Speaking at the annual meeting of the West Birmingham Relief
Fund—a local association for the purpose of relieving temporary distress by local and voluntary effort—Mr. Cham- berlain laid down two governing principles on the recognition of which the realisation of a practical scheme of old-age pensions would• alone be possible,—(1) that it should be the outcome of the joint action of all the great agencies for pro- moting thrift ; (2) that a clear distinction must be made between the poverty due to misfortune, ill-health, or failure of physical strength after a long industrious life, and the poverty due to misconduct or improvidence. In regard to the crisis in British industry, his advice to the employers was to take the fullest advantage of the educational opportunities provided for them to develop their brains ; to the working classes to take advantage of their special opportunities and to develop the product of their labour, realising that any attempt to limit production was fatal to trade,—a view which we are glad to see is shared by Mr. Burt. Speaking later on at the West Birmingham Liberal Unionist Club, Mr. Chamberlain advised caution in accepting the assurances of the prodigal children who, after fifteen years of riotous living, had rushed off to Chesterfield and elsewhere to explain that they had given up Home-rule. For himself, before he received these prodigals, he would be very anxious to know whether the conversion was really permanent.
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