Manamatu Herald. FRIDAY. JUNE 13, 1879. A BUILDING SOCIETY FOR FOXTON

Manawatu Herald, Volume I, Issue 82, 13 June 1879, Page 2

Manamatu Herald. FRIDAY. JUNE 13, 1879. A BUILDING SOCIETY FOR FOXTON

». We understand a public meeting will be called in the course of a few days to consider the desirability of starting a Building Society at Foxton. We need hardly say it will have our heartiest support. We hear that a gentleman who is taking nn active interest in the affair has written to the Secretaries of the various Building Societies in Wellimgton and other places, to obtain their rules and any other information calculated to throw light upon the best kind of Society to start, and the most advantageous system of working it. There are, as is known to many, Permanent Building Societies (i.c , those which continually exist) and there are Societies which run out in a certain number of years, depending for their length of days upon several considerations, but chiefly upon the amount of profits made, as we believe that when the shares become worth a certain amount the Society expires. A Building Society will supply a much felt want in Foxton. Numbers of men desire to settle down permanently in the place, and make a home in it, but have not the cash to buy a section of land and build a house. To such a class, the Building Society would be a great boon, as they could obtain from ie say £50, which, added to the little 'store they may have saved from their weekly earnings, would enable them to become their own landlords, and thus, whilst nominally paying their rent to the Society in monthly amounts, according to the sum borrowed, they would be paying off the principal, and making a home of their own. There are others, again, who desire to save money. They would be contributing members. Instead of drawing money from the Society, they would pay it in. Persons of {either sex, who are earning enough to be able to save a few shillinge each week, could place their money in the Society, where it would be invested profitably, and in a few years they would be able to draw an amount sufficient to give them a fair start in life Such a Society would, we believe, have a powerful effect in steadily increasing the population of the township. If a man has a [cottage and plot of land, he can support his family on considerably less than one who has to pay rent. The very fact of being his own landlord, of owning a property however small, induces him to look upon the place where it is situated as his home, especially when it is remembered that the absence of rent and the returns from his garden, enable him to live much cheaper than he could elsewhere. We know numbers of prosperous and contented men in all parts of New Zealand, who owe their comfort and freedom from the grind* ing cares of poverty, to the assistance of Building Societies. The fact of being a property owner gives an industrious man an inducement to. thrift and frugality, which aro the essential features of successlit! colonists, and where these are

congregated, prosperous communities are the result. There is another aspect. These Societies tend to increase the number of buildings, and therefore they increase the rateable value of the town, and tend to the improvement of the district. If ten buildings of the value of £100 each were put up during the year through the operations of the Society, it would mean the circulation of £1000 in the district, which "would represent employment to sevnn or eight men. Rates would be received from those ten building* to the extent of say £60, one half going to the Local Board, and the other half to the County, calculating on a shilling rae, whilst a similar amount of £50 would be received in subsidies from the Government. Thus the opera* ions of the Society (it it attained the work supposed), would be instrumental in leading to the expenditure of £100 per annum upon the roads. From whatever aspect the affair is viewed, there seems every reason for hoping that the Society will be energetically started and carried on. Perhaps it may have a humble beginning, but the acorn must be before the oak. Even though its size may at first be small, and its earlier operations circumscribed, in a progressive district (and this district is steadily progressing) it must eventually be an important institution. Numbers of settlers in Campbelltown, and other parts of the Carnarvon District, as well as in Foxton, would gladly avail themselves of the assistance the Society would afford to become what every true man desires to be, the owner of his own home, however lowly it. may be.