The Treasury did well when Major-General J. B. Seely was
appointed Chairman of the National Savings, Committee, for no man has a more infectious energy. His. Committee has evolved two new schemes, which we wish to commend to wage-payers and wage-earners, both of whom are invited to co-operate in them. Repre, seatatives of both have sat upon the Committee that drafted them. National Savings Certificates are already bought through innumerable associations of one kind or another. A new form of association between employers and employed is now proposed under the new schemes, which seem to us adaptable to many different forms of wage earning, but particularly for places of employment where the numbers of persons concerned are not large enough to justify a regular scheme of superannuation or pensions, such as larger businesses can and do under- take. At the same time they avoid that constriction of labour which would antagonize the labourer by tying him to one employer if he is to keep his benefits. The employer, for- one example, undertakes to -add. a certificate to each block of an agreed number towards which the employee agrees to make a weekly saving. Another good point is that in the case of death the employer undertakes to fulfil the employee's payments for the certificates towards which he was saving weekly, and a number of insurance companies have undertaken to insure the employer on good terms against this risk.
Previous page
