OLD-AGE PENSIONS IN NEW ZEALAND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13568, 16 April 1906, Page 4

OLD-AGE PENSIONS IN NEW ZEALAND.

THE HIOH COMMISSIONER FOR THIS DEFENCE. (From Our Ows Correspondent.) LONDON'. February 24. Writing to the Morning Post, Mr" \Y. P Reeve.?, ihe High Commissioner for New Zealand, says: "You published a leading article on old-age pension systems and schemes, tho effect of which was to show that all pension laws, whether suggested l or in working, are open to serious objections. In the rourse of this not wry exhilnrating task your leader-writer aimed a. Wow or two at the New Zealand law, curtly dismissing it as a scheme by which thrift has been discouraged and fraud stimulated. A pension sysloni like that which is doing its good work in our colony is not. however, io lie disposed o( in this off-hand fashion. Even if it were fail—winch it certainly is not—lo ignore entirely the good side of a social reform and dwell only on its weak points, I colld still show that your picture of Ihe seamy side of our law is unduly gloomy." After summarising the main features of the Xew Zealand system .Mr Reeves goes on to remark: "You say that this must operate to discourage, thrift, because, persons after saving enough to secure an income of 10,s a week will have no obiect to go further. Do you seriously (liink that a large number of New Zealandors, energetic and provident enough to save a substantial sum, will be seriously checked in thrift by any such narrow calculation? Our experience'of our colonists is very different. The more thrifty and successful among the poorer classes are spurred on by more ambitious motives. When they have accumulated capital they want to take a step' up in life—lo embark in business, to extend some little enterprise to buy land, to make a. comfortable home. They are not the sort, of peoplo to abandon their dreams and change their methods 0/ life through fear of becoming too rich to bo entitled to 10s a week in extreme old age. Ten shillings a. week when yon are very old does not seem a very dazzling or gilded dream to a thrifty and energetic colonist in youth or middle age. It will not demoralise him. " There is, however, another and humbler class," continues Mr Reeves, "among which a. limited pension may, and. I believe, does act as a. very strong encouragement Io thrift. I refer to that weaker class which in most countries does not. save at all, largely through a feclimr of sheer hopelessness. What is the use of saving for old age when your most extreme, self-denial may possibly secure you an income of 3s or 4s a- week? To a class so circumscribed, and especially to the women amongst them, a pension scheme like ours is a very strong inducement indeed to practise such thrift as will enable them to supplement their little pension with a few shillings more. On the balance, therefore, I feel quite clear that Ihe New Zealand law does encourage thrift. Not that this was the main object for which it was passed. Its highest aims were to lessen distress, to give a brighter oullook to life, and to diminish the anxiety which embitters the toil of the poor. If it has attained these objects —and it has—it may claim to he a good law apart from the question of thrift altogether." Next the High Commissioner quotes copious statistics showing that there has bcero no discouragement of natural thrift, but Ihe contrary, on the basis of savings bank, life insurance, and friendly society' figures. Ho also denies that there is fraud to anylarge extent, while he adds: " Under any conceivable system of charity you will oncounter a certain amount of trickery and deception. Assuredly you do not escai/o Ihis iii countries where the relief of liic poor is partially left to nrivate benevolence? Look at England now! Loot around you in London! If there is ono snot on the earth whore whole tribes of bogging impostors and mendicant tricksters flourish, it is this filfullv and irregularly benevolent, country and capital. Ask anyone who has had anything to do with the administration of benevolent funds. .Ask anyone who ha s tried to track the wayward course of individual alms-giving: they will tell you that private charity is everywhere the prey of more or less impudent fraud. It is, moreover, marked by wasto and blundering such as no State system that I have ever studied can fairly be charged with." To (his communication the Morning Post appends the following footnote:—"We arc very glad to print the favourable, testimony given by so eminent an authority ag Mr W. P. Reeves to the successful working of old-age pensions in New Zealand. We certainly had no intention whatever to condemn the New Zealand scheme as a whole: we used it merely to illustrate the dangers of Ihe particular provision reducing the pension in certain cases on account of other income. From this danger schemes without such a provision are free. Wo should like, also, to say that the leading ariielo referred to was certainly inspired bv n. spirit of mere destructive criticism. The principle, of old-age pensions already receives so much general support thai it is fully worth while discussing as a practical issue the merits and dangers of particular (schemes, and thus giving some explanation why no one of them has so far ken adopted in this country."