Several main observations are developed in the discussion below. First, while geographic availability of depository services to areas not served by private banks was always a prime justification of postal savings – in the United States as well as in Japan and Europe – it has not proved to be the major source of demand for postal savings, even if it was important to a few rural customers. From the start, the . clientele of postal savings was concentrated in urban areas among immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, a group that had most reason to seek the safety of postal savings after their experience with unreliable.
