528 



MASSACHUSETTS. 



deficit increasing year by year, until it has 

 now reached serious proportions. To meet 

 the deficit, and the probable necessities of the 

 coming year, the sum of $2,000,000 will be 

 needed in addition to the ordinary revenue, 

 and the Governor recommends that that sum 

 be raised by direct taxation. 



SaYings-Banks. The total of deposits in the 

 savings-banks at the close of business Oct. 30, 

 1886, was $291,197,900.96, an increase for the 

 year of $16,199,488.08, which is greater than 

 for any year since 1875. The number of de- 

 positors was 906,039, an increase of 57,250, 

 which is the largest increase for any year since 

 1872. There are now 172 savings-banks doing 

 business in the Commonwealth, one more than 

 the year previous. The savings-banks of the 

 State find it more and more difficult with each 

 succeeding year to invest their deposits safely 

 and profitably. United States bonds pay their 

 holders little more than 2 per cent, net in- 

 come, and they are being rapidly called in. 

 Comparatively few city and town bonds are 

 being issued. All that remain, then, for the 

 investment of the bulk of the deposits are 

 mortgages on real estate and loans on personal 

 security. While real- estate mortgages are de- 

 sirable, experience has shown that it is not 

 safe to have too large a proportion of the de- 

 posits in investments that can not be readily 

 turned into cash at short notice, when needed. 

 The present statutes provide that not over 

 one third of the deposits shall be invested in 

 personal securities. " Loans on personal se- 

 curities," says the Governor, " consisting of 

 the notes of a principal with two or more 

 sureties, often strengthened with satisfactory 

 collateral, or of the notes of strong corpora- 

 tions, with the guarantee of responsible par- 

 ties, are most desirable investments, especially 

 when the notes contain a provision that any 

 part of the loan needed to pay depositors may 

 be called before maturity. In case of a run on 

 the bank in time of panic, these loans are 

 practically on demand, and they are due from 

 persons able to respond promptly under almost 

 any circumstances. Believing that the inter- 

 est of the depositors will be promoted by al- 

 lowing a larger investment in such desirable 

 loans, I recommend that the limitation of loans 

 upon personal securities be increased from 33 

 to 40 per cent, of the total deposits." 



Co-operative Banks. The interest m the es- 

 tablishment of co-operative banks is increas- 

 ing. During the year ten have been incorpo- 

 rated, making forty now in operation. " The 

 object," says the Governor, "for which they 

 were primarily established to assist mechan- 

 ics and other persons of moderate means in se- 

 curing homesteads by the use of their monthly 

 savings recommends them to the fostering 

 care of the Legislature, and also requires that 

 their stability should be maintained by such 

 conservative legislation as their development 

 calls for." 



Education. By the law of 1870, power is 



granted the towns to unite into districts for the 

 purpose of securing such supervision as their 

 schools may require. Four districts have been 

 formed under this law, with good results. 



The new building for the State Normal Art 

 School is nearly completed. The Governor 

 suggests that the Legislature consider whether 

 the success of this experiment in higher edu- 

 cation does not warrant the extension of the 

 State normal system to music. " The promo- 

 tion of our manufacturing interests," he says, 

 "and the welfare of working men and women 

 appear to me to require the eaily establish- 

 ment of high-schools of the mechanic arts and 

 of industrial design, in our cities and larger 

 towns, and the incorporation of manual train- 

 ing among the studies and exercises of gram- 

 mar-schools, in order to give handicraft, fa- 

 miliarity with the use of tools, and a knowl- 

 edge of mechanical principles to all the youth 

 of the State. It should be borne in mind that 

 when the existing studies and exercises were 

 introduced into the schools of the Common- 

 wealth, by far the greater part of our people 

 lived in isolated houses or in small villages, 

 where every boy had occasion to work, and to 

 learn the use of tools. At the present time, 

 with moj^e than three fourths of our popula- 

 tion gathered into cities and large towns, with 

 little or no opportunity for useful work in the 

 intervals of study, a generation is growing up 

 in Massachusetts without instruction or train- 

 ing of eye and hand. The decay of the ap- 

 prentice system has coincided with this change 

 in depriving our youth of the me*ans of acquir- 

 ing skill in the use of tools and knowledge of 

 mechanical principles, and in driving them 

 more and more into the already overcrowded 

 ranks of those who follow sedentary occupa- 

 tions; while an increasing severity of compe- 

 tition is making it constantly more difficult 

 for the Commonwealth to maintain the ad- 

 vanced position which, from the first, it has 

 held among the manufacturing States of the 

 Union." 



Sunday Laws. On this subject the Governor, 

 in his message to the Legislature of 1887, says: 

 " The laws concerning the observance of the 

 Lord's day are, in their present form, of un- 

 equal if not unjust operation, and by partial 

 or irregular enforcement are liable to become 

 an annoyance to the people and a reproach to 

 the State. The whole body of the Sunday 

 laws should be thoroughly and carefully re- 

 vised, and this should be done without delay. 

 I believe that it is possible to frame such legis- 

 lation as will permit the doing of acts which, 

 in the present state of society, are generally 

 approved as practically necessary on all days 

 alike, and will remove from our law the re- 

 proach of being an aid to fraud and an encour- 

 agement to the violation of just obligations ; 

 and I have no doubt that this can be done with 

 due regard to the quiet and sanctity of thf 

 Sabbath, and without offending the feelings of 

 any class of our citizens." 



