Although the working classes of France and Belgium do not belong to benefit societies to anything like the same extent, it must be stated, in their justification, that they are amongst the most thrifty and prudent people in the world.  They invest their savings principally in land and in the public funds.  The French and Belgians have a positive hunger for land.  They save everything that they can for the purpose of acquiring more.  And with respect to their investments in the public funds, it may be mentioned, as a well-known fact, that it was the French peasantry who, by investing their savings in the National Defence Loan, liberated French soil from the tread of their German conquerors.[1]

[Footnote 1:  At the present time one individual out of every eight in the population of France has a share in the National Debt, the average amount held being 170 francs.  The participants in the debt approach closely to the number of freeholders, or rather distinct freeholdings, which amount to 5,550,000, according to the last return.  France certainly furnishes a singular exception to those countries of Central and Western Europe, where “the rich are getting more rich and the poor ever more poor.”  In France wealth becomes more and more distributed among the bulk of the population.]

English benefit societies, notwithstanding their great uses and benefits, have numerous defects.  There are faults in the details of their organization and management, whilst many of them are financially unsound.  Like other institutions in their early stages, they have been tentative and in a great measure empirical,—­more especially as regards their rates of contribution and allowances for sick relief.  The rates have in many cases been fixed too low, in proportion to the benefits allowed; and hence the “box” is often declared to be closed, after the money subscribed has been expended.  The society then comes to an end, and the older members have to go without relief for the rest of their lives.  But life assurance societies themselves have had to undergo the same discipline of failure, and the operation of “winding up” has not unfrequently thrown discredit upon these middle-class associations.

To quote the words of the Registrar of Friendly Societies, in a recent report:  “Though the information thus far obtained is not very encouraging as to the general system of management; on the whole, perhaps, the results of the investments of the poor are not worse than those which noblemen, members of Parliament, merchants, professed financiers, and speculators have contrived to attain in their management of railways, joint-stock banks, and enterprises of all kinds.”