HOUSE PURCHASE SYSTEM

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 299, 18 September 1928, Page 10

HOUSE PURCHASE SYSTEM

NEWSPAPER’S OUTSPOKEN CRITICISM Dominion Special Service. Dunedin, September 17. During the past twelve months some lively bouts of newspaper correspondence have centred around the operations of the quarterly dividends and national house purchase scheme——an English get-rich-quick scheme designed, it would appear, for the allurement chiefly of very humble investors. It is not wealth that the scheme promises so much as a safe and continuous financial competence at the earliest time for the least possible outlay The discussion of some months ago has now had a sequel. Mr. William Taverner, the chief director of the concern, has arrived iu Dunedin from Bristol for the purpose of registering a company or companies to put the New Zealand operations of the scheme on a local bltsis, though still under Bristol control. His visit follows a trip to Canada made with the same object. On Saturday night he addressed a wellattended meeting of those who have been locally interested in the scheme. The great governing principle which makes the scheme possible was explained by its author as follows: —“You never clear a loan out of itself, but out of the loan which follows: and as the loan that follows is always larger, you have the larger loan to clear the lesser loan,” After Mr. Taverner had explained his scheme in detail and stated that its promoters had suffered much persecution, a number of questions were asked. A voice: I have here an extract from the English “Truth” of February with statements concerning you; are they true or are they not? Mr. Ta verner: No. no I For twenty years “Truth” has never ceased to malign us or lie about us. A voice: Will you tell us in a word—have you ever been in gaol? Mr. Taverner: Yes, I have; but I say so witli a clear conscience, for I was wrongly convicted. (Applause.) At a late hour the meeting concluded with an intimation that a further meeting will be held on Thursday night, when Mr. Taverner will deal with the full history of the society, his persecution, and trial. After dealing witli the scheme and its expositor iu a leading article, tonight’s “Star” concludes: “Our own advice to would-be local investors must be to withhold their money from Mr. Taverner’s scheme and not to attempt to imitate it till an action is brought by him against London ‘Truth’ and they see what the result of that inay be.”