Nearly all mechanical devices for saving are a tacit acknowledgment of the weakness of human nature. But how much better it is to acknowledge we are weak enough to need a savings device than be so weak we can not save at all!

One of the simplest methods is to save all small coins of certain denominations, pennies, nickels or dimes. Or save every coin bearing a certain date, 1913, for instance, or every new coin. If you put aside five cents a day, which is the price of one cheap cigar, a glass of beer or a package of chewing gum, with interest at only three per cent. the total at the end of twenty years will amount to nearly five hundred dollars.

Every time a man smokes a cigar less than the day before, or shaves himself and shines his own shoes, it is a good idea to put aside a dime for the savings fund. Or put a silver dollar into the bank on pay night, when money is plentiful, the next day make it half a dollar, then a quarter, a dime, a nickel and a penny. Small as this saving is, it will carry several thousand dollars of life-insurance. A bit of oddity, even of the fantastic, often helps in this hard game of saving money.

Of course children often save by putting small coins into a toy bank. Grown people usually laugh at such contrivances, but it might not be a bad idea if our banks would introduce a device which a bank in Budapest, Hungary, has been using to great advantage for a number of years. These are slot-machine savings-banks and are arranged for the receipt of two coins, the crown, twenty cents, and the twenty-filler piece, four cents. They return a ticket for each coin deposited and these tickets bear interest from the date of their issuance. The rate paid varies with the current bank rate and ranges from three to four per cent; one hundred and ten tickets may be exchanged for a bank-book. The machine is so constructed that if counterfeit coins are deposited, the numbers of the tickets issued for them can be ascertained. The first slot-machine savings-bank was placed in front of a branch of the bank in the immediate vicinity of the central railway station.

Many persons are so constituted that they need a savings scheme with regular machinery that forces them to put something by. Christmas clubs are about as convenient as any. Nearly one thousand banks use this device. The scheme is a simple one. The first week after Christmas you deposit five cents, ten cents the second week, fifteen the third, and so on until two weeks before the following Christmas the bank sends you a check for sixty-three dollars and seventy-five cents, often with interest added. Or you may join a class beginning with two cents or even one cent. Still another way is to reverse the process and deposit two dollars and fifty cents the first week and reduce it by five cents each succeeding week. One bank paid out three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in a single year in savings clubs.

Somewhat similar is the movement to get people to promise themselves to save and deposit something in the bank every week. The pledge or covenant they make with themselves is as follows:

I WILL become a "WEEKLY SAVER," and will deposit $________every week for at least fifty-two weeks to my credit in a savings-account at the bank.

Signed_________________

If you live where there are no savings clubs or even no banks, do not give up the idea of saving. Join with a group of your fellow workers or with your family to put aside a certain small sum every week. With a number of small sums combined the compound interest will mount up much faster. That is real cooperation. Another method is to impose small fines for all manner of shortcomings, for all the little vices. Every member of the family that gets up late may be fined a penny, or five cents for every minute late for work.