The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, APRIL 25,1907. BRITAIN'S OLD-AGE POVERTY

New Zealand Tablet, Issue 17, 25 April 1907, Page 21

The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 1907. BRITAIN'S OLD-AGE POVERTY

fNGLAND is still dallying with the problem 'of old-age poverty — treating it with pinkpills, patching its grief with" proverbs, or mocking >it with the regimen of "the work- ,• ■house or the gaol. For years New Zealand; ' Germany, and Denma-rk have been pdle-drivirig A more- humane ideas into the. nainds of states-men-in Great Britain in regard .ixr tlie- mass ; of a-ged pauperism within its gates. Old Age Pensions ' " have from time to time been discussed "in '. fttee. Mother of-: Parliaments— generally in an academic, dilettante,* arid '. platitudinous way. A Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry^ was set up 'to report uDon the subject. The present Parliament opened' with the hopes that some provision, for old age poverty would be presently placed upon the sttataite-biook. But a cable-'iness-a'ge m lastl Mon-

. * • iday's _daily papers announced 'that the project has been ' dropped for the time being. And so for^a . time,- and perhaps yet a time, the central land of the Empire will have to tolerate the' three-cefnlury-old spamidal of treating old-age poverty as a .crime. Such poverty is, however,, usually a ■•misfortune— it comes to thevßritish , worker, even Respite the best precautions, just as whooping-cough and measles .-come- to" childhood. 1 Mr. .Booth (says' -Spender in his wiork, 'Th 6 NState and Pensions in Old Age-) shows that ' the bulk of pauperism .later in life ' (in England) 'is due, nob to vice, or drunkenness,, or j unthrift, but to misfortunes .which, under present conditions, .must be counted unavoidable. The vicious and the drunkien usually pa,jr, the-ic. penalty by an early death, * and we" find a general agreement among those who know • how the poor live that the -standard ' of decency and so-briety-rises as , age advances.. ,But in hundreds of cases' ■ a thrifty or deserving past' life does not appear to affect - the' ultimate^ result. With 'this evidence- confronting us ', adds 'Spender,, '.we are necessarily -led 'to revise some of the conclusions and to' consider more- carefully ' whether the conditions of life in old age"-cah be . mitigated by any .action on the part of the community. L .- - • Few legislative, enactments of the past quarter-century Jiave excited more interest iv civilised -countries than the 'Old Age 'Pensions Act which was passed by the New Zealand Parliament in 1898. .The comparative simplicity of its provisions and the smoothness of its working revived" in Australia and Europe- the languishing interest in this mode of preventing old-age pauperism. A pension scheme on substantially similar lines soon found~its . way on the statute-book of one of- the States " of " the Australian Common wealth. The European countries jthat have been most- scourged by revolution and anarchical socialism have long been in the field with' more or 1 less clever . or more or less puzzle-headed methods of providing against poverty in old age. Germia/ny has long had its scheme of compulsory -insurance. It is a miracle of curabersomeness, and (according to the economist Geffcken) its benefits are so paltry that ', the receivers -will remain indigent persons, to be supported by local poor funds '. The Danish system of pensions is financed jointly and in equal' shares by the Communal Councils and by a tax on the favorite ' tipple ' of~ the country, lager beer. But its_ benefits are insignificant— barely enough to enable a Danish Darby or Tfoan to starve respectably. Britain, with Jits -unexampled mass of direst poverty, has thus far been merely^ toying with the problem. A few years." ago the combined - total of in-door and out-door" JEngla-nd and Wales of over sixty years of age- was set 'down, ih round numbers, at 400,000, or nearly twenty per cent, of the tojbal population of the same age. ■ Taking those- ab'ove-sixty-fiye years old, the number was estimated at 330,000, and the ratio to- th 6 population of that age is said to have risen as high- as twenty-five- per cent. And yet thus far " the best effort of . the -British Parliament to deal with this serious .problem has been the offer of certain worthless and inoperative facilities for the purchase of annuities' -through the Post Office .and the National -Debt Office. Some 1,400,000 poor.,' old men of the working classes in England would be entitled to a pension starting at -sixty-five- years of a#e. To. meet -an- average .payment of. five shillings per .week, an .annual outlay of £16,000,00 C, would be required. With - Scotland and Ireland thrown in, some £6,Of;0,00O mo-re would have, to ; -be provided "^every year. . Stated in these .'bald terms" the vast^sum- required would scare the British tax-payer almost: out pf his wits. But such a scheme would enormously reduce tdie taxation that goes- to the maintenance ,of the' barbarous workhouse - system, .that ' grave of decent poverty '. And authorities "before us are agreed that -the financing of % old age pensions scheme could be managed without _ throwing undue burdens upon the people... JThe money-bags and the vested interests- and even the friendly societies are hostile to an y such scheme

But it is in all reason, high time to lift a little of the cloud from the lives of the bulk "of the workers of the nation and to give them a new heart and a new hope for the future. - And in every case the problem to be solved is big with a menace that no British statesman can afford to disregard. '