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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3054, 9 April 1881, Page 2

The winding up of the Tauranga Land Building and Investment Society furnishes the local paper with the subject for a leading article. After speaking of the suocessiul conduct of the business of the society, our Tauranga contemporary makes some remarks that are applicable to similar institutions all over the colony. It says:—" This society was the first of the kind started in Tauranga, and on this account its progress was watched with considerable interest. That it has been • of benefit to some of the community is r sufficiently evidenced by the fact that many persons who took shares have now houses and property of their own, which many of them would hardly have had but for the facilities of borrowing offered them by the society. While considering that such societies are frequently of greal benefit to a community, we feel there is also a certain amount of danger arising from the fact that some people may, perhaps, be tempted to speculate. The effect of this might be that their payments might fall into arrears, with the ultimate result of being obliged to sell their properties at a heavy loss. How ever, the society took all possible precautions to save would-be borrowers from 1 such a catastrophe, by a strict scrutiny of the security, and an iron rule not to lend more than a certain fixed proportion of the value. By this means speculation was discouraged, and the interests of borrowers themselves protected. The object of the society was one that mu9t commend itself to a large number of the community,and, judging from theone just 1 closed, the profit to be derived gives a good t interest on the capital laid out, though, perhaps, it is in the fact of inducements being held out for saving and cultivating habits of economy that the chief benefit is to be found. The small sum paid weekly, or monthly, as the case may be, is hardly felt at the time, and the amount gradually swells almost unknown to the investor, who at last finds himself in the possession of a nice little sum, which he can here always expend to advantage. The working man, by a little self-denial and economy, can easily become his own landlord, a position which without the aid of some such institution he would, except in rare instances, bo unable to attain.