the Post Office and Trustee Savings Banks and the money order and other postal remittance business, and run as a national service for the receipt and custody of cash, for the utmost possible development of the cheque system, and for the cheapest possible organisation of remittances.  There is no longer any reason why this important branch of social organisation should be abandoned to the profit-maker, should be made the instrument of levying an unnecessarily heavy toll on the customers for the benefit of shareholders, and should now be exposed to the imminent danger of monopoly.

“If the receipt and custody of deposits and the keeping of current accounts were made a public service the Government might invest the funds thus placed at its disposal in a variety of ways.  A certain proportion, perhaps corresponding to what is now held as savings, would be invested, as at present, in Government securities—­not Consols, but such as are repayable at par at fixed dates, including Treasury Bills and Terminable Annuities; and any increase in this amount would, in effect, release so much capital for other uses, by paying off part of the National Debt.  But the bulk of the amount, corresponding with the proportion of their resources that the bankers now lend for business purposes, might be advanced, for terms of varying duration, partly to Government Departments and local authorities for all their great and rapidly extending enterprises, formerly abandoned to the profit-maker; and partly to a series of financial concerns, whose business it should be to discount the bills and satisfy the requests for loans of those profit-makers who now appeal to the bankers.  But these financial concerns should be organised, it is suggested, very largely by trades and industries, specialising in particular lines, and devoted, so far as possible, to meeting the business needs of the different occupations.  Whether they should be financial concerns, owned and directed by shareholders, and ran for their profit; or whether they might not, in some cases, be owned and directed by the great industrial associations and combinations that the Government is now promoting in the various industries, and be run for the advantage of the industries as wholes, may be a matter for consideration and possible experiment.  In either case, the concerns to which the Government would lend its capital would, of course, have to be of undoubted financial stability to be secured, it may be, by large uncalled capital, or by the joint and several guarantees of a numerous membership; coupled, possibly, with a charge on the assets.”

At first sight this proposal to differentiate the functions of banking is somewhat startling, and one wonders whether it could possibly work.  On consideration, however, there seems to be nothing actually impracticable about the scheme.  The Government would presumably take over all the offices and branches of the banks of the country, and would therein accept money on