Family Allowances The decision of Messrs. Pilkingtons, the St. Helens
glass manufacturers, to introduce a system of family allowances for their workers is more than a commendable piece of social benevolence. The proposal, which will operate from February 6th, is to pay a bonus of 5s. a week to employees for each child above three of school age. In the St. Helens works alone it is reported that at least five hundred families will receive such benefits. At the same time, so far as there is a family allowance problem it cannot be solved in this way. If individual employers undertook to endow large families the temptation to employ only men with small families would be irresistible. The only obvious way of avoiding that difficulty is by adopting the system, widely practised on the continent, of equalisation funds by which employers in a given area or industry pool the cost of bonuses, or, alternatively, by the State instituting a national family allowance system and paying the bonuses itself. In all European countries except Great Britain, Spain, Portugal and Russia family allowances have been adopted as part of the services of the State, and the Government would do well to consider the possible advantages of extending its own services to cover the distribution of family allowances not only on grounds of social welfare but also as a deterrent to the threatened fall in population.
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