The Magic of Property.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 969, 13 August 1881, Page 2 (Supplement)

The Magic of Property.

By E. A. McKechnie, Esq. (From the Star. — Concluded). Various business arrangements have from time to time been made by men of capital to assist the working man in improving his condition. The most notable of these are Building Societies of different kinds. These were commenced in the beginning of this century by a few persons animated with a desire to improve their social position, and impressed with the advantages to be derived from associating together for the purpose of raising funds to be lent out among themselves, The advantages of the system became in a short time so apparent that such associations multiplied exceedingly. The Government at last thought it advisable to place Building Societies upon an independent basis, by passing an Act for their regulation. The Act was not perfection at first, but it has been amended. Our present Act of 1880 embodies those amendments, and appears to give satisfaction. Now it may be asked, what is a Building Society ? A Building Society is simply a co-operative association to raise a common fund into which its members put their savings, some with the intention of obtaining interest thereon, and these are called investing shareholders ; others with the purpose of borrowing money for the purchase of land and cottages, and these are called borrowing members. These latter give security for the amount borrowed over the property purchased, and agree to pay back the amount with interest within a certain number of years. It is a puzzle to some how these societies can charge only a low rate of interest to borrowers, and yet give a high rate to their investing shareholders. The explanation is very simple. If the society lends out in small sums —say five or six hundred pounds —during one week

a portion of the loans is repaid during the next and succeeding weeks, and the society is shortly again enabled to make further loans out of these repayments. The more the society lends the more it can lend, and this constant repetition of receiving and lending out gives a compound interest which multiplies itself over and over again. There are two Building Societies in this city, affording ready means for the industrious and provident to im < prove their condition. lam connected with one of these—the Industrialunder the management of Mr. George Fraser. But lam not here to advocate the claims of one at the expense of the other. My object is to impress ■ upon you the necessity of joining one 1 of them, leaving you to choose between ; the two. As, however. I am better acquainted with the Industrial than the other, what I shall further state will relate more particularly to the Society with which I am connected. J The advantages offered then by thajf j Society are briefly these : —A shared holder can borrow money in any | amount and for any time from Ito 10 1 years at a low rate of interest. The ’ borrower pays no procuration fee for the loan which in ordinary cases is a pound for every hundred he borrows. The cost of the mortgage deed is restricted by the rules to a small stated sum. The amount borrowed is repaid by weekly instalments, but the borrower, you will remember, is living rent free, and /the instalments are equivalent to, but are no more than an ordinary rent. At the end of the period, when the amount is paid off, he secures to himself a home that he can call his own? A tenant can never have the same motive for. exertion in making his home comfortable as a man who feels that the cottage belongs to himself ; that no one can turn him or his family out; and that whatever he expends upon it will be so much gain to himself. Those of you who remember what Newton and Ponsonby were 10 years ago, and how rapidly of late years the land there has increased in value, you will see the advantage of becoming possessed of a house and land of your own. The land imi<cdiately around Auckland must increase in value if the city spreads as it has done of late, of which there can be little doubt; and I would gladly see every mechanic and working man in occupation of their own little freehold. A man when the place is his own, employs every leisure moment in adding to his own comforts and the comforts of those dependent upon him. He becomes proud of property and spends many a happy hour with his household around him in improving it. A mechanic working in the town and the countries I have mentioned will carefully save till he can purchase a little plot of ground outside of this town. To this he will repair every working evening of his life, and with his family assisting him, will spend hours cheerfully and pleasantly toiling upon it. This you will say—though he considers it a relaxation—is constant work. No doubt it is, but we must all work ? It appears to have been decreed, since mau first appeared upon earth, that he should live by the sweat of his brow. For long periods this was looked upon as a curse. But in recent times to the thoughtful of mankind, it has borne a different aspect or signification. Every earnest thinker, who has expressed himself to the world by spoken or written lan- 1 guage, has in his own way impressed upon us this great lesson—that it is a high , and honorable privilege to work that man is dignified and enobled by work—and that what in foretimes was looked upon as a curse, is in reality a blessing. No one in our time has impressed this upon the world with more earnestness, with more attentionarresting power than that great teacher Thomas Carlyle whose death has lately been recorded. Now men work in two ways—with their brains and their hands. There are two forces mixed up in our being—one, the nerve force, which, acting on the nerve centres of the brain, we call mind ; the other the action of the muscles, which we call bodily strength—both forces are kept up by the same kind of nutriment. A man working with his brain, becomes exhausted in the same degree as when working with his muscles, and if the vigour is not kept up, or the vitality supplied, by proper food, the system becomes exhausted and dies out. Few men can work with both brain and muscle at ifhe same time. It is generally found that where one is habitually used, the other is in a. great measure neglected. Brain work is considered higher work than of muscle, but it does not confer the

same amount of content and happiness. Those who work laboriously with the brain, as a rule do not enjoy’ the best bodily health. They suffer in many ways from their compulsory sedentary habits, which the muscle worker entirely avoids. The mind becomes more than ordinarily sensitive from being frequently overtaxed, and the brain worker is often tempted to envy the strong frame, robust health, and cheerful cNiposition of those who earn their bread by manual labor. You thus see you have something in your position of life to be grateful for. There is no book that will make you more sad on reading it than the lives of those connected with literature. Most of them in former days lived in straitened circumstances, dependent on the good nature of charity of others. Some were reduced to poverty and rags, some languished in prison for debt, some died of hunger, and some, so dire was their necessity, perished / by their own hands. Even Carlyle, great as he was considered, and honored as he is as a great thinker and writer, tells us himself that he was the most miserable of men. Thus you see if we raise the veil from any individual life, we find nothing to envy, and little to desire. Take the most successful men here, and note how •engrossed they are in their business, with what regularity they live, and how little they are seen out of their own homes. Now any one of you obtaining the same command over himself, pursuing business or work, with the same steady application, and living a home life, will succeed as well. I do not say he will make annually the same amount of money —but he will be equally independent, and this in my opinion is the only thing in the world worth struggling for. There is one other point to which I desire to draw your attention in connection with the division of land among the people, and that is the respect for property which it induces. A traveller of more than ordinary intelligence records the impression it made upon him in these words: “ But what surprised me as much as anything was that, as I drove along the public roads for miles, even near the towns, the roads were bor-

dered by rows of magnificent fruit trees of various kinds. These trees had no protection against theft. There were no hedges or palings. They were all open to any passenger along the roads. Anyone could have plucked the fine fruit. I have often seen, in the autumn, the overladen boughs supported by long poles forked at one end, and even then nearly breaking under their burden. I have seen the ground beneath covered with ripe and fallen fruit, but no one touching or interfering either with trees or fruit. I have seen a thousand miles of such road side orchards in Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, and have constantly looked with astonishment at the wonderful respect for property which all this evinced.” Now are we not ourselves blameable, in some measure, for the existence of the opposite state of things here in our midst ? A large portion of each man’s land is occupied by unproductive hedge rows, fences, walls, and ditches. All this is rendered necessary by the habits of the people. Every man trespasses and encroaches, o* endeavors to do so, upon his neighbour, and is only kept in order by the strong arm of the law. Large sums of money —some two or three thousand pounds—are annually spent in maintaining gaols, police and judicial departments, and otherwise providing for the detection and punishment of crime. Our streets are crowded with young persons apparently under no •control, and the means of keeping them within bounds have to be increased yearly. Are we not, I would again ask, answerable for this state of things ? The government of a family, I would remind you, is the first stage of all governments that expands to the government of villages, towns, countries, nations; but if we neglect our duty in the limited sphere of *« head of a family,” how can we do our duty in the more extended one of citizens ? Lord Macaulay, in his grave way, has wondered how any parents can reasonably expect their children to be otherwise than they are themselves. The father may spend his time at his Club, smoking, billiard-playing, and idling. The mother may join in all the frivolities and pleasures of life, and yet they most absurdly expect thqir children to be 'studious and domesticated. Neither by inheritance nor example, can this be so or the children be different from their parents. Should we not take home this truth to ourselves and endeavor to turn it to profitable account? To aid you in doing

so —to keep your children around you and yourselves under proper restraint —acquire property, not for itself only, but for its influence for good. The money many cast away in drank alone —not in what is efficient or good for one, but in excess of all that —would make a fair beginning for most men. There are men in this country —as you well know —who knock down in a few days’ drinking the hard earnings of months, whose lives alternate between lonely life in the bush and the fever frenzy of drink in a town. This arises partly from their having no interest in anything in the world, and partly from a want of knowledge how to use their money profitably, and partly from having no control whatever over themselves. Now it is very instructive to note how this reckless unhappy mode of life, not uncommon among our wage class, immediately vanishes under a different system of land laws, and before an educational system which imparts greater practical knowledge in the various pursuits of life. In the countries I have mentioned, where such laws are in force, every yeoman farmer, every peasant farmer, every laborer who owns a mere garden, devotes every spare moment he has to his land, in developing its fertility, tending its vegetables and fruits, studying and striving in every way to increase the value of its products. The lesson thus taught may well be taken to heart by the rulers of mankind, and those who desire the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Teachers of the people may tell them of the injurious effect of alcohol to the end of time, but their voices will remain unheeded. Give the mass of mankind an opportunity of acquiring property, restore to them a hopeful life, which human laws have deprived them of, and all the improvement we desire to see in their condition, conduct, and lives will immediately be developed. The acquisition of property is the one thing that will enable you to stay a downward course, that will enable you to avoid a continuous strain upon your energies. Let me ask you then in the interest which every right-minded man must feel in the social order and improvement of the working classes, in the prosperity and contentment of those around him, in the advancement and happiness of his race, to give yourselves and your children a chance of doing well. Endeavor to realize the true dignity of independence, and to feel the restraining influence of property —an influence so marvellous in its action, so beneficial in its results, as to be termed most appropriately “The Magic of Property.”