I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES.
“Do not forget to pay your dues to-night,” is an expression familiar to the occupants of fifty thousand Philadelphia homes, one hundred and fifty thousand Pennsylvania homes, and six hundred and fifty thousand households in the United States. This means that nearly seven hundred thousand families are contributing towards gaining homes of their own through Building and Loan Associations. The entire membership is nearly seventeen hundred thousand, of whom fully four hundred thousand are women and children.
The picture “Paying their Dues” is a representative one, and in Philadelphia there are four hundred and seventy-five such gatherings every year. The Philadelphia associations generally meet once every month, but in some parts of the State, and in other States, many societies meet weekly, so there are fully ten thousand such gatherings every twelve months in the United States.
The women have shares in their own right, and the children are either paying dues for their parents or for themselves, the father or mother acting as trustee. The boys and girls know exactly what nights the associations meet, and are generally on hand with their money long before the officers are ready to receive the funds and give receipts in the pass books.
What is the meaning of these gatherings? To enable every member to become his own landlord—to purchase homes for themselves, by paying their money into a joint concern for a few years until each one has saved enough, with gains added, to buy a home, and in the meantime the entire receipts being loaned to the members to gain homes in advance of the final reckoning or maturity of the shares.
The members have well learned the principle that money makes money if well used, that if many pay rent for the benefit of the few, through the building association the many may combine together so as to put the rents into their own pockets.