WORKS THAT PAY.

Gisborne Times, Volume VII, Issue 338, 12 February 1902, Page 2

WORKS THAT PAY.

Very well off, indeed, because it cannot spend very much and has a big revenue, is King’s Ferry, over the Ouse. This is odd. because a ferry generally means a boat and a man. -- and this one is not allowed to charge ’ ’> anything, for it owns much land and houses, but must take across the river eierybody who wants to go. It keeps; a big barge to take horses and carts from bank to bank, besides two wherries for foot-passengers, and has four men at work all day and every dav. This ferry has bought the street, so to speak, for a whole row of villas and cottages have sprung up on the land that belongs to it, producing a rental ol over £IOOO a year. There is a farm of lot acres, too. As the ferry onlycosts £2OO a year, the institution has a clear £IOOO to give away. This it does royally, paying all rates and taxes on its tenants’ houses, and running a good-sized orphanage, holding 100 waifs and strays; besides k piping hot, free soup kitchen, which is much pitronised in hard times.

But the Crispin Lighthouse, on Aurmi Head, in Ireland, does better than that This is the only light in Britain that -is not kept up by one of the national Light Boards, and the reason is that it is a great landowner and’ 'emp’oyer, and can pay its own expenses, with a large balance to the good. Its two poultry-farms are the best in the South of Ireland, and produce a revenue of about £250 a year. I They rear nearly seven hundred head of poultry—chiefly fowls, geese, and turkeys—a great number of which come to the London and Dublin markets. Besides these the lighthouse is the owner of 1000 acres of mountain pasturage, supporting three large herds of cattle and fifty horses. Con-' sequently, the lighthouse, after paving its own cost, has a surplus of £7OO a year, which it deals out with a generous hand. All this landed property s a settled gift from a long dead lord of the manor. The rents of the other fatmr. are often remitted by the lighthouse in bad years, and all the poor of the neighborhood have their doctors bills paid and their cottage repairs settled by the trustees of the

light. It pays its keepers extremely well, and is known as the best landlord in Ireland. It also owns a bell-’ buoy, which swings and rings out to sea tc warn vessels off the rocks and the ffghthouse gives a great banquet la DubliU every year t