OLD AGE PENSIONS.

Evening Star, Issue 10705, 18 August 1898, Page 4

OLD AGE PENSIONS.

[A Paper Paktlt Read to the Citizens' Union, Wellington, 10th August, 1898 ] ( Continued.) THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON THE AGED POOB, 1893-95. Such, then, in outline, are the chief schemes which have been proposed for dealing with the problem of the aged poor. Some further light has been recently ahed upon the question by the investigations of parliamentary committees and royal commissions in England and elsewhere. The chief outoome of the Royal Commission on the Aged Poor appointed in England in 1893 was a recommendation of something very like the Danish system. They urged in the case of the aged poor a greater discrimination between the "respectable poor" and those whose poverty is distinctly tbe result of their own misconduct, and that the wholesome and growing strictness in the granting of outdoor relief should be relaxed in favor of the former. Where it was found that applicants had borne a good oharaoter, had made reasonable efforts, and had not been previously assisted from the rates, except temporarily and under speoial circumstances of misfortune, then they recommended that outdoor relief should in all cases be tendered. Mr G. Booth and Mr Chamberlain were both members of this Commission, and it is interesting to find the former joining in the recommendation after telling us in his book on 'Pauperism and the Endowment of Old Age' that he could imagine no court of inquiry competent to conduct suoh an investigation. He would probably justify the apparent inconsistency by saying that though no tribunal was competent to do the work it was better under present conditions that it Bhould be clumsily done than not at all. As a matter of fact, this discrimination has been very generally attempted by poor law authorities ; and in the book just cited, which wis published in 1892, Mr Booth refers to " the improved conditions of pauper life usually meted out to old age." It must not be overlooked, however, that one reason for the large proportion of. the aged in our poorhouses is that they often require more care and attention than the most generous practicable allowance would enable them to procure outside. Tne manager of the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum when asked what affect old uge pensions of 10* a week would have on his institution Baid: "It would not relieve the institution much. A majority of the inmates could not bo trusted with money, and a number require so much medical attention and nursing that they could not manage with the small pittance they would receive."

THE VICTORIAN ROYAL COMMISSION, 1897-98 The one practical suggestion in the report of the Royal Commission on Old Age Pensions presented to the Victorian Parliament a few months ago is of a similar character. The florid and pretentious style of this document is familiar enough to us in thirdrate journalism, but looks somewhat odd in a Blue Book. It opens with the grandiose and nonsensical declaration that " the palliatives of political expediency must give way to the drastic panaceas of resolute statesmanship," but ends tamely enough with the suggestion of pensions (t e , outdoor relief) for the deserving aged poor and the workhouse for the undeserving. " Undeserving," by the way, is not their word; they abandon the usual nomenclature, and among the poor, at any rate, recognise only the " deserving" and the " les3 deserving." Seeing that by their own definition the less deserving consist of "those who bave been intemperate, extravagant, icdoleut, improvident, lawless, and generally those who have made no reasonable effort to provide for the future," it would seem that they have not discovered any obvious traces of higher merit in this class than have previous observers. But one result of universal suffrage appears to be a growing inability to impute positive demerit to any man who has a vote unless he happens to have some other marketable property besides. This strang*ootnpound of maudlin humanitarianism with calculating hypocrisy—this regard for our weaker but enfranchised brother, which is

shared by the light-healed sentimentalist yearning to relieve his weakness, and the light-fingered dem.«g"gue yearning to capture his vote, is what thu/atcDS democracy with the gr.vcßt dangers iu the sphere of social experiment. THE MOVEMENT IN NEW ZEALAND. In our own country there h&s lately been a general but vague feeling in favor of some system of old age pensions, but the popular demand has never taken any definite shape, nor had the problem been discussed with any accuracy either in or out of Parliament. Iu 1894 a Committee appointed by the House of Representatives arrived at certain resolutions which are unimpeachable as far as they go, but leave the crucial difficulties untouched. This Committee had no time for original investigation, and its moit important suggestion was that a Royal Commission should be appointed to inquire thoroughly into the matter with reference to the circumstances of the colony. Parliament has ignored this iecommenda * tion, and is now for the third consecutive session attempting to deal with the matter at first hand. After months of det liberation the Committee appointed by the Imperial Government has just reported that not one of the hundred schemes submitted to it is workable. After a few hours' discussion, without expert testimony before it, without special knowledge, without mature deliberation, and with a j \unty irresponsibility worthy of a juvenile debiting society, our House of Representatives decided last year that it bad found a scheme that would do. That such an inquiry should solve such a question would indeed be a miracle, but even a miracle should be discussed on its merits, and this discussion I will now undertake. THE OLD AGE PENSIONS BILL, 1896. The Old Age Pensions Bill introduced by the Premier in 1896, on the eve of a general election, was crude and impossible, and obviously not meant to pass; but it was not essentially vicious in its cardinal provision. It was not a mere charitable aid measure, and it did not make poverty and idleness the necessary equipment of a pensioner. An applicant who had lived sixty-five years, and spent twenty of them in the colony, was to be entitled to a pension of 10s a week, provided " that his total income from all sources {exclusive of personal earnings and his pension) does not exceed the rate of £SO per year," whioh meant that, though a man with property producing an annual income of £SO was disqualified, it was not necessary for a man to give up work in order to qualify. But the House would not tolerate even the property disqualification, and removed any Buspioion of pauperism by striking out the whole subseotion, and thus giving to every man who satisfies the conditions of age and residence the right to a pension. The measure then became a genuine pension scheme, but the enormous addition to its financial difficulties entailed by this extension was made an excuse for dropping a Bill which, even as introduced, had no financial foundation at all. THE OLD AGE PENSIONS BILL, 1897. When the Bill was introduced again last year the subsection reappeared in its original form, but the House this time amended it in an opposite direction. The saving clause as to personal earnings was struck out, and everybody earning £1 a week or upwards was disqualified for a pension. The relief proposed by the Bill of 1896 was a modified charitable aid under not wholly pauperising conditions; the rHouse then converted it into a genuine pension. The same relief waß proposed by the Bill of 1897, and the House then converted it into a pauper's dole. I regret to see that this conversion is now accepted by the Government, and I propose to.consider in detail the provisions of their measure in its latest form. A MODEL. PREAMBLE. The preamble of the Bill is one from whioh no humane person could dissent:—" Whereaß it is equitable that deserving colonists who during the prime of life have helped to bear the public burdens of the colony by the payment of taxes, and to open op its resources by their labor and skill, should look to the oolony for a pension in their old age," With the aspiration of that preamble we can surely all agree, But it points, as the title of the Bill points, to a pension for. whioh all deserving colonists can qualify by living to the necessary age and doing' the necessary work; and when the enacting parts of the measure proceed to restriot the

class -who are to receive pensions by conditions whioh bear no relation whatever, except by way of contradiction, to their labor and skill, or to their contributions to the public weal, the lie is given to preamble and title alike. To make the preamble anything bat a false pretence it should ran < Whereas it is equitable that Colonists, who during the prime of life may or may not nave helped, etc., etc., and woo from divers causes have been unable or unwilling, and continue to be unable or unwilling to provide for themselves. To make the preamble a fitting to a discriminating scheme of charitable aid it should run : Whereas it is equitable that deserving colonists ] who, etc., etc. (as in the Bill), and who from divers not discreditable causes nave been unable to provide for themselves should look to the colony for a pension in their old age, and whereas it is inequitable that undeserving colonists-who have not helped to bear the public burdens of the colony by the payment of taxes, nor to open up its resources by their labor and skill, and who from divers discreditable causes have been unable or unwilling and continue to be unable or unwilling to provide for themselves, should look to the colony for a pension in their old age. MERIT AND SUCCESS. Merely to say that the Bill is a Charitable Aid Bill, and not an Old Age Pensions Bill, would not necessarily be to eondemn it. As a Charitable Aid Bill it might still bave its uses and its justification. Note that by leaving that important word "deserving" standing in my second preamble I have admitted that there are oases of indigence in old age which cannot be attributed to the demerits of the sufferer. Someone has said that success is a rough test of merit, but that it is tbe only test we have. Worldly success is too often a very delusive test indeed. The formula of the survival of tbe fittest is a truism which is made to cover a deal of falsehood. It merely means that tho3e survive who are fittest to survive ; it is falsely supposed to imply that they are necessarily fittest for any other purpose. Those who succeed in the worldly struggle do so sometimes because tbey are fitter for

gaol, and often beoause they are less fit for Heaven, than those whom they surpass. Mr Booth mentions the-case of a young girl of his acquaintance who was earning 10} a month in service, and out of that for some time sent 8j a month, to her poor and aged mother. The prospects of worldly success for that young creatnre were not brilliant. In after life she would probably be stripping herself in the same way for her children, and, it may be, a drnnken husband, and thereby, acoording to the cant of the survival of the fittest, ultimately establishing her fitness for tbe workhouse. TWO KINDS OF HALOES. Such cases are to be found among the pensioners of the Charity Organisation Society of London, and doubtless also in connection with any other large charitable institution ; and they show that the world's failures inolude some who bave a better title to be crowned than the proudeet lady in the land, though, of course, it is a halo, and not an earthly crown that should be theirs. But as this award is not in our power, I would not quarrel with a Bill, whatever might be its name, whioh promised some genuine solace for the. declining years of such a life. Ten times the pauper's dole that is proposed in this Bill would, on such a purpose, be money well spent, and we could afford it all if the 90 per cent, of undeserving whom the Bill threatens to endow could be effectually excluded. It is to the endowment of these unworthy that I objeot. I protest against diminishing the national ■lividend available for the widow and the orphan and the faithful failures in life's struggle by the admission of the class of man whose only halo is the halo round his iioso that marks the blossoming of a long' course of self-indulgence. If we can amend the world's rough justioe by some more aoourate measurement, by all means let ca do it; but let us remember that the experiment is one of infinite delicaoy and danger; and, above all, let us not forget that indiscriminate bounty will in the long run only aggravate the hardships that we seek to cure, and postpone the dawning of the brighter day that we are endeavoring to hasten. THE QUALIFICATIONS OF A PENSIONER. Wnat discrimination, then, is exeroised by the Bill? how are the sheep and the goats divided 1 and what are the qualifications of the "deserving colonists" for whose benefit it is devised ? The answer to these questions ,is to be found in ohuaea 7 and 8, which may ! bo summarised as follows:

Every person in the colony of the age of sixtyfive years or upwards is to be entitled to a pension of £lB a year for the rest of his life, provide!—

1. That he resides in the colony, and has so resided for twenty years. 2. That during the ten years preceding his application he has not been imprisoned for four months or on four occasions for any offence punishable by imprisonment for twelve months and dishonoring him in public estimation. 3. That during the five years preceding his application he has not for twelve months or more deserted his wife or without just cause failed to maintain her or his children under fourteen years. (Analogous provisions are made where the claimant is a woman.) 4. That he is of good moral character, and is leading a sober and reputable life.

5. That his income does not amount to £1 a week, nor the net capital value of his property to £5lO.

0. That he has not deprived himself of property or income in order to qualify.

An applicant who can satisfy these conditions has an absolute right to a pension, no liscretionary power being reserved to any authority to qualify or withhold it. (To be conlimid J