In some respects, however, the postal savings system falls short of the advantages of the regular savings banks. These usually accept for deposit as small an amount as ten cents; they pay interest either quarterly or semi-annually; they pay on the average (at present) almost double the rate of interest, and the interest is credited to the depositor's account at stated intervals and automatically compounded. The postal savings system, as the law now stands, may be looked upon, therefore, as supplementing the regular savings banks rather than competing with them. § 9. #Collection of savings and education in thrift.# Small savings have been encouraged in many places by penny provident funds, dime savings banks, and school savings funds, which have been conducted at public schools, social settlements, and factories, by school officers and by charitable and educational societies acting through canvassers. These plans all call for much personal effort and cost, which must be provided by volunteer services and private gifts. These plans being undertaken mainly as a means of education in thrift and in the related moralities, their results are not to be measured merely by the magnitude of the sums collected. They are not rivals of the ordinary savings banks, but rather auxiliary methods of encouraging their use. The funds collected by these agencies are usually deposited in local savings banks, and depositors are encouraged to open individual accounts there, whenever they have considerable sums saved. In Germany the public schools have been furnished with automatic stamp vending machines, from which savings stamps in as small denominations as ten pfennigs (2-1/2 cents) may be had by dropping a coin into a slot.[10] This method could be used very effectively in connection either with the postal savings system or with a local savings bank. It ought to be made easy to deposit funds at every school house, at every post-office, at every factory counter on pay day, and wherever people pass in numbers. Allurements to foolish expenditures meet old and young at every turn; to spend the dime is made all too easy, whereas to save it and deposit it in a safe place too often calls for wasteful and discouraging efforts from the person of small means.