REMARKABLE RECORDS OF THRIFT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 178, 18 July 1908, Page 3

REMARKABLE RECORDS OF THRIFT.

It has been asserted that the British working man does not know how to| save, it statement which is refuted bv tlie National Thrift Society, a society which was founded some thirty years ago by Mr. T. Bowdcu (Inra with the object Of promoting habits of regular and systematic thrift amongst all classes. These habits are promulgated bv moans of having thrift "chats" iu workingclass centres, and circulating literature showing how to economise without being stingy or miserly. To celebrate its thirtieth anniversary the society recently organised a competition, in which they offered prizes in sums of £ls, £lO, and Co to the three men or women who produced the three best "•-nrds of industrial thrift, in respect ving, covering a period of not Jes> ■ . thirty years. The candidates, win. .ucludcd engineers, printers, factoryworkers, railwaymen, labourers, clerk's, and domestic servants, have produced some remarkable records of thrift.

Here is tlie case of a railway porter, fifty-nine years of age, who lias set a splendid example to his fellow-workmen. He has never earned more than :Slls ,i -week, and out of his pay he has sup ported u wife and a family of six children. Although he was swindled out of the first £10(1 he managed to save, he is now tlie proud owner of £1(1.) in property and £15!) 14s in other saving-, A shopkeeper at Buriiliani-on-Cioiici, lias even a better record. He is nov. fifty years' of age, and married m eighteen, when his wages did not exceed 15s a week. He worked hard, however, and became a shopkeeper in a smai: way of business two years later, and ;t> determined was he to succeed that lie thought nothing of working sixteen hours a day. In spite of the fact thai lie lias reared a family of fourteen children, his business turnover last year amounted to £1,732, besides a stockworth £I,BOO. According to the results of the competition, however, domestic servants are far away the most thrifty of the work-ing-classes. A record hard to beat is that owned by a servant whose wages have varied in the thirty years from £lO to £IG a year. Sh<>'has been in her present place thirty-eight years. Out of her slender earnings she has saved £175 in Consols and lias £167 standing to her credit at the savings bank, in addition to providing for her old age by purchasing ifn annuity of £l2. There are scores of others whose savings-bank accounts testify to their thrifty disposition. . At Southend a workman of humble means has accumulated £SOO in thirty years, £420 being invested in Consols; while a Birmingham man, a worker in a paper factory, whose wages have never exceeded 30s per week, had in twenty years saved over £IOO and purchased a house nhd two cottages.