Then as to _secrecy_. None are more jealous of their little savings being known than the poorer classes: a large number of operatives have cogent reasons for secrecy, or, at any rate, privacy. Indeed, it seems to have been agreed upon that, if these classes cannot keep their savings quiet, many will not save at all. The wage-receiving class are naturally and properly averse to bringing their savings under the notice of their masters or their masters' friends. Savings Bank managers, even when not masters of workmen themselves, are generally local dignitaries well known to such.[193] In the Postal Banks there is, or need be, no occasion for particular observation; the officials are required to conciliate confidence; to observe the strictest secrecy; and it is our conviction, gathered after no inconsiderable experience, that nowhere so much as in Government offices is the work conducted without distinctions of class. Next to the advantages of which we have just spoken, is that secured by the arrangement to undertake the receipt and accumulation of _small sums_. A working man may now take his shilling to the Savings Bank as readily as his master may take his pounds, and the former will have no occasion to feel that he is made the object of a charitable clause. In seeking to bring a working man to put by a shilling in its bank, the Government hopes to induce a habit of saving, and may fairly expect to take his larger sums when saving habits have been induced. Mr. Gladstone's decision to take sums as low as a shilling was almost universally accepted as a wise one. Mr. Gladstone had long interested himself in the condition of the workman, and no one knew better than he that the labouring classes are not suddenly masters of whole pounds, and that, when they are in the act of accumulating it, the temptations to break in upon the little stock laid by are ever present, and are often too strong to resist.