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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4828, 12 September 1876, Page 2

The Friendly Societies Act, already passed by the Legislative Council, has remained upon the Order Paper of the House of Representatives for so long a time, and so low down upon the list, as to give cause to fear that it may be sacrificed amongst the innocents in the melee in which honorable members often seek at the close of a session to atone for or recover the waste of time which marks its early stages. It will bo a misfortune if this should happen, and it will be a misfortune for which the leader of the Opposition and his obstructive associates—he has ceased to have followers—will be held to be accountable by the large body of people whose interests are so seriously concerned. It has been demonstrated that the financial condition of very many at least of the existing societies in this colony is unsound, and that the radical cause of that unsoundnesa is that those societies persist in maintaining a uniform rate of contribution for men of all ages for securing the same benefits, such as sick pay, burial allowances, and pensions or annuities ; men of twenty years of age, who in the ordinary coarse would rarely have need for assistance, being compelled to make the same annual or monthly contribution as the men of forty-five or fifty, who have occasion to seek aid frequently. The want of equity in such an arrangement is inevitably fatal in the long run, and it is because of this defect, as well as of the general inadequacy of the contributions required from members to secure the benefits promised, that so many friendly societies have within the last two years been refused registration here. In the appendix to the Report upon Friendly Societies in Ireland, furnished to the Royal Commissioners by Mr. Lynch Daniell, and laid before the Imperial Parliament in the year 1874, we find the following notes of evidence on the graduation of tables given by Messrs. HallidaY’ and Connor, —the former described ns having been for twenty-seven years member of St. Patrick’s Tontine Society in Dublin, —inwhichaviewof the philosophy of this important question is given, from what we may call the sentimental point of view, as distinguished from the professional or actuarial standpoint. - Mr. Andrew Halliday, 27 years member of the St. Patrick's Tontine Society, Dublin. Established 1770. Mr. Clark, secretary. ■Assistant Commissioner: You make no difference in your contributions, a man of 20 pays the. tame as a man of 40 ? Mr. Halliday: Not, a ha'porth. difference.. We d rather have men 1 of 40. ' , Assistant Commissioner: Don't you find the older men draw more money for sickness and die sooner ? Jtfr, Hallxday: We do not, sir, We prefer a man

of 40 to a 1 boy of 20. The young men are more uncertain. They run more risks of accidents. They go on sprees and try their constitutions more, and so they cost us more. \ •-., Assistant Commissioner: But hav'nt your .older men gone through all that 'and got 25 more years on their backs beside. How are you to find out now much they have gone through ? , , Mr. Halliday: Wo do find out. We know what he’s been doing for, years past before we accept nun. But no one can tell what the young man will do. Assistant Commissioner: Have you a medical examination? . Mr. Halliday: We have not, sir. We can toll better than any doctor, and the friend who proposes him knows what he’s been about for years past; and, besides drink and sprees, and carrying on in other ways, tell on a man's looks. Many of the Dublin boys never get drunk at all; but the drink is there written down as plain as the nose on their faces. Such men would be bad members at any price, and we don’t want them at all. Assistant Commissioner: In 20 years your man of 40 will be 60, while your man of 20 will be only 40. Are there not more sickness and more deaths in the 10 years between CO and 70 than between 40 and 50 ?

Mr. Halliday: May be there will, sir; but the man between 60 and 70 won’t have his wife dyin’ in childbed like the younger ones do, and come upon us for burial money; and besides, look at me. I’m 55, and never came on the society for a week’s sicknessand as for young men not being so sick as old ones, look at Mr. Clark. Look at’him ; there he stands, a man of 70, hardly ever cost 'the society sixpence for sickness, and nothing at all, God be praised, for burial; and his son cowld in his grave, dead and buried, your honor, years ago (triumphantly). Is that true, Mr. Clark, or is it not ? Secretary: It's God’s truth, it is and nothing else.

Assistant Commissioner: Do you know that the tables which show that there is more sickncsss between 40 and 60 than there is between 20 and 40 have been got at by taking the average of more than 1,000,000 of lives ?

Mr. Halliday: That may be, sir. But them rules are for big societies. We never take more than 100 members, so that wo know exactly what sickness each man has, and don't want to bother ourselves with the average of other societies. Thira big burial societies are some of ’em the biggest blackguards out, and live by cheatin’ the poor. They’ve got their board on one aide of the water and their lodgin’ on the other; and for board and lodgin’ one of them I’m told, draws £40,000 a year out of the poor in Ireland. £20,000 of this they claim to spend in management, and they can steal just as much more as ever they choose besides. Your Honor is of course dead agin Home rule; but you wouldn't think that right anyhow. Assistant Commissioner ,* Why do you only admit 100 members ? Mr. Halliday: Because if we had too many wo couldn’t keep the accounts and manage things ourselves. Wo don’t like having an office and a regular secretary. If a man sits in an office all day, and does nothing else for a living, lie gets too clever by half, and won't be content without plenty of money. His wife and daughters get to be ladies, and wear chignons and kid gloves, and dress in fine clothes ; he lays down his pipe and smokes cigars, and all this costs money; and many of them do nothing but scheme how to do so without being found out, or else they steal it downright and make off with it. Assistant Commissioner: You do not then dread the society, when so small, being swept away, or crippled by cholera or fever, or ill luck in having a great many members getting sick or dying at the same time ?

Mr. Halliday: We do not. We’ve prospered since 1770, and we'd rather take whatever God sends than put our affairs out of our own hands by getting so big as to want an office. Assistant Commissioner: Do you know much about the Liverpool and other Branch Collecting Burial Societies ?

Mr. Halliday: I know a little, and that's more than I want to know about them. Assistant Commissioner: They don't work well ? Mr. Halliday: It does’nt become me to speak much of them, being myself a member of a tontine, and opposed to them. Assistant Commissioner: Why are you opposed to them ?

Mr. Halliday: We are mutual, and work for the interests of our members. They work for the collectors and managers. Besides they're too big entirely. A working man who gets into one of 'em doesn’t know whether he stands on his head or his heels. Ho never sees bis accounts, and can’t tell what amount of cheatin’ Is going on.

Assistant Commissioner: What is the general character of the collectors ?

Mr. Halliday: Well, somo are thought honest, and some the other way. Mr. Taylor, of the Liver, bears a good character, but the honester the agent the worse it is for the poor. An upright collector is, savin’ your presence, like a bit of toasted cheese. H© looks so nice, and talks so pleasingly, that it tempts poor men into the trap.

Assistant . Commissioner : He must have a pleasing manner to get on well? Mr. Halliday: That's so, sir, especially with the ladies. A collector must be a ladies' man, or he’ll never do any good. MR. JAMES CONNOR, Assistant Commissioner: A man entering your society at 20 will pay double what the man of 40 will if both live to 60, and still you pay them the same burial money. Don’t you think that unfair ? Mr. Connor : Sure if he knows the rule and does it willingly, it can’t be unfair. May be he won’t be glad enough himself some day to have the same thing done for him by younger men. Our members would be satisfied with no society where all did’nt pay alike. The good God will punish men who are too selfish. The story of one of our members will show what sometimes comes of such notions, A young man soon after joining had bad ideas like that put into his head by some Odd Fellows, who wanted him to leave us and join thoir lodge, and with great respect to your honor, he talked just as you do yourself, sir. But it pleased Providence to punish him. Ho took sick himself, so he did, and died after being a short time only in benefit. He was then decently buried with £3 of the society’s money, which, God forgive mo for saying, served him right. It was looked on as a judgment, and ought to be a caution to others. Assistant Commissioner: Then you would not yourself wish to see any change made even if the members would consent ? 4

Afr. Connor: They would'nt consent, because they’d think it wrong to have one man paying more than another. Besides, no man, young or old, can get sick or die without the will of God, and if it’s God’s will, as many will die at 20 as at 40, or SO for that matter, if they live so long.

This very Hibernian society is clearly under the special protection of Providence, which interposes vicariously to warn and to punish its members for heretical opinions on finance. It was established in the year 1770, and its survival is a remarkable fact. Individuals who have been carried to bed regularly every night after innumerable tumblers of whisky punch have been known to live to a green old age; but that fact would not perhaps be accepted as conclusive evidence in favor of general intemperance ; so neither could we admit the fact upon which Mr. Halliday laid so much stress—that Mr. Clark had lived for seventy years without putting his society to the cost of burying him, as evidence that equal payments for unequal benefits and risks was an equitable or safe basis for a friendly society. These Dublin tontines are, as we believe, peculiar in their constitution and principles. They are dividing societies, with a strict limit to number of members, and they apparently prefer those members to be between the ages of forty and sixty years. Having no expenses of management, and an annual clearing up and “divide” of funds, they escape some of the danger which attends the uniform rate of contribution in societies whose funds and engagements are cumulative, as is the case with the great majority of friendly societies in New Zealand.

It is satisfactory to know that men of intelligence and skill, leaders in some of the societies in New Zealand, notably in Dunedin, are conscious of the danger • of , the existing system, and are laboring to improve it and to enlighten their brethren. The hands of such men would be strengthened by the passing of the Friendly Societies Act this session ; and as it is a matter in which young mothers, smiling families, and a considerable section of the human race in these islands are deeply concerned, we venture to express a hope that the friends of humanity in the House of Representatives will make time for considering it.