Bournville Village: Linden Road.
In order to encourage thrift (at the same time insuring privacy), a Savings Fund on a novel system has been working successfully for several years at Bournville. The fund was opened in Jubilee year by gifts of £1 to each employee who had been three years in the service of the firm, and 10s. to those employed for a shorter time. Deposits are received, and amounts withdrawn in the usual way during the year, through collectors in each department, the depositors' cards being called in quarterly for audit. At the end of each financial year, in May, interest at the rate of four per cent. is added to the amount standing to the credit of each depositor, and the whole amount paid over to the Post Office Savings Bank. At this time also, Post Office officials attend at the works, and enter the amounts to the credit of each depositor, issuing new Post Office Savings books where necessary. This system secures absolute privacy for the permanent savings, and places the fund upon a secure basis. As some evidence that the scheme is appreciated, it may be stated that the total balance transferred to the Post Office Savings Bank has averaged over £3,200 per annum.
While in the district of Bournville, the opportunity must not be lost of becoming more closely acquainted with the village around the works. Away beyond the factory stretches an estate of nearly 500 acres, set apart for the purpose of "alleviating the evils which arise from the insanitary and insufficient accommodation supplied to large numbers of the working classes, and of securing to workers in factories some of the advantages of outdoor village life, with opportunities for the natural and healthful occupation of cultivating the soil." As yet only some 450 houses have been erected, pretty, picturesque cottages all of them, for the most part semi-detached, each on its sixth of an acre,
more or less, housing in all a population of about 2,000.
Fishing Pool, Bournville.
It was compassion for the ill-housed work-people of Birmingham that led Mr. George Cadbury, the founder of the village, to undertake so splendid a task, and having accomplished it, he crowned it by making a gift of the whole to the nation, placing its administration in the hands of a Trust. In doing so he laid down ideal stipulations for its development, and for the regulation of the villages which may in the future be built out of the income of the Trust. The principal of these are that factories or workshops shall never occupy more than one fifteenth of the area; that no house shall occupy more than one-fourth of the ground allotted to it; that in addition to wide roads and the ample gardens thus secured, one-tenth of the area shall be reserved for public open spaces for ever, parts of which are to be used as children's playgrounds. At present no intoxicants are sold or prepared on the estate, and if ever the trustees should see fit to permit this, it is to be as a co-operative undertaking, the profits of which
shall "be devoted to securing for the village community recreation and counter-attraction to the liquor trade as ordinarily conducted."
Such a scheme affords a model for public bodies tackling the housing problem in earnest, and is fraught with great hopes for the future. The annual income, nearly £6,000, is to be applied first to the development of this estate, and subsequently to the purchase of estates near Birmingham or other large towns, and the establishment of new villages thereon. A most important feature is, that although the rents are calculated to yield a fair return on the cost, including a proportion of development expenses, they are so low that a five-roomed cottage with bath and every convenience can be had for the rent of a two-roomed hovel in the slums. About two-fifths of the householders find employment in the cocoa works, the rest in the adjoining villages or in Birmingham.