GENEROUS WORKS.

Gisborne Times, Volume VII, Issue 336, 10 February 1902, Page 4

GENEROUS WORKS.

VESTED WEALTH,

There are many generous works in the world, and among the kindly persons in Great Britain is Rochester Bridge, for, in spite of its heart of grey stone, it gives away £2doo a year in charities, and keeps a special fund for find ng work for poorunemployed people in bad times. The soup it deals out in cold weather is excellent.

This bridge belongs to nobody—in fact, 'it owns several hundred acres of land, and there is not a better landlord anywhere. It keeps its own officials to sue the tenants if they don’t pay, owns a chapter-house and a staff of clerks to keep the books properly, and pays all its own expenses and repairs. It gives a banquet once a year to its captain and employees, and “ runs ” an iron swing-bridge at one side of it, to let vessels pass up and down the eiver, all paid for out of its own pocket. All its surplus income, bar a reserve fund, goes in charities. London Bridge, and Bideford Bridge, in Devon, do the same thing, but not in such princely style. Another very good-hearted creature is the Strachan Road, Staffordshire, which does a good deal of farming, and throws its surplus income right and left among the poor of the neighborhood. Most roads cost a lot of money, which the ratepayers have to provide, but the Strachan Road —the whole three miles of him—costs nobody a penny, for he owns two farms of 300 acres each, has pastures that support 100 head of cattle, and keeps a baby race-course of his, own. lie also owns a dozen red-brick villas with all the latest improvements, whose rents add largely to the money he can afford to give away. This road —land and all—was presented by a Hugh Cecil a good many generations ago, and now the highway is the best kept in Britain, with an income of £9OO a year surplus over expenses and reserve, all of which its servants distribute among the poor. Out-of-work farm laborers are helped out of its funds, and it allows a pension to every workman who has served it 20 years. There are eight people drawing these pensions now. If there is as much as a dent in the roadway, out comes a gang immediately and smooths it down as flat'as a table. One could play billiaeds on the sidepaths, and it is never allowed to get muddy. The road gives the best annual dinners—at £OO a time—in the county. For generosity no Duke can compete with Bourne Bridge, on the Avon, and its brother, Massey Bridge, for they run a beautiful establishment, witli two cottage hospitals, besides giving away over £2OOO a year. This is due to a stroke of luck the bridges had a few years ago. They were once very hard up—indeed until fairly lately—for a monarch now as dead as Adam had endowed them with 700 acres of land, which was, to say the least of it —poor. Nothing would gsow there, and there was not even pasturage for sheep, for the land was heath and waste. So the bridges fell into disrepair and got into debt. But about thirty years ago variable limestone quarries were located on the bridge estates, practically inexhaustible, and now the two bridges supply about a third of Britain from their quarries, employing 130 workmen and twenty horses, which are “ hard at it ” all the year round. The revenue reached £3,500 last year, and the bridges are now in grand condition, and keep a big business house always busy. The £2OOO, besides the cottage hospitals, ' goes iu soup kitchens, pensions and poor relief, saving the workhouses a lot of money, and it is a recognised thing in the district that of all jobs a job on -the bridge estates is by far the best for pay and fair treatment.

The Sutton water tower has rather put on airs since it has acquired a game preserve all of its own, but it does a lot of good, and helps a large number of poor people out of financial difficulties every year, it has somewhat the same experience as the last institution, except that it is a newer building. It had 1200 acres of land settled on it, which became derelict, through bad luck and the poorness of the giound. When this had been going on for two or three years, so far liom paying its expenses, the tower bad to be helped out of the rates, for the payments for water nothing like covered the cost. This was a sad come down for a lauded gentleman, though only a red-brick one. But an enterprising trustee stocked the towers estate with game, and within three years it Was turned into a flourishing “ shoot ” of tiie ' first water. It fetches £6OO ;i year now, leaving £2O to spare, above expenses, and it plso ciaims one-third of the “ ground game ” shot on its land, bringing in another £SO a year, the tower now having a good fat banking account. It runs a free bread agency for thirty people and keeps two widowed famil'es per year in comfort, besides giving the most hospitable little dinners, livery year, too, it buys a little more lacu, and .the rent goes up steadily^