, BURIAL MONEY FOR THE POOR
Industrial Assurance. By Sir Arnold Wilson and Professor Hermann Levy. (Oxford University Press. 2 is.)
Tots book at once takes a high place in the bibliography of social studies. It is not a dispassionate study, and one suspects that the academic objectivity of one author has been outweighed by the "fearless independence" of the other. But it is nevertheless a highly important book, at once profoundly interesting and disturbing.
Industrial Assurance is the misnomer for the system Which to all effects provides burial money for the poorer classes. The statistics are the most eloquent testimony to the social significance of the institution and to the magnitude of the problem which has developed. The annual premium n income of all companies and societies concerned with industrial assur- ance was in 1935 over £63 million. The number of policies in force was 8o million, and the invested funds and reserves held Qviost them -totalled about kaoo million. In the same year ix million new policies were effected, over 5 million of which the authors calculate have already lapsed. All this business is based on house-to-house collection of weekly or monthly premiums of a few pence apiece, conducted by an army of 7o,000 agents and canvassers. If the meaning of poverty can be brought home to a world which dissipates its resources in armaments, let it be noted that in Great 'Britain the statutory maximum assurance on the life of a child under so can be provided by a premium charge of id. per week, that it is necessary to arrange to collect this sum weekly and that a high rate of lapses occurs on these juvenile policies. At the other end of life old .people living in alms-houses, or with no income beyond an Old Age pension of los. a week, endeavour, to avoid the stigma of a pauper funeral by, taking out an insurance at perhaps 6d. or is. per week, "an almost unbeatable burden."
The authors open with a -useful historical summary -of the development in this country.; and the surprise with which most readers will learn of such episodes as Gbuictnne's _intervention, the recommendations of the Northcote Commission and the fiasco of the Post Office Assurance scheme, warrants the remarks of the authors regarding the neglect of this subject displayed by economists and social historians. The main section of the book is a critical examination of the situation from the standpoint, first of the insured, then of the agents, and lastly of the offices. The- incontrovertible facts which emerge are that the poor pay very heavily for a service which they can ill afford, that grave abuses are associated with the organised pressure for increase of business, and that the companies and societies have a long record of obscurantist obstruction towards reform. These are matters which will excite sufficient comment in the general notice .which the book is certain to receive, and it is perhaps more useful here to' pass straightway to- an examination of the reforms put forward by the authors,. They reject die notion of further amalgamations of existing offices with the attendant desirable economies of administration. They also reject proposals for the establishment of a single public utility corporation or for
a revival of the old Post Office scheme. Their single remedy . . , - _ consists in making funeral benefits an integral part of the National Health Insurance scheme, and they make a neat point by quoting the unanimous recommendation of the Northcote Commission in 1874 that Government Insurance should be extended so as to cover the whole ground now occupied by what is termed Industrial Assurance.
This provokes the old cry Quis custodiet ? We can pass over the larger issue that at the present moment no agency is more powerful and active than governments in perpetuating the poverty which afflicts the world and of which this problem is merely one aspect. In commenting on the large funds controlled by Industrial Assurance concerns, the authors express their firm conviction that no Chancellor would make unwise use of a large and certain command of money, and of his independence of the City. This is a rash statement to make in view of the fact that for the past five years the Treasury has been manipulating the money and capital markets largely with the aid of extra-budgetary funds supplied from Health Insurance, Pensions, Post Office and Trustee Savings and other services administered by public depart- ments. Above all, as Mr. Keynes has pointed out, govern- ments have a perpetual bias in favour of a progressive deterioration in the value of money, firstly because of their own impecuniosity and secondly because of the political influence of the debtor class. A Government Insurance scheme would almost certainly be restricted to investment in national or local fixed interest securities, and to no class of investment is currency depreciation more disastrous than to this. Can we be sure on this point that the interests of insured persons, essentially long-term investors, will receive due consideration from governments ? The story since 1914 is not reassuring. At the present 'moment an acute contro- versy ranges round the price of gold. At the figure of rztos. per ounce the way is being opened to a colossal world inflation. Can we confidently assert that insurance policyholders and gold mining interests have equal weight in the councils of State ? It is to be feared that the obscurantism and chicanery which the authors -denounce in this work are part of the make-up of a grossly inequalitarian society, and that the real remedy awaits the greater infusion of public life with the qualities of industry, courage and high integrity which
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