MOTHER'S PENSIONS.

White Ribbon, Volume 23, Issue 272, 18 February 1918, Page 12

MOTHER'S PENSIONS.

Judge Henry Neil, of Chicago, is visiting England to propound a scheme of Mother’s Pensions. His story is a most interesting one. “Early in January, lyii,” he says, “1 went into the Juvenile Court in Chicago, and saw the first case tried. It was a mother with five children, the mother worn out trying to earn a living for the children. The father had died three years before, and the mother had gone out washing. Now broken in health and unable to work, the landlord ordered her to move on, and she had nowhere to go. The Probation Officer said that as the mother could not support the children, they should be taken away from her and given to someone who could. The mother said, ‘Judge, wouldn’t it be kinder and more humane if you took the mother out and shot her bc10re you take away from her for ever her children?’

“That case woke me up. 1 went to the State Legislature of Illinois, told them the story of this woman, and asked them to enact a law by which a widowed mother, with no reasonable means of support, would be furnished with money to support her children out of the common county tax fund. The law was enacted, and has been successful in thirty States. The mother gets her cheque every month, and if she proves unable to handle the money properly her pension may be revoked.” Instead of putting children in institutions which are costly, they are looked after by their own mother, and the cost is about one-third what it was.