A THRIFT DAY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23953, 31 October 1939, Page 8

A THRIFT DAY

Thrift is usually included among the virtues, though it is not one which is much advertised. It is generally conceded that the individual who is described as thrifty is accorded a useful testimonial. The man who is careful of his own resources is likely to be careful of the resources of his employers. In his thriftiness he reveals discretion and selfreliance, with a desire to avoid looking to others for assistance. Those who persistently fail to balance their incomings and their outgoings may sometimes have attractive qualities, like Mr Micawber, but they are apt to be a sore trial to their friends. A sufficient excuse for the presentation of a few such platitudes concerning thrift is the circumstance that to-day figures in the calendar as Thrift Day, in accordance with international agreement among savings institutions representative of many countries.

If it is not exactly expected that popular appreciation of the anniversary, and a desire to honour it, will be expressed in the form of queues of depositors lining up at savings-banks, it has doubtless been the hope that the occasion may have the accompaniment of good resolutions about putting a little bit away for a rainy day. It may well appear timely, indeed, that a Thrift Day should bring its own peculiar reminders to the people of New Zealand. While the need for thrift is perennial, opportunity and incentive for its practice might be expected, to be widely recognised at the present time. The statistical evidence available on the subject is instructive, perhaps surprising. It reflects a definite trend towards spending in the circumstance that the total withdrawals from the Post Office Savings Bank in this Dominion during the year ended March 31 last exceeded the deposits by £4,163,417, and that the excess of withdrawals over deposits in the first six months of the current financial year amounted to £3,355,383. In the case of trustee savings banks a similar tendency is reflected in an excess of withdrawals over deposits of £208,592 in the first five months of this financial year. These figures are the more significant because, save between 1928 and 1933, a period which includes the depression years, the record of the State Savings Bank, as officially chronicled in decades since its inception, is one of successive surpluses of deposits over withdrawals. In only one year of the depression, moreover, did the excess of withdrawals over deposits exceed the figure of that excess for the year 1938-39. By all appearances the present year bids fair to establish a record for the excess of withdrawals over deposits. Even though it is the case that it is from the larger deposits that the withdrawals have chiefly been made, the development recorded in the statistics is the more strange, and perhaps disturbing, because the country is supposed at present to be enjoying times of prosperity. The Government is spending on a lavish scale, and the natural anticipation in view of what it claims in respect of the affairs and position of the Dominion would be that the pressure on people to reduce their savings-bank accounts would be comparatively light. Mr Savage has cried, “ There is no wolf,” and has pointed proudly to an increase of 50 per cent, in three years in the Dominion total of wages and salaries. True, at the Easter conference of the Labour Party the Minister of Finance formally took back the advice previously tendered the people by the Government to spend freely and proclaimed that saving was desirable. But the recantation seems to have gone unheeded, or else the public is finding prosperity quite expensive. Is it that the Government’s own example is infectious, or that its policy and measures have convinced some people that saving is no longer necessary, and others that it is no longer possible? It was Shylock who said, “Thrift is blessing, if men steal it not.”