OLD-AGE PENSIONS.
THE straightforward and statesmanlike protest made by Lord Cromer against State-provided, non-con- tributory old-age pensions has not been without effect. Already there are signs that the more thoughtful members of the Liberal Party are beginning to realise how great was the mistake made by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in pledging themselves to a universal non-contributory scheme. Men are coming to see that either the scheme will cost so much that the money cannot be obtained under any reasonable and just increase of direct taxation, and that therefore recourse will have to be had to indirect taxation, with all the attendant evils of a tariff, or else that the proposal will have to be so much modified that it will not satisfy the Socialists and other extremists, though it will involve the expenditure of at least seven or eight millions a year. But such a scheme will be worse than useless. In the first place, it will tempt the Tariff Reformers to out- bid the Liberals by offering to finish the work and make a good job of it, an offer which will be backed up by the declaration that their policy of Tariff Reform will provide new sources of national wealth which will benefit the working classes indirectly as well as directly,—directly by giving universal pensions to all persons over sixty-five, and by getting rid of the inquisitorial discrimination of the half-and-half scheme, and indirectly by stimulating trade through the taxation of foreign goods and products. We are not much afraid of the working classes being deluded into trying to foster trade through a tariff as long as the project is in vacuo ; but if it is hitched on to a definite scheme for expanding a system of old-age pensions already established, which the Liberals profess themselves unable to expand owing to Exchequer difficulties, we confess to having very grave doubts whether a large section of working-class voters will not succumb to the temptation.
In addition to the fact that he has made a great many Liberals uneasy, and has set their minds working, Lord Cromer has also earned our gratitude by obtaining for the first time clear indications of what the Govern- ment scheme really is. Hitherto one has been to some extent in the position of those fighting in the dark. The leading article in last Saturday's Westminster Gazette was, however, evidently inspired, and may be taken as the official exposition of the Ministerial policy as regards old- age pensions. The article begins by defending the Govern- ment for taking up the pensions question on the ground that if they did not do so the Free-trade cause would be sven more disastrously compromised than if they offended certain classes of taxpayers by imposing fresh burdens. In other words, the working classes are to be bribed into continuing their adherence to Free-trade by being assured through the working of a practical scheme that such bloated and dangerous finance and Socialistic action by the State are not incompatible with Free-trade. We might argue that if the loyalty of the working classes to Free- trade can only be secured on such terms, it is hardly worth securing. We shall be content, however, to point out that Free-trade never will be preserved by a policy which in practice, if not in theory, must when it reaches its full development end in a vast extension of indirect taxation. We must never forget that the history of almost every Protective tariff in the world shows that the original cause of its adoption was not any scheme of " scientific " taxation of a Protective or Preferential kind, but the plain need for filling Treasuries emptied by vast expenditure. Tariffs were originally put on because those responsible for the national finances of the countries em- ploying them found that they had, owing to wars or other reasons, to raise huge sums of money, and that the peoples, rightly or wrongly, would not endure an increase of direct taxation. They found, in fact, that the ordinary taxpayer assumes just the reverse of the attitude of Ajax, who wished to perish in the light of day. The ordinary tax- payer, if he must pay, would infinitely prefer to do it in the dark of indirect taxation and not know exactly how much he is being bled. But when once a wholesale system of indirect taxation is established by means of a general tariff, it has always been found impossible to prevent it receiving a Protectionist complexion, in spite of the fact that the more Protectionist a tariff becomes, the less does it yield. That Britain should prove no exception to the rule cannot be doubted. Establish a general tariff—and, remember, to get much money that general tariff would have to include the taxation of food and raw material as well as the taxation of all manufactured articles—and Free-trade will have ceased to exist, no matter what was the original cause of the new departure. We therefore deny altogether the Westminster's statement that, so far as " danger to Free-trade " is concerned, " we may say that if it exists it is at least as great in one direction as in the other."
Again, we challenge the Westminster's statement that both parties are committed to the policy of old-age pensions. No doubt some of the more extreme Tariff Reform leaders, like Lord Milner, talk a good deal about old-age pensions, and Tariff Reform candidates at by- elections have done the same. The Unionist Party as a whole, however, is not committed. Though the question was so prominently before the country while the last. Administration were in power, Lord Salisbury first, and later Mr. Balfour, successfully avoided giving it any direct official sanction, and refused to make any prepara- tions for carrying it out, though no little pressure was brought to bear upon them. If the Liberal Party were to stand firm on the question, the Unionist Party would not dare to outbid them here, for to do so would alienate the best section of the Conservative middle class, which is anxious above all things to limit expendi- ture. The real danger lies in the Liberal Party yielding. Then, no doubt, the Tariff Reform extremists would be able to capture the Unionist Party by saying : " The Liberals are going to give old-age pensions in any case, though they will do it by a bad and predatory form of taxation. That being so, the best and wisest thing for the Unionist Party to do is to accept the situation and promise old-age pensions also. As the thing must be done, it is better that it should be done by the Unionists in the right way than by the Liberals in the wrong way." To put the matter plainly, the Westminster's plea on this head seems to us fatal to honest politics. It introduces the methods of the auction-room.
When the Westminster Gazette comes to close quarters with the subject, it notes Lord Cromer's modified acquiescence in a contributory scheme, and declares such a scheme to be impracticable. No plan of that kind would be workable in our social and political system. " Com- pulsory universal insurance is, for this reason, out of court." Next, it condemns State-aided individual effort,- i.e., non-compulsory insurance :— " Any intelligent person can multiply these schemes indefinitely, but they are all subject to one very serious, if not fatal, draw- back. They will give the State contribution to the comparatively well-to-do, and miss that great class of aged labourers who are not able to save any sum that would contribute seriously to a pension and whose hard lot, after a life of toil, is the chief part of the
case The Government, in choosing the non-contributory plan, decides that this class must not be excluded, and the decision is, we think, just and right."
But, argues the Westminster Gazette, it does not follow that it will cost twenty or thirty millions to do what is necessary. And here the writer of the article in question develops a breezy optimism which is curiously unlike the cautious tone usually associated with the editorial columns of the Westminster Gazette. " It may be," he says, " that as time goes on and revenue increases, the community will absorb what looks at present a very formidable sum without disturbance to the present basis of taxation." For the moment, however, all that can be done is to make the best possible beginning with five or six millions. This means that though non-contributory, the scheme cannot at first be universal. The State must therefore select the deserving necessitous persons who are to obtain its grants. We give the remainder of the Westminster's scheme in its own words. The writer becomes almost lyrical in his vision of the State's power to act as a universal Providence :— "The State will not pay 5s. a week to all old people, regardless of means and character; and it must, therefore, select the deserving necessitous. That ie a very difficult problem, and it will only be solved, we think, by setting up local committees to administer the funds voted by Parliament. These committees will have to be carefully distinguished from the Guardians, though they must, of course, keep in touch with them ; and, though certain rules will have to be laid down for them, they must be left as much freedom as possible. It will be for them to
sift out the cases in which a pension will keep the home and add to happiness from the cases in which infirmary or hospital treat- ment is necessary, or which, through faults of character or other infirmities, are properly left to the workhouse. It would be folly to give 5s. a week to drunkards or to attempt to •keep the sick and solitary in squalid cottages, with no one to look after them. These committees, as we see them, would not merely be the means of disbursing State money, but they would be charged with the whole problem of the aged poor in their district. They might, as time goes on, become the trustees of almshouses, the recipients of charitable legacies and subscriptions, the advisers and visitors, and, we hope also, the friends of the old people. They would find their problem branch out in various directions. It would include probably the provision of district nurses, especially in villages, where the possibility of getting food and nursing in the home so often settles the question whether an old man or woman may end their days at home or whether they must be sent away from home and friends to the workhouse infirmary. If pension committees can be set up on these lines, the good they will do may bo out of all proportion to the mere disbursement of the money handed to them by the State, and they may easily prove to be a new humanising and civilising influence which will affect people of all ages."
Stripped of its rhetoric, what does the scheme mean ? It means, in truth, nothing less than a colossal extension of outdoor relief, or, to put it plainly, a colossal scheme for spreading pauperisation into homes that have hitherto been free from it. Up till the present time the best of our Poor Law administrators have always struggled to prevent the extension of that kind of outdoor relief, through doles, which is likely to induce those still at work to consider that they are under no necessity to provide for old age, and which will free their kith and kin from feeling any responsibility as to their maintenance. When any one who has not previously had experience of Poor Law work goes on to a Board of Guardians, he is pretty sure to begin by falling into the frame of mind exhibited in the Westminster's leader, and by thinking that there can be no harm, but rather good, in what he calls "preventing a home being broken up by giving a little judicious outdoor relief." He will, of course, assert at the same time that nothing will induce him to help the undeserving necessitous. The deserving necessi- tous, however, ought not to be forced to undergo the cruel ordeal of having exhausted other means of supporting themselves before they receive support from the State. That test is, he thinks, as uneconomic as it is inhuman. Further, he will reject as pedantic the notion that he must not in any case make the position of the dependent and relieved man better than that of the poorest man who takes no help from the State.
If, however, the new Guardian of our thought is a man of good judgment and has a mind open to conviction, a little practical experience of Poor Law work will soon make him see the fallacious character of his original impressions, and force him to realise the intolerable evils of outdoor relief. He will find that in hundreds of cases in which it at first seemed to him that the old people would have to go into the House unless they were helped by a dole from the Guardians there was in reality no such simple dilemma. A. firm refusal of outdoor relief, he soon sees, brings to light relations and friends who are able to help, but who, not perhaps unnaturally, will not do their duty in this respect as long as they think there is any possi- bility of the State doing it for them. In fact, under the Westminster scheme, which, as we have said, is no doubt the Government scheme, nothing is really changed. There is only a dole of five or six millions more from the State to increase outdoor relief, already lavished with far too open a hand. To put it in another way. The Government mean to stimulate what all the best and most experienced Poor Law reformers and administrators deem a very bad tendency in existing Boards of Guardians,—i.e., the tendency to stretch their powers in the matter of outdoor relief in the cases of the respectable and apparently necessitous old persons.
We ventured a fortnight ago to recommend Sir Henry Campbell-Baxmerman to read the Report of the Poor Law Commission of 1834. We make this recom- mendation again, and now desire to include the Prime 'Minister's colleagues in the Cabinet (with the exception of Mr. Burns, who doubtless knows the document well enough already), the editor of the Westminster Gazette, and, indeed, all the Liberal editors and leader-writers. They will find there plenty of reasons against lavish out- door relief, put far better than we can hope to put them. We can only end by saying, and we say it deliberately and after full reflection, that we regard the Westminster's plan as distinctly more objectionable from the moral and social point of view, though not, we admit, from the financial, than the plan for paying every inhabitant of the country who reaches the age of sixty-five the sum of five shillings a week without any attempt at discrimination whatever. At any rate, the universal scheme would not have an eleemosynary, and therefore pauperising, taint attached to it.
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