22 Wisconsin Acach'tny of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



ravel intelligently the complications of our industrial condition. 

 The men of humbler mean?, in putting their little savings into 

 life insurance, have been aggregating vast sums with which large 

 capitalists might operate, but from which they themselves could 

 not get a cent for their lesser and, we shall maintain, equally safe 

 enterprises. 



The capitalists not having legitimate enterprises in which to 

 put the larger sums which the insurance companies have placed 

 at their control, have become speculators, have lost their ven- 

 tures, and swamped the insurance companies loaded with bogus, 

 insufficient or depreciated securities ; and the insured and his 

 money and insurance have been forever parted. 



The working masses must reflect that the plethoric millions, 

 which they boast of as constituting the assets of their favorite 

 company, are so much money collected from themselves and put 

 beyond the possibility of their own manipulation. More than a 

 billion of dollars within a generation have been gathered from 

 all quarters of the country ; from all pursuits and occupations; 

 from farm and country village, and massed for use in the large 

 cities. 



If this enormous aggregate were distributed to, or could be 

 handled by, the people from whom it came, financial relief would 

 at once be widely felt. The wheels of the humbler enterprises 

 would be speedily oiled. When it becomes possible for ihem to 

 secure accommodations, we shall start anew in industrial prosper- 

 ity, and out of the sum of small movements we shall reach the 

 possibility of great ones without peril. 



It is in industry as in nature — you cannot have rivers without 

 rills. 



The facts are the same with reference t ; savings banks. They' 

 may serve the poorer classes well in some respects, but in others, 

 and they are important ones too, they are an injury. They may 

 help each individual to save his own, but they hinder each indi- 

 vidual from being help: d with the little surpluses of his neighbor. 

 It is easy enough to deposit five dollars in a pavings bank, but no 

 poor man can get an accommodation of five dollars /y-o??i a savings 

 bank. 



