THRIFT.

Otago Witness, Issue 1847, 15 April 1887, Page 15

THRIFT.

VIEWED IN ITS MANY PHASES IN RELATION Tti THE PUBLIC WEAL. Being One of the Most Highly Commekded bssay6 in the mutual, llfb assubance Society's ' Recent Competition. (Continued^) "■ • Two vices so widespread that they may be almost considered as national lie like two vast dragons in the path of. national thrift. They are DRINKING AND GAMBLING. Without taking an extreme view of the drink question, there can be no unbiassed person bat will admit that it is the cause of most of the misery in the country. The hotel bar is the great competitor with the savings bank for the spare earnings of the people : the one intercepts the money which would otherwise go into the other. 'Xbe occasional sixpences spent in drink are so small a matter that no account is taken of them ; the payment becomes more frequent, and is soon made not in sixpences, but in shillings and in pounds. What comforts the working people might have, what a purchasing power at their call, what interest -bearing deposits, what a provision for their wives and their children and for their old age, if they would only lay by the spare money that they spend in strong drink. And this loss is only the primary effect of intemperance; the secondary effects are vastly more serious and appalling. What a tale of thrif tlessness, misery, vice, arid desperation do our hospitals, asylums, gaols, and churchyards tell ! It is, however, pleasing to observe that there are not wanting signs of the dawn of a better time, when temperance principles (whioh do not necessarily mean total abstinence) will, regulate the habits of the people. Through good repute and through ill the temperance battle has been fought with unremitting zeal, and now the victory may be considered as assured. It is one of the happiest social revolutions of our time. The other vice of gambling dies hard — more Srobably does not die at all— in spite of very rasiic legislation. It has been speciously argued in defence of it that it causes no loss of wealth to the community, but merely effects a transference of wealth out of one pocket into another. Precisely ; and if the entire community turned its attention for a few years to this transference of wealth from one pocket to another, and did nothing else, it would soon discover that it had not much wealth to transfer. Gambling is at best unproductive work, and causes an incalculable amount of evil by attracting the industrious with its great gains (the losses are not so much heard of), and causing them to be discontented with the slow, sure profits of honest toil. The soul of thrift is to set value on small things ; the spirit of gambling is just the opposite. It must be confessed that IN NEW ZEALAND THE GAMBLING SPIRIT IS RAMPANT. The gambling that is transacted over race meetings, coursing meetings, and every other kind of sport goes without saying, but that is really a small matter compared with our commercial gambling. It is this, the writer believes, that has brought about the present depression. Our commerce has been proceeding on a fictitious basis, property having been bought at a speculative value. Millions of acres .of land in New Zealand changed hands at prices at which the produce of the soil would not pay more than half the current rate of interest on the purchase money. But the purchaser bought* the land not to cultivate it bat to sell it, and so< the gambling went on until the stock of foolishness iv the country was exhausted, and then the crash came. In Ofcago there has been a similar iosaue speculation in mining shares bought by clerks and small tradesmen, who had no kind of knowledge of the commodity they were dealing in. During the fever of speculation the last thing they would have thought of doing would hare been to save the margin of their salaries or trade profits, arid lay it out in the ordinary safe investments. Everything had to go into the pool to be doubled or lost. The prevalence of other forms of gambling scarcely needs illustration. To satisfy oneself of its existence one need only look in at the crowded billiard rooms at night, where gambling leads, to drunkenness and drunkenness to gambling. This is and ■ever has been one of the most frequent roads to ruin. " Beware, 0 beware, For anguish, and sorrow, and care Are in there, are in there." Another form of national waste is worthy of •attention, but the delinquency is in this ease of ■Mich a mild and pardonable sort that the moment we mention it we can fancy we hear a ■chorus of Sir Toby Belchers exclaim : " Dost thou think, because them art virtuous, there -shall be no more' cakes and ale ? " We mean IHVi WASTE THAT IS OCCASIONED BY PUBLIC HOLIDAYS. And there can be no denying the fact that the number of public holidays we have got into the habit of treating ourselves to in New Zealand is quite unconscionable. And it is equally undeniable that they are made an occasion for squandering a great deal of useful, hard-earned money. There can scarcely be a cricket match, & race meeting, or review, or a -sham fight, but, there must be a holiday ; and these, in addition to saints' days, New Years' days, Christmas and Easter holidays, and anniversaries, make up a record of idleness which we are riot in.the habit of regarding as seriously as we might. .- Mrs Poyeer was a very shrewd woman, and she has some hqmely philosophy on this subject which is well worth listening to. - " I'd sooner ha' brewin' an' washiu' day together," she protests, "" than one o' these pleasurin' days. .There's no work so tirin' as danglin' about an' starin', and "not rightly knowin' . what you're goin' to dp ■v -xt, and keepin' your face i' sinilin' order like * grocer o\ market day^ for fear people shouldna "think you civil enough., An' you've nothin' ; to •show for'twhen its-d one, if it isn't a yallbw face wi' eatin' things as disagree." Let everyone have his holiday, by all means ; let him get to the mountains, where big, body will be tiuvigorated and his soul gladdened ; let the cobwebs of city life be blown out of his .mind, and let him find himself in the, presence of serene, ■omnipotent Nature. ".It is very good at times," writes the gifted authoreßS of ',' Colonel Enderby's Wife," one of the best works of fiction of recent years — "it is- very good at .times -to •get away into silence and solitude — to get away from all the noise and struggle of man with his Arts and sciences and magnificent, schemes (so often abortive, , and his' poor little" space ,oi snxious, self 'fiounoiouß yeara. It is goodta, get

back and lie on the warm bosom of the eternal mother,' the folds ' of . whose' garments are the high mountains, whose feet are set in the laughing ocean, and whose life is 1 the life of the world — to lie there while the soul slips away from the sense of its own'paltry joys and sorrows, from the narrow hopes and fears of the individual lot, to be made One with the glorious order :of created things." While we preach the sermon of thrift we do not wish it to be understood that we place material prosperity as the crown of life, or that, we should approve of the bargain of - THE MAN WHO GAINED THE WHOLE WOBLD AND LOST HIS OWN SOUL. „ , 'Far otherwise^ Thrift of soul, if, the expression may be used, is more to be desired than .thrift of health, or of time, or of money ; but the frequency with which men contrive to escape from the business of work-a-day world is no criterion of the frequency with which, in the language of Lucas Ualet's rhapsody, they M lie on the warm bosom of the eternal mother," and are " made one with the glorious order of created things." The State, as represented by Parliament, has within its' power many opportunities for cultivating thrift on. the one hand or displaying extravagance on the other. In the past history of this colony we have seen how successive Governments have been most thriftless in the rash disposal of Crown lands at very inadequate prices, and it is only within the last few years that the State has become aware of the magnitude of this' improvidence. It may be justly characterised as thriftless, too, to allow so many large estates to remain comparatively unused, when they might by a more liberal policy have been made capable of supporting a large and prosperous population. There is some reason in the argument of our more advanced legislators that this is' one of the principal causes of "poverty in our midst. But the greatest thriftlessness on the part of the State in New Zealand has been in • THE RECKLESS EXPENDITURE OF BORROWED MONEY. The money flowed into the country in vast amounts, and was forthwith spent on public works altogether beyond the requirements of the population. Members sought popularity with their constituents by demanding large grants for their districts, and successive Governments sought popularity with members by yielding to their demands. Those singular monuments of dishonesty, which are known as political railways, political roads, and political bridges, were constructed with apparently no other object than to increase the value of land in favoured districts and promote speculation. The writer when he takes a ride into the country has occasion to pass a railway bridge which cost he forgets how many thousands of pounds, and which now stands lonely and deserted across a vast river bed, unconnected with any railway, not used and not likely to be used, erected there originally simply that the district might be duly represented in the public squander. The thought has often occurred to him that, since the bridge serves no other purpose, it might by a suitable inscription be turned to account as a monument of a form of political extravagance which it is to be sincerely hoped is now dead and buried. Nor was public extravagance the only evil effect of the era of borrowed money ; it was succeeded by A PRIVATE EXTRAVAGANCE THAT WAS, IF POSSIBLE, MORE PERNICIOUS. 1 Money seemed to be earned without effort, and was spent as easily as earned. The profits that came into the hands of workmen, contractors, tradesmen, and speculators, were spent with a splendid prodigality. It was confidently believed that the good times would never come to an end. Profits, it was said, would increase as population flowed in. People began to live more expensively than ever. Life seemed almost too short to consume its good things. History was repeating over again the incident of the digger knocking down his cheque— handing ■his £100 to the publican, as the legend goes, with the request, •' There, mister, tell me when that's done," and when he had only an hour more to stay, and £10 still remained to be spent, taking the balance out in smashed windows and broken furniture. Just so was it with those who found themselves suddenly rich in the halcyon days of borrowed millions *, their madness only differed from the digger's in its method. While it cannot be denied that the public works policy of 1870 and the succeding years has. hastened the progress of the colony, it is equally undeniable that it was a forced progress, and that the prosperity of those years was not of that kind which is lasting. Passing now to THE QUESTION OF CO-OPERATIVE THBIFT, the* good that is being done by life assurance societies, building and friendly societies, and savings banks comes to be considered. Life assurance -is one of the best forms of thrift, and is very creditable to the people of the colonies, who are in many ways, it must be confessed, an improvident people— that a much larger proportion of .the population than is the case in the Mother Country have insured their lives. There is no better incentive to thrift than the knowledge that the life assurance premiums have to be paid at certain stated times. By this means the habit of saving is engendered, and it is engendered early, for. the younger a man is when he takes out a policy the easier are the conditions of payment- And if he should wish to have the money paid at a certain age, as provided by the endowment tables, he can secure to himself the possession of a handsome sum of money at a time of , life when it is most difficult to earn it ; and this is all to be obtained by the mere layings by of two or three shillings each week. To the married man a life policy is, as it were, a sheet anchor. Life is at best uncertain,' and when a man has a wife and family depending on him, for whom no other provision has been made, it becomes his duty to insure for as largo a sum as he can afford to keep in force. It is a common belief, but an erroneous one, that the premiums. unless paid punctually are forfeited., The provision of a surrender value, by which policies are kept in force out of premiums already paid and their accrued profits, nas efiectually answered this objection. A' striking illustration of the advantage of this provision to insurers occurred in Southland recently.. A man had, insured for £250 some years ago in a society established on the mutual principal ; he had borrowed £40 on the security of his policy and during the last three or four years he had been unable through misfortune to pay his premiums. A serious illness overtook him, and he died in the belief that his policy was forfeited, Much to the widow's joy, however, a cheque for the' sum of £202 was at once handed to her by the society's agent. The policy had been kept in force out of past bonuses and premiums. The thought that our families may be left to the mercy and cold charity of the world should be a sufficient incentive to every conscientious man to make them indepennent of such a pre- ■ carious form of relief. ' - Building societies, when carefully and honestly fttnaged, are also a. valuable means of encovirsg- '

ing 1 thrift, and are specially. '.adapted to the wants and resources of the wage-earning class. Many a, man has been, able by .the payment of a small sum monthly to secure at, the end of a term of years a'ffeehold ,sectioh and house, of his own, and .to live rent' free" for the rest; of his life.' -The only, fault that is'to, he found with, these'sooieties is that they are.too often loosely managed^' and, too much, power is given to irresponsible ■ secretaries. . It is also important that there' should be the strictest supervision over investments, for nothing', sooner disgusts the thrifty than to find their ."money, squandered by those who are intrusted with the investment of it., The great, work that friendly societies are! doing is proverbial. By the payment of. a' small weekly fee members are attended in sickness free of charge, and in the event of death the necessary expenses are paid I by the society. It is pleasing to note, as proving j that these societies' do really promote the j habit of thrift, that those who are members of friendly societies are generally found to have their lives insured and to have deposits in the Savings Bank. , - j (To be concluded- nextiweek.)