MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S PENSION SCHEME. T HERE is only one objection to
Mr. Chamberlain's scheme for old-age pensions, but that is a fatal one. It will not do the work it is intended to do, and will im- pose a burden on the State calculated to produce evils worse than the disease intended to be cured. With Mr. Chamber- lain's main aspiration we have the very greatest possible sympathy. If some plan could be devised for making, not a few picked men, but all men save against old age, and a plan which would at the same time impose no immoderate financial burden on the State, we should welcome that plan with the utmost satisfaction. We agree that the present Poor-Law has many evils; that it is demoralising, and humiliating ; and we would gladly see it done away with, and a system of self-help among working men instituted in its stead. Our opposition arises solely from our belief that the pension scheme proposed by Mr. Chamberlain will not do away with the necessity for the present system of poor-relief, and that all that would be accomplished by its adoption would be a dole of national funds to those who ought to be able to do without help. But though this is our feeling in regard to Mr. Chamberlain's plan, we must not forget to admit that he has approached the subject from a perfectly justifiable standpoint, and that it is by no means fair to accuse him of showing any desire to return by a side-door to the evils produced by an in- discriminate use of State funds to support the poor. Mr. Chamberlain, in his paper in the National Review, starts with a proposition which is incon- trovertible. There is a legal obligation on the com- munity to support those who cannot support themselves. But this being so, the question arises : What is the best method of carrying out this obligation ? At present we do so by means of the workhouse and of a certain amount of outdoor relief. Canon Blackley and those who follow him propose that it should be done by a system of universal insurance against old age. Mr. Cham- berlain, on the other hand, proposes what we may call a mixed system. At present poor-relief is given,—(1), to those who are in temporary distress through whatever cause ; and (2), to those who have ceased, through age, to be able to support themselves. Mr. Chamberlain would leave the existing system to deal with those in poverty from causes other than old age, but would endeavour to take the old- age relief out of the operation of the Poor-Law by giving what are, in fact, bounties on savings. His plan for doing this is as follows. In order to stimulate thrift, he would enact that every workman who can manage to accumulate £5 in the hands of the State before he has reached twenty-one shall have a sum of £15 added to his own deposit of £5. The intending purchaser of a pension would thus start at the age of twenty-five with £20 standing in his name, and allotted to the purchase of a pension. But Mr. Chamberlain believes, though he does not give us the facts on which his belief is based, that the further payment of £1 a year for forty years would enable the State, without any expenditure beyond the original £15, to guarantee a weekly allowance of 5s. a week after the age of sixty-five had been reached, and until the annuitant's death. The arguments which Mr. Chamber- lain uses to prove the expediency of adopting his plans, are, in appearance at least, of great force. "It has been shown, he says, " that under existing cir- cumstances a very large proportion of the industrious poor must infallibly seek Poor-Law relief in their old age. Their condition, in the majority of cases at any rate, is due directly to declining years, and not to misconduct. The difficulties in the way of their making provision are fp +neat that practically none of them do make it, and all existing agencies have hitherto failed to induce them to do F33." From these premisses, he in effect deduces the con- clusion that the State should hold out a strong temptation to the working man to save against old age. If the State cpuld feel sure that its temptation would prove effectual in the cases in which the temptation is specially designed to operate, this would be all very well. But what proof is there of that ? Is there not, indeed, a great deal of proof the other way, of proof to show that even the inducement of a £15 bounty will not be enough to get the men who earn from 10s. to 20s. a week—the class, that is, which it is most desirable to catch—to save £5 before twenty-five, and £1 a year afterwards for forty years ? In our belief, none but the elite of the working class would touch Mr. Chamberlain's pension scheme. But they are men who will save without a bounty. If Mr. Chamberlain's scheme were largely adopted, it would, we are convinced, be by the superior artisans, the men with from £2 to £3 a week, and not by the men who now unfortunately end their lives by coming on the rates. We should, then, were we to adopt Mr. Chamberlain's scheme, find ourselves in this position. The present expenditure under the Poor-Law would be reduced by very little, if at all, while there would be a new additional, and if his scheme were widely adopted, a very large fund required for the old- age pensions. If the State had a lucky-bag out of which it could get money at will, this would not matter. Since, however, every £1 the nation spends has to be raised by taxation, and since in the end taxation falls mainly upon the poor—it either comes directly out of their beer and spirits, their tea or their tobacco, or else dries up the sources of industry on which they depend—the pension fund might mean something very like the taxation of the very poor for the benefit of the superior artisans. If we are to spend national money on old-age pensions, we would far rather adopt the plan suggested by Mr. Charles Booth, a plan which we criticised some weeks ago. He proposes to raise by taxation enough to give every person an annuity after a certain age. Rich and poor would contribute, and rich and poor would claim their £10 or .t15 a year. It is said that the scheme would cost £20,000,000 a year ; but it must be remembered that it would render it possible to enforce a really drastic administration, if not an abolition, of the Poor-Law. Granted the necessity, the best way Of raising the money would be to require the local authorities to add the necessary pennies to the rates collected by them. In this way, there would be little or no loss in collection, and every householder in the Kingdom would be brought under contribution. But though we by no means hold Mr. Booth's scheme to be absurd, we do not suppose that it will ever be tried. The nation has an instinctive dread of raising such huge sums by taxation. Besides, there is a physical limit to the ingathering of taxes, and if we were at war, the pension fund might be a serious trouble. It is our belief, then, that little or nothing can be done quickly to remedy what we admit is a very terrible result of the economic conditions under which the people of England live,—we mean the pathetic fact that half the working men who live beyond sixty-five have to come on the rates, and this through no direct fault of their own, but simply because the smallness of their wages, and the dearness of living and of bringing up a family respectably, make adequate saving an agony more intolerable than even the thought of the " House." God knows it is not because we fail to realise the hard fate of the poor, or because we are satisfied with a sombre and philosophic acquiescence in their misery, that we cannot express approval of Mr. Chamberlain's well-meant attempt to dis- cover a remedy. We sympathise with the spirit in which he has set his mind to the subject, if not with his proposals. Our own belief is, that no vast socialistic experiments will be of any avail, and that the one and only remedy lies in endeavouring to bring about general economic conditions under which the poor will be able to live and thrive and make provision against old age. In plain language, what is wanted is an increase of the national wealth, and its more equal distribution. If there is no waste of wealth by war, or by what is as destructive of wealth as war, mad socialistic experiments, we do not despair that another generation may see a vast improvement in the material condition of England. Wealth, as it accumulates, tends to spread abroad, not to rise in heaps. No doubt that material improvement we hope for will not do everything expected of it, and will be of little avail by itself, and unaccompanied by a corresponding spiritual development. For the solution of the pauper question, however, it is all-important. Those, then, who are sincere in their desire to fight the evils of poverty, will bear in mind one thing above all others. The best way to relieve poverty is to husband the national resources, and to forbid the waste of the national wealth, be the excuses for such waste never so ingenious and fair-seeming. Taxation is always an evil, because always a waste. At the best, it can never be anything but a necessary evil. Any scheme, then, which suggests fresh and heavy taxation is to be regarded as prim,' facie contrary to the public interest.
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