POSSIBILITIES OF THE LAND 167 



"A noteworthy point in the return is the fact that the 

 savings of the people, as shown in the banks account, 

 have remained practically stationary, the withdrawals 

 almost balancing the deposits. This has now been the 

 case for several years, and is in direct contrast to the 

 position in the United States, where the deposits in the 

 savings bank have nearly quadrupled in the past twenty 

 years, and now reach the enormous sum of over 

 £600,000,000. In the past six years alone they have 

 grown by nearly ^^200,000,000." 



Now these two instances are but examples of what is 

 going on in most of the civilised countries of the world. 



We wonder whether these startling facts will arouse 

 the British people to a sense of their own weakness ; their 

 wretched condition in comparison with other countries. 



Will they awake to a realisation of what the sacrifice 

 of agriculture, the worship of a free trade fetish, and 

 blind adherence to a misguided, if sincere, political party 

 has brought them to? 



Will the fact that in the United States the people, out United 

 of their savings, have added in six years, £200,000,000 to Savings 

 the credit side of their banking account, appeal to them 

 as a thunderclap, or will they treat the matter with the 

 same dull apathy with which they have treated practi- 

 cally all those vitally important social and economic 

 questions upon which depends their life's well-being. 



Will it ever occur to the British people that if the 

 Prussian people can bank in one year twenty-seven mil- 

 lions sterhng out of their savings, and the people of the 

 United States thirty-three milHons, that we, under 

 the same sensible, wise and favourable fiscal conditions 



