The Daily News. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1911. THE RAINY DAY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 126, 18 November 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1911. THE RAINY DAY.

The bulk of humanity are .forced to live so close to their income that provision for "a rainy day" is difficult to make. In most countries (including New Zealand) the State, recognising that the people singly and in bulk are its chief concern, and the basis of its revenue, has latterly devised.plans for seeing that the almost inevitable ''rainy day," when sicknes.s, accident or age overtakes the worker, shall be less grim than formerly. There is no tragedy so harsh as the tragedy of the person who while willing to work is unable to from unpreventible causes. It has been demonstrated in the Homeland that all,parties have contrived to agree on the point that compulsory insurance against the unavoidable contingencies of workaday life is necessary, humane and financially sound, that the happiness of the worker, employer and the idle rich may be added to by such schemes, and that the future to the man who depends on a pittance that merely enables him to ''keep the wolf from the door" is not so black. Under Mr. Lloyd-George's National Insurance Bill nearly fifteen million people will by public contribution insure themselves against accident, sickness and old age. Many of the persons going to make up this great total will not be compelled to insure, but it is thought the advantages will be so great that people working for more than one master, wives working for their husbands, the casual workers, and those earning over £IGO a year, will take advantage of the scheme by paying the whole of the contribution, which, in the case of the compulsory insurer, is divided between the worker, State and employer. The worker who earns over 2s (id a day will pay 4d a week (3d for women) and the voluntary insurer who earns over £3 per week 7d (women Cd). In cases where the wages are very small the employer under the Bill is called upon to pay the larger part of the weekly fee. Thus if a man earns Is Cd a day the employer pays (id and the worker Id. Tn 1912 the State plans to spend nearly two millions as its share of the insurance, drawing from the workers eleven millions and from the employers nine, and the State expects that in three years after the inauguration of the scheme it will itself use four and a-luclf millions. A vastly important undertaking is the maternity insurance scheme, which will be paid out of the fathers' insurance and which

must dispose of one of the greatest trial* of the poor. The provision made for "before and after" rest and medical attention to nursing motkers is a statesmanlike provision which will have the most important results on the race. The insistence by law on the master taking a ■'financial interest in the lives of his employees is wholly good, and the tax is so small and so finely graduated that it will be a bagatelle to the masters and icpresent the least possible self-denial to the workers. Perhaps the necessity for such a scheme is less in the colonies, where the margin between wages and sudden poverty is wider, and where, too, there is, in a very large number of cases, a desire and ability to provide for "a rainy day" by the ordinary insurances and by the aid of the great friendly societies. There is, however, no question that the compulsory system is better than the optional system, because in so many cases the healthy man or woman "takes no thought for the morrow." It is indeed unusual for the normal person to worry about the future, and hence the State, which necessarily does the thinking for the people, is light in compelling them to make due provision. Possibly the very bold experiment of the Homeland will be imitxted by other countries and the British colonies. Such schemes mean that pauperism must decrease and that the burden of public and private charity must be lessened. Such schemes, too, give. colonial people a chance to repeat that there is no poverty in Australasia—because they don't see it. In minor degrees both New Zealand and Australia have all the social sores of the Old Countrv, and although they are so small in comparison they are precisely the same problems and 1 need precisely the same treatment.