OLD AGE PENSIONS.

Evening Star, Issue 12399, 12 January 1905, Page 5

OLD AGE PENSIONS.

A RADICAL TRIBUTE,

Old age pensions are still en Fair as far as this country is concerned (says the Clarion’). Air Chamberlain appears to have forgotten them, and John Bull is spending so much on such expensive hobbies as the army and navy that n'e can’t botner with the spent and worn army of toilers with one foot in the grave and the other in the workhouse. In New Zealand, however, old age pensions are now in their sixth year. The sixth annual report of the Old Age Pensions Department of New Zealand, for the year ended March 31, 1904, shows that at the end of March last there were 11,926 pensioners, 729 of whom were Maoris, on the books, with an average pension _of £l6 17s, compared with 12,776 pensions, averaging £l7, at the end of March, 1902. The number of new pensions granted during the year was 1,063, or 27 per cent, of the population becoming elieihle by age or residence, compared with 1,694, or 43 per cent., in 1902. New Zealand, it should be borne in mind, has rather more people than Glasgow. These reductions have been obtained by the institution of a more complete system of investigation, whereby the statements of a claimant for pension were verified before the claim was submitted ,to the stipendiary magistrate. The position, also, of those already on the funds was exhaustively inquired into, and a number of have-been pensions cancelled. Ihe total gross payments on account of pensions during the five and a-quarter years 7a4?n lll j been in force amount to oil oon ■ and , cwst administration to £15,280, or 1.56 per cent, of the total. Couldn’t we get Mr Seddon to come over and run the Old Country for a spell?