FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[G]Annales de l'Institut des Sciences sociales, of Brussels.

[G]Annales de l'Institut des Sciences sociales, of Brussels.

ByHectorDENIS

The accumulation and safe keeping of funds, their investment with the triple guarantee of security, productiveness and easy and prompt realization are regarded as the fundamental functions of Savings Banks, and it is in these directions that their development has especially been accomplished.

The comparative studies on these institutions, such as the works of Rostrand and the fine account of Messrs Hamande and Burny testify to the increasing ingenuity of the means of drawing out and gathering up savings, and of the great expansion Savings Banks well conducted can give to divers forms of credit, and will finally be obliged to give them.

But such is the flexibility of this institution that in carrying the spirit of reform into the means of assuring to the depositor the most prompt and convenient disposal of his savings, there ought, in order to apply it to his payments, to be accomplished in the Savings Bank, an evolution equally fecund in a new direction.

A savings bank like that of Vienna having at its command the powerful lever of the postal service, combining in a few years with singular ability, the centralization of the accounts of itsdepositors with the post office functions,—at once receptive and distributive, centripetal and centrifugal, cannot fail to appear one of the most ingenious, stable and perfect organs of modern circulation.

There is no need to discover in this functional evolution the realisation of any new principle—undeniable bonds of filiation attach it manifestly to the Bank of Amsterdam, whose system of clearing accounts Adam Smith has so admirably described, and in a still more distant past to the Bank of Venice, which, more perhaps than the Bank of St-George, served as a type to the Bank of Amsterdam; only like the most advanced modern institutions of credit and settling up, it has, over the primitive institutions, the advantage of perfections of means, of rapidity, and of an ever-growing importance in its operations, and of an ever increasing economy of money;—it has as its own peculiar features conditions of special expansion, valuable means of control and specially a capacity of adaptation to a system of credit institutions which can make it one of the instruments of the transformation of the monetary system.

The Austrian Imperial Government in carrying out the reforms which are the subject of this paper does not directly pursue the solution of the monetary problem, but is primarily occupied with the financial interest of the Savings Bank. As its able secretary, M. Tobisch, has explained, the law of May 28th1882, of which the text is given further on, in organising the Postal Savings Bank, caused no doubt a considerable number of deposits to be made, but their average importance was so feeble and they involved such general expenses, that the cost almost completely absorbed the results of the investments. In order to distribute these general expenses over a greater mass of monies and to realise a larger clear profit, that is to cause more considerable deposits to be made by especially interesting tradesmen and working-men to have recourse to the medium of the Savings Bank, a notice of the Minister of Commerce of Oct. 29 1883, authorised the depositors of over 100 florins to draw cheques on the Central Office at Vienna. Originally the depositor remained the holder ofhis account-book, but from Dec. 1 1886, the deposit of all such books at the Central Office in Vienna became obligatory for those who wished to take advantage of the cheque service. The institution of this service had a considerable influence on the progress of the amount of deposits; before the reform in 1883 the total deposits amounted to 8,176,889 florins, a year after in 1884, they reached 56,586,461 florins, of which 46,223,539 was connected with the cheque service.

The natural corollary of the centralisation at Vienna of the accounts of all those who adhered to the cheque-service was the organisation of the service of clearing accounts, for the more the number of its adherents increased, the more frequently it happened that one depositor drew a cheque in favour of another depositor. The cheque, up till then payable in specie, became a clearing cheque realisable by a simple transfer in writing. This complimentary service which is destined to become the principal one, was instituted Sept. 1 1884.

The Austrian institution is only at present an element in the vast modern system of credit and the balancing of accounts and no one is ignorant that the system entirely rests on metallic money, as Stanley Jevons, Francis A. Walker and Macleod have elsewhere clearly shown. Macleod makes the striking comparison of modern circulation to the movement of a peg top which spins round on a very fine metallic point.

The Postal Savings Bank, as it is organised and works, has not yet any kind of purpose of freeing circulation from its metallic basis, but like all other credit institutions, it contributes to this end by economising more and more the use of money; with extraordinary powers of expansion, it enables an ever increasing number of respectable persons, associations or bodies, to effect all their payments without the least risk, almost without loss of time and without having to keep any metallic money in their possession. And if one tries to conceive the future ideal evolution of an instrument so flexible as the Savings Bank, one may expect as I shall attempt to show in subsequent papers, that in combining its circulatory function with its function of investment it will be led into concurrencewith the radical transformation sought by M. Solvay in the definitive elimination of the metallic instrument.

The sources from which the materials of this account have been drawn, are the laws, regulations and instructions of which the translation is appended, the statistics of the cheque and clearing service in the last official report (Zwölfter Rechenschaftsbericht des postsparcassen Amtes) the remarkable studies of M. Tobisch, secretary of the Savings Bank, and finally direct observation. Guided by one of the most enlightened officials of the Savings Bank, Inspector L. Kotschy, I have been able to penetrate into the inner life of this admirable institution. The Vienna Central Postal Bank occupies the old palace of the University; there, distributed in its antique halls, a population of 1,300 employés, among them 150 ladies, working after a skilfully organised plan, pursue silently now for thirteen years, with inflexible method, an experiment of very great interest for science and for the economic life of societies. Bound by invisible threads to more than four thousand secondary organs:—the post offices, which plunge directly into the torrent of the exchanges,—the Central Office records each day with extraordinary precision the minutest changes that the ever increasing number of its adherents accomplish in the social movement of wealth.

All the operations of which it thus fixes the traces arrange themselves into two great classes which recur as the two essential aspects of the rhythmic movement of a central organ of circulation; one joins in the formation of the property of every adherent of the system, in the constitution of his credit at the Central Bank; the other leads to different modes of disposing of his property and to the formation of his debit.

The services of cheques and account-clearing[H]of the Austrian Savings Bank enable on the one hand every person to make, under conditions fixed by law, in any Post Office in the Austrian Empire, payments on account, or to the profit of allthose who participate in the service; on the other and they enable every adherent to assign by means of a payment cheque, a part of his property to anyone, physically and morally, or by means of a clearance cheque to cause the transfer to be made to the account of another participator in the service.

The Austrian terminology bristles with difficulties, the name ofcheque verkehris here given to the first of these services,circulation of payment chequesresulting in the end in the use of metallic money, and to the second service, the name ofclearing verkehr, circulation ofclearing cheques, which resolves itself, as far as the Savings Bank is concerned, into the transference from one account to another, in the substitution of one creditor for another.

The cheque service may exclusively be adhered to, or the cheque andclearingservice.

For affiliation to the cheque service it is necessary to request the Office of the Postal Savings Bank in Vienna to open an account, to send a cheque book and a book ofcertificates of receipts and deposits, of which we are now about to speak. The cheque book costs 1 florin 50 kreutzers, the certificates of deposit 1 kreutzer a piece.

The Post Office can refuse the request without having to give any reason. If an account is opened to the grantee, he receives cheque books and certificates, but he is bound within a month to effect a deposit of 100 florins as security. Neither the law nor the regulations fix any maximum of deposit. The minimum of 100 florins will remain in the hands of the administration, without the person entitled to it being able to dispose of it as long as he has an account open in the Post Office. The adhesion to theclearingcirculation is at once requested by the Post Office, of adherents to the cheque service.

The number of adherents to the cheque service is not identical with that of adherents to the service ofclearing. For the thirteen years that these services have been instituted the first has always taken precedence of the second, but the divergence which exists between the two numbers is being reduced and the number of adherents to theclearingservice tends to blend andwill finally blend with the adherents to the cheque service.

The geographical distribution of those who have accounts in the two services is of much interest. In 1895, out of 28,363 adherents to the cheque service there were 27,820 in Austria, 353 in Hungary, and 190 abroad,—163 in the German Empire, 5 in England, 1 in France, 3 in Holland, 5 in Italy, 3 in Switzerland, 2 in Belgium—an interesting fact.

The twelfth report:Zwölfter Rechenschaftsbericht des postsparcassen Amtes, insists on the important number of Hungarian commercial firms, affiliated to the Austrian Bank, all of whom have an account open in the Post Office Savings Bank instituted in 1887 at Budapest; it announces the approaching inauguration of a direct and regular service of account-keeping between the two Banks, a service to which the traders in both countries attach great importance. It will mark a new phase in the evolution of the institution; and form as it were the preface to its internationalisation.

It is curious to note that out of 543 residing in Hungary and abroad who have cheque accounts, there are 434 who are affiliated to theClearingat Vienna, that is 79.9%, a proportion very much larger than is seen in all those in the various Austrian provinces.

The number of those having accounts has successively been:

From the above it is seen that the proportion per cent of the number of adherents to the service of clearing rises gradually in the later years;—after having from 1890 to 1893 been nearly uniformly from 69 to 70%, it rises in 1895 to 73.2%.

The classification of the adherents from the point of view of conditions and profession reveals the elasticity peculiar to such an institution. Advocates, notaries, doctors, even professors appear in great numbers. Manufacturers and traders united represent nevertheless more than half the total number of members; 339 bankers and money-changers, 362 associations for savings and loans, 220 private savings banks, 1,490 associations or corporations,—public establishments of which 185 were communes and administrative bodies,—271 benevolent associations, funds, establishments and foundations, 175 agricultural and forestal associations and 175 religious associations, 266 assurance societies, and 204 journals or periodicals serving as media for the Savings Bank. The administration of the State forests and domains have recourse to the Savings Bank in order to bank the produce of the forestal sales, and the administration of taxes is now experimenting as to its intervention for the getting in of duties. This institution thus presents a marvellous flexibility, invading by degrees the whole domain of exchange and enveloping one by one all the organs of the collective life.

Let us first explain the modes of operating payments to the profit of every member affiliated to the cheque and clearing service. In the first of these modes, the instrument employed is thecertificate or attestation of receipt and of deposit(empfang erlag scheine). (Fig. 1.)

Books containing blank certificates are issued by the Central Office at the low price of a kreutzer the piece, to every person adhering to the cheque and clearing services; these are books of 10, 20, 50 and 100 pieces, and to meet the needs of various holders they are drawn up either in German or in some other of the tongues spoken in the Empire. All these certificates bear the number of the account to the operations of which they are destined and carry the name and the address of the account holder.

Each of the certificates presents three parts which are separated one from the other in the course of the operation: the first, the counterfoil, remains attached to the book and in the hands of the holder of the account; of the two others, one, the attestation of the payment, has to be returned by the Post Office receiver to the person who makes the payment; the third the certificate of the deposit has to be transmitted to the Central Office at Vienna, which returns it to the holder of the account. To make a payment it is necessary to fill in the certificate of receipt and the certificate of deposit, and to present them at a Post Office with the sum to be paid into the holder's account. The receiver of the Post Office will bank the sum, and will sign the receipt, imprinting on it the stamp of the office, and will remit it to the person making the payment; he will then detach the certificate of the deposit and will send it to the Central office at Vienna with the daily account of his operations. The central administration will immediately credit the person in whose favour the payment is made, in the account that it has opened for him, and it will then transmit to him the deposit certificate with an extract of his account.

Such is the series of operations which result fromempfang erlag schein.

Suppose for example that the holder of an account is a merchant who has furnished supplies to a customer in the provinces to the amount of a hundred florins, net. He fills up a leaf of the account book, bearing a certain number, on which he indicates the amount payable, and which payment is to be placed to his account; he sends this leaf to his customer, keeping the counterfoil with the customer's name written on it: the customer forwards the leaf to the Post Office where he lives with the sum due: the postal receiver separates from the leaf the certificate of receipt (empfang schein), which he signs and returns to the customer, he sends the certificate of deposit to the Central Office at Vienna, where the sum is carried to the account of the merchant. After which the deposit certificate bearing the name of the person making the payment is forwarded to the merchant with an extract from his current account, enabling him thus to exercise strict control.

Figure I.

Deposits can be made by the intermediary of rural postmen to the extent of 500 florins. In this case the receipt and deposit certificates must be remitted to them with the sum; a provisional receipt is given which is replaced at the next round by the official receipt of the district post-office.

It will be interesting to show the importance to which this mode of arranging deposits has now attained.

There is at the Central Office at Vienna a printing office which permanently employs 16 workmen, exclusively engaged in printing cheques and certificates of receipts and deposits. Six million of the latter kind of certificates are now annually printed and the number of them printed since the setting up of this system in 1883 amounts to 107 millions. An office for the verification and control of the printed matter is connected with this workshop. As to the amount of payments made through these certificates to the accounts of holders the 12thReport enables us to give the statistics.

At the opening of the year 1883 the sums paid into the funds of the account holders, by means of theEmpfang erlag scheinamounted to 322,284 florins.

They rose successively:

The annual growth has been during the later years about 70 to 80 millions of florins. It moves at a regular pace.

I have shown by the example above how by aid of theempfang erlag scheine, the trader can by means of his responsible agent, the Savings Bank, receive at once the amounts of his invoices, without the money passing through his own hands. Numerous other applications of the system are before us: commercial travellers can deposit to the account of their employers, the sums they have collected in their rounds; they can even add at the back of the certificate such helpful notes as they think necessary; the commercial firm which employs them being regularly and immediately informed of payments by account extracts and the certificates of deposit being successively forwarded to the firm by the Central Office at Vienna.

Associations of every kind having accounts at the Savings Bank can by the same means gather subscriptions from the members: it is enough to send their memberscertificates of receipt and deposit; each one makes his payment at the neighbouring post office; the associations receiving, as the merchants, extracts of their accounts.

Assurance societies can in like manner, effect the payment of their insurers' premiums without any formality beyond that of sending to these insurers theempfang erlag scheine. And in like manner subscriptions to journals and all kinds of periodical payments can be received.

Post Office orders issued to the benefit of any person affiliated to the cheque-service can, at his request be placed to the credit of his account. He gives to this end, on forms required by the regulations, an authorisation at his district post office. On its side the Central Office of the Savings Bank puts itself in relation with the post office. Ingenious combinations which are indicated in the instructions reproduced in the appendix to this paper, cause the order to be transmitted to the Money Order Office of the Viennese Post Office, which in paying the amount to the Central Office of the Savings Bank will at the game time inform of this transmission, the person in whose favour the order is made out.

The Post Office Orders only take a very secondary position in the accounts of thechequeandclearingservice.

It is stated that the progressive movement is at once slower and more regular since 1891, than it was previously.

The Postal Savings Bank receives in like manner for the benefit of holders of cheque-books, dividend warrants due from the Austrian public funds. It records the amount of them to the credit of the holder's account and receives a fee of 1 kreutzer a piece.

It is the least important of the agencies which feed the credit of the adherents of the system.

The amount of claims to debts and bills rendered payable at the post office can in like manner be placed to the credit of the adherent to the cheque and clearing service in favour of whom these bills have been drawn.

The importance of this agency is more considerable, but its progressive development is said to move at an irregular rate.

Introduced in 1886, it was absolutely insignificant during the first two years.

When the bearer of a cheque book is at the same time an adherent to theclearingcirculation, the amount of the cheques issued in his favour is carried to the credit of his account by the Postal Savings Bank, unless on these cheques is expressly noted:Outside the clearing circulation.

The amount of this service, after that of theempfang erlag scheine, is the most important element in the formation of the accounts' credit. It has nearly quintupled in the last ten years, moving forward, since 1886, at a steady rate, a proof, as the whole of the facts otherwise witness, of the progressive penetration of the system into the national economy.

At the opening of the institution ofclearing verkehr, in the second fortnight in 1884, the amount of the sums carried to theclearingaccount was:

The last and assuredly the most ingenious of the application of the system is being made at this very time in the payment of taxes.

Thecertificate of the payment of taxes (steuer Einzahlungs-schein)is nothing but a special form ofempfang erlag schein; the Savings Bank proceeds experimentally by the trial of this mode of collecting the taxes in the province of Lower Austria.

The document, which costs 5 kreutzers, is divided into three parts: theEmpfang schein, theErlag schein, theTreasury acknowledgement: Amtliche bestätigung(confirmation and official attestation). (Fig. II.)

The tax payer pays at the Post Office the amount of his tax which must be paid to the account of the central administration of taxes at Vienna; the document bears the account number of this Receipt Office of Taxation. The attestation of this payment of the tax-payer is signed by the postal employé and bears the stamp of his post office.

The remainder of the document is detached from the tax receipt and presents at first theerlag schein; it is the authentication of the deposit paid to the cashier of the administration of finances and which is sent by an employé of the Central Post Office at Vienna. It bears the name, the profession, the address of the tax-payer, the amount of the payment made by him, and shows what is the nature of the taxes received and the number of the account at the ministry of finances.

The other part of the document is the attestation by the ministry of finances itself of the payment made to its account; thisamtliche bestätigungwill be detached and sent to the tax-payer: he will thus possess in the end a double authentication. It may be easily imagined how a tax-payer who is an adherent of the clearing service can pay his tax by a simple transfer of accounts, the ministry of finances having itself an account open at the Savings Bank.

If the various modes which concur to the formation of the property of the account holders in the Central Office at Vienna are considered as a whole the total amount of deposits has successively been:

In fixing the proportional relations per cent of all the statistical data here brought together we see that the factors which concur to form the credit of the double service of cheques and of clearing, the payments made by way ofempfang erlag scheinrepresent in 1895, 65%, and the transfers by writing about 35%, while the total amount of the banking of post office orders, of interest in the public funds and of bills does not come to more than 3% of the whole.

Figure II.

The second class of operations of the cheque and clearing service of the Austrian Postal Savings Bank embraces the different modes of disposing of the property of the depositors who share in the service. The cheque is in a general way the instrument to which they recur under its two fundamental forms of cheques of payment and cheques of clearing, according as the amount is to be paid in cash or to be transferred to the account of another participant in the clearing service. The cheque books remitted to holders serve the double purpose; it has not been found necessary to print distinct documents, nor even to give to these two classes of cheques different colours.

Cheque books containing fifty pieces are remitted to participants by the Central Office at the charge of 1 florin 50 kreutzers; this sum means 50 kreutzers, expense of paper and printing and 1 florin stamp duty. They are printed on the premises of the Central Office as are the attestations of receipts and deposits. About 2,500,000 of them are now annually reproduced and more than 23,000,000 of cheques have been issued since the official presses were first set up at Vienna. They are prepared either in German, or in any other language spoken in the Empire. Before sending them to the holders of an account the Office prints on each of these vouchers the number of the account for which they are to be used, as well as the name and address of the holder. (Fig. III.)

Expressed in ordinary terms, the cheque states, that the Savings Bank will pay, on the voucher being forwarded, the sum of which the amount in florins has been written out in full. It bears the signature of the person drawing it. To avoid frauds in the statement of the sums to be paid, the Savings Bank has adopted moreover an arrangement so ingenious and sure that up to the present time no fraud has been noted.

The cheque bears to the right four series of figures going from 1 to 9. The first set corresponds to thousands, the second to hundreds, the third to tens, the fourth to units; the four series united together can express the sum of 9,999 florins, beyond which no cheque can be drawn, so that if this part of the document is left intact, the amount of the cheque will be 9,999 florins, provided always that the written statement agrees with the series of figures. If a lower figure is stated, then the number of the thousands, hundreds, tens exceedingthe amount desired must be cut off with a pair of scissors. Suppose for example the cheque is to be for 782 florins; the column of the thousands is to be cut off, figures 8 and 9 in the columns of the hundreds, the last figure in that of the tens and the last seven in the column of units. It is evident that by this ingenious method of control, it will never be possible to raise the amount of the cheque; it will be of no use to alter the written statement of the amount in order to augment it, for it will never be possible to make a corresponding alteration in the arrangement of the figures to the right; by this process of cutting off, the cheque can only be reduced in value but never augmented. And if the agreement between the written figures and the combination of the figures resulting from this way of cutting them out is not perfectly exact, the Central Office at Vienna rejects the voucher as possibly fraudulent, at any rate erroneous.

The cheque (of payment) can be payable to bearer at the Postal Savings Bank at Vienna. In this case it is delivered to the person who ought to receive the amount without the drawer having to transmit it to him. This party can either bank it himself immediately at the Post Office Bank at Vienna, or put it in circulation: this circulation is authorised for fourteen days, but the voucher cannot carry any endorsement. The cheque will be paid by the Office up to the time that the credit account of the drawer is sufficient to meet it.

If the cheque has been delivered to a person affiliated to the postal-service of cheques and clearing, he can have the amount put to his credit instead of receiving it in cash.

The customer of the Postal Savings Bank has the right to cause the amount of the cheque to be paid into the hands of a particular person in any one of the Post Offices; in this case he writes on the back of the cheque the address of the person for whom he intends it.

Figure III.

This cheque will be sent by him to the Central Office at Vienna. There are special envelopes for the transmission of these advices which are sold by the Office to the possessors of cheque books. The Central Office will immediately transmit to the person designated an assignment of payment and the cheque will be paid to him on his returning this assignment, signed by him as a receipt. He will detach from it, in order to preserve it, a portion on which is noted the amount of the sum he has received, who the holder of the account is, the said portion bearing also the stamp of the Postal Office at Vienna.

A notice to the post office where it is payable will have been sent at the same time, giving authority to pay the cheque. (Fig. IV.)

Everyday 4,000 to 5,000 of these authorisations to pay cheques are issued. Ladies write out these authorisations by means of type-writing machines: their fingers work the machine with astounding rapidity. According to the data given me each of them prints every day 400 to 500 assignments of payment to the persons designated and authorisations to the post-offices to pay; and the hours of work averaging seven, they write about one a minute.

The cheque can be drawn in favour of a person living in Hungary or a foreign country. It is enough that on the back is noted:—«for the issue of a post office order in favour of N ...», and that it is signed. The Central Office at Vienna will send immediately a post office order of corresponding import. The telegraphic order can even be used.

Statistics distinguish these three categories of cheques and enable us to follow their movement.

Payments effected

It will be seen that in the last ten years the movement of the cheques payable to bearer has been more rapid than that of cheques paid at the post offices; the amount of the former has more than tripled.

The possessors of cheque books can cause purchases to be made by the Post Office in the public funds up to the amount of their account. The order ought to be explained by the transmission of a cheque of a value corresponding to that of the stocks to be bought. The rights acquired by the Post Office will either be sent on to the purchaser of the stocks, or at his request kept by the Office and under its guarantee. The Office banks the dividend warrants on their payments and places them to the credit of its client unless he requires them to be sent to him or the money remitted.

Figure IV.

The importance of these payments is not considerable as is seen by the following figures:

The Postal Savings Bank pays in the same way on account of the adherents of the cheque and clearing service, bills, signed bonds, accounts admitted and approved. Bills of exchange are settled at the Postal Office at Vienna. In order to realize their payment, the holder of an account draws a cheque for the amount of the bill and writes on the back:for payment of the bill herein refered to. He indicates the date of its falling due and puts his signature below these remarks. This cheque is sent to the Postal Office at Vienna before the bill falls due. It can be addressed also to the possessor of the bill, who will present it at the date it is due to the Postal pay Office with at the same time his claim. If the possessor of the bill is himself affiliated to the cheque service he can have the bill put to the credit of his account.

The degree of importance of this branch is indicated by the following figures:

From this it will be seen that during the last five years the movement has so accelerated that the amount has in the interval nearly doubled.

Here the system presents to us its highest degree of interest: the possessors of account books, adherents of the clearing service, can discharge their debts one to the other by the transfer of accounts. It is sufficient to write at the back of the cheque: to be carried to the credit of account No..., with the name of the holder of the account and his address. In this case the amount of the cheque is placed to the debit of the person who issued it and to the credit of the person in whose favour it is drawn.

The two holders of accounts at the Savings Bank are immediately informed of this transfer by the sending of the extract of their accounts.

The cheques which have this destination are properly speaking clearing cheques not intended to be paid in species; but it may happen that a cheque destined for a member, adherent to the clearing service has in an exceptional case to be paid in money; the person who has issued it will in that case have to make a note at the back of the document:Outside the clearing circulation.

The statistics show the growing importance ofclearing cheques.

It will be seen that in the last ten years, the amount has nearly quintupled. The pace of the movement is here more rapid than in cheques payable in cash.

The proportional relations of all the modes of disposing of the credit of the adherents of the cheques andclearingservice show that in 1895 on a total of liquidations or payments of 1,484,251,488 florins, 32% were occasioned by transfers of accounts, 32% by cheques to bearer (cassa-checks), 35% by cheques to appointed persons, and the remainder by the other modes indicated.

The progress of the figures taken all round is as follows:

All this formidable account keeping is done strictly day by day. Three hundred employés are working at it constantly. Special employés who have acquired an extraordinary ability, verify the signatures on each occasion. The type signaturesare classed alphabetically. Current-accounts are drawn up on loose sheets and not in books: this is considered a real progress for books are soon in tatters. On each occasion an extract of the account is sent to the party interested: every transfer entails the sending extracts to both parties interested. Envelopes with their names and addresses printed are classified in pigeon holes so as to be easily found. I join to this explanation some extracts from typical accounts. One shows a banking made by a post office, the other a transfer made between adherents to theclearingsystem. (Fig. V.)

The centralisation of all this vast account-keeping at the Central Office of the Savings Bank at Vienna is the basis of the system, the pledge of the regularity of the service and of the certainty of the control. Notwithstanding the inevitable complexity of operations and accounts, this complexity does not entail any really prejudicial delays[L]. The increasing figure of the operations is a proof of the growing favour of the public and is a testimony to the usefulness of the institution beyond all argument. The coefficient of error has been very slight and fraud has not been as yet able to succeed in causing trouble in the working of this admirable machinery of circulation.

The Central Office is put every day in relation with 4,000 post offices, which transmit to it packets containing theempfang erlag schein, the claims and all the documents which have been brought them. The unfastening of this immense correspondence is simplified by machinery. All these documents are enclosed in large envelopes of uniform dimensions so that they can be opened by packets, in cutting off their edges by means of large knives working mechanically. (Fig. VI.)

The Postal Office of Vienna prepares annually the list of all the possessors of cheque books who are adherents to the clearing service; this list is printed and can be obtained by subscribers with the supplements published at irregular intervals for one florin a year.

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