The Growth of the Easy Payment System

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 89, 9 January 1926, Page 13

The Growth of the Easy Payment System

4C 17 * * s obvious 10 ,in 7 observer that the hire-purchase system, as it is I called, is expanding. Theie is still much progress to be made in I extending it before it reaches the dimensions to which it has grown S in America and South Africa,” says the “Daily Express.” “In America, for instance, it is estimated that the amount of outstanding indebtedness on purchases acquired on the instalment plan is £1,000,000,000. This sum equals £8 Us. per head of the population in the United States.

"Judging, however, by the common knowledge which we have of the extent of the practice among the wage-earning and middle-class sections of the population in the United Kingdom, it would 110t.be an exaggeration to state that one-half of our population of forty millions commonly takes advantage of the method of deferred payments for goods acquired.

"The weekly obligations vary between a few shillings for clothes and other necessities in the poorer quarters to several pounds in respect principally of furniture and motor-cars for those of moderate mean:.

“If the economist should complain that these beneficent results interfere with bis most cherished theories, it can be answered that Ins complaint must be directed against the credit system as a whole rather than against this most recent branch of it. “The rich have long' been able to delay making payments to those from whom thev buv on the strength of their 'reputation. That those who are not wealthy, or who do not display the outward evidences of wealth, can command equal advantages must be a matter foi general rejoicing. “The hire-purchase system in its infancy was unpopular because it was largelv conducted bv persons who abused it, and who took advantage of a temporary inability to pav a weekly or monthly instalment to take back their goods without compensating those who had regularly liquidated their undertaking's up to the moment of default Now that firms of unexceptional repute are inviting their customers to receive the benefits of the system cn honourable terms, intending purchasers have reasonable safeguards against maltreatment,, and there is no one left who could contend - that the hirepurchase system has not proved a stimulant to production.’