OLD-AGE PENSIONS.
WE wish to state our own view of this complex matter with some clearness. We believe that the first necessity of the English people, and indeed of the general proletariat of Europe, is a, decided, though not necessarily very large, increase to their weekly wages. With the exception of the specially skilled in the finer trades, or the thoroughly skilled in the rougher trades, they do not get enough silver at the end of the week to meet the new conditions of civilisation,—the necessity, that is, for better housing, for some modicum of instruction, and for those club subscriptions without which they cannot enjoy the advantages derivable from carefully managed association. Laws a good deal stronger than any Parliament can make render it certain that this increase must come of itself, from the rise and fall in the labour market, and not from outside interference, but we are full of hope that it will come, that combination, increased intelligence, and the spread of a new idea as to the moral obligation of insist- ing on a living wage, and of abandoning the trades which do not yield it, will steadily raise the general average. All workers ought to lead the Christian life, and, as Bishop Wilberforce is reported to have said, "that is difficult under a pound a week." The second great neces- sity is honourable provision for workmen against the only source of weakness which involves no reproach, and cannot be escaped by anybody, namely, old age. We do in this country make under the Poor-law a provision against that weakness, so that nobody starves in the street, but it is not an honourable one. The requirement of Christianity is satisfied, but not the requirements of a community that has grown pitiful, that feels for feelings, and that at heart is doubtful whether its general pros- perity can be righteous while anybody is painfully un- prosperous. There is, therefore, a demand for some system which shall transmute a dishonouring provision into an honorific one ; and it is this which Mr. Chamber- lain, with an insight highly creditable to his intelligence, as perceived, and has induced the Government to take he usual first steps towards providing. Those first steps have not led to action, have, indeed, seemed to revent action, a Royal Commission having, it is said, eported that any such measure is impracticable, and r. Chamberlain is therefore abused; but he does not reserve abuse. He has perceived a great evil, he has lied general attention to it, and he is intent on scovering means of removing the sole obstacle, no oubt a very grave obstacle, to providing a practicable emedy.
That obstacle is not money, as everybody is just now eclaring, but the pulpy condition of opinion which in ngland always precedes a great reform. Almost every- ody is agreed that relief for the "aged "—that is, for verybody over sixty-five—should, if possible, be changed om relief through the workhouse into relief through ensions, but that unanimity upon the abstract question rries us forward but a little way. Before any ncrete result can be arrived at the people must nswer two or three questions which as yet they are not even formulated in the depths of their minds, and which, if they were suddenly asked, ey would probably answer wrongly. In the first lace, do they mean everybody to have pensions, the Duke Westminster as well as John Hodge, or only the desti- ? They will all, we feel assured, say the destitnte, d they will all say wrong. The well-to-do will not make great sacrifice for so futile an end, which indeed can be cured without all this fuss. Pensions to the destitute ly will leave them paupers still. They amount, in fact, nothing but outdoor relief slightly more systematised. at could, we believe, be granted now if the Local overnment Board liked; and if it could not, the change not worth any serious effort. Nobody would be much e happier, and the true object of the reform, which is take the stigma of pauperism off the very old, would t be attained. They being in the proportion of 90 per t. or more, persons who have worked are not to starve, t to be deprived of their liberty, and not in any way to be separated from the rest of the community. That is, it seems to us, the ideal in view ; and to secure that ideal, and also another end which we will mention directly, the pension must be, as Mr. Charles Booth recommends, a right inherent in every member of the community. Every- body is to be born with a right to a pension of 7s. a week at sixty-five, irrespective either of means or character, be he Duke or be he convict-loafer at the street corner. To discriminate between wealth and poverty in granting the pension is only to keep up the present system under another name, and is not a reform for which even a philanthropist can be required to take off his coat, or for which any states- man will consent to lose a night's rest ; while to discrimi- nate between the deserving and undeserving is to provide pensions for everybody except those who cannot live with- out them. Provision for everybody except Lazarus will never do, and never be voted for either. The second question is whence the money is to come, and that re- solves itself into a third,—Is the pension to be a dole from the State or a purchase made by a community every member of which will directly benefit by the arrange- ment ? We maintain that the question answers itself. If it is to be a dole the money cannot be obtained. Mr. Booth, who is a careful statist, says the cost will be £20,000,000 a year, and that sum, if flung upon the rates, will add 50 per cent. to their weight, and if paid out of the Treasury, will involve an extra Income-tax of at least ls. in the pound, which in time of war or great depression might be ls. 6d. Parliament will not vote any sum of the kind, nor could Members, with the whole of the well-to-do in insurrection, keep their seats if it did. The money must be raised in some other way, and there seems to us only one way,—namely, some carefully super- vised system of universal compulsory insurance aided by the State. That is, in practice, every adult person must buy every week a fourpenny stamp, to be shown say when. ever he is paid wages, or asks for liquor, or pays rent, and the fund so collected must be supplemented by a grant. A grand insurance fund, to be kept up by a compulsory purchase of stamps, managed and supplemented by the State,—that is the kind of scheme to which we shall probably come. There will be heaps of details to be settled, and of course the weight of the stamp will be affected by the age fixed for the pensions, by the amount, and by the ever-improving longevity of the population ; but something like this, we feel convinced, must be the pivot of a successful scheme.
The country is not prepared for such a scheme ? The country is never prepared for any scheme which its leaders have not carefully explained to it, and we dare say it is not prepared for this. There is always a diffi- culty here in the way of every insurance scheme, half comic and half grievous, but exceedingly hard to sur- mount. The difficulty is that no average young English workman ever believes that he shall live beyond sixty- five. He accepts the possibility as an article of faith, and if hard pressed will admit that his grandmother did reach that age, but as to the chance of himself reaching it, he does not believe a word of it. Forty years hence is to him, in fact, what ninety-nine years is to the buyer of a lease, a rather stupid expression for eternity. Consequently, until the people are a little more civi- lised, say up to the level of Scotchmen, no scheme involving long deferred benefits will ever be popular or ever regarded as anything but a tax. Still, it is a teachable people. It was taught Free-trade, which seems to be wholly beyond the intellectual grasp of most popu- lations, and it did submit peaceably to that astounding innovation, the abolition of the old Poor-law, a wise measure, but as violent a measure as the suppression of the monasteries. We do not despair, therefore, that if Mr. Chamberlain will persevere, and if the economists will explain, and if the politicians will quarrel so angrily that they will make good speeches, a party may be found to carry a working scheme of pensions for old age. But anybody who thinks it will be carried without the kind of effort which carried Free-trade does not understand either the greatness or the feebleness of the English workman, his cool fearlessness as to the future, his absolute refusal to study any complicated proposal. He will trust Parliament as if it were God, but as to listening to Mr. Courtney and proportional representation, he sees there is a big sum in arithmetic to be done, and would die fighting rather than work it out.
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