conditions deposits are not necessary. The affiliated person will give a pledge in exchange for his cheque book. The registers of the Central Savings Bank will declare that he is permitted to carry on transactions with x unities, and his cheques will be accepted, as long as he does not go beyond this figure.

In place of a deposit having a value of its own, there is the simply writing down, the entry of a right, and the dangers of the present system would be avoided.

The entry and the writing down constitute the ideal realization of the comptabilistic system. They lead one to understand that the transactional unities have only a fictitious value, that they serve solely to measure the transactional value of things, that their system is thus dependant on the existence of these things.

Ideally speaking, all the transactions, that is to say the changes in the fortunes of individuals, may be written down, may be entered, for example in bank books.

But concerning the practical side, although the entry remains the ideal conception, it may be that the necessities of human relations require other methods of a more convenient nature. This is a side of the question upon which we hope soon to set forth some solutions, but which can be discussed without the theoretical side of comptabilism being introduced.

Ernest SOLVAY.