BABIES' PENSIONS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 190, 7 May 1919, Page 5

BABIES' PENSIONS

"G. 8.5." ON BRTTTRH "ECCENTRIC! . .. TIES."

Jrj "By a liappy coincidence," says Mr. If George, Uernard Shaw, in tho "Dockers' | Jiecurd," oil the subject of mothers' pen* |ij] sions, "the uiomeiit at 'which the -United 8 States threw themselves into the European struggle to destroy lite was that in j which they threw themselves into the I European struggle; to save it. President !'Wilson was tho .protagonist of the first 5] j operation and Judge Henry Neil of the 81 j other. > |j j "Judge Neil, a man of powerful, origin- ; ality, conceived the startling notion that , as a, child must,, after all, be loolted after 1 by somebody, until' a trustworthy' comi bined incubator,' stomach pump, 'ihid \ vacuum cleaner is' invented, that some--i ■ body may as well b6 the ..child's mother. | ! lie proposed, in short, to tear the child- | ; ren from the. aching amis of. the official ;* ; guardians of the'poor and tho beadle, and g| i fling: them naked on-the maternal breast. | ! "Unnatural, as it seemed, the .notion | 1 had its. good points. It was mucli cheaper,- | | and the children did not die of it as .they ~ did in the constricting caresses of tho || ; official custodians. With reason, even 8 1 a bad mother is better than a .good Si 'beadle. jjjl ; '"Judge Neil had another fresh idea. 1| • When the poor mother was trotted cut | anil exhibited,' as necessarily a; J tad || mother, lie pointed out that the' way to 2J : get over hor poverty, and consequently jjj| her badness, was to givo her some money. | Whon tho experiment was only half.a |j success in America he said, 'Give her =n twice as much'money,'' which being done | ' the experiment became wholly successful. Hi "When Judge Neil came to England he || : found,' among the other eccentric arrangcU nients of this most, unreasonable country, 51 that we had actually instituted old-age I pensions without ever thinking of the far I morn pressing need for young-ago pen- ~ 6ions, and ho set .himself to persuade us HI that we had begun at tho wrong end. | "A still crazicr discovery was that a | woman wifli illegitimate children could g by a familiar everyday process of law ob- ~ tain a pension of five shillings a week for II each child provided she selected the || father from the well-to-do class which Hi oan afford such luxuries. No doubt this 31 arrangement tends to abolish class || hatred by encouraging affectionate :ela- | tions between the proletariat and tho g bourgeoisie; but Judge Neil could not be SJ made to understand why a respectable U married woman, struggling to bring up jj six children, should have a starvation I) pittance doled out to her witli every cir=l cumstance of bitter, humiliating, pnd | ' continuous insult, whilst a less scrupu- | . lous one should have twice as much. | ■ "The Judge makes helps instead of U hindrances of these anomalies, They enJiible him to show us what fools wo are in a good-humoured manner. Ho is gaining ground here as ho did in his own 1 country,"