The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1901. NEW ZEALAND SHOWS THE WAY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 37, 12 September 1901, Page 16

The New Zealand Tablet

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1901. NEW ZEALAND SHOWS THE WAY.

* To promote the cause of Religion and Justice by the ways of Truth and Peace.' LBOiXIII. to the N.Z. TABLET.

tF late years New Zealand has been pile-driving some new ideas into the minds of statesmen of other countries and affording political quacks grounds for reconsidering their treatment of a few of the tumors that are feeding on the body politic. For even in this dawn of the twentieth century political quackery has a wide field of operations. It has its traditional prescriptions for old disorders and its pink-pills and other cure-alls for the various new symptoms of distress that declare themselves from time to time. Some of its remedies for pauperism — that lurid product of the Reformation period — are, in particular, marked by such a degree of folly that, to this hour, there is not, perhaps, an English-speaking country under the sun but retains to a greater or less degree the principle of punishing old-age poverty as a crime. Poverty is usually a misfortune which comes, despite the bestavailable precautions, like the whooping-cough or the measles. Mr. Booth (says Spender in his work, The State and Pensions in Old Age) shows that ' the bulk of pauperism later in life is due not to vice, or drunkenness, or unthrift, but to misfortunes which, under present conditions, must be counted unavoidable. The vicious and the drunken usually pay their penalty by an early death, and we find a general agreement among those who know how the poor live that the standard of decency and sobriety rises as age advances. But in hundreds of cases a thrifty or deserving past life does not appear to affect the ultimate result. With this evidence confronting us, we are necessarily led to revise some of the conclusions and to consider more carefully whether the conditions of life in old age can be mitigated by any action on the part of the community.' New Zealand has, happily, no hereditary paupers and no pauper class. But in her Old Age Pensions Act she has shown the pauperproducing nations of Europe one of the best and simplest methods discovered since the middle ages for dealing, with a reasonable degree of effectiveness, with one of the deepest and most trying problems of poverty. The same statemanlike ability might be advantageously directed towards solving the far less knotty problem of the Christian education of youth in New Zealand. J * Few legislative enactments of the past twenty years have excited more interest in civilised countries than the Old Age Petitions Act which was passed by the New Zealand Parliament in 1898. Ihe comparative simplicity of its provisious and the smoothness of its working revived in Australia and Europe the languishing interest in this mode of preventing old-age pauperism. A similar Act has found its way on the statute-book of one of the States of the Australian Commonwealth. The matter has been brought up in half a dozen other Parliaments, and it even led to the appointment of a Committee of Inquiry by the British House of Commons. A few years ago the combined total of in-door and out-door paupers in England and Wales of over sixty years of age was said to be, in round numbers, 400,000,

or nearly twenty per cent, (one in five) of the total population of the same age. If we take those above sixty-five years old separately, the number was over 380,000, and the ratio to the population of that age rose as high as twentyfive per cent. The figures are those of Mr. Charles Booth in his Labor and Life of the People of London. His estimate (which we give merely in round numbers) is stated by Mr. Spender, in The State and Pensions in Old Aye, to be 4 the most trustworthy material for a decision on this point ' which, up to that date, has been published. Taken in the light of the history of the past century and a quarter, the condition disclosed by those figures furnishes a menace to the established order of things that no British statesman can afford to disregard. And yet the best effort of the British Parliament to deal with this serious problem has been the offer of certain worthless and inoperative facilities for the purchase of annuities through the Post Office and the National Debt Office.

New Zealand's experience of the Old Age Pensions Act has served as a tonic to the agitation on the subject in Great Britain. A cable message in last Saturday's daily papers ran aa follows : ' The Trades Union Congress resolved that an old-age pension is the right of every citizen, and instructed its Parliamentary Committee to convene a national conferencejof trades unions, co-operative, friendly, and other societies to formulate a scheme of pensions.' But a universal scheme of old age pensions would have a slender chance of running the gauntlet of the British Houses of Parliament. With the war taxation thrown upon him, the British tax-payer would strenuously object to a project which, even at a minimum average payment of five shillings a week to every person who has attained the age of sixty-five years, would involve, for England and Wales alone, an annual expenditure of £17,000,000. With Ireland and Scotland thrown in, the amount would soar into £23,500,000, which would scare the British tax-payer out of his wits. Moreover, the Moneybags and the Vested Interests and even the Friendly Societies are all hostile to such a scheme. A scheme on the general lines of our Act would have a much greater chance of squeezing through the Lords and Commons of Great Britain.

The European countries that have been most scourged by revolution and socialism have been long in the field with more or less clever or more or less puzzle-headed methods of providing against poverty in old age. France, says Spender, * proposes to establish a voluntary measure, resting, like the German, on the joint contributions of masters and men, together with a large State subsidy ; and in Italy we have another proposal to establish a pension fund, with State aid, through the medium of the Savings Banks and friendly Societies.' But, so far as we know, the only schemes in actual operation in Europe are confined to Germany and Denmark. The German system is one of compulsory life insurance. It is a miracle of cumbersomeness ; it neglects the interests of women ; and, according to the noted statistician and economist Geffcken, its benefits are so paltry — not to say miserly — that 4 the receivers will remain indigent persons to be supported by local poor funds.' The Danish aystem resembles that of New Zealand in so far as it dispenses with contributions and therefore with the cumbrous, costly, and elaborate machinery devised under the German Old Age and Infirmity Act for the collection and recording of them. It is financed jointly and in equal shares by the Communal Councils and by a tax on the favorite ' tipple ' of the country laager beer. But its benefits are insignificant — barely enough to enable a Danish Darby or Joan to Btarve respectably and, for the rest, to patch their grief, as beat they may, with proverbs. The pensions range from £11 5s for a man and £8 8s for a woman and £16 16s for a married couple in Copenhagen, to £6 15s, £5 12s, and £11 48 respectively in the country. But thus far the noncontributing system, as it is in force in New Zealand, easily scores on the contributing system in the matter of simplicity and cheapness of administration, and in its general prospects of ultimate success.

Mr. W. Langford, the old-established undertaker, Colombo street, Christohurch, makes a speciality of embalming... Lost a severe attack of Rheumatism by the application of Witch's Oil. Experience shows it acts like magic. — ***