CURRENT L1TERATUILE.
OLD-AGE PENSIONS.
Old-Age Pensions and the Aged Poor, a Proposal. By Charles Booth. (Macmillan and Co. 2s. net.)—This is a reprint (with now preface) of a volume published in 1899, which, again, is in part a recapitulation of a larger work issued in 1894. We bare never been able to trace any connexion between Mr. Booth's statistical labours and this proposal, and we are not aware that any close connexion is alleged. Yet it is undoubtedly Mr. Booth's reputation as a statistician which has given currency to his pension scheme. Since the pronouncement of Sir IL Campbell-Bannerman and Mr. Asquith in favour of a universal endowment for old age, the subject enters on a new phase, and a recapitulation of events is desirable. The beginning of this agitation was an article in the Nineteenth Century in 1879, by the late Canon Blackley, urging a compulsory, self-supporting insur- ance scheme. Politicians very soon declared that this would not do. Some of them, notably Mr. Chamberlain, then suggested that a voluntary scheme of insurance, to which the would-be annuitants should themselves contribute, would be a popular proposal. It was objected that, if voluntary, the scheme would not attract the careless and unthrifty, and would for the most part be an endowment of the efforts of those who already wore equal to making their own provision ; and secondly, that if contribution was required, it would cut out the poorest class, who, it was alleged, were unable to take any step whatsoever. towards insuring their old age. An objection, which seemed hyper- sensitive to some, was added by Mr. Booth that assistance given to a class (it was proposed that the bonus should be confined to the manual-labouring class), being of the nature of Poor Law relief, would carry with it a stigma of inferiority. In order, therefore, to salve such susceptibilities, and include also the destitute and the careless, Mr. Booth has suggested that the pension shall not be provided by insurance, but by a universal endowment payable out of public funds to rich and poor alike on reaching a given age. To meet the objection that five shillings a week would be very little use to the helpless destitute, and would not reform but rather aggravate the irresponsibility of the unthrifty, Mr. Booth relies on the assumed analogy of a fact pointed out by Arthur Young,—viz., that property turns sand to, gold. A little property in the shape of five shillings a week would alter character, and be a foundation for an ampler and an adequate provision raised by the self-denying efforts of the pensioners themselves. Hitherto clever politicians have stood aloof from reasoning and proposals that alike appeared to them Utopian. Mr. Chamberlain has on more than one occasion said that he could not support such a scheme. The State, it is argued, should be ready to assist, but not to supersede, personal effort. Five shillings a week from the rates or taxes would not be suffi- cient, and the deficiency would be made up along the line of least resistance,—namely, by agitation to increase the provision from the same source. The plan confused, moreover, the claim of those who repudiated their personal responsibilities with that of those who were willing to do something to prevent their old age being a burden on the public. Until the recent pronouncement of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer it was thought that, while Mr. Booth and his Mends had driven all contributory schemes from the field, the practical politician had assumed that universal endowment could not be made a winning cry. In view of increasing and well-organised pressure, however, the opinion of the politician seems likely to prove a negligible quantity, and the view now prevails that schemes of com- pulsory, or even contributory, insurance are shabby subter- fuges, and that universal endowment holds the field. The " upset " price, to adopt the not inappropriate language of the auction-room, was originally five shillings a week at the age of sixty-five, but to what heights the bidding has now taken it we do not profess to know. The New Zealand price was recently quoted at ten shillings. If Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman and Mr. Asquith are serious in their intention to saddle posterity with the burden of maintaining in their old age the young and able- bodied of this generation at a yearly cost which, reckoned on our present population, will go on increasing for over forty years, to say nothing of the prospective liability for increments of population, we hope the financial diffi- culties will be fully considered. Before we proceed further it might be worth while to inquire into the burdens which are already being accumulated for posterity in respect of various Emperaiumation schemes now in force,—e.g., the police super- aunuation in boroughs and counties. It is notorious that super- annuation funds which professed to be adequate insurance funds have degenerated into mere annual charges. These, from the nature of the case, grow from year to year with alarming rapidity, and are proving a serious embarrassment to load finance. The reduplication of such funds on a larger scale presents formidable difficulties. We have never been able to understand why old age —a certain and calculable risk which presupposes a long life during which provision might be made—should be singled out for exceptional treatment, as against such risks as the early bereavement of widows and orphans, or the premature break- down of the young and able-bodied, and we may be perfectly sure that if universal endowment is adopted in one risk, it will be impossible to resist its application in all risks. Indeed, this is the avowed object of a certain school of thought, and those who object to such an extension will be wise to adopt the maxim, Obsta prineiplis. Admittedly the shifting of the responsibility of maintenance from the individual to the community has, under our Poor Law system, been productive of grave economic danger, and at times disaster. It has involved the artificial preservation of a proletariat class, which is an anachronism. The need of meeting the daily and ubiquitous risks of life supplies the disci- pline of economic civilisation, and the resultant character and habit form our surest guarantee for a mitigation of primitive poverty by the appropriate development of the instincts of property and of the economic competence of the individual. It is idle to suppose that universal old-age pensions at the public charge will economically differ in results from those experienced in the case of the Poor Law. The truth is that, in the fight against the hand-to-mouth life, civilisation cannot afford to lose the assistance of the motives and discipline which arise out of the need to provide for old age. For Mr. Booth we have the greatest respect. He has, with the assistance of his staff, added up and decimal-pointed more figures than any other private man in Europe, figures, however, quite irrelevant to this issue, and we decline his invitation to take this leap into the dark.
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