WORKING MEN’S SAVINGS.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1556, 13 February 1879, Page 4

WORKING MEN’S SAVINGS.

The question of the best means of enabling the wage-earning classes to secure for them selves a due provision for sickness and old age is engaging an increasing share of public attention, both in the mother country and on the continent of Europe. In the former, this object professes to be attained by the numerous friendly societies which have been called into existence. But these, although praiseworthy in design, are very fallacious in effect. Their accumulated funds are altogether inadequate to meet their not very remote liabilities, and it is to be feared that when the weakest of them begin to collapse, something like a panic will occur, resembling what has taken place in America with respect to the savings banks, so many of which have failed owing to the enormous shrinkage of values which has been going on there ever since 1873. Failures of this kind are calamitous in a twofold sense. In the first place, they inflict upon depositors a serious and often irreparable loss as regards the fund which has been thriftily accumulated or the subscriptions which have been regularly paid in; and, in the second place, they have a tendency to demoralise some of the most exemplary members of the community. When a man of prudent and saving habits makes the mortifying discovery that the fruits of his frugality and self-denial have been suddenly dissipated like smoke, by no fault of his own, bitter and reckless thoughts are apt to rise in his mind, and to prompt him to ask himself, “ What am I the better for having ‘ shunned delights and lived laborious days ’ P After all these years of thrift and carefulness, I am as poor as the man over the way, who has never denied himself any indulgence, and never put by a shilling from one year’s end to another.” And it will be a fortunate circumstance for the sufferer by the failure of an American savings bank or of an English friendly society, if he does not endeavor to drown his disappointment and chagrin in drink, and “ go to the bad " altogether. As to the conditions of the last-named institutions, the chief registrar for England and Wales states that those of the former country from which returns have been received — number 9163, with 2,745,730 members, and a total accumulated fund of £7.969,995, being an average of £2 18s Ofd per member, to meat the claims that are daily maturing. Those of the Principality show a itUl lower average. A few in both countries appear to be in a prosperous condition, but in the greater number the assets are less than £1 per member; for, writes the chief registrar, “there are—in England, 1,524 societies, with 1,836,302 members, and in Wales, 134 societies, with 56,550 members, giving a total of 1,658 societies and 1,802,852 members, whose capital has dwindled down to below £1 per member, and in some societies to below Id per member.” These statements are made in the report for 1878, and they are selected as the text of an address read at the last meeting of the Social Science Congress at Cheltenham by Mr J. S, Randell, who, having compared the present official returns with those of previous years, bod been struck by the continuous decrease of capital in many of the societies, showing that not only have the funds previously accumulated been absorbed, but that the subscriptions of younger members, instead of being invested for their own future, were being applied to the liquidation of present claims. Hence ho argued that in all such cases the societies must be drifting into insolvency. As to the condition of those friendly associations which have refused or neglected to answer the queries of the chief registrar, the presumption is that their condition is still more precarious. In view of this most unsatisfactory, not to lay perilous, state of things, the question arises, What is best to he done to enable and induce the wage-earning classes to make a suitable provision for sickness and old age ? And the answer supplied by Mr Randell coincides to some extent with the recommendations of the Rev. W, L. Blackley, in an article on the same subject, in the “Nineteenth Century.” Mr Blackley believes poor rates might be abolished and intemperance materially lessened by “ compelling every man to bear his own share in the burden of natural providence, instead of allowing him to cast it on the shoulders of others.” And if, in the battle of society with vice, ignorance, and crime, it is justifiable to make education compulsory upon all, it is surely not less so to make providence a legal obligation upon all. Every human society in civilised countries is founded upon the principle of justice. “ Memotd Hague jvstitid, ” observes Bt. Augustin, 11 quid sunt regno,, nisi viagna, latrocinia ?” Now, it is obviously repugnant to justice that the industrious, the liugal, the sober, and the self-denying, should be charged with the maintenance of the idle, the thriftless, the drunken, and the self-indulgent. Yet such is the case, undeniably, in every country in Christendom, And society has a perfect right to say, “ This shall not be. If you—the lazy, the improvident, and the intemperate—choose to avail yourselves of the advantage* conferred upon you in a well

ordered community, you must not merely obey its laws, but conform to its code of morals, its industrial habits, and social usages. Wo will not endure a crushing load of taxation imposed upon us for the erection and support of hospitals, prisons, lunatic asylums, reformatories, and orphanages, which are filled by such as you and yours. You claim all the rights of citizenship, and you must fulfil each of the duties it entails. If you will rot do eo voluntarily, jou mustbemade.” Mr Randell does not go so far as this. His proposition is that the State should provide an organisation by which the wage earning classes may readily and securely assure themselves against want. He contends — “That for this purpose some easily accessible, and, beyond all doubt, secure assurance is necessary. That to cover the risks of early and middle life—the years of work before capital is accumulated —this assurance must be co-operative. That it should be national, that being the strongest co-opera-tion, and the broadest, consequently the least fluctuating, basis we can command. That the classification should be numerous, so as to include all varieties of age and all degrees of health. That it should be tabled to meet the requirements of the highest as well as the lowest of the wage-earning classes, say from Is to 10s per day. That the tables of payment should be such as to insure the society being self-supporting; and beyond this, the guarantee should be national —as in the case of the Post Office Savings Bank —so as to make it as secure as the English funds. That with a reliable friendly society covering the kingdom, the test of * the house' could be more generally applied, and we might look forward with confidence to the present poor law in the course of a generation becoming inoperative, and to its being then regarded as an institution of the past. That the omnipresent establishment, the post-office, presents ready to hand the machinery for receiving weekly, monthly, or other periodical payments, and for handing over to members the sick pay that may from time to time be certified to be due to them.”

Can any one doubt that the present distress in England might have been averted by the exercise of providence, as well on the part of the wage-earning as of the middle classes ? Wages have been unprecedentedly high, and business of all kinds unprecedentedly profitable, but a period of great prosperity has been also one of extravagance and dissipation, and those who never thought of the morrow find themselves in the position of the foolish virgins in the parable. But if thrift had been a legal obligation, the present season of adversity would be merely an arrest of industrial development, and not a time of privation and Buffering.—Melbourne ‘ Argus.’