This Week's Books
Mn. BELLMAN, the general manager of the Abbey Road Building Society, has done a service to the public by writing his lucid account of The Building Society Movement (with an introduction by Sir Josiah Stamp. Methuen, 3s. 6d.), Building societies originated in England in Pitt's day and have grown steadily, until they are now doing a very great, work. Within eight years from the Armistice the societies completed advances for £235,000,000 to enable people to acquire houses—or seven times as much as local authorities were authorized to borrow in order to make similar loans to would-be house-owners. In the Dominions and the United States, but not on the Continent, the building society has also flourished. Mr. Bellman, who has long been associated with the movement, describes the normal methods clearly and shows how easy it is for any resolute person to acquire a home of his own with the help of a building society. Sir Josiah Stamp, in his admirable preface, lends the full weight of his authority as an economist to the assertion that " it is socially a far finer thing for a hundred people to save £10 each than for one person to save 11,000." Any and every agency which helps the poor man to save is vitally important to the national wellbeing, especially now that the rich cannot save as much as they used to do.
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