SMALL INVESTORS

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 131, 30 November 1933, Page 5

SMALL INVESTORS

A NATION'S SECURITY

IMPRESSIVE FIGURES

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, October 27.

Mr. Bunciman, President of the Board of Trade, who wa,s the principal guest at the luncheon held in connection with the annual meeting of the London Regional Conference of the National Savings Movement, said that the tendency towards the accumulation of wealth among the small investors of the country was one of the most hopeful signs of the times. Lord MottiBtone, chairman of the National Savings Committee, who presided, estimated the total of securities held by small investors at over £3,000,000,000. Mr. Bunciman, who proposed "The National Savings Movement," said that for some years he had collected information about the investments of the small investors, and the more he delved into the subject tho more he was impressed with the fact that the small investors were really the solid foundation on which the British nation had been built. The tendency towards the accumulation of wealth among those small investors was one of the most hopeful signs of the times. Today the figures had reached totals which were almost unbelievable; they were so large.

In the National Health Insurance ap- j proved societies the amount contributed by employees had been estimated at £59,600,000; Post Office Savings Bank deposits accounted for £312,820,000; Government holdings purchased through the Post Office Savings Bank, just under £200,000,000; trustee savings banks, £84,570,000; trustee savings bank special investment department, £79,130,000; trustee savings banks' Government holdings, £40,810,000; building societies' share capital, £341,790,000; building societies' borrowers interested in houses mortgaged, £360,180,000; industrial and provident societies, £244,840,000; industrial life assurances and collecting societies, £280,190,000; friendly societies, £119,820,000; railway savings banks, £20,410,000; National Savings Certificates (small investors' proportion), £237,100,000; ordinary life assurance funds (share of small investors), £452,000,000. When these sums were added up tho total came to the stupendous figure of £2,833,000,000. "The best of replies to the political movement which has attacked Europe from the East," said Mr. Bunciman, "and which, in other circumstances, might havo spread to the West, is to be found in tho possessions of this people, stored up in every class of the community, every village and town in tho country. And in this wonderful movement they will not run any .undue risks. I do not know what political view they will express at the polls, but they would not tolerate for a week a Government which did not respect their possessions. That, indeed, is one of the greatest assurances we can have for tho future/