Connecticut western news., 1875-02-12
A NOVEL COMPANY.
It Proposes to Enable a Man to Live on NOth- ing, and Show Him How it is Done.

i 1t tPrOpOses to Enable Man to Live on Moth
 ing, and Show Him How it is Done.
 How to live upon nothing is one of the most difficult problems which the poor in large city have to solve. It is more than probable that none of them have ever accomplished the task, although many may have come as near toward sue cess as nature under the most favorable circumstances will permit. People who have abundant means often find it diff cult to live; but then the difficulties are of their own making, and can readily be cleared away if only there be.a good will to help the work. It is not so with the poor. With them the difficulty is too | often beyond their control, and how they manage to meet it, is, as we think will readily be admitted, often source of wonder to their more prosperous neigh bors. q Z II I. ...T ....- .. ~ria
 But difficult as the proposition intrin- sically is, some shrewds business men in London have taken. hold of it, and a company has been formed which under takes to give practical proof of the pos sibility of solving it very literally. The directors of this company show in their prospectus that, under certain condi- tions, to live upon, nothing is really a matter of no difficulty whatever. It only requires little time and financiering and we must say that their proposition is, to say the least of it, ingenious. It is based upon the idea of amassing the little items of discount which are gener- ally neglected by ready-money pur- chasers, and investing them at compound interest. The company supplies ner- chants and store-keepers with coupons representing sums of money from twelve cents to five dollars, charging a premium of five per cent. upon their nominal value, which premium represents the discount for cash. Any person laying out money with such merchants may, by asking for it, have a coupon representing the amount he has expended. As soon as he has accumulated coupons to the value of $25 he remits them to the com pany, and in return receives bond of the same value, signed by two directors, redeemable sooner or later without any deductions. The five per cent. premium paid by the merchant on receiving the coupons in the first instance, being al lowed to accumulate at compound in terest, constitutes the fund out of which this result is to be obtained, as we'll as that from which the working expenses of the company are to be defrayed.
 The rationale of this proposal is sim pie enough. Suppose that 0 person lay out $25 with his grocer. He receives at the same time coupons of the same face value, which the company exchange for @ $25 bond. The premium paid on those coupons was about B1. .25, which, invested at only five per cent. compound interest, would yield in seventy-five years some where about double the amount of the bond. The company have recognized the objection that people will not care to wait seventy-tive years for the return of their money; they have, perhaps, over rated this; but they propose to meet it by setting apart a portion of their an nual receipts to redeem some of the bonds every half year, which would ac- complish the objects of the company to some extent almost immediately, and people would begin to have all the money they have laid out for provisions re- stored to them. ... -.. .".
 As we have said, the scheme is cer- tainly ingenious. It has these advan- tages, too: Very little capital is needed, and the public, who are to benefit by it., invest nothing. The merchant, who buys the coupons, will be glad to do so for the increased business that comes to him in consequence, and, after all, he is only spending the discount allowable on a cash transaction. He is not money out of pocket. Neither do we think that the holders of the bonds need object to the time that they may possibly have to wait for their redemption. They have cost them nothing, and they will at any rate serve as an acceptable legacy at the death of the first holder. They repre- sent, practically, in fact, an investment of nothing, which in due time will have become equivalent to the entire outlay for living of the first owner of the cou- pons. Supposing that the existence of the company is permanent, the redemp- tion of the bonds will continue to be Q source of livelihood, differing only from the original value by any altered value in money that may have ensued since the bonds were issued. It may also be reckoned that many bonds and coupons will, from various causes, get lost or de- stroyed, all of which will be so much strength to the company to enable it sooner to fulfill its obligations. ...,
 Such, however, is the general outline of proposal which, for one so simple, is 8 little curious, and we shall watch with some interest for its results. For it is not merely theory. We understand that the company is rapidly extending it's operations in London, where already some hundreds of retail houses are pre- pared to supply the coupons. If the plan succeeds. and with honest manage