MR. C. BOOTH ON PAUPERISM.*
WE rise from the perusal of this most instructive book with a feeling of dissatisfaction for which we feel it difficult to account, but which is probably due to overstrained expects.
tion. Mr. Charles Booth is the most painstaking of statists; he throws white light on every subject he touches, and he is free to an astonishing degree from the liability to be carried away by theories, which is the standing temptation of all who. devote themselves to the question he discusses. We agree too, in the main, with his leading idea, which is also that of Canon Blackley and Mr. Chamberlain. He maintains that the key- stone of the whole question of pauperism is the condition of
the aged poor, meaning by aged, for reasons not worth giving here, all who are over sixty-five. It is true that the total pro- portion of aged pauperism is only one-fourth of the whole, 343,000 out of 1,317,000 (p. 164) ; but then, it. is this fourth with which it is so difficult to deal. It is of no use talking of this or that cause of pauperism in the aged, or blaming the paupers, or suggesting plans for improving them ; there they are, a solid block of
misery, for which, in accordance alike with Christianity and with English precedent, it is indispensable to provide. It is possible to save the children, to " administer " the able-bodied, to punish the criminal ; but so long as aged pauperism remains with us, we must be burdened with some system of relief. If we could but eliminate that, the remaining evil would, in Mr.
Booth's opinion, become manageable, and the hopeful might even look forward to a day when the extinction of pauperism as a condition of society would not be reckoned among the obvious impossibilities. "We have seen that strict adminis- tration, as things are, is a broken reed on which we cannot lean. Its principles, too fine for general use ; its practices only adapted to village communities, where detailed know- ledge of every case is possible. Withdraw old age ; if it be possible, withdraw the sick also ; and the problem at once becomes manageable. We now spend £8,500,000 on poor relief, much of it mischievously. Take from the rates half this sum towards the cost of pensions, and under this pres- sure, relieved of the burthen of the old, there is no Board of Guardians in the country who could not very soon save a larger proportion than half the rates, with excellent effect on the character of the people and without fear of reaction. Life among the poorest might be based on independence, if their own old age and that of those who now hang heavily on them were secured. Chronic pauperism would be confined to a ne'er-do- well class, and might in the end be stringently regulated.'
This view is, we think, substantially sound, and the main object of this book is to discuss the best methods of taking the aged altogether and for ever out of the pauper rolls. Mr.
Booth objects to Canon Blackley'e scheme, which compels the young to deposit a sum, say of £6 10s., before they are twenty- one, first because it would not begin to operate on a large scale for forty years—a final objection—and secondly, because it would be, in fact, taxation, taxation of a special kind, and taxation confined to the unwilling. The class we most want to provide for is just the class which will not provide for itself, and
• Pauperissn, cud the Endowment of Old Age. By Charles Booth. London: Macmillanand Co.
which, therefore, will resist or evade by every means in its power an arrangement the advantages of which it will not perceive. He objects, for the same reasons, to Mr. Chamber- lain's plan—which is Canon Blackley's modified by an immense rant from the State, £15 for every £25—which would, moreover, cost £5,000,000 a year and upwards from the very beginning, while accomplishing nothing for the present generation. Mr. Booth supports both objections by figures and reasons for which we must refer our readers to his book, but which seem to us unanswerable; and then proceeds to state his own plan, which is nothing less than to set aside the idea of insurance, and to tackle the evil at once and boldly by granting to every man and woman in Eng- land and Wales, on attaining the age of sixty-five, a life-pension of 213 a year, or 5s. a week. This pen- sion would be granted irrespective of need, character, or previous history ; would begin at once, as soon as the law passed ; and would be accompanied by an entire withdrawal of outdoor relief. The coat would be met, like that of pensions to soldiers, out of taxation alone. In a lengthy and extremely well-condensed series of arguments, Mr. Booth proceeds to argue that this scheme would be free from most of the objec, tions to all Poor-Laws. Being universal, the pension would inflict no stigma, and involve no socialistic injustice. Being so distant and so small, a bare livelihood, and, except when two or three persons shared together, an insufficient livelihood, it would not diminish the motive of the young to save, which, he contends, is most strongly felt by the well-to-do; and it would in no degree destroy filial piety, the obligation to provide for one's own parents, for that objection, "if good at all, is good against any savings for old age, or at least against any encouragement of such savings, and therefore goes too far. If children ought to support their parents, it cannot be right for parents to save and so prevent them from performing this duty. But filial duty may be shown in many ways, and the relations of the rich to their children are not in fact worse than those of the poor ; while looked at in the concrete, it is probable that thousands of old people with 5s. a week in hand will find a home with some son or daughter who otherwise must have seen them enter the workhouse."
And then, having disposed of these objections, Mr. Booth enters upon the greater one of cost. This, he admits, would be an addition to taxation of £17,000,000 a year, minus the small sum, as a maximum perhaps £2,000,000, but more pro- bably £1,000,000, which we might save by abolishing outdoor relief. This sum is a heavy one, but Mr. Booth thinks it one by no means impossible to raise, and though he disclaims any idea of suggesting the method, he does, in fact, suggest a rather elaborate plan :—
" To raise fairly such a sum as this, indirect as well as direct taxes would be needed, and the 'free breakfast table' would become a dream of the past. It would be out of place for me to balance the claims of sugar, tea, and drink, or of income tax and the death duties. I will only point out that a fd. a lb. on the sugar imported in 1891 would amount to over £6,000,000, that 2d. on tea would provide nearly £2,000,000, and that neither are im- possible taxes. Drink seems to be able always to supply another .£2,000,000 when called upon. 3d. on the income tax is fully .26,000,000, and we have an adjustment of death duties in re- serve. It cannot be said that there would be any actual difficulty in raising whatever sum may be needed, nor in arranging the incidence of the new taxation so that all classes paid approxi- mately in proportion to their incomes, provided there be any general desire that the thing should be done."
The reader will up to this point probably be more or Iess in accord with Mr. Booth, whose extreme quietude of style is exceedingly seductive ; but at this point he will draw a long breath, and ask in a dismayed voice : "For what is this huge sacrifice to be made ? " An annual revenue of 217,000,000 capitalised at 3 per cent, is more than 2500,000,000 sterling, a new National Debt to be supported on our shoulders for ever! Mr. Booth does, indeed, say that it is not for ever, because there is no contract; but how is it ever to be shaken off? Poverty will never cease, and to deprive the whole of the aged poor of their grand resource, in most cases their sole resource, at a blow, is a course which a Christian community will never take. It would, in an emergency, let the country perish of over-taxation first, or repudiate the National Debt, or sanction some huge scheme of confiscation. The burden once taken up must be permanent, and for what is the weary Titan, already so loaded, to take it up? In order to extinguish pau- perism? Not a bit of it, for as Mr. Booth himself admits in his able paragraphs on thrift, we have still to deal with all the
pecuniary mischances which befall men and women before they are sixty-five,—have, in fact, to bear three-fourths of all the evil which we bear now. To make old age in England happy P Not a bit of it ; the pension will be of value only to a limited class, and to them will yield so little that the very next cry would be that, in the name of Christian kindness, it must be doubled. All that would be effected would be that three hundred and forty thousand persons who now seek shelter from poverty in Poor-Law doles, or in residence in great and strictly managed asylums, would in future live lives of even more extreme poverty, but outside. For instead of the State provision making the aged welcome guests of the workers, its effect would be to encourage the workers to throw the whole responsibility of their relatives and friends upon the State. Mr. Booth will retort that a " stigma " will be removed, and that is partly true ; but the " stigma " in many cases is deserved, and where it is not, it is surely a small thing to remove at so enormous a cost. It is a grant out of taxation Mr. Booth is proposing, and probably for an eighth of it, certainly for a fifth, we could turn the aged wards of the Unions into pleasant asylums for old age, or increase outdoor relief until it was, for the limited class, admittedly sufficient. It is in this respect, the immense disproportion between the end to be attained and the means of attaining it, that Mr. Booth's book leaves so unsatisfactory an impression. He leaves pauperism as a problem almost where it is, but pro- vides a poverty-stricken asylum for old age at the coat of a new National Debt of five hundred millions sterling. We confess that seems to us unreasonable, and anything un- reasonable is so opposed to all that we gather of Mr. Booth, of his method of thinking and style of arguing, that it comes on his reader with a jar, as if a poet were pouring out discords, or a statesman writing like Mr. Stead. The student pauses, doubts, and finally concludes that Mr. Booth is a weaker thinker than he has hitherto been reckoned.
The object of this review is, of course, to discuss Mr. Booth's book, and not to advance or decry any scheme for improving the Poor-Law ; but we would ask him, simply as author, whether he has not omitted too completely one form of insurance against poverty which, if only because it is so common in the upper class, surely deserved a few words of acceptance or rejection. He disposes of Canon Blackley's scheme and Mr. Chamberlain's scheme ; but there is a third of which he does not dispose. Suppose the State guarantees without aiding, except by paying expenses of management, a Universal Provident Office, empowered to receive from every man and woman 6d. a week throughout life, and to pay its value in a pension beginning at sixty. It is quite certain, if we understand the usual statements, that the provision would be ample,—more than ample, on Mr. Chamberlain's figures. Is it certain that the body of the people would refuse to pay anything of the kind ? They do not refuse at Stroud ; and we believe that their supposed reluctance is due solely to an ignorance which their usual leaders could dispel,—which Mr. Gladstone, for example, could turn into assent almost in a single speech.
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