ASTONISHING FEATS OF SAVING.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12765, 17 June 1911, Page 12 (Supplement)

ASTONISHING FEATS OF SAVING.

WORKMEN WHO AUK WORTH THOUSANDS. What self-help ond thrift can do for n man is strikingly demonstrated by the case of John Morrison, a Yorkshire mrpe/:ter, who, although his wages ha<! never exceeded 355. a week, has been able to leave behind him the snbstrmti.il sum of £3,000, ©very penny of it the fruits of saving. INVESTED IN HOUSES. "Impossible!" the sceptic says; and no wonder, for such a feat seems to border on the nnraenlous. And yet it was really quifco s'mpla, as John Morrison used to declare.1 When ho marlied, a litt'e over forty years ago, he looked round to t=ee what economies he could ofFoct. He found that ho had boon spending at least ss. a week on brtrtr *nd tobac-o; these he could very well rjispense with. That meant a weekly snvintr of 55.. or £13 n year. And'thrs was the nucleus of his fortune. A few weeks later his wages were rsii^M from 30s. to 3os. weekly. He cculd mb alone: without the extra 65.,

and was thus able to put by £26 a year. When his savings had amounted to £100 ho bought two cottages, borrowing three-fourths of the purchasemoney and paying off the loan out of tha rente. H« was a man of property iiow. The appetite for thrift took full possession of him. He was fond of gardening, and he decided to turn his hobby and spare time into money. Ho rented half an acre of land; his wife opened a .sltop for the sale of the produce, and the first year he was able to increase his savings to £l a week, with in tvo years' time he was able to buy two more houses. £3 A WEEK FOR £250. And thus simply his fortune •grow. ITous-i was added to house, each paying ior its own purchase with its rent; tintil at; sixty he was able to retire on .l-'ISO a year, almost twice his highest uagea as workman; and when he died to leaire a g00d.£3,000 behind him. And whit John Morrison could do and did others have done. Quite recently a working man confessed in a court of law N that lie had already saved £GOO oat of -wages which had never exceeded 130s. a week. "How did you do itP" asked the magistrate. "By a little selfdenial, your worship," the man anfiverod, and then proudly added, "And I'w broughb tin four children, too; and now there's only me and the wifo I'm guJng to buy an annuity with it, which they say will come to over £70 a Star." In another case known to Vie writer "S^London policeman managed to save £250 during the first dozen years of his married life. This sum he deposited in a bank, from which he secured a loan for the purchase of a block of weekly property which lie bought at a bargain. - The rents, in process of time, paid not only the interest but the principal of the loan. The repairs he executed himself in his spare time, and long before he was sixty he was in tho enjoyment of a clear -mcorno uf £150 a year from his property, which had cost him nothing but the initial saving of £250. PIDNT WANT A PENSION. In stilt another case, reported from liuheashire, a factory operative presented himself one day recently before lis foreman and asked him _to aijcept a week's notice The foreman, who know that the man had never drawn more than 30s. a'week and had brought up a-, family, asked, "What are you going to do? You can't have saved anything, and you are too young-for fi Government pension." "I want no pension," was the answer; "I've saved enough to see me and the wife through." "How much have you sav**d?" 'Oh," was the startling nnswer, "t\ matter of a thousand pounds. You see, I've been, lucky in my investments.'-' '-....,.