Old Age Pensions.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVII, Issue XIX, 9 November 1901, Page 873

Old Age Pensions.

When the old age pensions were initiated a general feeling of contentment brooded over the community. Of a surety we began to take less thought as to the morrow, and to lead a more lily-like existence, for the spectre of absolute want that overshadows the future prospect in the case of so many was laid. We might not make fortunes on which to live luxuriously in our old age. but on the other hand we had the State guarantee that if the worst came to the worst our bread and water would be sure. Even to the millionaire it was a solid comfort to look forward to that seven shillings a week awaiting him in his declining years, a certain stand-by of which all the exigencies of fortune could not deprive him. Mere riches might take wings to themselves and fly away, but that seven shillings was an enduring heritage. But, alas, the dream was too bright to be true. Already there is talk of limitations and conditions to be attached to the pension scheme, which seriously detract from it. One of the Australian colonies, which started out on a very generous scale, is already reducing it. In New South Wales it is now proposed to modify the conditions under which old age pensions are granted by making sons in a position to maintain their parents do so. And here in New Zealand the statistician has still more rudely disturbed the spirit of our dream by declaring that in ten years’ time the amount of the pensions will have risen so high that it will be quite beyond the resources of the State to meet the burden. Altogether the outlook for us in our old age is by no means so rosy as it was. The sexagenarians who now en ov the pen-

sion are the fortunate individuals, and pcor we who are paying them may have to go like common paupers to 1 ne home for indigent aged when we reach their years. So it turns out that we in all probability were born too late to share the full benefits of old age pensions, just as our grandfathers on the other hand were born just a trifle too early. They went to their graves without having known the blessed hope, we shall depart having indeed entertained but never realbed it. If you are a pensioner, dear

reader, enjoy it while y«u may, for you muy not enjoy it long. Take the gifts the State provides thee, and thank your lucky stars.