Thrift of 'Good Old Days' Typified
By Ingenious Stunts of Toy Banks
CLEVELAND, 0., March 16 (UP)—  In the "good old days," when thrift was a foremost virtue, children learning to save put their coins in banks and watched tiny figures do everything from extracting teeth to turning somersaults on bicycles.
     James C. Jones, one of the country's 10 foremost toy bank collectors, had one when he was a child. Now he has hundreds.
     "The only thing that worries me," he said, "is where to put them all. I've built shelves all over the house, and now I'm starting on the garage."
     The toy dentist bank endeavors to make saving less painful by demonstrating a tooth extraction.
     When a coin is inserted, the operator pushes a lever. The dentist gives a tremendous pull, and topples over backward with the aching molar. The patient also goes flying when the chair topples over.
     "I guess the idea behind that design," Jones said, "is to make the child so happy that it is not he who is having the tooth pulled that he will not feel the pain of depositing a nickel he wanted to use for candy."
     Of the estimated total of 300 designs used by children of an earlier decade, Jones has about 250.
     "Here's one which was considered a sensation in its time," said Jones. "It is called the initiating bank."
     The collector put a coin on a tray held by a tiny figure bent into the characteristic posture of a college freshman or other neophyte.
     He pulled a lever, an adjacent goat moved. and the buttee, shocked and grieved, flipped the coin into the mouth of a frog which stood waiting to play its part in the drama.
     Prof. Pug Frog's great bicycle feat must have been an early thriller, for the professor, seated on a bicycle, made a complete revolution, together with his vehicle, when the coin was Inserted and the lever depressed.
     "I like this one particularly," Jones said. "It's called the confectionery bank."
     He, dropped another coin—he said he always carries a pocketful of pennies—pressed a lever. The figure of a girl pivoted around to what looked like a series of drawers. The top of the drawer opened, and the girl swung back again with a candy wafer.
     "It's fun—and think of the money saved!" Jones said. "Ill venture to say that many of our great financiers got their start that way."