These societies have done more to teach the people practical thrift than any known device ever promulgated. Thrift is described as “good husbandry, economical management in regard to property, success and advance in the acquisition of property, increase of worldly goods, vigorous growth, as a plant.”
“He is a good wagoner that can turn in a little room.”—Bishop J. Hall.
“Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty and of ease, and the beautiful sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health. Without economy none can be rich, and with it few can be poor.”—Dr. Johnson.
While these literary economical truths proclaimed in all ages by wise men, which they themselves very seldom knew how to put into practical use, have no doubt caused millions to think and wonder how to do it, they, altogether, have not built half as many rounds in the practical ladder of “thrift” as the poor workingman who successfully induces his next door neighbor to save one dollar a month out of his waste money, and with it subscribe for one share of stock in a well-managed building society. Building society advocates have done much inducing, but always in a practical way. They have not merely proclaimed that “economy is wealth;” that “the best security for civilization is the dwelling,” but they have taken the arm of their friend and neighbor and have led him to the society meeting-room and shown him just how they saved their own money. They have also taken them into their own homes and told them, “This is my own home, paid for, or nearly so, through the aid of the building society.” In this way lessons in the practical benefit of thrift are daily given.
“Examples demonstrate the possibility of success,” said Colton many years ago.
Alexander Dumas brought the matter home to the door of every man when he said, “All the world cries, ‘Where is the man who will save us? We want a man!’ Don’t look for this man, you have him at hand. This man—it is you—it is I—it is each of us.... How to constitute one’s self a man? Nothing harder if one knows not how to will it; nothing easier if one wills it.”
It would seem that building society advocates were created to teach men how to will it. In this line of work they have certainly been eminently successful. To what class of citizens do these advocates belong, good, better, or best? In the early history of these associations they were organized and almost wholly managed by mechanics and laboring men; managed honestly, conservatively, and successfully; and to this “class” belongs the honor of organizing, conducting, and carrying to a point of magnitude and usefulness, that commands the admiration of financiers the world over, the building societies as conducted in Pennsylvania and other States.
The honest, thrifty home-seeker has proved himself to be the “best” citizen so far as managing a building society is concerned. When failures have occurred, the main causes have been the introduction into the management of financial ideas emanating from the brains of theoretical bankers and literary economists.
The man who works at the bench mending shoes has a better idea of what a dollar will do than the man who has at his command hundreds of thousands of dollars belonging to other people, but who never was blessed with the necessity of earning a real dollar by his own labor. The conservative building society is one of good common sense and not of class. It would be difficult to bankrupt a building society conducted by men endowed with honesty and good common sense. The “better citizen” is the man who spends less than he earns, pays his debts promptly, would rather give his neighbor a dollar than steal a dollar from him, looks upon the home institution as holy and sacred, strives to own a home of his own, obeys the laws and looks the world straight in the face. This “class,” without a penny to begin with, caused Philadelphia to be known the world over as “the City of Homes.”
In the many interesting cases of men redeemed from the habit of unthrift through the agency of building associations, and placed on the road to moderate fortunes, there are sometimes two sides to the story. One side is that related by the individual who has been saved from future poverty, and the other side that which could be related by the wife and mother, if she did not prefer and really strive to hide from the outside world the life she had been leading, its trials and gloom. The man simply tells how many days in the week he preferred not to work, and how he never tried to save a penny. The wife could tell how little the husband brought into the home in the way of money, and what her awful anxiety had been. One side is public property, for it is told by the husband for the purpose of inducing others to make a new departure on the road to thrift and home-ownership. The other side is supposed to be sacred, but it is only a secret in a sense that it is not proclaimed. No man who is often voluntarily away from his work, having a “good” selfish “time,” spending the earnings of days of actual work, need imagine that his friends and neighbors are ignorant of what the life in his home is, for it is as plain to all as if the house was constructed of clear glass.