THE NEW PHILANTHROPIC PROJECT.
WE have always doubted, and after reading Mr. Chamberlain's speeches on the subject, we continue to doubt, whether any project of State-aided pensions for the aged poor will ultimately succeed. The people, we think, will not take to them. There is a sanguine element, or element of fearlessness, lying deep in the character of Englishmen, and, we are told, also of Americans, that exempts them from that apprehension of poverty in old age which haunts the minds of the poor belonging to other races. They are either defective in imagination, or they are ready to bear what fate sends without too much complaint, or they are sure in their own minds that they shall somehow evade any distant ills. The insurance offices do comparatively little business in deferred annuities. The clergy, who are well educated, and are peculiarly liable to see the widows of their brethren suffer from poverty in age, have never organised any general fund for securing to them pensions. The artisans in great establishments, such as the railways, strike against deferred pay ; and it is seriously doubted whether the prospect of pensions weighs half as much with common soldiers as an immediate increase in their cash allowances would. The Post Office business in deferred annuities is exceedingly small, and the great Trade-Unions, which do so vast a business in sick- pay, cannot organise a scheme of any completeness for pensions in old age. We judge, therefore, that, for the present, any non-compulsory scheme for making a provision for old age will fail, and that a compulsory scheme would cost such masses of votes that no party will venture to bring it forward.
The scheme proposed by Mr. Charles Booth on Tuesday at a meeting of the Statistical Society is not open to this objection. It asks no self-sacrifice from the young, and demands from the poor exceedingly little forethought. They will have in the end, no doubt, to pay more taxes, or higher rents, but they will not see why ; and the annuities will seem to them very like direct gifts from the whole com- munity. Mr. Booth, in fact, proposes, or rather, inclines to propose, if the community will bear it, a vast extension and modification of the Poor-Law. Instead of receiving the aged poor in workhouses or giving them outdoor relief, he would, at the age of sixty-five, pay to every individual in England and Wales a pension of 5s. a week. This would cost £17,000,000 a year, from which would be deducted the £3,000,000 a year now expended upon the aged poor. The balance, £14,000,000, would be raised by additional taxa- tion, and is equivalent to an eightpenny Income-tax, if raised exclusively from the well-to-do, or to an additional 4d. on income and a revival of the old sugar-duty, if raised, as it undoubtedly should be, from the entire popula- tion. Mr. Booth contends, and is undoubtedly right in contending, that such a pension is exempt from many of the old objections. It would pauperise nobody, for it would help nobody until they were full of years. It would not be unfair, because if the taxation were fair, every one would have an equal claim to its proceeds. It would not affect the rate of wages or the readiness to work, because the pension would be enjoyed only by those past bodily labour. It would probably increase rather than decrease thrift, the desire to save for comfort's sake being stronger than the desire to save for the sake of keeping off the rates. And, Mr. Booth might have added, but did not, in so severely practical an assemblage, it would slightly increase enterprise, courage in business adventure decidedly increasing with the sense of security for old age. The scheme, whether wise or foolish, is, in fact, exempt from almost all the objections usually and justly raised against State charities.
What, then, are the objections to it ? If the figures are right, and they seem to be, though we must in the main accept them on the authority of Mr. Booth, usually a most accurate and painstaking statist, they resolve themselves into distrust caused by the magnitude of the expense, and distrust created by the present tendencies of opinion. An extra expenditure of fourteen millions a year is a huge addition to the permanent burden under which the British taxpayer already lives. The arrangement once made could hardly be cancelled under any pressure whatever, for even if England were invaded, the aged could not be left to starve, and the majority of voters, whether moved by pity or by self-interest, would never give up their claim. The outcome of the scheme would therefore be, in practice, equivalent to the addition in time of peace of five hundred millions to the National Debt, or more than twice the sum by which economical Ministries have reduced it since the end of the Great War. That is a load we could stagger under if prosperity con- tinued, but it would seriously reduce the national power of raising money ; and if adversity set in, as it must do some day, it would help in a serious way to shake con- fidence in the public credit. We see no guarantee, moreover, that this sum, vast as it is, would be final. On the con- trary, it might, on occasion, be very largely increased. Ten shillings a week to an aged married couple, is at present a maintenance ; but if the price of bread rose seriously, as might easily happen if we were at war with America, or if we lost our maritime ascendency, the demand for an increase of pension would be very loud, and would probably end in concession, and the contraction of more debt. Or it might—even more probably—end in a breach of public faith, the refusal of the annuity to all but paupers, an act of confiscation which would reduce the burden—taking Mr. Booth's figures as accurate—to £6,000,000 a year.
The greatest objection of all, however, to the scheme is the tone of the public mind. There is a tendency to take all taxes off the poor, not on the ground of fiscal con- venience, but of philanthropic feeling. The poor, it is said, have no surplus out of which to pay taxes,—an argu- ment which, if true at all, is true as to all the things they need, and would lead to a maximum price, to be fixed by the State, for bread, clothing, lodging, and coals. The argument is, however, obeyed by Chancellors of the Exchequer to such an extent as to make it more than doubtful whether taxation for pensions would not be imposed solely upon the well-to-do. There would be fair- ness probably at first, but every successive Chancellor of the Exchequer would seek popularity by taking off duties on articles of general consumption, until at last the income- tax-payer was left once more to bear the entire burden, and the multitude could demand increased pensions, or, which would be much more popular and more expensive, pensions at an earlier age, without fear of being compelled to contribute anything to their cost. Such a situation would very soon constitute a grave political danger, more especially as each demand, being made in the name of "the poor," would be defended by those philanthropic arguments which in our day no one seems able to resist publicly, or even to discuss with thoroughness. Outdoor relief, more- over, has in our days a double check, the dislike of the ratepayer to pay it, and the dislike of the respectable household to receive it ; but the demand for more pension would not be checked even by the sense of humiliation. The proposal would, we fear, open a door to extravagance of the most ruinous kind, and place upon the nation a burden too heavy for it to bear, yet continue in prosperity. We have said little about the effect of such a proposal, if carried, upon the moral character of the people, because we are still much perplexed by the evidence. The obliga- tion on all men to assist, and if necessary support, their parents, springs from a law of Nature, and is, we conceive, one of the great defences of society, as well as one of the buttresses of character. We should be sorry to see it destroyed, or even weakened, as prima facie it might be when maintenance without humiliation was always provided for the old. The son would feel no obliga- tion to spare for his mother, and in the absence of that feeling would have lost the most operative of all the domestic virtues. It is said, however, by Magis- trates, Guardians, and clergymen alike, that among the very poor the Poor-Law already produces precisely that evil effect, and that sons habitually refuse to support their parents, not from ingratitude, but from a feeling that they are only "wasting their wages in order to relieve the rates." If that feeling is general, no project of pension can make things worse than they are, and it is just possible that the readiness to contribute in order to secure comforts for parents beyond bare maintenance, might even be in- creased. The point is, however, much too uncertain for fruitful discussion, which must be confined for the present to the philanthropic advantages of the scheme, which are considerable, and its financial dangers, which are more considerable still.
Previous page
