SOME ASPECTS OF THRIFT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 257, 31 October 1933, Page 6

SOME ASPECTS OF THRIFT.

It is an interesting coincidence that Thrift Day should follow so closely on the remarkable survey of British thrift that the President of the Board of Trade presented at a conference of the National Savings movement. There is a local coincidence in the fact that the Northern Co-operative Terminating Building Society held its annual meeting last evening, and was able to report steady growth and stability despite the depression. The extent to which thrift has proceeded in British countries (to say nothing of others) through these hard times is a very important economic, sociological and political factor. Mr. Runeiman points out that the savings of the small investor in Britain, excluding houses completely owned and industrial holdings, reach the enormous total of £3,000,000,000. As he says, the wide distribution of so much solidly invested wealth must make for political stability. Preachers of political or economic revolution must find this class hard to convert. Of this sum about £400,000,000 is invested through more than a thousand building societies. The latest figures for New Zealand show that 94 building societies possess assets totalling eight and a half millions. In Britain these societies are encouraged by the Government, and looked upon as a leading agency in financing the housing of the people. The Government arranges for guarantees to be given to them by local bodies, to enable them to advance amounts as large as possible on securities. This is typical of the British policy of decentralisation, and it is a question whether it would not be better for the New Zealand Government to consider some such scheme, rather than to concentrate advances and the control of their finance in its own department. In the Auckland district alone £3,000,000 has been advanced by building societies in the last ten years, and it would be interesting to compare the losses in this fund with those of the Government in the same field. j