THRIFT IN IRELAND

New Zealand Tablet, 24 August 1911, Page 1653

THRIFT IN IRELAND

A SURVIVAL FROM RACK-RENTING DAYS

Though Ireland has been very poor, and is only now emerging, and although the Irish character (at any rate in the novel and on the stage) is associated with the reckless expenditure of borrowed money, there has always been (says ‘F.W.H.’ in London Economist) a remarkable amount of thrift. Even in the poorest districts and in the worst times money has somehow been saved; and these sayings were usually hoarded as in —hidden away in stockings, beds, cupboards, chests, or holes in the ground. Under rackrents no tenant farmer dared to show any sign of comfort in his home or dress lest his rent should be raised; and this fact may account for the innumerable little hoards which have enabled three or four millions of Irishmen and Irishwomen

To Pay Their Passage Money

to America during the last sixty years. Nor is this system of hoarding by any means extinguished. Habits live long and die hard. To convert this idle money into productive capital is one of the most fruitful tasks of civilisation; but to accelerate the process successfully those responsible for the management of our finances (including the Post Office Savings Bank) should

remember that peasants and agricultural laborers are naturally and reasonably suspicious. It is better; they think, to keep a small bag of money in a place of safety than to run the risk of losing it altogether for the sake of interest. In Ireland the principal competitors with hoarding are the Post Office Savings Banks, and the ordinary banks, which, take the money on deposit and pay 1 per cent., giving the depositor a deposit receipt on which he can borrow again at, say 5 per cent. J ’ Not very long ago the bank manager of a country branch in Leinster persuaded numbers of people to let him take their money and invest it for them, paying 5 and 6 per cent. It was an attractive proposition, and in a short time he had collected some £50,000. He seemed to be a paragon of honesty and industry At last he asked the bank for a week’s holiday, disappeared with the money, and has never been seen since. A neighbor, who had happily preferred to invest for himself, told me heart-rending stories of the small savings which had been lost to this rogue; but he also told me of a hoard of £IO,OOO or £12,000 which escaped, and was discovered in the house of an old man alter his death. The hoard consisted

Chiefly of Bank Notes, many of which had been so rotted by age as to be hardly decipherable. At a small market town in the West I related this story to a popular and well-known priest, who at once capped it from his own experience. He was one day visiting an old lady in- his parish, and she happened to say that she kept most of her money in the house in fact, she thought she had about £9OOO or £IO,OOO —in soap boxes The priest was horrified, and told her that she ought to invest it. ‘ What does that mean V He explained what this strange process of investment meant. The old lady asked him if ho wouid do what was necessary. He replied that for himself he had always spent any little money he had but that Father P ,in a neighboring parish, was a shrewd man, and could arrange it for her. They found thal the money was stowed away in boxes of all shapes and sizes upstairs. Copper had been used for ordinary day-to-day purchases; but there were great quantities of silver coins, all very dirty and unrecogmsable. For a fortnight the old lady and her maid rubbed and cltaned the silver. Then they collected all the com and notes (many of which were decaying put them into a vehicle, and drove to the bank. So the hoard was at last invested and converted into use ful capital.