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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 226, 22 March 1912, Page 4

STATE INSURANCE IN GERMANY. The Hon. W. P. Reeves, the first High Commissioner for New Zealand, who now occupies the position of Principal of the 'London School of Economics, is delivering to the students of that institution.a series of lectures on "State Insurance." In a lecture delivered recently, Mr. Reeves, comparing the English and German systems of invalidity and old age pensions, explained that in Germany the best thing was for a workman to be skilled enough to earn more than 22s a week and to be healthy and strong enough to subscribe to the combined Old Age and Insurance Division for something like SO years in order to qualify for the maximum invalidity pension of £22 10s a year at the age of -67 or 68, instead of getting an old-age pension ranging from £7 10s to.£ll 10s a year at the age of 70. The contributions in Germany were paid by means of stamps issued by the Imperial Department, one stamp being affixed every week to each card until the end of the year, when the cards were called in and fresh ones issued. This stamp system had led to a certain amount of grumbling here. In Germany, where the employers were'not required to lick ;the stamps themselves, the workmen complained that in some cases the clerks who collected their contributions did not put the stamps om the cards, the clerks on their side complaining of the carelessness and indifference of the workmen. Still, on the whole, the stamp- system worked very well in Germany.-. The most serious charges against the German insurance system was that in both the Sickness and Invalidity divisions it led to a certain amount of malingering, and that the doctors were not fairly treated in the Sickness Pivision. In fact, their dissatisfaction has been so marked and so outspoken that proposals had been made in tne Reichstag to reorganise the Sickness Division in the hope of being able to come to a better arrangement with the doctors. There were complaints in Germany that the accident insurance had not led to the reduction in the number of accidents, and to the greater care and more scientific organisation of factories and workshops which should be expected from a thorough-going system of insurance against accident. if the German system of State insurance were established with the view of killing Socialism it had failed; if its object were to weaken the power of trade unionism the trade unions had grown under it; if it were invented with the idea of preventing disputes between Capital and Labor it had not done so; but it might have done something to make the Socialists less revolutionary and more a party of reform, and something to satisfy German workmen and attach them more closely to their country. In this respect the national system of subsidised compulsion had done solid good, and on the whole the German people were satisfied with the results.