In the economy of nations the encouragement and promotion of saving and the accumulation, distribution, and investment of capital are as essential as the conduct of exchanges, but the performance of these functions has not been segregated and institutionalized to the same extent as has commercial banking. Vast amounts of capital are invested directly by the people to whom it belongs without the aid of middlemen and large amounts are also invested through brokers of one kind and another who can hardly be classed as bankers. The most important types of institutions which have been developed in connection with these functions are savings banks, trust companies, bond houses and investment companies, land banks, and stock exchanges. _1. Saving and Savings Institutions_ Saving is an individual matter for which the essential conditions are the development of the instinct to make provision against uncertainties of future income and to better the material condition of one's self and family, and a surplus of income above necessary daily expenditures. In order to secure the realization of these conditions to as great an extent as possible, many agencies cooperate in all modern nations, among them savings institutions. Included among these are various forms of provident associations, sometimes independently organized and sometimes connected with other organizations, insurance associations of many kinds, building and loan societies, and savings banks. The need for savings institutions varies greatly among the different nations and among different classes of people in the same nation. Among people of great wealth the surplus of income above expenditures is so great that large savings can hardly be avoided, and among all the well-to-do classes the margin from which savings are possible is sufficiently large and the desire to save sufficiently great to insure large accumulations of capital. Among these classes there is little or no need for institutions designed primarily for the development of the saving instinct. What they need are institutions for the safe keeping, accumulation, and investment of the savings which they are constantly making. The principal work of savings institutions, therefore, pertains to the classes of people who are not well-to-do and who need encouragement and help in their efforts to improve their material condition, if they are so inclined, and stimulus to make such efforts, if they are not so inclined. The means available to savings institutions for the accomplishment of these ends are the urging of the importance of saving upon the attention of people who do not adequately appreciate it, the placing at their easy disposal of facilities for making savings when they have the ability and inclination to save, and the application of pressure of various kinds to compel or induce saving.