HOLIDAY SAVINGS CLUB

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 90, 13 October 1923, Page 14

HOLIDAY SAVINGS CLUB

A LANCASHIRE SECRET.

Lancashire makes holiday by towns, and as week by week large crowds leave for the seaside and numbers for the Continent, wonder grows into astonishment that at a time when many business fortunes lie wrecked and distress is widespread, cotton operatives can find the money for a holiday. It is a miracle; and yet it is a simple miracle. Lancashire's secret is the holiday savings club.

As holiday time approaches, writes James Hodson, in the "Daily Mail," you and I suddenly say, "Confound it! So soon! Where's the money coming from?" But the Lancashire operative thinks- 51 weeks ahead. Immediately his holiday is over he says, "How much can I put away each week for next year's 'wakes'?' 1 And having determined upon an amount, he saves with a system, pertinacity, and if need be, a sacrifice, that is hardly rivalled. He joins a club at the mill, workshop, Sunday school, co-operative society, or public-house, and regularly one night each week he takes his little yellow or blue-backed card and invests his money. Shares are usually 6d each, and in normal times it is not uncommon for a family all told to invest £1 a week. Mill directors during the boom were known to save in the clubs £10 a week, the old habit clinging to them. Many an operative makes the club his eheet-anchor, his exchequer, and he shares the first charge on his weekly earnings. Bolton savings clubs and banks paid out recently £200,000 (an amount £50,000 greater than the boom year's total). Nelson has distributed £55,000, double last year's figures, and Stockport Co-operative Society has just distributed £56,000—an increase of £12,000 above 1922. The total so far is over £500,000, and Oldham's clubs have still to_ pay out. Oldham claims to have originated "wakes" clubs; two years ago 145 of them flourished there, and while they are fewer now (Oldham 'has lost millions of money since 1920), the clubs total will be between £100,000 and £200,000. These _ amazing savings throughout Lancashire and neighbourhood have only been achieved by a condition of mind that says, "All spaTe shillings have Blackpool written on them." No operative will withdraw his club money except as a last resort, and the fact that many clubs have ceased to exist is eloquent testimony to hardship But some Oldham folk are not beaten even then. Last year a man pledged lus grave for £3 towards a trip to the seaside and others pawned furniture, wot all the savings, however; are spent on holidays. Large amounts' are reinInfs doLtr dt°bUypianOS 'biCycleS '

If you encounter the sonorous dialect and dry wit of Lancashire at Lucerne, Brussels Penzance, Margate, or Rothesav (not to mention Blackpool and the Isle of Man) you may safely conclude that in four cases out of five the