OLD AGE PENSIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21144, 30 March 1932, Page 13

OLD AGE PENSIONS.

Sir, —The National Expenditure Commission by recommending a smaller pension lull, especially the old age pension is inviting the Government to legislate by starvation to help to balance tho Budget. I would like to place the commissioners in my position for, say, 12 months, after which I am sure they would favour a larger pension bill for themselves. My parents, with eleven children, paid our passages from England to New Zealand and landed in 1864. Old colonists know how we had to battle for an existence. We had no free education, no eight hours' day, work from daylight to dark, no half-holiday. Bread and dripping and hasty pudding (flour, boiling water, milk and brown sugar) were considered good enough for us kiddies. There were slumps and soup kitchens and pick and shovel work at 4s per day to keep a family on. Nine of the family have fallen in the battle of life. I was forced by circumstances through no fault of mine to apply for the old age pension last year. I battled on until I was forced to give up—unable to work any more. I have a good saving wife who is not yet eligible for the pension. We have only two meals daily, which does not include duck and green peas. I ask the commissioners how they expect us to keep life in our bodies on a pension of 15s per week to keep two of us after food, clothing, firing, lighting and rent are paid for. War pensioners are looked upon by the commissioners as a class apart and no reductions are to be made to disabled soldiers. Quite right. "But why reduce the pension of disabled old age pensioners who sent thpir sons to the war to fight for justice, who did not return to comfort and help their parents in the evening of their lives? Is that just? One of the New Poor.