TOPICS OF THE DAY.
UNIVERSAL "ALL-IN" INSURANCE.
WE are glad to be able to report to our readers that Mr. Broad's Universal Insurance Scheme is not merely receiving, as was certain, wide sympathy in principle. It is attracting the special attention of statesmen in all parties, and also of those who may be rightly described as experts in the problems of Public Assistance. What is even more important, as witness the striking letter by Mr. McCulloch in our last issue— a letter emphasised and endorsed by Mr. Broad himself in our correspondence columns of to-day—is that "the real workers" will evidently welcome the scheme.
On the present occasion, however, we want to deal with some of the misgivings that are naturally felt by those who have been suddenly confronted by a plan conceived on such far-reaching lines. The first is one which naturally has our strong sympathy because it deals with the question of finance. If the finance of the scheme could be shown to be fallacious or badly based, and if it seemed probable that insolvency would result, we should be the first to condemn it. Anything which involves economic waste, or which increases the burden on the taxpayer is to be condemned per se. You cannot tax a community into opulence. To raise money from the taxpayers, whether directly or indirectly, and then to hand it back to them in the form of benefits is a process which may very easily lead to grave public injuries. Further, we have a great deal of sympathy with those who would if possible leave the betterment of the workers to individual effort. That, however, is now a counsel of perfection. It is too late to be a " hard-shell " individualist. If we were without a system of Public Assistance for the poorer portions of the community, a great deal might be said against its introduction. The essential point to remember in this matter is that we have a vast system of State assistance under which certainly ninety millions of rates and taxes, and probably a hundred millions, are being spent every year. Further, it is essential to note that this system has got beyond control and is growing by leaps and bounds. No one can defend our existing scheme of relief by the State. It is partial, haphazard, and inefficient. It is very extravagant, and yet it does not give us the public benefit which it seeks to give—the benefit which obeys the sound principle that where relief is given it must be adequate and not merely of that sort which, while it keeps men physically alive, destroys them mentally and morally. The worst of all systems is that which manufactures paupers and makes true men and women its horrible waste product.
The present system not only does that but involves the most appalling economic waste. You have two or three bodies bestowing benefits upon the same man and the same family. The experts in the art of obtaining Public Assistance, who incidentally are always the least deserving, often manage to obtain by their uneconomic way of life salaries which are above those of the honest workers. The present system, with its necessary inquiries and delays, local machinery and central machinery for distribution, and again local supervision and central supervision, cannot avoid being costly. The State as a whole is like some of the societies which the C.O.S. made it its first work to tackle—assistance societies in which 70 or 80 per cent. of the subscribers' money went in official salaries and overhead charges, and only some 20 or 30 per cent. ever reached the persons for whom the money was subscribed t Therefore, we have got to do something to stop the leakage of Public Assistance and its direct manufacture of paupers : (1) out of the persons to whom the money is given, and (2) out of the persons from whom the money is taken in rates and taxes. Remember that the rates and taxes are not paid only by rich men.
If we base the insurance scheme on the rule that the burden of Public Assistance is not to be greater than it is now, it cannot be objected to on the ground that we are increasing the burden on the taxpayer. As a matter of fact, we are reducing it. But, it will be asked, if Hu scheme is not going to increase the burden on the public, how will you be able to do so much more and give so much more adequate relief to the persons affected ? In the first place, the relief given will be automatic. A great part of the cost of the Poor Law is to be found in the discrimination which under that system is absolutely necessary.
Mr. Broad's scheme will give us our unemployed at the right end, and not at the wrong end. No one will be forced to retire at sixty-three or sixty-five, whichever is the age chosen ; but the men who do not retire and become unemployed—men, that is, with a ten or twelve years' expectation of life—will not be injured by their unemployment in the terrible way in which the young are injured. By acquiring the habit of idleness, young men and young women in whatever class are, as a rule, ruined. No one who could perform a miracle would ever hesitate to substitute in the ranks of unemployment a man or woman of sixty-three for a man or woman of twenty. Again, the man who knows that he can retire at sixty-three with a decent pension, and who knows that he will not be asked what are his means of livelihood, is much more likely to save during his good years than the man who knows that the money he saves will have to come off the money he will get under the Old Age Pension scheme. In the same way, sons and daughters in good work are much more likely to make an effort to help their parents when they know that if they can make up an extra 5s. a week, the sum, though small, will be "well worth while" in giving additional small comforts.
A word or two is necessary in regard to another condi- tion which we consider essential—the total abolition of the present Poor Law with its Workhouses, Relieving Officers, Boards of Guardians, and the whole outfit which our forefathers used to call the Pauper Bastilles. People often ask the very reasonable and pertinent question : "How are you going to deal with the residuum of the unemployables, persons feeble in body, if not actually in mind, and generally with those who because they have never been employed by others, but have only employed themselves, or, again, have been supported by people who have ceased to be able to support them, are left without means of assistance ? There must clearly be Committees who will give that necessary assistance, for nobody contemplates letting the residuum die. But those Committees must be formed not of sentimentalists, but of the sort of people who form the Committees in Trade Unions, or bodies like the Oddfellows. They will have brought before them cases which involve the prob- lems of malingering or incorrigible idleness—the cases of men who look for work all day and pray all night that they may not find it. Those persons must be dealt with firmly. It will no doubt be said : "You are only bringing back the Poor Law." Yet such a declaration, though it may sound like a dialectical triumph, is not one in substance. There must be kindness and humanity to the utmost shown to those who are feeble in body. With the work-shy there must be sterner measures.
J. Sr. LOE STRACHEY.
Previous page
