The Leeds Permanent Building Society, which has furnished healthy tenements for about two hundred families, sets forth the following recommendations of the influence which it has exercised amongst the working classes of that town:  “It is truly cheering to hear the members themselves, at occasional meetings tell how, from small savings hitherto deemed too little for active application, they began to invest in the society:  then to build or buy; then to advance in life, and come to competence, from extending their savings in this manner....  The provident habits and knowledge thus induced are most beneficial to the members.  And the result is, that the careless become thoughtful, and, on saving, become orderly, respectable, propertied, and in every way better citizens, neighbours, and more worthy and comfortable.  The employment of money in this useful direction encourages trade, advances prices and wages, comforts the working classes, and at the same time provides the means of home enjoyments, without which such advances would be comparatively useless, and certainly uncertain."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Letter of Mr. John Holmes, in Reports of Paris Universal Exhibition, 1867 vol. vi., p. 240.]

There are also exceptional towns and villages in Lancashire where large sums of money have been saved by the operatives for buying or building comfortable cottage dwellings.  Last year Padiham saved about fifteen thousand pounds for this purpose, although its population is only about 8,000.  Burnley has also been very successful.  The Building Society there has 6,600 investors, who saved last year L160,000 or an average of twenty-four pounds for each investor.  The members consist principally of mill operatives, miners, mechanics, engineers, carpenters, stonemasons, and labourers.  They also include women, both married and unmarried.  Our informant states that “great numbers of the working classes have purchased houses in which to live.  They have likewise bought houses as a means of investment.  The building society has assisted in hundreds of these cases, by advancing money on mortgage,—­such mortgages being repaid by easy instalments.”

Building Societies are, on the whole, among the most excellent methods of illustrating the advantages of Thrift.  They induce men to save money for the purpose of buying their own homes; in which, so long as they live, they possess the best of all securities.

CHAPTER VII.

ECONOMY IN LIFE ASSURANCE.

“Do not, for one repulse, forego the purpose That you resolved to effect.”—­Shakespeare.

“We are helpers, fellow-creatures,
Of the right against the wrong.”—­E.  Barrett.

“Life was not given us to be all used up in the pursuit of what we must leave behind us when we die.”—­Joseph May.

“Le bonheur ou le malheur de la vielillesse n’est souvent que l’extrait de notre vie passee.” (The blessedness or misery of old age is often but the extract of our past life.) De Maistre.