The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1877-07-19
Building Associations.

General Court in passing, at the last
session, the act authorizing cooperative
fund and loan associations COM
monty known rs building associations
The same act has recently passed in
Massachusetts, after having been fought
for two years by the savings banks and
trust companies. This is an act which
gives the industrial classes the facilities
for obtaining Independent Homes. There
is nothing chimercal or empirical about
the plan. The institutions of building as
sociations has been long tested in Penn
sylvania, there these organizations have
existed since 1910, and the results have
been so favorable that it is no eXaggera-
ton to say that the workingmen of Phla-
delphia, who have erected $4,000 houses
for their own occupancy by means of these
associations, are the best housed labOring
population in the world. In all the mag
niticent spectacle at the great Centennial
Exhibition at Philadelphia, there was
nothing more gratifying to the lover of
mankind than the thousands of humble
homes in the great city itself. A work
has been going on in Philadelphia dur
ing the last half century which is quite
unique and exceptional in the history of
large cities; and this work has been the
acquisition by the laborious classes Of
honesteads in their own right, to an ex-
tent unknown anywhere else in America,
and this all as result of the building
associations.
The leading idea of the plan is, that
the money ordinarily paid 10y laboring
man for rent, is paid to secure him the
ownership, in fee, Of the house in which
lie resides; it has been illustrated as fol-
lows: ga tenant hiring a house at Sl5
per month will pay his landlord $3.50 per
year OF $500 in ten years, while the
same money paid to a building assoca-
ton Of which he is member, will bay
the same house, or at least the greater
part Of it in from eight to ten years." In
Philadelphia there are some 500 building
associations, whose capital is at least five
times greater than that of all the nation
al banks III that city, combined. There
is scarcely a workingman in the Getty of
Brotherly Love- who is not member of
one OF two of these associations and
those who do not own their own homes
have at least pecuniary interest, through
these societies, in the homes of their
neighbors, and are thus landlords in pros
pectivc. In recent article on this sub
.ject the Hon. Loring Blodget well says
''To inspire selfrespect, to sustain indie
pendence and to insure morality and
social order, the separate house and fam
lily are Indispensable, at least to the great
body of the people"
The facility Of creating what may be
called first mortgages payable by month
ly instruments, secured by the house in
which the member of the association lives,
is the greatest OF all possible facilities for
house buying. How the people of Phila-
delphia have availed themselves of such
facilities may be seen from the fact-that
the sum of $50, $50, 900 has passed through
similar associations into real estate in that
city, from 1919 to 1876. 1t is estimated
that 81 ,672, 600 was paid into and invest
ed by them in 1875. There were in that
year $50 active associations in that city,
with 81 800 stockholders and members
or over one-titth of the number of per-
sons having occupations in Philadelphia.
These associations appear to be almost
like societies of brothers, united by love,
science and labor There is no need to
point out how much better this state of
affairs is than in other large cities where
the great body Of mechanics live in hired
houses, with the expectation that they
are to 'move on" like the poor fellow in
one of Dickens novels, whenever the ex-
actions of a landlord so dictate Such a
condition OF things marks great ad-
vance in social science. 1t is encouraging
to know that the world grows, at least in
some sections, in the endeavor to anne
liorate the condition OF its inhabitants
without regard to class distinctions. 1t
is a sentiment unknown, or at most not
acted upon, by the ancients. At Pom
pei there have not been found traces
of a single building devoted to the relief
Of Distress whether of mind or of body.
No hospital ever opened its haven of
refuge to the sick poor. For such things
and for the principle which gives rise to
them, we look in vain to the hard civil
ization of Roman society. On the other
hand, it must be confessed, that there
have not been found evidences of that
wretchedness and extreme poverty which
pertain to most of the large cities Of mod
ern times. The efforts of the past were
directed toward improving the conditions
of specific classes of men. Thus Numa
Pomplllus instituted Colleges of Builders
as early as the year Us B. G., but these
were as we'll religious societies as frater-
mites of artisans. Rebold in his admir-
able History of Free Masonry in Europe
says of these early Builders, "They had
their own worship and their own organi-
zation, based upon that of the Dyonisian
priests and architects Besides the ex-
elusive privilege of constructing the tenn
pies and public monuments, they had a
Judiciary of their own, and were made
free OF all contributions to the city and
State" Vitruvius, the only ancient writer
upon the science of architecture whose