Part 8
The price of this purchase will be entered to the debit of the depositor's account as repayment; the bonds bought will remain under the care of the Post Office Savings Bank and a Stocks-book will be forwarded to the depositor.
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A Depositor (Payer) who has in the Post Office Savings Bank an adequate sum at his disposal can at any time request the Office to make purchases for him in the Public Funds.
The request for the purchase is to be drawn up on Form N^o 22, and must, if the purchased stock is to remain at the Post Office Savings Bank contain a watchword. If the depositor already has a watchword in connection with his deposit book that watchword is to be inserted.
If a depositor cannot write he must make his mark and have it attested by a witness. If this witness is the same person who attested the depositor's mark on the counter-cheque and in the deposit book, then the request with the mark of the depositor and the signature of the witness can be sent without further delay to the Post Office Savings Bank. But if the signature of this witness cannot any longer be obtained, the depositor has to go to a Receiving Office and himself prove his own identity.
For the first purchase together with the request it is simply necessary to enclose the deposit-book; for each subsequent purchase the deposit-book and if it relates to deposited bonds the stock account-book also must be sent.
The purchase is made as far as practicable according to the state of the market as noted in the official price-list of the Vienna Exchange on the day in which the request refered to reached the Post Office Savings Bank, a commission being charged of 2 per thousand, which however cannot amount to less than 20 kreutzers.
The stock bought will, according to desire of the depositor either be sent at his own risk and cost to the address he names in his request or be taken care of without cost by the Office under guarantee for kind and number of documents, class of coupons and winning numbers in the lotteries, and the Post Office Savings Bank will prepare and send to the depositor with reference to them a «stock account-book» (Document N^o 32).
Stock which the depositor has not bought through the Post Office Savings Bank can be deposited by means of a stock account-book. The process is thus: the Post Office Savings Bank buys the stock sent and enters it to the credit of the sender, upon which the resale to him is gone through and the stock entered in the usual way in the stocks account-book.
In such cases the purchase and sale in respect of stock of the same kind takes place at the same market price, so that there is no loss to the depositor, merely costing for the purchase on account the fixed commission of 2 per thousand.
Depositors have, with a view to the taking over of such stock to send it at their own cost to the Post Office Savings Bank, joining with it a request in which the stock to be taken over is described, the deposit-book being sent (either lottery or stock account-book).
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The Post Office Savings Bank undertakes to present at the Treasury of the Public Debt, the bonds bought on account of depositors in order that they may be stamped with the names of the holders.
This can be done at the request of the purchaser immediately after purchase of the bonds refered to in which case the stamp duty will be accounted for at the same time as the costs of purchase, or, the stamping of the bonds can be requested which according to the stock account-book are already in the Post Office Savings Bank. In the last case the duty which including the cost of the form used amounts to 40 kreutzers a stamp is to be forwarded in postage stamps enclosed with form N^o 22.
In every case the request must contain the exact name of the holder and further information as to where he wishes to take the interest, otherwise it will be understood that it is to be received at the Public Debt Treasury.
After the stamping has occurred, which, according to rule must take place within 3 or 4 weeks, the Post Office Savings Banks forwards the stamped bonds to the address given before the business was entered on. If an account of the interest due has to be prepared it is forwarded to the holder by the Treasury of the Public Debt.
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The coupons of the Bonds deposited as per stock account-book will, when they fall due, be detached and cashed, and upon the day of their falling due entered both in the stock account-books of the holders without their having in each particular case to give notice. With reference to these sums coupon-orders will be issued to the depositor on the ground of which they can receive payment of them at any Receiving Office, on the amount being entered in their deposit-book before the expiration of the two months during which the orders are valid.
After this the entry can only take place by sending the deposit-book to the Post Office Savings Bank at Vienna.
It remains free to the holder of the stock-account book to cause the Post Office Savings Bank to forward the coupons in its case, falling due in their entirety or in part, either _in natura_ or in money to himself or to a third party. This order should be sent to the Post Office Savings Bank in sufficient time for it to arrive before the coupons fall due.
When the coupons are detached and sent _in natura_, no commission is charged, only the persons to whom they to be addressed must pay the postage as when coupon interests are forwarded.
For banking coupons or lottery prizes, a commission will be charged as for stock in case of the Post Office Savings Bank at 1 per thousand, excepting, however, when the produce of the coupons is itself entered to the account of the depositor.
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The owner of a stock-account book can at any time request that his stock in the public funds be sent to him or that it be sold. The request is to be duly addressed to the Post Office Savings Bank on form N^o 22^c in connection with N^o 24. The request forwarded to the Post Office Savings Bank must contain the watchword and personal signature of the person making the request and be accompanied by the stock-account book and also by the deposit-book when it is a question of entering the money resulting from the sale to the credit of the depositor's account.
The sale takes place in agreement with the final state of the market officially noted on the day the request arrived at the Post Office Savings Bank upon a commission of 2 per 100, at the lowest, 20 kreutzers.
If a stock-account book is lost, the loser is to inform the Post Office Savings Bank in writing, sending at the same time his watchword, and, enclosing 20 kreutzers in postage stamps to request a duplicate.
If after eight days subsequent to the notice the stock-account book is not found the Post Office Savings Bank will issue a duplicate and send it to the depositor, or if an official act is sought with reference to the book, the Post Office Savings Bank will enter into communication with the actual possessor of the book and it will depend upon the result whether the Post Office Savings Bank can grant the request of the loser, or whether it decides to relegate the parties to the magistrate in whose jurisdiction the matter lies.
11.--_Freedom from Cost of Postage and Commissions._
The correspondence of depositors with Post Office Savings Bank as well as with the Receiving Offices and with the Post Office management is always post-free, even in the case of a registered letter.
This favour however has no application to the sending of certificates of stock or with reference to money transactions which result from the purchase and collection of the interest on the stock, nor does it apply to notices forwarded of their declared value, with the sole exception of the deposit-book being sent by letter with the declared value for the purchase of stock in the funds.
The correspondence of the Post Office Savings Bank and its organs with the depositors is with reference to orders to addresses designated free from the tax of 1 kreutzer the letter, a tax appointed with reference to the post offices not dependent on the Treasury and to rural post offices, and in connection with the collection of registered letters also to those dependent on the Treasury.
The memorials addressed to the Post Office Savings Bank, to the Post Office authorities and their organs by depositors their legal successors, or authorised representatives, as well as the acts of conveyance mentioned in article 6 of the law of May 28^{th} 1882 are stamp and duty free. The interests of the savings deposits are in like manner exempt from the Income Tax and from any future tax coming in its place.
The deposit-book as well as the forms necessary in giving instructions in business transactions with the Post Office Saving Bank will be supplied to depositors gratuitously.
12.--_Official Secrets._
The officials of the Post Office Savings Bank are bound by duty to keep the business and official secrets and it is strictly forbidden to them, beyond their superiors, to impart to any persons whatever, knowledge of any kind relating either to the names of depositors or the the amount of the sums deposited or withdrawn, or to the amount of balances. Those who contravene this rule will undergo disciplinary treatment, and, according to the circumstances, will be dismissed from the service.
Every depositor may therefore rely on the strictest secrecy with relation to his business transactions with the Post Office Savings Bank, not only with reference to the usual Post Office Savings Service, but also with regard to the business in the Public Funds.
POST OFFICE SAVINGS BANK. _The Director_, WACEK.
FOOTNOTES:
[N] _Reichs-Gesetz-Blatt._ Collection of the Imperial Laws.
[O] _According to the altered form of the law of November 19^{th} 1887._
The earlier form of Article 5 ran thus:
Each depositor will receive from the receiving office (Post office) where he pays in his first deposit, a deposit book in which each amount paid in, each amount paid back, and the interest added to the capital is to be entered. Each subsequent payment can be made at any receiving office (Post office), the amount being entered in the deposit book.
That person is to be considered the depositor on whose behalf the deposit is made.
The deposit book is to be delivered gratuitously and stamp-free.
The Post Office Savings Bank will open an account for each depositor.
[P] _According to the altered form of the law of November 19^{th} 1887._
The earlier form of Article 6 ran thus:
The deposit-book is issued in the name of the person for whom the savings have been deposited, and is to contain the notes necessary to the identification of the same, as well as the signature of the depositor.
A depositor who cannot write will have to bring with him a trustworthy man who will have to attest the identity of the depositor and to sign the deposit-book in his stead.
An assignment of a deposit-book to another person is only to be accepted by the Post Office Savings Bank when the act of assignment has taken place at a post office entrusted with Post Office Savings Bank business.
This being done, the assignee is to be regarded as the proprietor of the deposit-book. (Art. 21, paragraph 3.)
Minors are entitled to pay in sums as savings and to receive repayments back, provided their legal representative has entered no written objection at the Post Office Savings Bank.
In the case of the loss of the deposit-book, a duplicate is, after carrying out the proceedings prescribed by Article 14, to be issued.
For one and the same person, but one Post Office Savings Bank deposit-book is to be issued.
Whoever causes two or more deposit-books to be issued loses the interests on the capital entered in the second and in any subsequent books.
If the whole amount of the deposits in the two or more deposit-books that a depositor has caused to be issued is over the sum of a 1,000 florins, or if a depositor has deposited in one year more than 300 florins, in the two or more deposit-books issued to him, he will lose in the first case that part of the capital which exceeds 1,000 florins, and in the second, that part of the capital which exceeds 300 florins.
The Minister of Commerce is empowered for well considered reasons to be indulgent with reference to the loss of capital, which, in conformity with the regulations, would occur to the surplus deposits.
Post Office servants are forbidden, except to their superiors, to give any information whatever to anyone, as to the names of depositors and the amounts of their deposits.
[Q] _According to the altered form of the law of November 19^{th} 1887._
The earlier form of Article 7 ran thus:
Each payment must amount to at least 50 kreutzers or a multiple of 50 kreutzers. The sum total of payments in the course of a year cannot exceed the amount of 300 florins, after deducting the amount resulting from payments back during that year.
The balance in favour of a depositor including deposits paid in and interest added to the capital cannot, deducting the amount of repayments amount to more than 1,000 florins.
Deposits of 50 kreutzers can be made in postage stamps, or in special postal savings stamps as soon as such stamps are issued by the Minister of Commerce. These stamps are to be fastened on forms supplied gratuitously.
[R] _According to the altered form of the law of November 19^{th} 1887._
The earlier form of Article 8 ran thus:
The rate of interest for savings deposits is to be fixed at 3 per cent per annum.
The rate of interest can only be altered by legislation.
[S] _According to the altered form of the law of November 19^{th} 1887._
The earlier form of Article 13 ran thus:
The repayment of the balance in favour of a depositor, or any part of it, to him or to his legal heir or authorised agent, will take place upon a notice which can be made by the party giving it, at the receiving office (post office) which he names in the notice.
The repayment is to be made through the receiving office (Post Office) named in the notice on the production of the deposit-book on the basis of an assignment by the Post Office Savings Bank, except the payment is, according to Article 14, barred by proceedings having been instituted, or according to Articles 6 and 17 by a protest having been made.
When such notice has been received with reference to sums up to 10 florins, the assignment will be sent by return of post by the Post Office Savings Bank and the payment back will be made by the receiving office (Post Office) immediately after its arrival.
The repayment of sums between 10 and 100 florins will be made in a fortnight at the latest, that of sums between 100 and 500 florins in a month at the latest, that of sums above 500 florins at the latest within two months after the arrival of the notice.
PROPOSED LAW
DEALING WITH THE ORGANISATION OF A
Service of Cheques and Clearing of Accounts
in the General Savings Bank
laid before the Chamber of Representatives of Belgium at the sitting of Nov. 20^{th} 1896
EXPLANATIONS[T]
GENTLEMEN,
The proposed law laid before the Chamber of Representatives, proposes to attach to our General Savings Bank, a service of which the great importance, the remarkable stability and singular capacity for development, has been proved by a trial conducted with vigilant carefulness during thirteen years in Austria and five in Hungary. In fact the chief part of the unfolding of a project of this kind consists in the setting forth of the results of foreign experience.
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(This part of the explanation relating to Austrian experience is a summary of the preceding article, to which we refer our readers.)
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Returning now to Belgium we cannot fail to recognise first of all that the institution of the General Savings Bank by the Act of March 16^{th} 1865, is one of the important events of our economic evolution. History will justly connect the name of Frère-Orban with a work so perfectly balanced and bearing the imprint of a real constructive genius.
The solution given to the fundamental problem of the relations of the Savings Bank with the State, and of which the essential characteristics were:--making the Central Bank a distinct legal entity, whilst at the same time surrounding it with the guarantee of the State;--taking measures so that this State guarantee should not be to onerous,--and the constitution of a reserve fund,--the conception of the complex and diversified system of investing the capital in the best way to suit both the exigencies of its productivity and its disposal;--fixing the rates of interest and the periodic distribution of a portion of the reserve;--the accession of all classes of society to the Savings Bank and the admission of unlimited deposits;--the correctives brought to bear on these principles by the fixing of differential rates of interest according to the largeness of the deposits;--all these elements wisely co-ordinated, give to the work of the legislator of 1865, at once an original physiognomy and a true grandeur.
No one of the fundamental ideas of this edifice is attacked by the bill laid before the Chamber.
But this work is perfectible and it contains in its constitution even the principles of its perfectibility. In studying the functions of the Savings Bank, the conviction is soon arrived at that the authors of the Act of 1865, conceived them in the most general and simple form possible, leaving it to time to complete their work. Thus it is that the investments are above all things regarded and portioned out with the view of the possible eventual withdrawal of deposits.
The great peril which the makers of the law had before them, was that of not being able to satisfy a sudden and simultaneous demand for the repayment of the deposits. As to the various forms which these investments could take, they were thoroughly recognized and pointed out by the law-makers, but there were some which were only mentioned in their explanatory statement, but which must take a more and more important position.
This has occurred with regard to agricultural investments, which have awaited a complementary organic legislation. This again is the case with the investments in land, the importance of which in the economy of the Savings Bank, Frère-Orban had seen already in 1850, better than anyone, but which so far has lacked appropriate embodiment by which to give a real satisfaction to the needs of rural property.
The Acts of April 15^{th} 1884 and June 21^{st} 1894, with regard to agricultural credit, of August 9^{th} 1889, with regard to working-class Dwellings, the bill of November 19^{th} 1896, with regarded to landed credit only develop the thought contained in the institution of 1865.
The much-regretted Mahillon has profoundly said:
«It is indispensable in order to produce its whole useful effect, that the Savings Bank should be completed by distinct bodies which regulate its working. It is by this organic development that the fruitful character of the genius of our legislators will show itself.»
Our bill tends less to give a larger expansion to these original functions of the Savings Bank than to set free a new function which will carry we think according to the words of Mahillon, its useful effect to a still higher degree.
The Act of 1865 makes no preparation for this putting into motion the property of the depositors, but then neither its text, nor the spirit even of the institution excludes it. It has been seen at work in the examples of Austria and Hungary; such important innovations however require in themselves real legal sanction.
Thus it is that the two large classes of operations which the new service proposes to combine, imply the possibility for third parties to effect at all post offices payments in favour of depositors whose deposit-books will be kept centralized at the General Savings Bank.
To-day the deposits, like the withdrawals, although they can be effected at all the post offices, can only be so effected on presentation of the Savings Account-book, whether this is done by the holders themselves or by third parties in their names. The Annual Report of the Savings Bank on these operations gives the statistics of deposits effected by teachers on behalf of their pupils, by parents on behalf of their children, by masters on behalf of their workmen. Teachers, parents, workers, retain the account-books.
According to the proposed law depositors will be able to dispose of the free balance of their account by payment-cheques or clearing-cheques.
At present the holders of the account books cannot have recourse to the cheque, nor transfer any sum from their account to that of another on a simple demand addressed to the Savings Bank. Every transfer resolves itself into an act of cession which must be signified to the Bank by a judicial act or notified by a letter bearing the legalised signature of the ceder. The carrying out of these extra judicial formalities is evidently incompatible with what is required in a perfect organ of circulation.
The end in view is in fact to place at the disposition of the greatest number of depositors a permanent intermediary which will enable them to economise time to the utmost, to reduce risk and expense and to save money.
The postal administration by the extraordinary development of its invaluable public service in collecting bills and taking receipts, the importance of which has tripled in the last fifteen years, and by the aid which it has given to the Savings Bank in virtue of the Act of May 30^{th} 1879, in the collection of deposits and in payment of withdrawals, has realized one part of the operations which the projected institution includes.
But it is necessary to attain a still higher degree of organisation taking the Savings Bank itself as the foundation on which to rest.
The point aimed at is how to place at the disposal of its depositors a regular and continuous service of account-keeping both individual and collective in character, and to co-ordinate in a permanent manner all the operations which it embraces; the point aimed at is how to assure to every depositor the power of causing regular collections to be made by the mediation of the Savings Bank and the post offices, the amount being carried to his or her account; the point aimed at, is how to effect these payments by the same intermediaries without running the slightest risk, without the least of these operations escaping an inflexible account-keeping, constantly kept before the depositor's eyes, and without there being any need for the depositors themselves directly and personally to handle the funds.
The centralization of the accounts of all the adherents makes it possible for the Savings Bank to obtain clear and definite results and to eliminate by means of the clearing of accounts the intermediary of money in an ever increasing number of transactions, for this service is by its natural evolution, by the rapid increase of the number of the adherents destined to preponderate.
Assuredly, the instruments of credit and of liquidation, of clearing and balancing, which more and more reduce the use of money, have in Belgium taken an already great importance at the National Bank, in the private banks, and in the Unions de Credit:--the credit given and received having, in a quarter of a century attained two thousand millions of francs at the National Bank alone;--the extent of the movement being shown by the large figures of the current accounts upon which it operates, and during the last three years the National Bank has sought to connect by a sort of clearing the other credit institutions.