OLD AGE PENSIONS.

Evening Post, Volume LVI, Issue 79, 30 September 1898, Page 6

OLD AGE PENSIONS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sin— Your correspondent " E.T." has tho merit of earnestness. It is, as he says, practically impossible for a maa with a wife and five children and 30s a week to save anything for old age. I vould point out to him," however, that in Scotland, where large families are the rule, the children are brought up with the idea that they must support their parents in their old age. It is extremely doubtful, to say tho least, whether the present tendency to the eradication of the family virtues, and the substitution of the State as the universal mother and milch cow, will not result in a far worse burden being .imposed on the. poor tbau the one they are now seeking to remove. " E.T.," with a perhaps justifiable class bias, sees nothing in the efforts of those who are criticising this measure in tho House but a determination to upset the Bill, or at best to sly r " the burden of the pension fund whollly oil the shoulders of tho class from whicli the pensioners may be expected to arise, lie must remember, however, that a crude, ill-digested measure is worse than useless, that with the most rigid safeguards it will be difficult to prevent imposition, and, more especially in this colony, political seizure of the powers conferred by tho Bill, for political ends. In my opinion the thanks of all right-minded people are due to Messrs. Pirani aud Taylor and those other fearless critics of tho present badly-prepared and demoralising measure miscalled the Old Age Pensions Bill. I am, &c, A.H.G. Crofton, 26th September.