SEPARATION ALLOWANCES.
[To rue EDITOR OP THE " SPICTATOZ."[
Sts,—The Government has done much towards clearing up the questions of separation allowances to wives and children and other dependants of soldiers and sailors, and pensions to widows and children and disabled men, by the presentation to Parliament of the White Paper [Cd. 7762]. It is thought that a summary of ite contents may be useful to those who have not the leisure for closely studying the document itself.
On p. 8 there is a General Comparison between the old scale (i.e., that which was in force at the beginning of the war) and the new scale which has been gradually evolved. Any impartial person, on examining this page, cannot but come to the conclusion that the increase has been very large, amounting in several cases to close on one hundred per cent. To the number of wives who will receive separation allowances has been added all those of the Regular Army who were married "off the strength."
As the Prime Minister said on November 11th, it is impos- sible to have a scale of pensions or allowances which is graduated according to the different earnings of the different people dealt with. Mr. Long on the following day agreed with him that it passed the wit of man to invent a scale to mete out equal justice to all the men who were earning different wages before. As regards separation allowances, the true measure, of course, would not be the man's wages, but the amount he gave to his wife for the weekly housekeeping, including rent. To ascertain that would require a separate inquiry into each case, of a very troublesome character. Therefore, as Mr. .Asquith justly said, the best you can do is to take a rough average of the cases and then make provision, and it ought to be adequate and ample provision.
In the case of the wives and families of soldiers recruited in rural districts, whose cash wages seldom exceed £1, and even fall as low as 13s., and of course are not proportioned to the number of children, the new separation allowance to a wife without children is Ps. plus 3s. 6d., which is the regular allotment from the husband's pay, making 12s. 6d. She is free to work. The scale increases up to 18s. 6d. allowance to a wife with four children plus the allotment, making 22e., which is in excess of what the husband was earning, and in many cases a great deal above ; and moreover she has not to feed him. The soldier is now exempted from making any allotment on account of his children, the Government having undertaken that portion of the total payment.
It is to be hoped that the childless widow, who is to receive 7s. 6d. a week, will be able to work, but if really incapacitated she will get further help, on a recommendation from the local Old-A ge Pensions Committee. The widow with four children, if they are all of school age, will be in like case, her normal pension being 20s. The continuation of the total separation allowance for twenty-six weeks after the death of the husband will give the widow time to make arrangements for her future. The increased allowance for motherless children of Ss. weekly is about what is usually paid by Boards of Guardians for boarded-out children, and there will be less difficulty in finding foster-parents for them than in the case of the other class of children. That, as suggested by Mr. Barnes in the debate of the 18th, the gratuity of £39 on remarriage may offer a bait to mercenary suitors seems not unlikely. There are fortune-bunters in all classes. It should be noted that the separation allowances for children are continued after the mother's remarriage.
It is a wise provision that entrusts the cases of dependants of unmarried men to the Old-Age Pensions Committee, which may be expected to deal generously in fixing their separation allowances. Where the son, living apart, sent his mother a fixed sum weekly there will be no difficulty ; but if her son has been living at home, he will, in this part of the country, probably have contributed towards the household expenses something between 8s. and lls. 6d. a week. Her rent will go on as before, firing also, and the cost of his food ought to be estimated low enough to leave her with a comfortable allowance after it is deducted.
It is important to observe that separation allowances are now, for the first time, to be granted to the wives and children and other dependants of seamen and marines, contingent upon certain allotments being made. Seamen, it is well known, have always made allotments or sent remittances to their wives on a very liberal scale, which now, in order to gain the separation allowance, need not exceed 5s. weekly.
Lastly, the pension of totally disabled men, varying accord- ing to circumstances, is increased from a minimum of 14s. (for an unmarried man) and 16s. 6d. (for married men without children) up to a maximum of 23s., to which, in order to see what his real pecuniary position is, there must be added the sickness benefit of 10s. for twenty-six weeks and 5a. weekly after that for life, under the Insurance and Old-Age Pensions Acts. It should be remembered that soldiers and sailors pay only three-halfpence weekly as employed contributors, the balance being found by the State, so that three-fourths of the sickness and disablement benefit come from public funds.
In the course of the debate of November 18th Mr. Hayes Fisher made a very useful suggestion, that there should be granted to the Royal Patriotic Fund or to some other respon- sible body a large sum of money out of which it could augment the State pensions where it was really necessary, in order to provide better treatment for the widows of men who had earned high wages. This work might, again, be carried out by the Old-Age Pensions Committee. The flat rate is unavoidable, but it may often be desirable to supplement it from other sources which are not distributed according to a
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