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may be conducted as savings banks only. Private banks and loan and trust companies, as well as national and state associations, may receive savings deposits. In 1893 the savings. deposits in forty-four state banks totaled a little over $19,000,000, and in 1899 had reached only $55,000,000 in forty-six banks. Since 1900, however, the growth in savings deposits has been very rapid, due largely to the increasing prosperity of the people. In 1912 over half of the state banks-371out of 618-held savings deposits, which aggregated $278,047,586. The auditor reported two years later that thirty-five out of every one hundred inhabitants of the state had a savings account, whose average amount was $281.50.54

Loan and trust companies rank next to state banks in favor as depositories for the savings of the citizens of Illinois, having almost doubled such deposits in the past five years. As reported to the comptroller of the currency they increased from $121,000,000 in 1911 to $233,000,000 in 1914, but fell off slightly the following year.

A considerable number of national banks-196 in 1911 -also maintained savings departments, for which accurate data are available in the comptroller's reports. Unofficial and incomplete statistics of savings deposits in private banks are also published in the same reports. And to these there should be added, since their establishment in 1910, the deposits in the postal savings banks. The available data on these various institutions for the last few years are presented in the following table:55

54 Auditor's Report, 1914, p. xv.

55 Compiled from the annual reports of the comptroller of the currency. Faulty as the statistics presented undoubtedly are, they yet show an impressive volume of savings, which amounted in the year 1915 to over $500,000,000 or about $94 per inhabitant. But they would certainly be much larger if provision were made by law for the organization of mutual savings banks, such as exist in other states. Over half of the savings deposits in the United States as a whole are made in mutual savings banks. Out of a total of $6,972,069,227 on June 4, 1913, the following amounts were deposited in the institutions specified (000,000 omitted): state banks, $636.9; mutual savings banks, $3,768.9; stock savings banks, $744.5; loan and trust companies, $970.9; private banks, $26.4; national banks, $824.5. Report of the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, 1913, P. 455.

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Not reported.

† Time certificates of deposit, payable after thirty days.

The statistics of savings bank deposits in Illinois do not by themselves afford an adequate picture of the annual savings of the mass of the people, for other institutions, like building and loan associations, have served as agencies for the accumulation of small sums. These associations have always been popular in this state, though for a decade after 1895 they suffered somewhat of a decline from the high water mark of that year. Illinois ranks fifth among the states of the union in the total assets of these associations. Their growth is indicated in the following table:

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In this brief review there is recorded a growth not merely in the financial institutions which have been described, but in the wealth and resources of the people of Illinois. It is an impressive showing, and becomes the more so when one reflects that this financial strength is the result of only a century's growth. Toil, and self-denial, and wise investment lie at the basis of this development, as indeed they do of the economic progress of the state in all lines.

IT

XIX. STATE FINANCES

T WAS the famous French minister Turgot who originated the epigram pauvre peuple, pauvre royaume, which today may be translated "if the people are poor the state will be poor." The state finances of Illinois accordingly reflect in a measure the economic condition of the people, swelling to large proportions in times of prosperity and shrinking again under the chill winds of adversity. This is more true of taxes, which come directly out of the pockets of the taxpayers, than of expenditures, which are often light-heartedly voted in the face of an impending deficit. It is proverbially easy to spend other people's money.

But the parallelism is not close. The household of the state is on a stable basis and taxes are collected in bad years as in good. There are to be found in the state finances, therefore, fewer of the ups and downs which are characteristic of the income and expenditures of the average business man. On the other hand there has been a pretty steady and recently a startlingly rapid growth of both sides of the budget. The state of Illinois enjoys a patrimony-the wealth and productive power of its people—which expands progressively and yearly permits the development of new activities and the expansion of the old. The figures in which these services are expressed are indicative of the economic development of the state along all lines of private as well as public activity.

The finances of the state were adversely affected by the panic of 1893 and the resulting depression, and for several years showed the effect of smaller valuations on the assessment lists. From the high water mark of $5,854,269 receipts from the general property tax in 1891-1892, the revenue from this source fell off sharply by $1,000,000 the following bien

nium. And as the disbursements increased by another $1,000,ooo, to which was added a small deficit from the preceding year, the biennium 1893-1894 ended with a deficit of almost $2,500,000. A considerable increase in revenues during the next two years served to reduce this figure to about $1,000,000; and further improvement during the biennial period 18971898, with good crops and reviving business, transformed this deficit into a favorable balance of about the same amount. Only once since that time has the close of a biennial period recorded a deficit in the state treasury, and that was after the panic of 1907. But this was due to greatly enlarged appropriations rather than to declining revenues. A general summary of state finances since 1893 is given in the following table:

TOTAL RECEIPTS AND DISBURSEMENTS, 1893-1916

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Between 1893 and 1906 the growth in expenditures by the state was steady, but no greater than was necessitated by the increase of population and the extension of governmental functions. Beginning with 1907, however, there is a very sharp increase in expenditures, which have advanced since that time at a progressive rate, so that while it took fifteen years between 1891 and 1906 to double the state expenditures, a single decade, from 1907 to 1916, has again seen a doubling. This is a rate of increase five times as rapid as the growth of

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INCREASE OF STATE RECEIPTS, EXPENDITURES, AND TAXES, 1892-1916.

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