We believe that time and experience will enable the leaders of Friendly Societies generally to improve them, and introduce new ameliorations.  The best institutions are things of slow growth, and are shaped by experience, which includes failures as well as successes; and finally, they require age to strengthen them and root them in habit.  The rudest society established by working men for mutual help in sickness, independent of help from private charity or the poor-rates, is grounded on a right spirit, and is deserving of every encouragement.  It furnishes a foundation on which to build up something better.  It teaches self-reliance, and thus cultivates amongst the humblest classes habits of provident economy.

Friendly Societies began their operations before there was any science of vital statistics to guide them; and if they have made mistakes in mutual assurance, they have not stood alone.  Looking at the difficulties they have had to encounter, they are entitled to be judged charitably.  Good advice given them in a kindly spirit will not fail to produce good results.  The defects which are mixed up with them are to be regarded as but the transient integument which will most probably fall away as the flower ripens and the fruit matures.

CHAPTER VIII.

SAVINGS BANKS.

“I wish I could write all across the sky, in letters of gold, the one word SAVINGS BANK.”—­Rev. Win.  Marsh.

“The only true secret of assisting the poor is to make them agents in bettering their own condition.”—­Archbishop Sumner.

“Qui a vingt ne sait, a trente ne peut, a quarante n’a,—­jamais ne saura, ne pourra, n’aura.”—­French Proverb.

“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:  which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.”—­Proverbs vi. 6.

It is said that there is a skeleton in every household.  The skeleton is locked up—­put away in a cupboard—–­ and rarely seen.  Only the people inside the house know of its existence.  But the skeleton, nevertheless, cannot long be concealed.  It comes to light in some way or another.  The most common skeleton is Poverty.  Poverty, says Douglas Jerrold, is the great secret, kept at any pains by one-half the world from the other half.  When there is nothing laid by—­nothing saved to relieve sickness when it comes—­nothing to alleviate the wants of old age,—­this is the skeleton hid away in many a cupboard.

In a country such as this, where business is often brought to a standstill by over-trading and over-speculation, many masters, clerks, and workpeople are thrown out of employment.  They must wait until better times come round.  But in the meantime, how are they to live?  If they have accumulated no savings, and have nothing laid by, they are comparatively destitute.