CHEAT BRITAIN'S FINANCES.
Delivering his presidential address to the Institute of Actuaries at Staple Inn, L-niion, in Xovember last, Mr. S (.». Warner vccalled that a century .1511 Oreat Britain had emerged froin tlia Hig struggle with Napoleon, finding itself in a state of severe exhaustion, and freed with an unpreecdently large Xational Debt. It was difficult to contest the condition of the country as it was in 1815 and to-day. In the in- i U-.val the population increased fourfold. Tn 1815 there were thirteen public railways completed, of which the lot.gest measured twenty-six' miles. Loc»l expenditure for public purposes wan represented b v an annual sum of less than £8,000,000, as compared with •Cioe.ooo,ooo in 1011. Tliere was no national expenditure on education. The industrial revolution was vet in its childhood. In ISU the percentage of the population supported by aericiilture was computed as 34 per cent.; in 101 i as eight per cent. In 1821 there were in England and Wales only eight towns with more than 50,000 inhabitants, repusenting lfl per cent, of the population. In .1!)]] there were ninety-eight, repiesenting 48 per cent.
Since the beginning of the war Bri/ fish instiutitions transacting life assurance and annuity business in this country had paid for war claims over £7,500,000. They had invested, in British Government securities of various kinds upwards of £75,000.000. They had sold or lent to the Treasury American serrritics of the face value (converting the dollar for the purpose at five to the pound) of ever £-10,000.000, and before these Treasury schemes had appeared hud sold in the market not less than £20.000,000 of such shares. The strain o! the heavy war mortality on insurance companies had tyeeu home without the least disturbance, and general experience testified to the promptitude with which settlements had been made. We should be faced at the end of the v-fi with an enormous hurden of debt, but should have nothing to fear if we cculd keep up the productivity of the nation to the marvellous standard which it had reached, in the presence of a common national peril, by which all had worked with one end in view. By the courtesy of the Board of Trade he was able to say that the total accumulated amount of the unemployment fund at the present time was £7,475,000, and that the amount paid to workpeople in unemployment benefit from the beginning was nearly £1,230,000. The number of insured workpeople (other than munition workers, whom ivc'.ift legislation now included) was estimated at rather over 2,100,000. In view of the depression and unemployment which might have to be faced in some of the years succeeding the war. there was a store laid by which would l'c of the utmost value.
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Taranaki Daily News, 26 January 1917, Page 7
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457CHEAT BRITAIN'S FINANCES. Taranaki Daily News, 26 January 1917, Page 7
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