It is much to be desired, however, that a larger measure of popular cooeperation might be made possible to the depositors, both for its educational value and to reduce the real evil of the autocratic or the plutocratic centralization of the money power in the small communities.
Savings banks usually limit the amount of an account to $3000.

It is desirable that depositors should be able easily to convert their savings-bank deposits over certain amounts into good bonds, bearing a higher rate of interest (after the method of the issue of postal savings bonds).

There is need of a central market in each community where such bonds can be bought and sold at any time; and the savings banks might easily serve to buy and sell for their customers in this way in the larger bond market.

This would be of benefit also to the states and municipalities which issue bonds for such purposes as schools, roads, and public utilities, by creating a more open and regular market to small investors than now is provided for such securities.

This might somewhat reduce the rate of interest and there would be a gain divided between taxpayers and lenders.
The general plan and principles of local building and loan associations might well be extended to groups of rural cooeperators, enabling them to make loans to their members; and to groups of small investors, permitting them to hold real estate mortgages and bonds and stocks of corporations, free from taxation other than that paid on the wealth itself.