FAMILY ALLOWANCES.

Auckland Star, Volume 198, Issue LVII, 21 August 1926, Page 13

FAMILY ALLOWANCES.

PROGRESS OF THE MEASURE.

SOME SURPRISE EXPRESSED. FOLLOWING FRANCE'S LEAD. Some surprise has been expressed in Auckland at the advance that the Governmenc is making with its family allowance scheme. The measure was debated in Parliament this week, and it is believed that New Zealand is within coo-ec of adopting the principle of paying allowances to persons earning UDder £4 a week, with 'three or more children. "The principle has been talked of for some years," remarked an Auckland educationist, "but it must have surprised people to see the rapid advance that the Government was making." Another informant said that New Zealand was falling in line with other countries, chiefly those on the Continent, and was going ahead of a lot of other countries that were behind-hand in the matter of social education. In all countries, since the withdrawal of child labour, there had been a kind of readjustment going on, in which the wages of the breadwinner were struggling to get straight with the cost of living. The readjustment seemed to be slow. It had been argued that the single man should be paid the same wages as a married man because he prepared fo> a future family. In 1911 in England the census made it clear that there were eight million wage earners, five million wives and ten million children. A budget showed that, taking a man, a wife and two children as a normal family and fixing wages accordingly, England was paying on the basis of eight million wage earners, eight million wives and sixteen million children. So she was paying for three million hypothetical waives and six million children of the same type. In the large families there were approximately two and a half million children that went unprovided for. That was where the shoe pinched. There were no figures in New Zealand as to position, but the English analysis gave a good idea of what exists in industrial centres. Need of Allowances. Two very searching investigations were made in 1899 and 1912 in different English cities by different investigators. They showed that in the first case 57J per cent of the breadwinners of the poorer class who enjoyed constant employment could not possibly raise themselves out of poverty; and in the second case the percentage was shown to be 71, which meant an increase of 13J per cent in 13 years. Against <h.3 payment of family allowances, it was argued that over population might result, but it did not appear that children would be brought into the world for the express purpose- of receiting 2/ a head towards the *st of rearing the lot. Then there was the fear of weakening the sense of responsibility. A further opinion was that "there should be no cake for anyone until everyone in the class had bread." France, following the ideas that had grown out of social investigations, had led the way in adopting a system that served to place married and single men on a I similar basis. The system began after the war, and practical experience had been sufficiently satisfying to cause it to spread. Payments were made in three ways: firstly, as part of the wages paid weekly to the worker; secondly, from funds by state officials; thirdly, by the employers to the mothers, apart from wages. The Proposed Method. J New Zealand proposed adopting the j second method oi payment. It is exj plained that employers have no inducement to engage single in preference to married men. France has a number of ways of preventing, any preference; but the New Zealand proposals, being simpler, are less in need of protecting devices.

Benefit for agricultural workers with j families is an interesting feature of j the French system. There is a mutual insurance fund for these people, under the auspices of the various French dis- \ trict federations of farmers' unions, and j here *ii*. employers' contribution to the | fund is not in accordance with the wage | bill, but according to the area worked. | For New Zealand to adopt such a sys- j torn, it is stated, would be practically j impossible Each district in France has J been well worked and the whole country is uniform; but the nearest approach to uniformity in the Dominion, suggests an informant, is not wages or acreage, but the Government valuation.