164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and to so invest jjortions of their earnings as to make some provision 

 for the future. Mutual benefit societies are among the oldest of these 

 organizations, and are very numerous. Some of them confine their 

 operations mainly to giving temporary relief in time of sickness or 

 misfortune, or on the death of their members ; others have become 

 practically co-operative life-insurance companies. The sums annually 

 paid into these organizations are in the aggregate astonishingly large. 

 None of these societies, however, enable their members to accumulate 

 capital, and many of them are very unstable and unreliable. The 

 better class of them is not accessible to the masses of the people. 



Co-operative societies for production and distribution are not nu- 

 merous in this country. Many co-operative enterprises have been 

 started, but most of them have failed. The interest in such enter- 

 prises seems to be increasing, but at present they furnish but few of 

 our working-men with opportunities for the investment of their surplus 

 earnings. 



Building and loan associations have done excellent service in some 

 parts of the country by encouraging persons of small incomes to save 

 money and to invest it in houses for their families. In some parts of 

 Pennsylvania these associations have been particularly beneficial. 

 Large sections of Philadelphia, and of some of the smaller cities of the 

 State, have been built up by them, and thousands of working-men have 

 been led to save portions of their wages, and enabled to own their 

 homes through their agency. In some parts of the country, however, 

 they have not been so well managed, and poor people have sometimes 

 suffered loss and hardship in consequence. These hardships and losses 

 have created great distrust of these associations in some communities. 

 Excellent as is the service which they do, they do not furnish facilities 

 for saving which are available for all classes of the people, nor, with 

 their liability to careless or dishonest management, do they furnish 

 anything like an absolute security for money. The necessity of mak- 

 ing regular payments to them and to the mutual benefit and co-opera- 

 tive insurance societies is sometimes an additional incentive to econ- 

 omy, but in other instances it is productive of inconvenience and 

 hardship. 



The ordinary savings-banks have furnished all classes of the people 

 in some parts of the country with good facilities for saving small sums, 

 and have especially encouraged habits of thrift among the poorer 

 classes. In 1882 there were in the entire country 667 savings-banks, 

 the average deposits of Avhich amounted to $1,003,737,087. At that 

 time the New England States and New York together had about 

 eighty-one per cent of the savings-banks, and eighty-three per cent of 

 the savings-bank deposits of the entire country. 



The New England States are, on the whole, fairly well supplied 

 with savings-banks, having, on the average, one for every ten thou- 

 sand of the population. In some of these States the banks are so dis- 



