HOMES FOR WORKERS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13790, 23 October 1908, Page 7

HOMES FOR WORKERS.

A FRENCH SCHEME

New Zealand is by no 'means the only country providing homes for workers at modest rates. France, tho country of small lots and intense cultivation, has lately adopted an interesting scheme for providing the working man with half-an-acre and a home. The promoter of the legislation was M. Ribot, a well-known deputy. It was w r hile the Old Age Pensions Bill was under discussion that the idea occurred to him. Some of his constituents in the Pas de Calais had suggested that they would rather invest their savings in this way, and he at once sought to gain for them the option of setting aside their prospective pensions as part-payment, of the purchase money required to buy a plot of land and a homestead. The field or garden must not cost more than £48, and its extent is limited for the present to twenty-five ares— -a little over half-an-acre. The intending purchaser must possess 240 francs, or £9 12s. A poorer man may be helped by the State, and the moment he deposits the money he becomes proprietor of the holding. .He must undertake that he or his children will cultivate it, and he must also insure his life. The State does not deal direct with the purchaser, but with an intermediary and guarantee company formed in each district. A capital of £4,000,000 has been set aside for loans at 2 per cent., and each local company must have a capital of £8000, of which half is to bo held in reserve.

The original idea was to provide town or country workers with a home when they had reached the age of fifty or sixty, but it will be seen that anyone who has saved one-fifth of the purchase money, less than £10, can at once become possessor of "half-an-acre and aj homestead." M. Ribot hopes, in-] deed, that young workers and timt'-i expired soldiers will take advantage of the scheme and will settle down and marry. An attempt will be made to draw them away from the great cities, because the tendency of population in France, as in most other countries, is to drift to the industrial centres. M. Ribot's scheme was sanctioned by the French Parliament in April, but the Bill was passed almost without discussion, and it is only now that the matter is attracting attention. The London newspapers, in summarising the scheme, omit many details that would be interesting to New Zealanders, but fuller accounts should bo easy of access.