aside a surplus, distributable to the depositors at regular periods.  In the United States the number of such institutions reported in 1914 was 2100.[7] They have over 11,000,000 depositors, deposits to the amount of $5,000,000,000, an average deposit of $444 per depositor, or of $50 per capita of the whole population.  These figures are very unequally distributed geographically, the divisions ranking as to total deposits in the following order:  the Eastern Middle, New England, Middle Western, Pacific, Southern, and Western divisions.  The first two of these groups of states have about 75 per cent of all the deposits, the Southern states hardly 2 per cent, and the Western (North Dakota to Oklahoma) only 1/4 of 1 per cent.

Sec. 6. #Typical mutual savings banks#.  About one third of these banks are on the mutual plan, having no capital stock (most of them in the East) and these contain about four fifths of all the deposits.  The stock savings banks have individual deposits of over a billion dollars, and have outstanding capital stock to the amount of about $90,000,000 (about 9 per cent of their deposits).  These stock savings banks to a much greater extent than do the mutual banks transact also a commercial business.

The banks on the mutual plan are therefore the most important, the typical savings banks.  The average rate of interest they paid to depositors in 1914 was 3.86 per cent.  About one half of their resources are invested in loans, mostly to small borrowers on the security of real estate, and most of the remainder consists of bonds and other securities of the safer kinds.

Savings banks are subject to the supervision and inspection of the banking departments in the several states, a fact that exerts a salutary effect though not insuring absolutely against either mistaken judgment or dishonesty on the part of the bank officials.[8]

Savings banks seek to keep invested as large a part as possible of their assets, keeping only in ready cash enough to meet a possible temporary excess of withdrawals over deposits.  In contrast with the policy of commercial banks with their demand deposits, the sound policy for savings banks is to reserve the right to require notice of intention to withdraw.  The period of such notice varies from a minimum of ten days to a maximum of about sixty days.  In ordinary circumstances it is not needful or usual for a bank to exercise this right, but it is a needful safeguard in times of commercial crises.  This requirement of notice is greatly to the advantage of depositors collectively and thus of the community as a whole.  It is not an undue limitation of the rights of the individual depositor.  It is unfair for the individual, in a period of financial stress, to seek his own safety in a manner which is impossible for all, and thus to endanger the interests of all.[9]

The mutual savings banks in 1914 had (on the average) but six tenths of a cent of actual cash (and “checks and cash items”) in their tills for every dollar of deposits, but in addition they had for every dollar of deposits four cents due on demand from state and national (commercial) banks.  In the aggregate these demand deposits amounted to the large sum of $172,000,000, a large part of which bore a low rate of interest.