In looking into the official statistics we become convinced that the one most fixed idea of Frère-Orban is there definitely brought into operation; that of the common participation of all classes of society in the Savings Bank. Out of 100,000 savings-books, if 50% be set on one side as children's books, it will be seen that the surplus may be divided into nearly equal proportions between the class of manual workers on the one hand, and on the other that of the shopkeepers, the heads of industrial or agricultural enterprises, officials military men, proprietors, stock holders and professional persons. If to this division according to the number of account-books be added, the classification of the account-books according to their total sum, the conviction is soon arrived at that it is to the members of the working-classes that the cheques and the clearing of cheques will directly render the least service. In effect, if one ought to attribute to the working-class all the account-books of 1 to 1,000 francs, their total importance would represent hardly a quarter of the sum total of the account-books of the Savings Bank. This point will be rendered more clear by the publication of the book of Messrs Hamande and Burny. However, if putting the consideration of individuals on one side we consider the different forms of working class associations, the conviction is arrived at that, in the service of cheques and clearing they will have a valuable intermediary: the mutual aid societies, the cooperative societies, the professional unions themselves will find in this organ of circulation, the same help as the multitudinous associations of every kind connected with the Savings Bank of Vienna, the popular banks and the rural Savings Banks, specially carried on with a view to small industrial agricultural and commercial enterprises, and in a higher degree the unions de credit, will connect themselves by organic threads to the service of the Savings Bank; they will find in it a means of bringing their efforts to a common point. It may be added that, to the leading idea of the monetary benefit, is, in our idea united that, of assuring to the workers in this great movement of association one of the indispensable organs to a general and truly democratic financial service and a powerful instrument of economic education, for it will accustom the working-class societies which connect themselves with it to the invaluable discipline of a strict and permanent bookkeeping. The articles of the proposed law only reproduce the general conditions of this new institution as they result from experience. The cheques and clearing service ought to have a distinct existence, its accounts being kept separate from those of the savings service, understanding the term savings in the sense which the law of 1865 has given to it.