DOOM OF THE FAMILY MAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 206, 28 August 1920, Page 17

DOOM OF THE FAMILY MAN.

THE NEED OF STATE RESPONSIBILITY.

(By CR. TOM BLOODWORTH.)

Cr. Hall Skelton returns to the woes of the family man, and asks us not to worry about remedies until we have the great mass of public opinion behind us in our cause. Then, he says, "statesmen will be tumbling over themselves to apply tne necessary remedies."

In that I see a danger; we do not want the kind of remedies which statesmen or others tumble over themselves to apply. We have had too many remedies of that kind, and as a consequence real cures have seldom .been effected, while in some cases one evil has been removed at the expense of the creation of another. What we want is, first, a correct diagnosis of the complaint; then a carefully thought out remedy applied, calculated to remove the evil and not introduce others. Cr. Hall Skelton says once we have established a principle in the mind of the mass a remedy will soon be found. 1 have not much* faith in that method, not being a strong believer in the mind of the mass for the establishment of principles or for the application of remedies. Principles, I think, are generally propounded by the few, and accepted by the mass if approved; and it is the same with remedies —at any rate, real remedies. What really is the cause of all this fuss a.boufc the family man? He complains that little or no consideration is o-iven him by the State, and that every rise in'the cost of living, every increase in taxation, adds new weight to the burden he has to bear; and on the other hand the State complains that there arc not enough families. Mr. Skelton thinks that the family must be protected and the cradles kept full in order to prevent the ingress of yellow and black races to this Dominion, and he thinks the land-speculating profiteers should be taxed to provide a fund with which to help the family man. Well, suppose there were no yellow or black men wishing to come here, it would still ■be just as necessary that the family should be assisted; and suppose there were no land profiteers to tax (a feat which requires some imagination 1 admit), it would still be necessary to provide the fund from which the assistance could be given. The profiteer is responsible for a lot, and he is a very convenient object of abuse, but if profits were reduced to the minimum and the cost of living, back to the pre-war scale it would still be a fact that the family man would be penalised—that will remain a fact so long as the family income is dependent upon the earning power of the father. In those countries where food was rationed during the war the ration was not' given out in accordance with the trade or calling of the head of the family, but in accordance with the needs of the family; that is to say, if there were ten in the family that family got ten rations, if the family was only two, thefi all it got was rations for two, and it is interesting to note that the medical officer to the London School Board, reporting in 1917, said "that in 1916 the 'Children were on the whole better fed and better clothed than at any time since medical inspection was introduced." That was due to the fact that more women had incomes of their own, and the separation allowances regularly received were Bpent in finding and clothing the children of the men who had been called up for service. I think the system which proved so .beneficial to the family during the war should be adopted for use all the time, and that it should be extended. The State bonus is not merely a maternity or childhood bonus, it :s not a pension for the old. the sick or the infirm, it is not a charity collected from : the rich and given to the poor, it is a proposal, first—That every individual all the time should receive from a central • fund an allowance in money sufficient to maintain life and liberty if all else! failed; and, second, that as everyope' would get a share from the central fund ', so everyone who has any income at allj other than the bonus should contribute a' share to it each in proportion to his or her income. It is not intended that

contributions to this bonus fund would take the place of all other taxation Obviously it would not, but the application of the fund to the purpose for which it was collected would at once remove the necessity for at least some of the taxation now levied. It is not intended that the payment of this bonus would relievo the State of further responsibility; it would not, but it would at once remove all the burdens borne by the State to-day which arc the direct or indirect result of poverty. And immediately the bonus system is instituted the woes of the family man vanish, and a tremendous load of care Is lifted from the shoulders of thousands of people. The fear of distribution, that spectre which has always dogged the footsteps of the toiler, is at once removed; men would be no longer forced by fear of want to accept bad conditions, and women wiould not be driven to worse than death in order to sustain life. The marriage rate a s well as the birth rate would be beneficially affected, and it would be possihlft to'rsave many of those children who now die from preventable diseases due to poverty or ignorance. 1 know this proposal will meet with much criticism; it is too much of a revolution for some, and not revolutionary enough for others. The proposal has been put forward by a. few men and women in England who realise that the lot of the family man is a hard one, and who are anxious to show how the outlook for the family and for the State can be improved, and I merely pass It on for consideration by those who are interested In the matter here.