THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 SUGGESTIONS FOR A SCHEME 
 
 OF 
 
 OLD AGE PENSIONS 
 
 ^4 3 5 7< ft
 
 Suggestions for a Scheme 
 
 OLD AGE PENSIONS 
 
 "Mitb an ^ntroonctorg Cbapter Dealing witb tbe IReport 
 of tbe Committee on ©lo Bge pensions 
 
 BY 
 
 LIONEL HOLLAND 
 
 Member of Parliament 
 
 EDWARD ARNOLD 
 
 37 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND 
 
 1808
 
 7/OG 
 
 Qr7H7 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The " Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions" 
 is a reprint of certain proposals which I ventured to 
 submit for the consideration of the Committee appointed 
 in July, 1896. Encouraged by a few friends, who are 
 interested in the movement towards securing for the 
 deserving poor some better provision in old age than 
 they now enjoy, to disinter this scheme from its peaceful 
 tomb in the pages of a Blue-Book, I publish it without 
 alteration in the form in which it was submitted to the 
 Committee on Old Age Pensions. 
 
 These proposals were framed with the object of avoid- 
 ing the serious objections which can be raised to any 
 contributory system, without disregarding the opinion 
 that pensions should be conferred as a reward and en- 
 couragement to thrift. I claim for the plan no more 
 originality than can be attributed to the Report of the 
 Old Age Pensions Committee, and no freedom from the 
 errors of judgment which relieve the sterile monotony 
 of the conclusions accepted in that document. No one, 
 however, who is sincerely anxious to arrive at a solution 
 
 406163
 
 vi Preface 
 
 of this problem will deem any suggestions amiss which 
 are not advanced without some study and consideration. 
 The editor of the National Review has kindly allowed 
 me to use as an introduction to this pamphlet an article 
 I have contributed to his review. 
 
 LIONEL HOLLAND.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE REPORT ON OLD AGE PENSIONS. 
 
 The Report of the Committee on Old Age Pensions, 
 which was appointed in July, 1896, has at length been 
 issued. The circumstances which led up to the appoint- 
 ment of this Committee may be sufficiently indicated in 
 a few sentences. 
 
 For some years there has prevailed a "widespread 
 expectation, in and out of Parliament, that some pro- 
 vision other than that made by the Poor-Law should be 
 devised for the assistance in old age of those among the 
 poor who have led respectable and industrious lives ;" 
 and in the year 1893 a Royal Commission was entrusted 
 with the duty of ascertaining whether any alterations 
 were desirable in the methods of Poor-Law relief to meet 
 the case of the aged poor, or whether assistance could be 
 otherwise afforded to them. The deliberations of that 
 Commission, in so far as they relate to suggestions 
 for a system of Old Age Pensions, were negative in 
 result. The Commissioners had before them, among 
 other proposals of less defined provisions, the scheme of 
 the informal Parliamentary Committee associated with
 
 viii Introduction 
 
 the name of Mr. Chamberlain, and that of Mr. Charles 
 Booth ; they reported their inability to recommend the 
 adoption of any of the schemes submitted to them, but 
 expressed a desire that their inquiry should not pre- 
 clude the future consideration of plans which might be 
 thereafter proposed. A Minority Report was also pre- 
 sented. This Minority of the Commissioners, including 
 among them two members of the present Cabinet, Mr. 
 Chamberlain and Mr. Ritchie, advocated more definite 
 action : the appointment of a small Committee whose 
 functions should not be limited to an " examination of 
 all the schemes " which might be laid before it, " but 
 should extend to the construction, if possible, of a 
 practical scheme, either based upon, or altogether inde- 
 pendent of, any of those submitted. ... It should," 
 they were of opinion, " lay down the principles to which 
 any scheme should conform," especially in relation to 
 its financial aspect and its influence on habits of thrift 
 and self-reliance. 
 
 The Royal Commission on the Aged Poor presented 
 their report in February, 1895. Between that date and 
 the date of the General Election, the spring-time for 
 projects of social reform, the movement in favour of 
 State or State-aided Pensions developed rapidly. The 
 leaders of the Opposition sanctioned the demand for State 
 assistance to the industrious poor in old age, and when 
 the defeat of the Radical Government occurred and the 
 present Ministry came into office, the new Ministers 
 accepted, as responsible advisers to the Crown, " Old
 
 Introduction ix 
 
 Age Pensions " as an integral part of the legislative 
 programme upon which they appealed to the country 
 for support. They therefore took a step in advance of 
 the position assumed even by the Minority section of 
 the Old Age Commissioners. By including Old Age 
 Pensions among the subjects upon which, if the electors 
 confirmed them in power, the Government intended to 
 legislate, the present Ministry crystallized " the wide- 
 spread expectation " into anticipations which could be 
 reasonably entertained, and gave the electorate to under- 
 stand that they viewed the suggested departure, not only 
 as just and expedient in principle, but as practicable in 
 application. 
 
 Among the projected social reforms commonly accepted 
 by the party now in power, and endorsed by its leaders, 
 to none was given greater prominence at the last 
 General Election than to the " amelioration of the lot 
 of the aged poor " by some system of pensions. In 
 the purely agricultural districts of the eastern counties, 
 in the manufacturing cities of the midlands, in London 
 and in Glasgow, from the South of England to the North 
 of Scotland, by the recognised chiefs of the party and 
 by its rank and file, scarcely an Address was published, 
 scarcely a speech delivered without some reference, more 
 or less definite in its character, but invariably favourable, 
 to the promotion of legislation with a view to improving 
 the position and safeguarding the independence of in- 
 dustrious people in their old age. 
 
 It is, then, reasonable to affirm that the application of 
 
 b
 
 x Introduction 
 
 some scheme of Old Age Pensions to meet the problem 
 of old age pauperism is an essential part of this Govern- 
 ment's programme of legislation. Not only was the 
 necessity of a departure in this direction publicly favoured 
 by the foremost men in the Unionist forces, but they 
 persevered in their advocacy subsequently to the publi- 
 cation of the Report of the Commission on the Aged 
 Poor, and undeterred by its nugatory character. That 
 Report was issued, and its conclusions, or paucity of 
 conclusions, widely canvassed in the spring of 1895, 
 giving ample space for any reconsideration of policy 
 before deciding upon the character of the appeal to be 
 made to the constituencies. But no alteration of policy 
 was announced ; the members of the Government and 
 the rank and file of their followers continued to maintain 
 the question of pensions for the aged poor in a prominent 
 position in their electoral forecast. 
 
 There is at present no reason to doubt that it was 
 only after careful consideration and in all good faith 
 that Ministers accepted the responsibility of attempting 
 to grapple with this problem. The sense of political 
 honour at Westminster is at least as reliable as the 
 commercial integrity of the City. Occasionally a buoyant 
 market and a multitude of investors will persuade a few 
 gentlemen of solid financial reputation to support an 
 unduly favourable estimate of some industrial venture, 
 or to become enamoured of an African Eldorado ; and 
 it may be that the prospect of a new Parliament and a 
 change of Government inspires in ardent politicians ex-
 
 Introduction xi 
 
 pectations of a prosperous era of halcyon days of trade 
 and social improvement, which, if past experience is of 
 value, years of plodding and painful progress would be 
 unable to realize. But to suggest that a proposal for 
 legislation thus commonly accepted as an urgent neces- 
 sity by the representatives of the Unionist party at the 
 General Election, and formally approved by the Unionist 
 chiefs, is to be shelved or rejected, is to argue that the 
 leaders in the public life of Great Britain are not one 
 whit better than the shabbiest promoters of a bogus 
 company. 
 
 It is not necessary to impugn the good faith of the 
 Government, to doubt the wisdom hitherto of their policy 
 in regard to this question. Having accepted the principle 
 of State-aid for the industrious poor in old age, this 
 Government had to decide upon the most practicable and 
 beneficial application of that principle. They apparently 
 acquiesced in the recommendation of the Minority Report 
 of the 1893 Commission, that a further investigation by 
 a small Committee, with a view to formulating a scheme 
 of its own or endorsing some scheme submitted to it, 
 would be serviceable, and might indicate the lines which 
 Parliament could advantageously pursue. But their 
 acquiescence was only apparent. They appointed a 
 small Committee ; but neither in the scope of the 
 reference to it, nor in respect to its composition, did 
 they fulfil the recommendations of the Minority Report. 
 
 If the Government were actuated only by anxiety for 
 further informed advice to enable them the better to 
 
 b—2
 
 xii Introduction 
 
 apply a principle entertained in all sincerity, the pro- 
 cedure most likely to be of service to them seemed 
 fairly plain : to appoint a small Committee — a Depart- 
 mental Committee with some expert members, or a 
 Select Committee, which to my mind would have been 
 a preferable body for the purpose, and would have 
 equally been able to avail itself of expert opinion — but 
 in either case composed of gentlemen who might be 
 supposed to favour, or at any rate not to be adverse to, 
 the principle which it was the purpose of the Government 
 to establish ; to arrange that this Committee should act 
 under a reference wide enough to enable it to test every 
 proposal submitted to it which might promise to repay 
 examination, and with a specific direction to endeavour 
 to construct a practical scheme or schemes for the con- 
 sideration of the Cabinet and Parliament, and to indicate 
 the principles to which any such scheme should conform. 
 
 Unfortunately the more obvious course was not the 
 course adopted by the Government. 
 
 The Departmental Committee, which was constituted 
 under a Treasury Minute of July, 1896, was somewhat 
 unsuitable in its composition for the object for which 
 it was avowedly established. An acceptable chairman 
 was nominated in Lord Rothschild ; but of the eight 
 other members of the Committee, four were permanent 
 officials representing respectively the Treasury, Board 
 of Trade, Post Office, and National Debt Office — 
 representatives of a section of the community justly 
 held in high esteem, but not popularly supposed to be
 
 Introduction xiii 
 
 partial to legislative departures involving any addi- 
 tional levy upon the National Exchequer. Of the 
 other four members, consisting of Mr. Brabrook, the 
 Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies, whose experience 
 and advice were essential to any body charged with an 
 investigation of this character, the actuaries to the Atlas 
 Insurance Company and the Manchester Unity of Odd- 
 fellows, and the Parliamentary agent of the Ancient 
 Order of Foresters, one at least of them had publicly 
 given expression to his dislike to any system of subsidized 
 or State pensions, and, on the other hand, there was 
 no reason to gather that any one of them was already 
 favourably disposed to the movement. The Minority 
 Commissioners of the Royal Commission on the Aged 
 Poor had it " brought home " to them " only too 
 plainly " during the course of their inquiry that the 
 composition of that Commission, however admirable for 
 the purposes of criticism, was " far from favourable to 
 the work of construction." This opinion, passed by 
 Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Ritchie, and their co-signatories 
 upon the composition of the Commission of 1893 upon 
 which they served, applies with equal force to the Com- 
 mittee appointed in 1896 by the Ministry to which Mr. 
 Chamberlain and Mr. Ritchie belong. The work of 
 construction must be consigned to men who have not 
 only the ability but the desire to construct. When this 
 Government decided that voluntary schools were deserv- 
 ing and in need of pecuniary support, they did not hand 
 the matter over to a council of Liberationists to advise
 
 xiv Introduction 
 
 whether they could recommend any proposals to that 
 end. Army reformers would scarcely care to depute 
 the strengthening our forces and remodelling our army 
 system to a Committee composed of officials of the War 
 Department with a couple or so of the Little England 
 party to assist them in their deliberations. No satis- 
 factory scheme of Old Age Pensions will ever be formu- 
 lated until the duty of devising such a scheme is confided 
 to men who unreservedly accept the principle which is 
 involved. 
 
 But if the choice of the personnel of the Committee 
 was unfortunate and not conducive to productive result, 
 the reference under which it was required to act was. 
 conceived even less happily; ill-conceived at once in* 
 what it permitted and refused to permit. The investiga- 
 tion of the Committee was not focussed by any clearly' 
 specific direction upon the endeavour, after examining" 
 " all the schemes" laid before it, to construct a practical 
 scheme or schemes for the guidance of Parliament, and 
 " to lay down the principles to which any scheme should 
 conform." From the terms of the reference, it coujd not • 
 be inferred that the demand for Old Age Pensions had 
 been already acquiesced in by the Government, and that 
 the business of the Committee .was to advise upon the 
 best method by which effect could be given to a settled 
 principle. 
 
 But it is the limitations which were inserted in the"* 
 reference, even more than those which were omitted, 
 which have effectually operated to deprive the Report of
 
 Introduction xv 
 
 this Committee on Old Age Pensions of any material 
 weight, and of any degree of finality ; nor can the 
 Government plead that these restrictions were imposed 
 through mere careless oversight or ignorance on their 
 part. They had warning of their destructive tendency ; 
 but preferred to invite an impotent conclusion, and they 
 have secured it. 
 
 " We have found that of the numerous schemes sub- 
 mitted to us, the greater number are excluded from con- 
 sideration under the terms of our reference. . . ." " Within 
 the limits marked out by our reference we have not received 
 and we are unable to construct any scheme," etc. . . . 
 " Any pension scheme coming within the terms of our refer - 
 
 ■ cnce would be limited," etc. . . . 
 
 Such is the refrain of the Report ; paragraphs per- 
 forated with this depressing moral are to be found 
 '"scattered through its columns. They supply the pass- 
 word which the reader has to master before he can 
 •thread its barren pages. " The terms of our reference " 
 are to the Committee'what King Charles's head was to 
 Mr. Dick. 
 
 Upon Her. Majesty's Government must rest the re- 
 sponsibility alike for the composition of the Committee 
 and the limitations imposed upon its deliberations. But 
 the members of the Committee have observed these 
 limitations with a ready and loyal acquiescence, with a 
 
 ■ faithfulness deserving of more recognition than Ministers 
 on mature consideration are likely to extend. They 
 might have petitioned the Treasury, had they so desired,
 
 xvi Introduction 
 
 to widen the terms of their reference ; but they pre- 
 ferred, on the contrary, to interpret the limiting words 
 with a refinement and precision which go far to- justify 
 their designation as an " expert " Committee, and with 
 an appreciation of exact verbal values which will rejoice 
 the soul of Professor Raleigh. 
 
 The Committee was instructed to consider schemes 
 " for encouraging the industrial population, by State-aid 
 or otherwise, to make provision for old age ; and to 
 report whether they can recommend the adoption of any 
 proposals of the kind." 
 
 " Encouraging " differs in degree from ' compelling' ; 
 any scheme containing an element of compulsion is ruled 
 out of court. ... 
 
 "Encouraging the industrial population." — "The 
 industrial population" is not to be confounded with. ' a 
 part of the industrial population,' or 'a section of the 
 industrial population.' The greater includes the* less, 
 but the less is not the greater. The members of friendly 
 societies, trade unions, and cognate associations form a 
 portion only of the industrial population ; proposals there- 
 fore suggesting preferential treatment for members of 
 these societies cannot be entertained. 
 
 " Encouraging the industrial population to make pro- 
 vision " is not co-terminous with " to make provision." 
 All methods which do not involve a direct contribution 
 from the beneficiary are discarded. 
 
 " Encouraging the industrial population to make pro- 
 vision for old age " cannot strictly be construed to
 
 Introduction xvii 
 
 include provision against sickness or any other con- 
 tingency of life except old age proper. Thus the con- 
 tribution of the beneficiary must be a contribution 
 specifically applied towards his own maintenance in age, 
 and no other test of thrift is acceptable. It might be 
 argued, indeed, by the unsophisticated materialist, that 
 old age is a relative circumstance dependent on the health 
 of the individual and his capacity to follow with ordinary 
 vigour his accustomed employment, that whilst some men 
 may justly be termed old at 60 years of age, some could not 
 be correctly so described at 65 ; and that a man who has 
 provided for himself from the time when his health and 
 energy have become impaired by advancing years has, in 
 •fact, been providing for himself in old age, although his 
 65th birthday, the moment the Committee reckons old 
 age. as existent,- has not been passed. So nice is the 
 discrimination of the Committee, that it can differentiate 
 between the case of a man who provides 5s. a week from 
 65 to 70 years of age for himself, and is rewarded from 
 70 years onwards, to 75 years of age — supposing him to 
 live so long — by a weekly pension of 5s. wholly sustained 
 by the State, and that of a man who provides 2s. 6d. per 
 week for himself from 65 to 75, and receives from the 
 State the other 2s. 6d. during these years. Although 
 the respective contributions towards this old age pro- 
 vision of the individual and the State would be identical 
 in either instance, the latter case the Committee is at 
 liberty to examine, the former it is precluded from enter- 
 taining.
 
 xviii Introduction 
 
 And so the process of elimination is brought to a 
 triumphant conclusion. Four only out of the hundred 
 and more schemes submitted — including the proposals of 
 the informal Parliamentary Committee and of Sir Henry 
 Burdett — pass this rigorous preliminary test. This result 
 is not surprising ; but it is surprising that, having once 
 narrowed down their inquiry within these dimensions, the 
 Committee contrived to spend two years on an investiga- 
 tion which one might have supposed could have been 
 adequately accomplished in two months. 
 
 Discussion in any detail of the Conclusions at which 
 the Committee has arrived must have about it an element 
 of unreality. The limitations attached to its reference 
 have deprived the Committee's Conclusions of the value 
 which under happier conditions they might have 
 possessed ; as it is, they have no title whatever to finality 
 except in so far as they confirm the objections taken by 
 the Royal Commissioners in their Report of 1895 to 
 proposals based on the contributions of pensioners, the 
 one class of schemes this Committee has held to be 
 within the scope of its inquiry. Although for the pur- 
 poses of destructive criticism the members of the Com- 
 mittee relax the superstitious homage they otherwise pay 
 to the " terms of our reference," only within the accepted 
 limits of their reference can weight be given to their 
 criticisms. 
 
 In paragraphs 52 to 57 the Committee endeavours to 
 depreciate the need of any system of Old Age Pensions 
 by a somewhat elaborate train of argument. The evidence
 
 Introduction xix 
 
 " appears" to it " to suggest" that men whose average 
 weekly wages do not fall below 20s. can, with no serious 
 difficulty, contribute 2d. a week from early manhood, or, 
 if earning a slightly higher rate of wage, 4d. a week, to 
 secure pensions of 2s. 6d. or 5s. a week at the age of 
 65 years. " These considerations," the Committee 
 admits, " must not be pressed too far." From these 
 considerations it derives, however, several somewhat 
 crude deductions. Because, in its estimation, it is 
 possible for a workman with an average wage slightly 
 above 20s. a week to insure by his own efforts for a 
 deferred annuity of thirteen pounds to begin at 65 years of 
 age, the Committee infers that the only persons who may 
 require State assistance in old age are those whose 
 average weekly wage falls below 20s. ; that these persons 
 form but a small proportion of the industrial population ; 
 and that, even of them, but a small proportion above 65 
 years of age who are inmates of the workhouse — the bed- 
 ridden, for instance, and " those who are no longer 
 capable of the economical application of a small pension " 
 — would under any system be able to support themselves 
 independently. 
 
 It may be noticed that the initial consideration upon 
 which the members of the Committee base these deduc- 
 tions is in itself not in complete harmony with a stricture 
 they pass upon Sir Henry Burdett's proposals, in which 
 they question the probability of men whose average 
 earnings are from 15s. to 20s. a week being able for any 
 continuous period to spare 9d. a week out of their wages
 
 xx Introduction 
 
 for the purchase of the provision against sickness and old 
 age combined contemplated by Sir Henry Burdett. The 
 weekly sum required from the age of 25 onwards to secure 
 a deferred annuity of thirteen pounds at the age of 65, 
 together with ordinary Friendly Society assurance against 
 sickness, is from 8|d. to g-|d. It is impossible to suppose 
 that the Committee deem it desirable that any working- 
 men should cease to make provision against the more 
 certain and imminent contingencies of life, such as the 
 drain upon their resources caused by sickness and funeral 
 expenses, which they now are customarily enabled to 
 meet through the agency of friendly societies. If, then, 
 it is improbable that a man whose earnings are slightly 
 below 20s. a week can spare gd. a week out of them 
 for any continuous length of time, can it be asserted 
 with any confidence that the individual whose weekly 
 wage is only slightly in excess of 20s. is able without 
 difficulty to devote 8^d. or g^d. a week for forty years of 
 his life to insurance against sickness and old age ? Yet it 
 is upon this precarious assumption that the Committee 
 constructs the argument by which it aims at minimising 
 the need of any system of Old Age Pensions. 
 
 But even if we accept without reservation the inference 
 of the Committee, that a working-man whose earnings 
 exceed an average of 20s. can by his own efforts sub- 
 scribe for a pension of 5s. a week from the age of 65 
 onwards, to acquiesce in a premiss does not necessarily 
 imply acquiescence in a non sequitur. The Conclusions 
 which the Committee arrives at from this proposition can
 
 Introduction xxi 
 
 only be made acceptable by ignoring and misconceiving 
 some of the essential conditions of existence among the 
 poorer part of our industrial population. 
 
 We must ignore the weighty objections to deferred 
 annuities as a form of thrift which were expressed in 
 evidence before the Royal Commission on the Aged Poor 
 and in principle endorsed by the Commissioners. That 
 deferred annuities are unpopular as a form of investment, 
 and demand a greater degree of foresight than can be 
 reasonably looked for among young people, is certain. 
 That they constitute a prudent or valuable mode of thrift 
 has been seriously disputed ; and the fear has been ex- 
 pressed that to put a premium upon this form of saving 
 might well be productive of economic harm by injuriously 
 affecting other and more beneficial methods. Do the 
 members of the committee hold a different opinion, and 
 regard deferred annuities as a method of saving valuable 
 in itself, preferable to other methods, and likely to be 
 generally used ? If so, they can scarcely anticipate any 
 general concurrence with their view, when they vouchsafe 
 no reasons for rejecting the considered conclusions of the 
 Commission on the Aged Poor. If, however, no such 
 inference as to the opinion of the Committee is to be 
 gathered from its suggestion as to a certain proportion of 
 the industrial classes being in a position to purchase 
 deferred annuities, what possible end is furthered by the 
 statement of an irrelevant fact, and how can the state- 
 ment be applied as an argument to depreciate the need 
 of pensions ?
 
 xxii Introduction 
 
 The reasoning of the Committee in these paragraphs 
 is also vitiated by excluding any consideration of the 
 claims of the female portion of the community, even of 
 the widow who has assisted her husband in his efforts of 
 thrift, foregoing during his life the present use of the 
 savings which he was devoting in weekly contributions 
 towards an Old Age Pension, savings entirely lost to her 
 on his death. Women in their old age are at least as 
 much in need of assistance as men ; few women among 
 the industrial classes secure the average wage which the 
 Committee regard as sufficient to enable the wage-earner 
 to purchase a deferred annuity ; and the Conclusion of 
 the Committee, that " the people thus in a position to 
 require assistance must, in any case, form but a small 
 proportion of the industrial population," can only be 
 justified by reading a further limitation into its reference 
 and interpreting "the industrial population" to mean 
 the male industrial population only. 
 
 But the deductions which the members of the Com- 
 mittee come to by a process of abstract reasoning, based 
 upon "evidence" which "appears to suggest," are so 
 manifestly at variance with ascertained facts that it is 
 astonishing that they did not suspect the presence of some 
 flaw in their syllogism. How can their pronouncement 
 be squared with the existing conditions — " that nearly 
 20 per cent, of the total population (rich as well as poor) 
 above the age of 65 receive relief in one day, and nearly 
 30 per cent, in the course of one year ;" that while the 
 proportion of paupers under the age of 65 to the popula-
 
 Introduction xxiii 
 
 tion is only 8 per cent., it amounts to 25 per cent, in the 
 years which follow 65 ; that although, for the most part, 
 the members of the working-classes are " fairly provident, 
 fairly thrifty, fairly industrious and fairly temperate," 
 four out of every nine of them over the age of 65 years 
 are numbered among the army of paupers ? No shower 
 of acute syllogisms can sponge this record from the 
 slate, nor pages of faulty deductions from doubtful pre- 
 mises. 
 
 The argument of the Committee receives no accession 
 of strength from the rider, that " only a small proportion 
 of those above 65 years of age who now appear as inmates 
 of the workhouse or infirmary would, under any system 
 of State-aided pensions, be able to support themselves 
 independently." It is merely misleading. Returns for 
 the years 1890 and 1892 show that more than two-thirds 
 of the whole community of paupers over 65 years of age 
 receive outdoor, not indoor relief ; and figures of a striking 
 character will be found in an Appendix accompanying the 
 Report, which disclose an ominous growth in the tendency 
 to give outdoor in preference to indoor maintenance since 
 the electoral changes of 1894. Even although it were 
 the case, as the Committee infers, that the bedridden 
 and " those who are no longer capable of the economical 
 application of a small pension " would not, if possessed 
 of a small annuity, be frequently able to find in the 
 cottage of a relation or friend a more acceptable home 
 than the workhouse, at any rate the remaining two-thirds 
 of the industrial population over 65 years of age, who
 
 XXIV 
 
 Introduction 
 
 now in a greater or less degree receive assistance under 
 the Poor-Law, but receive it outside the workhouse, 
 might be enabled by State-aided pensions to support 
 themselves in independence. 
 
 The members of this Committee have failed to realize 
 the motive which animates the demand for State-aid to 
 the aged poor. State pensions are not only sought for 
 those people who under existing conditions are reduced 
 in old age to actual pauperism, but, at least as impera- 
 tively, for those also who are kept off the rates by the 
 assistance of friends or by private charity, or by their 
 own painful and penurious struggles. " Such persons," 
 the Commissioners of 1893 pointed out, " must sometimes 
 endure great privation in their effort to avoid application 
 for official relief, and they form a class quite as deserving 
 of consideration as others who are actually numbered in 
 the return as paupers." Does it in any degree satisfy 
 this requirement to prove that a section of the male 
 working-class can by continuous effort, even granting 
 such effort to be wise, secure for themselves a deferred 
 annuity of thirteen pounds after 65 years of age ? A sum 
 of 5s. a week may in many instances enable an old person 
 to obtain an honourable asylum with relations or friends ; 
 as a State endowment it will supplement any savings an 
 individual has been able to lay by, it will relieve him of 
 the apprehension that a few years or months of enforced 
 want of employment will dissipate any little capital he 
 has collected, and that in his age he will be left naked to 
 the Poor-Law authorities. But, dissociated from any
 
 Introduction xxv 
 
 other resources, an income of 5s. a week is not sufficient 
 to supply bare means of subsistence. 
 
 The reasoning pursued by the members of the Com- 
 mittee has no appropriateness to their Conclusion, unless 
 it is their thesis that a man who is in receipt of an annuity 
 of ^13 in old age, as a result of his personal efforts through 
 life, has no actual need of, nor ethical title to, any assist- 
 ance from the State. Although this view may harmonise 
 with the destitution test of our Poor-Law procedure, the 
 advocacy of State or State-aided Old Age Pensions is 
 grounded by the majority of those who favour their crea- 
 tion upon a principle which is almost the converse of 
 that which the Committee approves. Thrift and the 
 possession of small hard-earned savings is not to be 
 the disabling but the enabling test for the enjoyment of 
 the bounty of the State. Instead of the command of a 
 small self-secured annuity destroying a man's claim to 
 consideration, it goes far to establish it. 
 
 The Committee in making these criticisms wanders 
 beyond the limitations with which it consented to hedge 
 round its investigation ; but its theorising is instructive, 
 because it indicates at once the disposition with which 
 the majority of its members approached their task, and 
 the insufficiency of the reasoning upon which they are 
 content to dispute the need of any system of pensions. 
 
 In a fine optimistic vein of prophecy they ultimately 
 pass judgment, that improved conditions of labour will 
 deprive the whole problem of Old Age Pensions of im- 
 portance. They are careless of the warning that prophecy 
 
 c
 
 xx vi Introduction 
 
 should be grounded upon experience. From year to year 
 the actuality of the demand has not waned but waxed, 
 until it has but now won formal notice and approval from 
 a responsible Government. This phenomenon may be 
 attributed in part, no doubt, to the increased potency of 
 popular expression, and to the increased tenderness of the 
 public conscience and sentiment, rather than to any 
 aggravation in the necessities of the poor in old age. 
 But is it not also the case that the tendency of modern 
 industry is to favour the young ; that its methods demand 
 a higher rate of speed than formerly, as well as of excel- 
 lence, and, therefore, a more rapid expenditure of energy ; 
 that the reserve of vital force in the worker is more 
 quickly used up ? And while every year it is becoming 
 more difficult for the poor to obtain employment in old 
 age, for good or for evil the personal relationship of 
 employer to employed tends to be less intimate, and an 
 artisan must be content to shift for himself when the 
 fulness of years impairs his productive powers. 
 
 Three other of the Conclusions which have been 
 approved by the Committee may repay brief examina- 
 tion. 
 
 Accepting the view that State-aid should be afforded 
 only to a person who has exercised some degree of 
 thrift, and that it is inexpedient to ascertain whether 
 this condition has been conformed to by an investiga- 
 tion into the applicant's history or earnings, the Com- 
 mittee proceeds to enunciate the doctrine that " the only 
 test that can be applied is the possession at the pension
 
 Introduction xxvii 
 
 age of an income within the limits laid down as qualify- 
 ing for the aid." A test of income as a standard 
 of thrift is something of a novelty. The gambler who 
 had reduced an income of thousands to one of " not 
 less than 2s. 6d. and not more than 5s. a week " by 
 the time he reached the age fixed for the pension to 
 commence, or a burglar who successfully engineered a 
 lucky haul a few hours before his sixty-fifth birthday, 
 would, under this test, be acknowledged as paragons of 
 frugality, and as having proved by careful economy their 
 title to State maintenance outside the walls of a gaol. 
 Of course, every possible test of thrift that can be sug- 
 gested must fall short in some degree of exactness and 
 comprehension. But that one relied upon by the Com- 
 mittee, as the " only test " applicable, is manifestly illusory. 
 A pension test should accept some habit of saving and 
 frugal investment which is customary among the poor, 
 and which can be not unreasonably demanded from a 
 man in receipt of low wages, and who out of them may 
 have to support a family. For a working-man earning a 
 moderate wage to secure himself against the eventualities 
 of illness and death, medical attendance and funeral 
 expenses, and to maintain his independence of parish 
 relief during the more active years of his life, affords a 
 fair presumption of thrift and credit. Long-continued 
 insurance against sickness, whether through a friendly 
 society or other organisations, may not improbably be 
 considered the most convenient and satisfactory evidence 
 of an enabling standard of thrift. The Committee, how- 
 
 c — 2
 
 xxviii Introduction 
 
 ever, did not deem itself authorised to entertain any 
 scheme framed in accordance with this view. 
 
 The Committee inclines to the opinion that a State- 
 aided pension will diminish the wage-rate ; that the rate 
 is fixed subject to the requirements of a wage-earner in 
 old age, and " the wage payment will tend to fall by a 
 percentage approximating to that contributed by the 
 State to the pension fund." Every attempt to dogmatise 
 upon the considerations which influence the rate of wages 
 has hitherto conspicuously been brought to naught. 
 Professor Marshall does not anticipate that pensions to 
 the old would affect its natural rise or fall; and the Com- 
 mittee apparently ignores the actual condition, that nearly 
 half of the working-classes over 65 years of age are now 
 either wholly or partially supported by the State through 
 the Poor-Law. Experience has shown that any general 
 grant of doles to able-bodied men will militate against 
 high earnings ; but if the State-aid is restricted to aged 
 persons, it is improbable that it could do more than pos- 
 sibly influence in some degree such wages as old persons 
 may at present receive. Under an organised system of 
 industry such as now obtains, the endowment of certain 
 old people with pensions will open no new cheap labour 
 market to the employer. It is the efficient labour which 
 settles the remuneration of labour throughout a trade, 
 nor, in most commercial undertakings, would it be worth 
 the while of an employer to engage men of an inferior 
 capacity or activity, even at a reduced cost. The sug- 
 gestion that recipients of State-aided pensions should be
 
 Introduction xxix 
 
 debarred from engaging in remunerative work is, at the 
 same time, brusquely dismissed by the Committee, as an 
 attempt which " must assuredly fail." A provision that 
 pensions should begin only with cessation from regular 
 work might be inexpedient, and could not be enforced 
 with uniform certainty; but it is the custom of trade 
 union societies to confine their superannuation allow- 
 ances to members incapable of earning the ordinary 
 rate of wages, and the evidence of witnesses before 
 the Royal Commission of 1893 intimates that no 
 material difficulty would be found in seeing that such 
 a condition was generally observed. This abrupt dog- 
 matism of the Committee needs more examination and 
 authoritative support before it can be accepted as a 
 dogma by those who have faith in the policy of Old 
 Age Pensions. 
 
 The Committee approves a Conclusion that only under 
 a system of pensions which are at once identical and 
 universal can a State or State-aided allowance be exempt 
 from the taint which attaches to allowances made under 
 the Poor-Law. " Any discredit must depend," it is 
 of opinion, " not on the form in which the relief is 
 received, but on the causes which have led to it." This 
 opinion, again, although it contains a considerable 
 element of truth, appears to have been pronounced with- 
 out mature deliberation. It is easily conceivable that 
 the causes which have reduced a man to destitution may 
 reflect no discredit upon him ; he may, for instance, have 
 been forced by ill-health to resign his affairs or business
 
 xxx Introduction 
 
 for a time to the hands of a friend or partner in whom he 
 had every reason to rely, but who betrays his trust. If 
 from such a cause he is brought low, and is reduced to 
 soliciting assistance from the Poor-Law Guardians, is no 
 pauper taint, either in his own estimation or in that of 
 others, attached to the relief he receives ? When in the 
 workhouse, is he less a pauper than his companions 
 because the cause of his entering it is devoid of shame ? 
 The converse to the proposition of the Committee, 
 though also not completely satisfactory, contains not less 
 of truth than the proposition itself : that the pauper taint 
 depends not on the causes which have led to the relief, 
 but on the manner in which it is received. The pauper 
 stigma is involved by the element of personal selection 
 and discrimination, the inquiries as to character and 
 opportunities which precede the dole of relief ; the appli- 
 cant has to submit to an examination upon his means of 
 subsistence, he makes his application in forma pauperis, as 
 a poor man craving for the most the Guardians will 
 bestow. But this stigma is lightened if the tenure of the 
 pensioner is of legal right, not of grace ; and the shame 
 of dependence is eliminated. Accepting, for instance, 
 the general test I have suggested in a former paragraph, 
 insurance over a period of years in some society or 
 organisation against sickness and funeral expenses — such 
 a test would seem to escape the definition of pauper 
 taint which the Committee relies upon. To have been a 
 member of a friendly society for some length of time, to 
 have guarded against the eventuality of ill-health, is not
 
 Introduction xxxi 
 
 a cause to which any discredit can attach. On the other 
 hand, it avoids an investigation into character or means 
 of subsistence, any personal selection, any discrimination 
 between classes of individuals. Should the State decide 
 to pay an identical pension at a certain age to persons so 
 situated, to qualify by thrift for the bounty of the State 
 will rather be meritorious than discreditable. 
 
 Although the members of the Committee held them- 
 selves debarred by their reference from entertaining any 
 proposal based on such a test, they nevertheless hazard a 
 conjecture which, should it be realised, certainly points 
 to an undesirable resultant of any measure making 
 insurance against sickness, in a friendly society or other- 
 wise, a condition precedent to the receipt of a pension. 
 
 On the one hand it is contended that sickness is one of 
 the most imminent and serious contingencies of a wage- 
 earner's life, and probably the most fruitful source of 
 pauperism ; that insurance against sickness is the most 
 customary form of thrift exercised by the working-classes, 
 and, if exercised continuously over a number of years, 
 affords a sound presumption of the credit of the individual. 
 It is suggested that a State pension might be paid to every 
 person arriving at the pension age who could show that 
 he had during his manhood established his independence 
 of Poor- Law relief by securing for himself an adequate 
 sick-allowance by some approved and easily ascertain- 
 able method, as by insurance in a registered friendly 
 society. 
 
 On the other hand the members of the Committee are
 
 xxxii Introduction 
 
 of opinion that this plan would imply a contract with 
 every member insured in a registered society that even 
 should it become insolvent and unable to meet its obliga- 
 tions the State would nevertheless grant him a pension. 
 In effect the State would be guaranteeing the solvency 
 of each registered society ; and would certainly be con- 
 sidered to do so if the present registration were rendered 
 more effectual, and registration made contingent upon 
 the solvency of a society. 
 
 It will be observed that their reply contains, in fact, 
 two distinct criticisms. The Committee is of opinion, 
 as I understand its comments, that to offer a State 
 pension under certain conditions to members of registered 
 friendly societies is to guarantee the stability of those 
 societies ; it is also of opinion that to institute a more 
 stringent system of registration will have the same result. 
 Pensions can be accorded to members of registered friendly 
 societies without any alteration in the requirements of 
 registration ; or the registration requirements can be 
 altered apart from the institution of any pension scheme. 
 In either instance I gather the Committee to suggest 
 that a State guarantee of solvency is implied. It seems, 
 indeed, in its argument rather to confound the two issues ; 
 but they are manifestly distinct. 
 
 To insist upon the latter objection, the members of the 
 Committee must be prepared to reject the emphatically 
 expressed opinions of the Select Committee on National 
 Provident Insurance of 1887, and of the Select Com- 
 mittee of 1889 on the Friendly Societies Act. Both
 
 Introduction xxxiii 
 
 these Committees commented upon the imperfections 
 of the present system and made various recommenda- 
 tions towards enabling the registrar to refuse to register 
 societies unless subtantially sound, and to suspend any 
 which might have become unable to fulfil their obliga- 
 ,tions unless prepared to remedy their position. It must 
 also be remembered that the very course which the 
 Committee deprecates was last year adopted without 
 dissent by Parliament in regard to societies connected 
 with industrial undertakings. The registrar is called 
 upon under the Workmen's Compensation for Accidents 
 Act of 1897 to satisfy himself as to the solvency of these 
 societies before granting them a certificate. Is the State, 
 then, to be held to have guaranteed their solvency, and 
 to be responsible to their members in the event of their 
 default ? 
 
 But whether some degree of efficiency is to be im- 
 parted to the formality of registration or not, can it be 
 assumed that by offering pensions in their old age to 
 members of registered societies, any State guarantee of 
 the solvency of these societies is necessarily involved ? 
 This objection was advanced by the Royal Commissioners 
 of 1893 to contributory schemes which it was proposed 
 to work in connection with friendly societies ; but the 
 members of the Old Age Pensions Committee misapply it 
 if they mean to extend the objection to non-contributory 
 schemes. If Parliament demands that an individual 
 aiming at a State-aided pension must pay over a sum, 
 however trivial, to the Government, the State enters into
 
 xxxiv Introduction 
 
 a contract with the individual, and is responsible for its 
 complete fulfilment. But if no deposit and no payment 
 is required, if the pension is in the nature of a free gift 
 and endowment, such liability is not created. The con- 
 tributions of a member to his society are to cover the 
 ordinary risks which the society accepts, and no more. 
 If it fails, however grievously its failure may press upon 
 the individual, he has not paid for a pension, and if he 
 does not receive it through lack of qualification, he 
 cannot complain of any breach of faith on the part of 
 the State. The State merely offers a gratuity in the 
 form of a pension to those who can show that for a 
 certain number of years they have not come upon the 
 parish for relief, and have been insured against sickness 
 and funeral expenses. 
 
 The Report runs to some seventy paragraphs ; but 
 beyond the findings and arguments which I have essayed 
 to discuss, there is, I believe, no judgment of material 
 importance, and no criticism of any novelty to be met 
 with in its pages. Nor could anyone fully apprised of 
 the limited terms of the reference to the Committee on 
 Old Age Pensions, and of the literal construction of the 
 reference which commended itself to the members of 
 the Committee, anticipate any other outcome from their 
 deliberations than the impotent one which has in fact 
 ensued. The Committee confined itself to the considera- 
 tion of proposals which insist upon a pensioner making 
 direct contributions towards his pension, and any wider 
 criticisms it may have ventured upon are mere obiter
 
 Introduction xxxv 
 
 dicta, irresponsible comments on matters admittedly ex- 
 cluded from its cognisance. 
 
 From whatever standpoint this result is regarded, 
 there will be a consensus of opinion that it is eminently 
 unfortunate. Even those most disinclined to favour any 
 distinct system of State - aid for the aged poor will 
 acknowledge that their contentions receive no additional 
 force from the substance of this Report, that it fails to 
 advance the understanding of the question beyond the 
 point reached by the Commissioners of 1893 5 — an< ^ they 
 were agreed upon the expediency of a further inquiry 
 being undertaken to meet the widespread expectation as 
 to the desirability of affording by legislative action some 
 independent provision to the deserving among the poor 
 in old age. Those whose minds are yet clouded with a 
 doubt, who contemplate with approval altered conditions 
 for old people, but distrust the feasibility of any attempt 
 to establish them, and fear that the expense to the State 
 would be more than it can properly encounter, can 
 gather no instruction from a Report which is avowedly 
 inconclusive and incomplete. In regard to two points 
 only will they meet with substantial directions : the 
 Committee endorses the objections taken by the Com- 
 mission on the Aged Poor to all contributory schemes, 
 and expresses its conviction that the problem of cost is 
 not the most serious, that it does " not question that the 
 " State could bear the necessary additional burthen if the 
 " welfare of the community really demanded it." The 
 presence upon the Committee of Sir Francis Mo watt,
 
 xxxvi Introduction 
 
 the permanent secretary to the Treasury, lends to this 
 expression of opinion an unusual degree of authority. 
 
 But if the publication of this Blue-Book can give no 
 satisfaction to those who are averse to any measure of 
 State pensions, or to those whose views are still un- 
 decided, with what tolerance is it likely to be regarded 
 by advocates of the movement, by the Members of 
 Parliament who, with the sanction of the Unionist 
 leaders, declared themselves favourably towards it, and 
 by the electors who gave credence to the declarations of 
 Unionist Ministers and Tory candidates ? Already the 
 cry of bad faith has been raised against the Government. 
 It is alleged that their electoral pronouncements of policy 
 were mere gipsy predictions ; that this Committee was 
 a sort of feather-bed device to break the fall of their 
 " Old Age Pensions" pledge, and enable the Ministry to 
 escape from it, if not without dishonour, without imme- 
 diate risk. But even if we could credit the charge of 
 bad faith which this theory imputes to the Government, 
 it also infers on their part a degree of stupidity of which 
 it is difficult to believe them capable. Had the Govern- 
 ment aimed at escaping their assurance of legislation by 
 the appointment of a committee of inquiry, they would 
 at least have authorized the Committee to undertake a 
 complete survey of the question. By a judicious selec- 
 tion of its personnel they might in any event have ensured 
 a finding adverse to any system of State pensions, but, 
 had they acted with malice prepense, they would have 
 taken care to impart to the investigation an appearance
 
 Introduction xxxvii 
 
 of thoroughness. An unfavourable Report might then 
 have afforded a colourable pretext for diffidence and 
 delay, which the result of no truncated inquiry can 
 possibly engender. 
 
 Ministers are fortunate in still enjoying the opportunity 
 to disprove the suspicion of indifference provoked by 
 their ill-judged methods of approaching the problem 
 hitherto. Prior to the appointment of this Committee 
 the present Government had publicly tendered their 
 adherence to the principle of Old Age Pensions, and 
 their will to incorporate that principle in legislation. 
 Unless it was their fixed determination to initiate a 
 system of contributory pensions, in defiance of the dis- 
 approval expressed by the Royal Commission on the 
 Aged Poor to any such plan, nothing has occurred to 
 justify any change of attitude ; and that they had no 
 such fixed determination the appointment of this Com- 
 mittee is sufficient evidence. The direction, then, of this 
 Committee to the Cabinet is merely one of " As you 
 were." The obligations of the Unionist Government 
 and of Tory Members are unaffected by its abortive 
 deliberations. 
 
 Two years, however, which should have been spent in 
 fruitful investigation and construction have been wasted, 
 and Ministers cannot reasonably complain if their future 
 action is followed with jealous anxiety. Mere lapse of 
 time is the only altered feature in the situation since the 
 General Election, but it is a factor which is shadowed by 
 grave consequences. A deliberate policy which might
 
 xxxviii Introduction 
 
 have been defended as prudent two years since would 
 now be justly held to be a symptom of timidity and 
 insincerity. By the appointment of the Committee on 
 Old Age Pensions the Government gave the country to 
 understand that, while anxious to improve by legislation 
 the condition of the aged poor, they were not prepared 
 finally to commit themselves to a scheme of their own 
 manufacture without a preliminary inquiry, which would 
 enable the merits of various alternative ideas to be sifted, 
 and the structural lines brought into prominence in 
 accordance with which a measure might most advantage- 
 ously be framed. The actual inquiry which has been 
 undertaken has conspicuously failed to supply them with 
 this assistance ; its total effect has been to reduce the 
 time at their disposal to make good their profession. 
 To refer the subject now to a Select Committee, however 
 direct its instructions and however admirable in constitu- 
 tion, would spell further delay. A Select Committee 
 could not terminate its work during the present session, 
 would be dissolved at the close of the session, and be 
 able to gather little material to form the basis of legisla- 
 tion in the coming year. Two courses remain : either 
 for the Government to give notice of their purpose to 
 tackle the problem next year upon their own initiative, 
 upon such information as is now at their disposal or can 
 be acquired through the channels open to them ; or 
 that they should appoint a small Commission specifically 
 directed to submit some scheme or schemes for their 
 consideration, with such criticisms as commend them-
 
 Introduction xxxix 
 
 selves, and upon the distinct understanding that it should 
 complete its deliberations during the recess, so as to allow 
 members of the Cabinet to avail themselves of its Report 
 and the evidence taken before it in formulating legisla- 
 tion for submission to Parliament next session. 
 
 At any rate the time has gone by for trifling with this 
 demand that independent provision should be made for 
 the poor in old age. Electors are capable of distinguish- 
 ing between those who regard a project as an agreeable 
 plaything, and those who are sincere in their attempt to 
 realise it. If another General Election overtakes us while 
 a Unionist Government is still extending to this problem 
 their best consideration, or when they have enlarged the 
 Statute Book by one of those measures, dear to Ministers, 
 which vary the letter of the law without disturbing its 
 practical operation, no protestations of good faith will have 
 much weight with the constituencies. If members of the 
 Cabinet have repented their former assurances, however 
 illogical their change of attitude, they would be wise to 
 screw up their courage to the confessing point. Their 
 candour will alienate the sympathy of electors who put 
 confidence in their undertaking to ameliorate the lot of 
 the aged poor, but that sympathy cannot be retained by 
 any mere expressions of continued goodwill towards the 
 movement, nor by any mere tinkering and inoperative 
 measures ; and they will at least regain the esteem of the 
 comparatively small but influential section of the com- 
 munity who view with alarm all suggestions for Old 
 Age Pensions.
 

 
 SUGGESTIONS 
 
 FOR A 
 
 SCHEME OF OLD AGE PENSIONS

 
 ARRANGEMENT OF SUBJECT-MATTER. 
 
 (The headings to the paragraphs are merely to facilitate refer- 
 ence, and are not intended to indicate the whole subject- 
 matter of a paragraph.) 
 
 Para- 
 graph. 
 
 i. Introductory. 
 
 I. 
 
 Nature and Extent of the Evil. 
 
 2. I. — Old Age Pauperism. 
 
 3. II. — Extreme Poverty in Old Age. 
 
 II. 
 The Evil not met by the Poor-Law. 
 
 4. I. — Resulting Laxity of Poor-Law Administra- 
 
 tion. 
 
 5. II. — Poor-Law Relief lacks Discrimination. 
 
 6. III. — Is bestowed Unequally. 
 
 7. IV. — Objections to, summarized. 
 
 8. V. — Discrimination in, entails Expense. 
 
 III. 
 
 9. Some Proposals for State Pensions. 
 
 1 — 2
 
 4 Arrangement of Subject- Matter 
 
 IV. 
 
 Objections to any Scheme of Deferred 
 Para ; Annuities. 
 
 graph. 
 
 10. I. — Unpopular as an Investment. 
 
 ii. II. — Other Methods of Saving Preferable. 
 
 12. III. — Of Doubtful Wisdom, and demanding un- 
 
 usual Foresight. 
 
 13. IV. — Beyond the Reach of the very Poor. 
 
 14. V. — Tending to Injuriously affect Friendly Society 
 
 Insurance. 
 
 15. VI. — Benefits too Remote. 
 
 16. VII. — Objections to, summarized. 
 
 17. VIII. — Involving Interference with Friendly Society 
 
 Management. 
 
 V. 
 
 18. Universal Endowment and Compulsory 
 
 Insurance. 
 
 VI. 
 
 General Objects and Principles of the Submitted 
 Scheme. 
 
 19. I. — General Objects of. 
 
 20. II. — General Conditions it aims at Satisfying. 
 
 21. III. — Their Application to other Schemes. 
 
 VII. 
 Test of Thrift under Scheme. 
 
 22. I. — Not by Direct Inquiry. 
 
 23. II. — Membership of a Benefit Society. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 24. Outline of Scheme.
 
 Arrangement of Subject-Matter 5 
 
 IX. 
 Para / Rough Estimate of Cost. 
 
 graph. 
 
 25. I. — Inclusive Estimate. 
 
 26. II. — Reduction in, if not extended to Persons in 
 
 Regular Work. 
 
 27. III. — Affected by Condition as to Non-receipt of 
 
 Poor-Law Relief. 
 2S. IV. — Proposed Exceptions to such Condition. 
 
 29. V. — Gradual Augmentation of Cost. 
 
 30. VI. — Accompanied by a Reduction of Poor-Law 
 
 Expenditure. 
 
 31. VII. — Restriction of Outdoor Relief. 
 
 32. VIII. — Relief to Charitable Allowances. 
 
 X. 
 
 ^. Condition as to Income of Pensioner. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Position of Benefit Societies in Relation to a 
 Pension Scheme. 
 
 34. I. — Friendly Society Superannuation Schemes 
 
 Unsuccessful. 
 
 35. II. — Merely Deferred Annuities. 
 
 36. III. — Beyond Reach of the very Poor. 
 
 37. IV. — Juvenile Insurance no Solution. 
 
 38. V. — Superannuation by Continuous Sick Pay In- 
 
 jurious. 
 
 39. VI. — Self- Management of Societies not to be in- 
 
 terfered with by Government. 
 
 40. VII. — Efficient Registration of Societies. 
 
 41. VIII. — Trades Union and Employers' Societies. 
 
 42. IX. — Dissolution of Societies. 
 
 43. X. — Membership prevented by Ill-health.
 
 6 Arrangement of Subject- Matter 
 
 P«f XII. 
 
 graph. 
 
 44. The Pension Age. 
 
 XIII. 
 Amount of Pension. 
 
 45. I. — Five Shillings a Week. 
 
 46. II. — Supplemented by Endowed Charity. 
 
 XIV. 
 Old Age Pensions as affecting Wages. 
 
 47. I. — Summary of Advantages of Scheme. 
 
 48. II. — Pensioners not to be in Regular Employ- 
 
 ment. 
 
 XV. 
 
 49. Application of Scheme to Women. 
 
 XVI. 
 Administration of the Pension Scheme. 
 
 50. I. — Division of Cost between Imperial and Local 
 
 Taxation. 
 
 51. II. — Formalities of Administration. 
 
 52. III. — Advantages of Method. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 53. Alternative Scheme upon Same General 
 
 Lines suggested. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 54. Summary of Provisions of the Submitted 
 
 Scheme. 
 
 List of Sources of Information.
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 i. The suggestions made in this paper for a positive 
 scheme of old age pensions are, with some amendment, 
 those put forward in an article I contributed to the 
 National Review for February, 1896 ; and I have not 
 attempted to depart in any considerable degree from 
 the form or substance of that article, merely omitting 
 any discussions of a more general character which were 
 included, and amplifying passages which bore upon the 
 details of the scheme. It seemed to me that, as the pro- 
 posals I desire to make are little more than an adaptation 
 of the plans given in evidence before the Royal Commis- 
 sion on the Aged Poor by Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. 
 Charles Booth, I could best formulate some of the argu- 
 ments with which my suggestions may be supported by 
 indicating what I deem to be the objections to those 
 plans. Mr. Booth advocates universal endowment ; I 
 hold the view that the assistance after a certain age 
 should be made contingent upon what a man has done 
 for himself up to that age. The method explained by 
 Mr. Chamberlain was, roughly speaking, for the State to 
 pay half the contribution required to obtain a pension, or
 
 8 Introductory 
 
 to double the amount of the pension secured. I propose 
 that the whole cost of the pension, to the man who has 
 qualified himself to receive it, shall be borne by Imperial 
 and local taxation, the ultimate gratuitous annuity being 
 in the nature of an encouragement to the individual to 
 make independent provision for himself, through man- 
 hood and comparative old age, up to the date of the 
 pension becoming payable. The lines, therefore, of the 
 scheme I submit for consideration can be best justified 
 by stating what I conceive to be the extent and nature 
 of the evil which any system of pensions must be devised 
 to remedy, the general principles upon which such a 
 remedy should be applied, and the degree in which the 
 proposals initiated by Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Booth 
 fail to satisfy such principles, or to supply a remedy for 
 the evil. 
 
 I have appended a list of the sources from which I 
 derive authority for the statements contained in the 
 paper. This list is not intended to be exhaustive, but 
 merely to facilitate reference to some of the main evi- 
 dence which bears upon the points dealt with in any 
 paragraph.
 
 I. 
 
 NATURE AND EXTENT OF THE EVIL. 
 
 I. Old Age Pauperism. 
 
 2. After more than 50 years' trial of our present Poor- 
 Law system we have arrived at a result, so far as the aged 
 poor are concerned, which the Commissioners describe as 
 " unsatisfactory and deplorable." It appears that 3 in 
 every 10 of the total population of England above 65 
 years of age are recipients of parish relief during the 
 12 months of each year. Of the working-classes of a 
 similar age, 4 out of every 9 are paupers. In London, 
 35 per cent, of its citizens over 65 years old are in receipt 
 of relief other than medical relief. And the bulk of these 
 people are paupers through no traceable fault of their 
 own. The Commissioners admit that, for the most part, 
 the members of the working-classes are " fairly provi- 
 " dent, fairly thrifty, fairly industrious, and fairly temper- 
 " ate." That this pauperism in old age is accounted for, 
 in the main, by the declining physical powers and the 
 difficulty of obtaining work which accompany the increase 
 of years is established by the fact that the proportion of
 
 io Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 paupers under the age of 65 to the population is only 
 8 per cent., while it amounts to 25 per cent, in the years 
 which follow 65. 
 
 II. Extreme Poverty in Old Age. 
 
 3. But the pressure of poverty in old age which any 
 scheme of pensions must be designed to meet cannot be 
 gauged by the statistics of actual pauperism. The Com- 
 missioners point out in their report that " the number of 
 ' persons receiving relief at some time in the course of a 
 ' year does not by any means represent the number who 
 ' are continuously destitute. Relief is in many cases 
 ' only sought at intervals to tide over sickness and other 
 ' special emergencies. . . . The ordinary condition of 
 ' such persons must be only just removed from pauperism, 
 ' and calls for sympathy and consideration. There are 
 ' also many aged poor who are destitute so far as their 
 ' own resources are concerned, but who are kept off the 
 ' rates by the assistance of friends and by private charity. 
 ' Such persons must sometimes endure great privation 
 ' in their effort to avoid application for official relief, and 
 ' they form a class quite as deserving of consideration 
 ' as others who are actually numbered in the return as 
 4 paupers."
 
 II. 
 
 THE EVIL NOT MET BY THE POOR-LAW. 
 
 I. Resulting Laxity of Poor- Law Administration. 
 
 4. It is not disputed that the present method of dealing 
 with the aged poor fails to relieve the pressure of excessive 
 poverty on the most deserving class — those who make 
 every effort to avoid application for official relief — and is 
 obnoxious to a widely-entertained sentiment that it is 
 unjust to force deserving persons in their old age to 
 submit to workhouse discipline. At the same time, it is 
 established that the success of our Poor - Law system 
 depends upon the rigour with which it is administered ; 
 that the advance in independence among the mass of the- 
 people attendant upon it is only to be achieved by the 
 restriction of outdoor relief within the narrowest limits, 
 and by compelling those who apply for parish relief to 
 receive it inside the workhouse. 
 
 So long as nearly half of the members of the working- 
 classes in their old age have to seek Poor-Law relief, and 
 the sentiment continues to exist and grow stronger that 
 it is unjust to force them to submit to workhouse
 
 12 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 discipline, it is manifest that the principles of sound 
 Poor-Law administration will not be observed. Until 
 some alternative provision is offered to the deserving 
 poor in old age, it will be impossible to discountenance 
 laxity of administration of Poor-Law funds, or to insist 
 upon a strict application of the workhouse test. 
 
 The members of the Royal Commission on the Aged 
 Poor were influenced in the recommendations they make 
 by this desire to relieve deserving old persons from the 
 discipline of a workhouse, and express themselves in 
 favour of a further extension of out - relief, and more 
 adequate in amount, to aged and deserving poor. It is 
 also probable, with Boards of Guardians elected on a 
 democratic franchise and their ex-officio members abolished, 
 that the proportion of outdoor relief to indoor relief will 
 increase. Whether this is already the case in regard to 
 the maintenance of the aged poor could be conveniently 
 tested by a comparison of the figures supplied by Mr. 
 Burt's return of 1890, with a return made for the 1st day 
 of January, 1897, if such a return were obtained; but it 
 is shown by Mr. Burt's and Mr. Ritchie's returns for 
 1890 and 1892 that more than two-thirds of the whole 
 number of paupers over 65 years of age receive out- 
 door relief. "There is no doubt," say the Commis- 
 sioners, " that the pauperism of this large class is, to an 
 " extent which has been variously estimated, due to lax 
 " administration and the absence of proper inquiries."
 
 The Evil not met by the Poor-Law 13 
 
 II. Poor-Law Relief lacks Discrimination. 
 
 5. Mr. Loch declares, " It is almost entirely a question 
 " of Poor-Law administration whether 4 or 56 per cent. 
 " of the population over 60 are paupers or independent." 
 This is not a satisfactory conclusion to be forced to arrive 
 at in regard to the working of a system which has enjoyed 
 a trial of more than half a century, and after every effort 
 has been made to inculcate strict principles of administra- 
 tion ; yet there is no sign or likelihood of the law being 
 more strictly administered in the future so long as the 
 deserving poor have to rely for their maintenance in old 
 age upon the Poor-Law. " There is," the Commis- 
 sioners report, " unfortunately no doubt that the system- 
 " atic investigation and supervision contemplated by the 
 " regulations are very far from general, and that, in the 
 " case of the aged especially, the relief is often given 
 " without adequate knowledge of the circumstances, and 
 " continued for long periods without inquiry as to the 
 " changes in their condition which may have taken 
 " place." 
 
 III. Is BESTOWED UNEQUALLY. 
 
 6. There is nothing more dangerous in Poor-Law 
 economy, more productive of mendicancy and thriftless- 
 ness, than irregular or variable doles or benefactions ; 
 from the point of view of the poor nothing is worse than 
 " uncertain action." The dispensing of outdoor relief is 
 essentially uncertain and variable. The practice is widely 
 different in different unions. At Bradford and at Brix-
 
 14 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 worth, till quite lately, in the country, and at White- 
 chapel and St. George's-in-the-East in London, outdoor 
 relief is practically never given, or, at any rate, only in 
 cases of long standing ; in some unions it is given as ten 
 to one of indoor relief. The ratio of outdoor to the total 
 number of paupers varied, for instance, last February, in 
 the Metropolitan unions alone, from i*i in St. George's- 
 in-the-East to 6 1*3 in Lewisham. So, whether an aged 
 person gets it or not, is a matter of luck, depending upon 
 what union he is chargeable to. 
 
 And, again, in many unions the investigation into the 
 means or necessities of applicants is of the most casual 
 character. One Board of Guardians knocks off applica- 
 tions at an average rate of 200 in under two hours ; on 
 one occasion it disposed of 177 cases in one hour and eleven 
 minutes. It is to be presumed that the majority of these 
 were not new cases ; but it is absurd to suppose there 
 can be any certainty or uniformity in the just treatment 
 of applicants for out-relief when they are dealt with at 
 the speed of some two a minute ; but the Commissioners 
 go on to state that they " have other evidence showing 
 " that this manner of conducting inquiries is far from 
 " uncommon." 
 
 IV. Objections to, summarized. 
 
 7. I have attempted at this point to indicate four of the 
 main grounds on which it appears to me to be justly con- 
 tended that the provision made for the aged poor under 
 the Poor- Law is inadequate and unfair, as it affects
 
 The Evil not met by the Poor-Law 15 
 
 the deserving old persons themselves, and an injurious 
 impediment to the proper administration of the law. 
 
 It gives no assistance to those who are practically 
 destitute, but strain their resources to the utmost and 
 endure considerable privation so as to maintain indepen- 
 dence of official relief. 
 
 The existence of a large number of deserving old 
 persons dependent on the Poor-Law for subsistence 
 militates against any reform in the direction of stricter 
 administration, and renders it impossible to discourage 
 outdoor relief, and reduce it within narrow limits. 
 
 Old people, though of equal worthiness, do not receive 
 equal treatment ; but whether they obtain outdoor relief 
 or whether it is refused to them, and also the amount of 
 the relief afforded to them, depends entirely upon the 
 custom of the locality to which they happen to be charge- 
 able. 
 
 Even in the same union it is not improbable that two 
 old people of equal merit will receive dissimilar treatment 
 through the insufficient character of the investigation into 
 their cases. 
 
 V. Discrimination in, entails Expense. 
 
 8. To mitigate this last objection, it has been recom- 
 mended that further Poor-Law officers and inspectors 
 should be appointed, and their staff substantially in- 
 creased. At the same time, it ought to be remembered 
 that the proper conduct of such investigations by a suf- 
 ficient staff of officers — especially when taken in conjunc-
 
 16 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 tion with the recommendation in favour of the out-relief 
 allowance being more adequate in amount than is often 
 now the case — will add very materially to the present 
 Poor-Law expenditure. The salaries of the Poor-Law 
 officers in 1892 came, in London, to a quarter of the 
 whole expenditure on relief, and in England to some 
 ^1,629,000.
 
 III. 
 
 SOME PROPOSALS FOR STATE PENSIONS. 
 
 g. Various methods have been suggested by which 
 the State may maintain or contribute towards the 
 maintenance of the aged poor outside the Poor-Law. 
 These may be roughly classed in three groups : (i) 
 Compulsory insurance assisted by the State ; (2) Uni- 
 versal State endowment ; (3) State - aided deferred 
 annuities. 
 
 The most important of the schemes included in the 
 third group is the scheme suggested by Mr. Chamber- 
 lain on behalf of an informal committee of Members of 
 Parliament interested in the movement for Old Age Pen- 
 sions. The proposals, which are modified and extended 
 by a variety of provisions, embrace three alternative 
 plans : 
 
 (1) A non-returnable pension of 5s. a week at 65 years 
 of age, obtained by the payment of £2 10s., to which the 
 State adds £10 at 25 years of age, and 10s. a year after- 
 wards till the pension age is reached. 
 
 There is power to augment the pension by increased 
 payments ; the State aid is limited to £10.
 
 1 8 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 (2) A pension of 5s. a week at 65, secured by the pay- 
 ment of £5, to which the State adds ^"15 at 25, and £1 a 
 year afterwards. If death occurs within three years of 
 paying the deposit, the deposit is returned ; if subse- 
 quently, but before reaching the pension age, provision 
 is made for the widow for six months and for the children 
 to the age of 12, but such provision is not to exceed 12s. 
 a week in all. If there is no widow, £5 is paid for 
 funeral expenses. 
 
 In both cases there are special rates and benefits for 
 females, and provisions as to arrears of payment. 
 
 (3) This case is contingent upon the co-operation of 
 friendly societies. A male person has to make a deposit 
 of 30s., and a female of 25s., in the post-office, and to 
 insure in a society for a pension of £6 10s., and £3 10s. a 
 year respectively at 65, when the State doubles the 
 society pension. 
 
 As to the cost of the whole scheme, Mr. Chamberlain 
 reckons that if the whole male population took advantage 
 of it the cost would somewhat exceed ^"5,000,000 a year ; 
 if one-tenth of the male population, some ^300,000 a 
 year. He anticipates a gradual saving as a set-off 
 against this expenditure of two-thirds of the ^3,000,000 
 spent annually on the relief of the aged through the Poor- 
 La w. 
 
 The State fund is to be aided out of local rates.
 
 IV. 
 
 OBJECTIONS TO ANY SCHEME OF DEFERRED 
 ANNUITIES. 
 
 I. Unpopular as an Investment. 
 
 io. A mass of evidence was adduced before the Com- 
 mission to the effect that facilities for saving in the shape 
 of deferred annuities have hitherto failed to tempt the 
 members of the working-classes, and that there is no sub- 
 stantial prospect of this form of thrift becoming more 
 popular in the future. Of the 700,000 members of the 
 Manchester Unity of Oddfellows only 5,000 have insured 
 for its annuity benefits. In 1892, the year for which, I 
 believe, the last complete return is available, 167 persons 
 only subscribed for returnable, and but 47 for non-return- 
 able, annuities under the post-office scheme. Mr. Watson 
 in his evidence said that he has never come across a 
 single case of a working-man thus insuring for his old 
 age. Mr. Bartley, a Member of Parliament who has 
 had wide experience and opportunities to judge the 
 inclinations of the people in regard to such matters, has 
 convinced himself that nobody will take advantage of an
 
 20 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 annuity scheme ; that the danger a man foresees as to 
 whether he will be able to keep up his payments 
 or not, the remoteness of the benefit, the preference of 
 young men to spend their money on some object which 
 gives a more immediate return, would outweigh any 
 inducement the State can offer. Miss Octavia Hill 
 emphatically declares : "I have always found them 
 " most unpopular with all classes." The chief registrar 
 of the friendly societies is much of the same mind. He 
 agrees with Mr. Bartley that a man demands some con- 
 current and more immediate benefit before he will stake 
 his money on the uncertain contingency of living to the 
 age of 65. The method has no attraction to the English 
 mind, which rather regards it with aversion. " It has," 
 the Commissioners state in their report, " been generally 
 " agreed that deferred annuities are at present unpopular, 
 " not only with the working-classes, but with every 
 " section of the community. ... It is only when the 
 " deferred annuity is an integral part of some more wide- 
 " spread benefit, as in the case of the trade-union super- 
 " annuation funds . . . that it is used to any wide extent." 
 It is not proposed in any scheme of deferred annuities 
 that the State should offer any further and more imme- 
 diate benefit, such as provision against sickness or acci- 
 dent, in connection with the annuity. 
 
 II. Other Methods of Saving Preferable. 
 
 1 1 . These considerations alone render the efficacy of 
 any measure depending for good result upon their exten-
 
 Objections to any Scheme of Deferred Annuities 21 
 
 sion, and based upon their encouragement by State aid, 
 extremely doubtful. But another, and not less serious, 
 objection may be taken to a pension scheme on the 
 annuity principle. " \Ye are convinced," say the Com- 
 missioners, " that indirect methods of provision for old 
 " age are of at least equal value to the direct provision by 
 " annuities ; and that any legislation which would tend 
 " to the discouragement of the former is to be depre- 
 " cated." They remark upon several reliable witnesses 
 having questioned the advantage of deferred annuities, 
 as compared with other forms of saving or indirect invest- 
 ment, upon the necessity of the annuity expiring with the 
 death of the recipient, and upon the appearance of selfish- 
 ness which attaches to an investment of this nature. 
 They quote Miss Hill's expression of opinion, that other 
 modes of investment bring in " a better and happier 
 " return " to the wage-earning and poorer — as, indeed, to 
 all — classes, educating their children well, and assisting 
 them to secure better positions ; buying a small business, 
 house, or small holding, or land for a market garden ; 
 purchasing a stock of furniture ; laying by a small fund 
 against emergencies, getting " something which they 
 " have, and have to leave, and to give and to use." 
 This view is corroborated by a witness, Mr. Ladd, a 
 wood-dealer in a small way in Kent, who thought the 
 majority of young men would rather use their money in 
 becoming possessors of a pony, an allotment, or a pig, 
 than by purchasing an annuity ; and it is borne out by 
 the experience of Mr. Thomas Pitkin, a Buckingham-
 
 22 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 shire labourer, as described in his evidence. For 40 
 years or so his wages were some 8s. a week, but he 
 managed to put by £10, which he placed in the savings- 
 bank. Then, when an opportunity came to him to rent 
 an acre of land, he laid out that /io on the land, and 
 gets a good return for it. " With my land and a little 
 " work ... I get on as well as I can, and I am very 
 comfortable, as far as that goes." 
 
 III. Of Doubtful Wisdom, and demanding Unusual 
 Foresight. 
 
 12. It must be remembered also that, whether for rich 
 or poor, the financial wisdom of a deferred annuity as an 
 investment is open to grave doubt, and therefore the 
 wisdom of encouraging such a form of investment. A 
 deferred annuity stands upon an entirely different footing 
 to a life insurance policy, the benefit being essentially 
 uncertain, and, in the case of a non-returnable pension, 
 the family of the pensioner are deprived of savings 
 which might otherwise have been available to them if 
 he does not live to the pension age, or has only enjoyed 
 the annuity for a couple of years before his death. 
 
 And there is the further practical consideration, that 
 no scheme can be widely serviceable which does not 
 recognise the inclinations of human nature as it is. It 
 is unreasonable, and contrary to ordinary experience, 
 to expect young men, even of thoroughly deserving 
 character, to pay much attention to the pleasantly 
 remote, and, at the most, only probable, contingencies
 
 Objections to any Scheme of Deferred Annuities 23 
 
 of old age, even if they are confident of being able to 
 keep up their contributions through the 40 years which 
 are between them and the age at which the pension can 
 be claimed. The scheme demands an unusual degree of 
 foresight in the individual. 
 
 IV. Beyond the Reach of the very Poor. 
 
 13. In a passage I have already quoted from the 
 Majority Report of the Commission on the Aged Poor, 
 the Commissioners state their conviction, " that indirect 
 " methods of provision for old age are of at least equal 
 " value to the direct provision by annuities ; and that 
 " any legislation which would tend to the discouragement 
 "of the former is to be deprecated." To discourage 
 methods of thrift, which have been evolved through 
 their fitness to satisfy national requirements, in order to 
 substitute a form of saving which has not hitherto 
 become ingrained in the habits of the people, would be 
 contrary to common sense and prudence, and would 
 defeat the ends desiderated by any reform. It is an 
 essential condition of any acceptable measure of State 
 pensions that it shall encourage, and not blight or 
 destroy, the present inclinations and means of thrift of 
 the people. 
 
 The evidence given before the Commission goes far to 
 prove, if, indeed, it does not conclusively establish, the 
 existence of a very large number of the wage-earning 
 classes, especially among the grade of labourers, who 
 cannot afford to contribute regularly towards procuring
 
 24 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 a pension under any scheme based upon contributions, 
 but whose resources are strained to the uttermost to 
 avail themselves of the insurance against sickness, 
 accident, and funeral expenses, which friendly, trades 
 union, and kindred societies offer. " We cannot over- 
 look," report the Royal Commissioners, "the contention 
 "of many witnesses, that there are members of the 
 " working-classes who could not contribute regularly to 
 " a pension scheme, and that it would be unjust that 
 " State assistance should be withheld from them, while 
 " given to those who have been able to make the con- 
 " tributions." " In any event," writes Mr. Loch, in his 
 Memorandum attached to the Report, " members of 
 "friendly societies could hardly afford to pay for its 
 " benefits (the benefits of a pension scheme based upon 
 " contributions), and also meet their contributions to their 
 " own societies." Mr. Reuben Watson, actuary to the 
 Manchester Unity of Oddfellows, is emphatic on this 
 point. He is convinced that it is as much as ever rural 
 labourers can do to pay the lowest sum they are now 
 charged for friendly society benefits. The working- 
 classes, he affirms, especially in agricultural districts, do 
 not get sufficient money to justify the assumption that 
 they ought to make the payments required from them 
 under the proposals of the Parliamentary Committee to 
 purchase a pension. " There is all credit due to them 
 " when they manage to save the little money from their 
 " earnings which enables them to retain their member- 
 " ship of a friendly society." 

 
 Objections to any Scheme of Deferred Annuities 25 
 
 This is also the view held by the bulk of witnesses of 
 the working-class, especially in reference to agricultural 
 labour ; it is supported by a great quantity of evidence 
 before the Labour Commission ; and is borne out by the 
 results of the inquiries of Mr. Booth, embodied in his 
 book, " The Aged Poor : Condition." The Select Com- 
 mittee on National Provident Insurance in 18S7, in 
 commenting upon Canon Blackley's scheme, reported : 
 " Your Committee believe that many of the poorest class 
 " would be unable to provide £10 between the ages of 
 " 18 and 21 without great difficulty ; that many of those 
 " among them who might be able would be unwilling ; 
 11 and that the collection of the money from those whose 
 " work was fitful and uncertain would be almost im- 
 " possible. Among the poorest class so many exceptions 
 " would have to be made in case of both women and 
 " men, that the scheme would, to a great extent, fail to 
 " benefit many of those who at present add very largely 
 "to the pauperism of the country." The Committee 
 were considering proposals for enforced contributions ; 
 and it is clear that if many people, on account of their 
 poverty, cannot even be compelled to contribute, they 
 would not be likely to do so when they are left free to 
 contribute or not, as they choose. 
 
 V. Tending to injuriously affect Friendly Society 
 Insurance. 
 
 14. Several witnesses gave expression before the Com- 
 mission to the anxiety with which the chief officers of
 
 26 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 the great friendly societies generally regard the suggestion 
 that the State should institute any insurance scheme of 
 its own against old age. This objection to any pension 
 scheme based upon contributions is strongly endorsed by 
 Mr. Broadhurst in his report : " The friendly societies 
 1 and the trade unions, to which the working-class owe 
 ' so much, naturally regard with some apprehension the 
 ' creation of a gigantic rival insurance society, backed by 
 ' the whole power of the Government. The collection 
 ' of contributions from millions of ill-paid households is 
 ' already found to be a task of great difficulty, intensified 
 ' by every depression of trade or other calamity. For 
 ' the State to enter into competition for the available 
 ' subscriptions of the wage - earners must necessarily 
 ' increase the difficulty of all friendly societies, trade 
 ' unions, and industrial insurance companies, whose 
 ' members and customers within the United Kingdom 
 'probably number, in the aggregate, from n to 12 
 ' millions of persons." 
 
 This apprehension, if well founded, may be justly 
 deemed a fatal objection to a measure of national 
 insurance or contributory pensions, on the ground that 
 such legislation would tend to discourage assurance 
 against sickness, and those indirect methods of provision 
 for old age on the value of which the Commissioners lay 
 stress. It involves one of two issues, both destructive of 
 the hope that good may result from a law creating old 
 age pensions upon the basis of deferred annuities, or 
 involving contributions from its beneficiaries. Either
 
 Objections to any Scheme of Deferred Annuities 27 
 
 such a measure will be nugatory, and afford to the in- 
 dustrious poor in old age no protection against pauperism 
 and no relief against penury, or it will have the pernicious 
 effect of inducing young men to abandon the custom of 
 insuring themselves in friendly societies against the drain 
 upon their resources during a period of illness, and other 
 habits of thrift which are more immediately serviceable. 
 Either that section of the community only which has 
 been styled " the aristocracy of labour," skilled artisans 
 and well-paid labourers, will avail themselves of the 
 facilities the scheme offers for old age insurance, and in 
 all probability but a small proportion of these ; or we 
 shall be faced by an actual increase in adult pauperism, 
 due to diverting the savings of the poorest class, who 
 can afford no double contribution, from their present 
 channels to the provision of an annuity in old age. We 
 are to empty our workhouses of people above 65 years 
 of age, to fill them with able-bodied men who may be 
 incapacitated for a time by a bout of illness, or suffering 
 from an accident or temporary want of employment, and 
 will no longer make provision against these misfortunes 
 through their friendly and trades union societies ; or the 
 rich and the very poor, as well as the fairly well-to-do, 
 will be called upon to subscribe, through national taxation, 
 to a benefit which is suited only to the requirements of a 
 limited body, whose members, after all, do not often 
 come upon the poor rates in their old age now, or, at the 
 most, do not form the bulk of aged paupers. 
 
 The evidence adduced before the Royal Commission,
 
 28 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 in reference to the condition of the aged poor among the 
 rural population of England, substantiates the belief that 
 a considerable proportion of the inhabitants of agri- 
 cultural districts, at any rate, are unable to find means to 
 contribute towards an old age pension, and, at the same 
 time, to bring up their families in moderate comfort and 
 maintain their subscription to their friendly or benefit 
 society. This is the testimony, among other witnesses, 
 of Mr. Walker, agent for the National Agricultural 
 Labourers' Union, Mr. Pitkin, Mr. Ladd, Mr. Edwards, 
 general secretary of a Norfolk Labour Union, who em- 
 phatically asserted that the labourers " could not pay a 
 fraction out of their wages " towards a pension fund, and 
 of Mr. Watson, whose evidence I have already referred 
 to. There is a large consensus of expert opinion on the 
 almost certain failure of any pension scheme, requiring 
 contributions from its beneficiaries, to reach or attract 
 the really poor ; and of the probability that, if it did 
 succeed in attracting them, it must be at the cost of other 
 forms of saving, and of insurance against the less remote 
 and more certain contingencies of sickness, want of em- 
 ployment, incapacity through accident, and the necessity 
 to meet funeral expenses. In support of this dual 
 proposition we have the authority of Mr. Knollys, Chief 
 General Inspector to the Local Government Board ; Mr. 
 Hedley, Inspector for the Metropolis ; Mr. Davy, an 
 assistant-inspector ; of Mr. Hamblin, Chairman of the 
 Brighton Board of Guardians ; of Mr. Bartley, Mr. 
 Thomas Mackay, and Miss Octavia Hill. Mr. Hardy,
 
 Objections to any Scheme of Deferred Annuities 29 
 
 an actuary by profession, who has enjoyed an extensive 
 experience in questions relating to provident societies 
 and superannuation funds, insisted with great clearness 
 and force upon most of the objections already indicated. 
 " A scheme," he argued, " depending upon contributions 
 " could be adopted by only a portion of the community, 
 " and would act, preferentially, in the interests of the 
 " least helpless, and must leave the vast remnant still 
 " seething in hopeless pauperism." He pointed out the 
 danger of the provision attempted by many under such a 
 scheme breaking down through their neglect or failure of 
 means to support the assessed contributions; "this," he 
 added, " would only accentuate much of the present 
 " misery, by throwing the unfortunate individual back 
 " into the ranks of pauperism, from which he had made 
 " so earnest an effort to escape." He, also, was of 
 opinion that many even of the younger members of the 
 working-classes cannot afford further deductions from 
 their earnings than are already applied to securing to 
 themselves and their families provision against sickness, 
 and funeral benefits ; and, therefore, that the tendency of 
 a contributory scheme, if operative at all, would be to 
 increase adult pauperism. 
 
 VI. Benefits too Remote. 
 15. A further serious objection to a scheme in the 
 nature of deferred annuities is the length of time which 
 must elapse before anyone can obtain any benefit under 
 it. Whilst for the problematic advantage of each fairly 
 well-to-do individual who may take out a pension policy,
 
 30 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 every section of the community will suffer a present 
 increase, or forego the benefit of a present reduction of 
 taxation, not a single man or woman will reap any 
 corresponding good or relief for 40 years from now. The 
 encouragement to the young to adopt this form of saving, 
 which might result from acquaintance with old people 
 actually in enjoyment of a^ pension, will be lacking, while 
 the burden of the contributions and taxation will be 
 apparent to them. 
 
 It is suggested that the case of those too old at the 
 time of its introduction to enter into the normal con- 
 ditions of the scheme could best be met by modifications 
 of the existing Poor- Law ; but such a course fails to re- 
 move any of the deserving poor in their old age from the 
 operations of the Poor-Law for the next 40 years, it 
 entails an extension of the lax administration of the law, 
 and of extended outdoor relief over this long period of 
 time, and, in the opinion of the Commissioners, it is 
 " inevitable that when the time for pensions arrived, 
 " there would be an irresistible opposition to the discon- 
 " tinuance of the large and general allowances of public 
 " relief, to which the nation would have become accus- 
 " tomed, with only the comparatively small State aid 
 " given with the pensions to supply their place." 
 
 VII. Objections to, summarized. 
 
 16. I have attempted to mention some of the reasons 
 
 for discarding any scheme for old age pensions which 
 
 is based upon the principle of State-aided deferred 
 
 annuities: — (1) That deferred annuities are, and are
 
 Objections to any Scheme of Deferred Annuities 31 
 
 likely to continue to be, an unpopular form of investment, 
 and that therefore any such scheme would fail to be of 
 wide application ; (2) and that they are not the most 
 valuable form of thrift, so the wisdom of extending 
 special encouragement to this, in preference to other 
 forms, is questionable ; (3) that a system based upon 
 contributions can result in no wide economic good, in 
 that it will fail to reach the bulk of those who are now 
 reduced to pauperism or penury in old age, and who 
 cannot afford to do more than pay their contribution to a 
 friendly or trades union society ; (4) but may be pro- 
 ductive of economic harm by injuriously affecting exist- 
 ing sources and forms of saving ; (5) that such a scheme 
 demands a degree of foresight in youth which cannot be 
 reasonably looked for ; (6) that its benefits are too re- 
 mote, that no one will be in enjoyment of them for 40 
 years from now, and that any necessary increase in taxa- 
 tion to provide for the pensions will in the first instance 
 fall on to a generation to none of whom will accrue any 
 advantage from the scheme. 
 
 VIII. Involving Interference with Friendly 
 Society Management. 
 
 17. There is also the vexed question of the nature 
 of the control which the State should exercise over 
 the friendly societies if the third alternative plan, sug- 
 gested in the scheme of the Committee of Members of 
 Parliament explained by Mr. Chamberlain, necessitating 
 the co-operation of these societies, was adopted ; but this 
 question can be more conveniently mentioned later.
 
 V. 
 
 UNIVERSAL ENDOWMENT AND COMPULSORY 
 INSURANCE. 
 
 1 8. I shall not attempt to discuss proposals for 
 universal State endowment or compulsory State-assisted 
 insurance. Mr. Charles Booth computes the cost of his 
 scheme for the State to endow every man and woman 
 with 5s. a week on reaching the age of 65, subject to 
 certain restrictions in the event of their having received 
 Poor- Law relief for 10 years previously to their attaining 
 the pension age, at some twenty-four and a half million 
 pounds a year for the United Kingdom. There would 
 be an annual cash saving, to deduct from this ex- 
 penditure, of the three million pounds now spent under 
 the Poor-Law on the maintenance of the old. This pro- 
 posal is open to the grave objection of offering no direct 
 encouragement to thrift. Economically, it may be a wise 
 policy to face this immense addition to general taxation 
 in order to secure the possibility of a stricter administration 
 of the Poor-Law and the financial advantages arising 
 therefrom, and of a large relief to private charity, and a
 
 Universal Endowment and Compulsory Insurance 33 
 
 general improvement in the standard of life. It is true 
 also that the increase in taxation might be rather apparent 
 than real ; what the taxpayer paid out from one pocket, 
 in due course might be returned to the other. But the 
 magnitude of its financial proposals admittedly renders its 
 rejection certain under present conditions. 
 
 I assume, apart from any criticisms directed to merits, 
 a similar objection — that the rejection of any such plan is 
 a foregone conclusion — applies to compulsory schemes of 
 universal insurance requiring contributions to be obliga- 
 tory.
 
 VI. 
 
 GENERAL OBJECTS AND PRINCIPLES OF THE 
 SUBMITTED SCHEME. 
 
 I. General Objects. 
 
 ig. There are two objects which should be realized by 
 a system of pensions. In the first place, the provision of 
 some measure of independence and comfort for the de- 
 serving poor in old age ; and, secondly, the diminution 
 of pauperism and the cost of pauper relief. 
 
 It is possible, and has been proved in many unions to 
 be possible, to diminish by stricter administration the 
 sum of pauperism without relieving the pressure of 
 excessive poverty. Where the law is strictly administered 
 charity has to take the place of outdoor relief. " Under 
 " the ordinary conditions of Poor- Law administration, 
 " any attempt practically to abolish outdoor relief in the 
 " case of the aged poor might lead to great hardship," is 
 the conclusion the Commissioners arrive at. If, on the 
 other hand, it is an object to reduce the cost of the Poor- 
 Law system so far as is compatible with better provision 
 for the industrious poor in their later years, there is much
 
 Objects and Principles of the Submitted Scheme 35 
 
 force in the contention of Canon Blackley, that to pro- 
 vide for the contingencies of age without providing for 
 the emergencies of illness is to leave untouched the most 
 productive source of able-bodied, as of aged, pauperism. 
 It is not possible to entertain Canon Blackley's primary 
 suggestion, that the State should constitute itself an 
 insurance office against sickness and accident as well as 
 against old age ; that an endowed Governmental depart- 
 ment, manned by an army of State-paid officials, should 
 compete, on a basis of exceptional advantage, with self- 
 supporting thrift societies in the sphere of activity to 
 which they are admirably adapted. Such legislation, 
 even apart from unacceptable compulsory proposals, 
 would seriously hamper the invaluable work friendly and 
 benefit societies have for years been fruitfully engaged 
 upon, and have brought to a high level of usefulness. 
 But, if it is possible to attain a similar result indirectly, 
 and without injury to the development of the friendly 
 orders, a material reduction may, at last, be anticipated 
 in the nine and a half million pounds now annually 
 expended by local authorities on a system of Poor-Law 
 relief, which is distasteful alike to the ratepayers who 
 supply the money, and to the poor who receive it. 
 
 II. General Conditions it aims at Satisfying. 
 
 20. Before proceeding to submit the outlines of pro- 
 posals upon which, in my opinion, it would be possible 
 to frame an advantageous system of old age pensions, it 
 might be well to indicate the conditions which I believe 
 
 3—2
 
 36 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 any measure, to be a sound one, should satisfy if it is to 
 realize the two objects I have mentioned. 
 
 It should be simple in conception and application. 
 
 It must operate as an incentive and reward to thrift 
 and industry ; directly, as an encouragement to individual 
 exertion, and, indirectly, strengthening the hands of 
 existing thrift organizations. 
 
 Its benefits should not be problematic nor confined to 
 the small section of the community who are alone likely 
 to avail themselves of an insurance scheme, however 
 generous its facilities, other than compulsory or gratui- 
 tous ; its services should be within the reach of the very 
 poor. 
 
 It should be productive of some relief without delay ; 
 it should promote the immediate well-being of a con- 
 siderable number of individuals. 
 
 It should insist upon insurance being made against 
 sickness by the future recipient of the pension during the 
 years preceding the pension becoming payable. 
 
 III. Their Application to Other Schemes. 
 
 21. I have already pointed out that the project pro- 
 moted by the informal Parliamentary Committee, or any 
 project of deferred annuities, appears to me to fail to 
 satisfy three at least of these conditions. That it will 
 encourage thrift is uncertain ; that it will be detrimental 
 to some valuable forms of saving is possible. Its benefits 
 are likely to be inaccessible to the poorest portion of the 
 people, who form the bulk of the aged pauper popula-
 
 Objects and Principles of the Submitted Scheme 37 
 
 tion. For the ensuing 40 years no one is to receive any 
 advantage under it. 
 
 Proposals for compulsory insurance are open to similar 
 criticism ; they would operate in the direction of weaken- 
 ing existing thrift societies ; they would not be productive 
 of immediate relief to individuals ; and it would be prob- 
 ably found impossible to compel contributions from the 
 very poor. 
 
 Mr. Charles Booth's scheme of universal endowment, 
 apart from the question of expense, does not require that 
 the pensioner shall have insured himself against the risk 
 of sickness during manhood, and does not act as a reward 
 to thrift. 
 
 4GG16.1
 
 VII. 
 
 TEST OF THRIFT UNDER SCHEME. 
 
 I. Not by Direct Inquiry. 
 
 22. If the condition that a pension scheme should 
 operate as an encouragement and reward to thrift is 
 approved, it is necessary to consider what is to be the 
 criterion of the degree of thrift required to prove the title 
 to the pension. 
 
 Any minute inquisition into the merits and past history 
 of the pensioner would not only extravagantly swell the 
 expense of administering the fund, give a loophole to 
 abuse and partiality, involve uncertain and unequal treat- 
 ment, and entail an army of trained officers to make the 
 necessary inquiries, but it would defeat the whole purpose 
 of the reform, that the allowance should be free from the 
 taint of pauperism. The tenure of the pensioner must 
 be a matter of legal right, not of grace. To admit of 
 any system of personal selection or discrimination is 
 merely to continue outdoor relief, on an enlarged scale, 
 under the title of pensions. 

 
 Test of Thrift under Scheme 39 
 
 II. Membership of a Benefit Society. 
 
 23. I have remarked upon the evidence which goes to 
 show that there are a large number of the wage-earning 
 class whose earnings cannot support a double contribu- 
 tion, whose best exertions are required to insure them- 
 selves against illness in a benefit or trades union society. 
 His membership of a friendly society affords a sound 
 presumption of the thrift and credit of an individual. 
 The test may be a rough one. It may, and will, no 
 doubt, at first exclude many deserving people from the 
 benefit of old age endowment ; it may include persons of 
 little worth. But it accepts as its standard the habit of 
 saving and frugal investment most customary and 
 generally recognised among the poor, and which is all 
 that can fairly be expected from a man in receipt of low 
 wages, and who may have a family to support on them. 
 By securing himself against the eventualities of illness 
 and death, medical attendance and funeral expenses, and 
 by maintaining his independence of parish relief during 
 the more active years of life, a working - man has 
 adequately proved his claim upon the consideration of 
 the community.
 
 VIII. 
 OUTLINE OF SCHEME. 
 
 24. Accepting, then, membership of a friendly society 
 as the sufficient test of thrift, I submit that a measure of 
 old age pensions could be framed on the following lines : 
 
 That every man or woman on reaching 60 (or 65) 
 years of age, who is not in regular employment at regular 
 wages or remuneration, who has never received relief 
 under the Poor-Law, and who is a member of a registered 
 society which provides for sick-pay on a basis of members' 
 contributions, shall be endowed with a gratuitous pension 
 of 5s. a week, to be provided out of Imperial taxation (or 
 a moiety out of Imperial and a moiety out of local taxa- 
 tion). 
 
 The allowance would be payable to members on their 
 arriving at the pension age of any registered society 
 which provides for sickness expenses, whether friendly 
 or trades associations, or, under certain conditions 
 necessary to insure the permanence of the benefits, clubs 
 or associations in connection with industrial firms and 
 undertakings, so long as their members contribute sub- 

 
 Outline of Scheme 41 
 
 stantially to their funds. To guard against individuals 
 joining a society merely with the object of qualifying for 
 State aid, a period of 10 years' membership could be 
 exacted to entitle anyone now above 30 years to a 
 pension, while persons now under the age of 21 would be 
 required to enrol themselves in a registered society before 
 their 25th birthday. 
 
 Membership before 25 would be the qualification in 
 the future. 
 
 As a temporary provision, 30 might be fixed as the 
 qualifying age for membership of individuals between 
 the ages of 21 and 25 at the date when the law came 
 into force, 35 for those between 25 and 30 years of age.
 
 IX. 
 
 ROUGH ESTIMATE OF COST. 
 
 I. Inclusive Estimate. 
 
 25. Before going further, I will attempt to give a 
 rough estimate of the cost of the scheme. I give these 
 figures, with the reasons which caused me to adopt 
 them ; they have not been submitted to any accountant 
 or expert, but represent the result of such calculations 
 as I made myself, to obtain some idea of the expendi- 
 ture which might be involved by proposals which 
 seemed to me expedient on other grounds than those 
 of finance. 
 
 The pensions are to be restricted to members of 
 societies which are registered under the Friendly 
 Societies Act, and provide sick and usually also 
 funeral benefits. The registered affiliated orders have 
 a strength of some 1,727,809 people, the orders not 
 affiliated of 2,133,170, in all of 3,861,519. The trade 
 union associations include about 1,166,922 members, 
 but several, more especially among the newer unions,
 
 Rough Estimate of Cost 43 
 
 offer no insurance against illness.* It is also probable 
 that some 20 per cent, should be deducted for duplicate 
 membership, as it is not suggested that an individual 
 could claim a pension in respect of each society he 
 belonged to ; and I take, in round figures, the total 
 membership of the registered societies giving sick and 
 funeral benefits at 4,000,000. 
 
 The next step is to arrive at the relation which the 
 members over 60 and 65 years of age bear to the whole 
 body. The Manchester Unity of Oddfellows lately 
 endeavoured to ascertain how the proportion stood in 
 their own society. Of 615,170 members whose ages 
 were returned, there were 45,352 over 60, 25,948 over 
 65 years of age, or a proportion of about 1 to 13 over 
 60, 1 to 24 over 65. In 1893, m the Ancient Order of 
 Foresters, of 516,305 members making a return, 29,108 
 had passed 60, 13,654 had passed 65 years, roughly 1 to 
 17 and 1 to 39. In some of the large benefit societies it is 
 very considerably less. In the Rational Sick and Burial 
 Association, with, in 1894, over 72,000 adult members, 
 including over 1,000 females, it is only 1 to 45, and 
 1 to 90 ; and in the Hearts of Oak Society, with 183,000 
 adult members, the comparison is still more favourable. 
 I will accept, however, the average proportion of the 
 members above 60 and 65 to the total strength of the 
 
 * A note will be found in the Report of the Committee on Old 
 Age Pensions giving the membership of these societies as ascertained 
 by the last returns. As, however, the figures do not differ very 
 materially from those suggested above, I have left my estimate as it 
 was submitted to the Committee.
 
 44 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 societies coming within the scope of this pension scheme 
 to be i in every 15, and 1 in every 30. If, then, the 
 pension age is to be 60, about 270,000 people will be 
 entitled, subject to any further conditions, to take imme- 
 diate advantage of the measure, or, if 65, there will at 
 once be some 140,000 pensioners ; the annual cost to the 
 State being about ^3,510,000, or ^"1,820,000 to provide 
 a pension, at 60 or 65, as may be decided, of 5s. a week. 
 In accepting the proportion of those over 60 and 65 
 years of age to the total membership of the societies as 
 1 to 15 and 1 to 30, it must at the same time be noted 
 that this proportion will increase, though slowly, year 
 by year, even on the present membership of the 
 societies. The percentage in England of those over 60 
 and 65 to the total population above 25 years of age, is, 
 for males, 15-9 and 10 per cent., for females, i8*8 and 
 12*3 per cent., and although several years will elapse 
 before this proportion of aged members of friendly 
 societies to their total number of members is ap- 
 proached, and an allowance must be made for members 
 being enrolled under the age of 25, the proportion 
 within the societies will tend gradually to approximate 
 towards the normal proportion obtaining for the whole 
 population. 
 
 II. Reduction in Cost, if not extended to 
 Persons in Regular Work. 
 
 26. But it is clear that this annual expenditure will 
 be largely reduced if the Act provides that no individual
 
 Rough Estimate of Cost 45 
 
 can claim the pension so long as he is in receipt of 
 regular wages for regular work. The Hearts of Oak 
 Society offers a superannuation allowance of 4s. a week 
 to members incapacitated for work, and the members 
 receiving this allowance were also permitted themselves 
 to earn not more than 12s. a week. Of the members of 
 this society above 60 years of age, about one-fifth were 
 then upon the list of superannuated members. Many of 
 the trade union societies make superannuation allow- 
 ances to incapacitated members over a certain age, the 
 average age qualification being 55 years, and the per- 
 centage of members dependent upon the superannuation 
 funds is not a heavy one, ranging from 0*9 per cent., to 
 4*3 and 5 per cent. It is impossible to arrive at any 
 accurate estimate of the reduction in expenditure which 
 this provision in the Act would induce ; but it is safe 
 to predict that, at any rate, one person in every three 
 above 60 years of age, and one in every five above 65, 
 will prefer and be able to continue in regular work at 
 some regular wage rather than claim the pension. The 
 annual cost of the scheme will then roughly amount to 
 ^2,340,000 if the pension age is 60 years, and ^1,455,300 
 if 65 years. 
 
 III. Affected by Condition as to Non-Receipt of 
 Poor-Law Relief. 
 
 27. The condition as to the non-receipt of Poor-Law 
 relief would further lessen these amounts, although to 
 what extent it would do so it is scarcely possible to
 
 46 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 decide, and I have not attempted to make any deduction 
 in respect of it. 
 
 From a return issued in 1891 it appears that for 
 every 10,000 persons now in registered friendly societies, 
 there are in workhouses 26 persons who have left their 
 societies, and 12 whose societies have broken down, and 
 Mr. Brabrook considers even these figures too high. 
 Mr. Ballan Stead stated that in the Foresters' Society 
 out of 526,000 English members, 490 only have applied 
 for poor relief during the past five years, while in Wales, 
 out of 23,000 members, only 8 sought relief in the 
 same period. The number of society members receiving 
 indoor relief is, however, no accurate criterion of those 
 who have applied for and received outdoor relief. Sir 
 Hugh Owen stated that it is most exceptional for 
 Guardians to require a man who had secured' a pension 
 for himself in any form to go into the workhouse, and 
 that there would be a much greater disposition to give 
 outdoor relief to a man who had always been of a 
 respectable character than if it had been otherwise. 
 It is probable, therefore, that the majority of members 
 of friendly societies applying for relief would be assisted 
 outside the workhouse. In considering the satisfactory 
 figures in connection with the Foresters' Society, it must 
 be remembered that the inclination of members making 
 returns would not be towards admitting that they had 
 received official relief, and that probably both the 
 Foresters and Oddfellows show a specially low propor- 
 tion of pauperized members. I imagine that everyone
 
 Rough Estimate of Cost 47 
 
 living in a country district has personal knowledge of 
 one or two cases of aged members of some society or 
 other who have applied for and received outdoor relief, 
 and it is not likely that the Outdoor Relief (Friendly 
 Societies) Act of 1894, making it lawful for a board to 
 grant outdoor relief to a member of a friendly society 
 without insisting upon the destitution test, would have 
 been promoted and passed into law had there been no 
 substantial demand for such legislation. 
 
 IV. Proposed Exceptions to such Condition. 
 
 28. Though I believe that the strict observance of 
 the condition as to the non-receipt of parish relief would 
 result in a substantial, though not very considerable, 
 reduction in the cost of the pension scheme during the 
 first years of its operation, and will be found to be a 
 most useful and economical provision when the scheme 
 had been established for some years, I do not think it 
 would be advisable at the outset to deny, in every case, 
 a pension to an old person who has occasionally 
 received medical or other parish assistance prior to, or 
 immediately upon, the scheme becoming law. To meet 
 the case also of periods of special distress through 
 general want of employment, a distinction should be 
 made between ordinary Poor-Law relief, and the work 
 provided to meet such emergencies by local authorities 
 in the distressed districts. The Select Committee on 
 Distress from Want of Employment has, in its report 
 this year, and in an interim report, recommended that
 
 48 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 relief given in the form of labour during such periods in 
 a distressed district should not disentitle persons receiv- 
 ing it from exercising the Parliamentary franchise. If 
 this distinction was recognised, and it was provided that 
 relief given in similar form and circumstances should 
 not be deemed to deprive a man of his claim to a 
 pension, the wage received for such labour would also 
 enable the workman to keep up his necessary contri- 
 butions to his society during a time when otherwise he 
 would be likely to fall into serious arrears. Such a 
 provision would do something to lessen the probability 
 of contributions being allowed to lapse through the 
 necessity of the individual. 
 
 V. Gradual Augmentation of Cost. 
 
 29. The possibility, however, must be faced of an 
 appreciable addition to the cost of the scheme, and of 
 the body of pensioners being enlarged at an early date, 
 through institutions not hitherto registered under the 
 Friendly Societies Act being qualified and applying for 
 registration. A proportion of these, however, do not 
 provide the required benefits ; and it would be well to 
 render the test of registration somewhat more stringent 
 and effectual, simultaneously with the passage of legisla- 
 tion creating a system of pensions. It is improbable, 
 then, that more than a quarter of the associations now 
 not registered would attempt to become so, and would 
 satisfy the conditions of the Friendly Societies and of the 
 new Pension Act ; and such an addition to the body of
 
 Rough Estimate of Cost 49 
 
 immediate pensioners might increase the total annual 
 cost of the scheme to some ^2,795,000 or ^"1,685,000, 
 agreeably to the pension age being fixed at 60 or 65. 
 Otherwise, for 10 years, subject always to the considera- 
 tions I have mentioned, the expense to the nation would 
 remain fairly stationary ; afterwards gradually to in- 
 crease concurrently with the natural growth and expan- 
 sion of benefit societies, a growth which would be 
 accelerated by the prospect afforded to their members 
 of an annuity secured to them by the State in their old 
 age ; the measure operating as a direct incentive to the 
 habit of thrift expressed by insurance in such institu- 
 tions. 
 
 For 10 years, subject to the above considerations, 
 the cost of the scheme will, as I have mentioned, be 
 stationary. The expenditure is not likely to be con- 
 siderably augmented for 30 or 35 years after the enact- 
 ment of the system, when those who are now under 30 
 years of age would first be able to claim a pension. 
 What the rate of increase in the cost will finally be will 
 depend on the probable rate of increase which can be 
 anticipated under present conditions in the membership 
 of friendly societies, the acceleration of that rate due to 
 the further inducement of an annuity to the natural 
 growth of population, and to the tendency of the propor- 
 tion of the aged to friendly society membership to 
 approximate to the proportion of the aged to the total 
 population over 25 years of age. 
 
 4
 
 50 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 VI. Accompanied by a Reduction of Poor-Law 
 Expenditure. 
 
 30. But the growing expenditure under the pension 
 law must be accompanied by a diminishing expenditure 
 under the Poor- Law. Not only the cost of pauper relief 
 to the aged, but to the able-bodied also, will be materially 
 lightened. 
 
 It is contended, from the figures I have already quoted 
 in paragraph 27, that members of friendly societies do 
 not form any considerable portion of the mass of old- 
 age pauperism, and, therefore, that the hope of a great 
 reduction in the cost of Poor-Law administration, con- 
 sequent upon a scheme of endowment to members of 
 these societies, is not likely to be justified. 
 
 Even if this criticism was wholly substantial, it is not 
 destructive to the arguments in support of such endow- 
 ment : that these pensions have as their object not only 
 the relief of old-age pauperism, but of excessive poverty 
 in old age of the poor who only avoid pauperism by 
 enduring great privation. But the figures are, for 
 reasons I have endeavoured to indicate, far from con- 
 clusive ; and it is certain that many members of benefit 
 societies are only kept off the rates in their old age by 
 their societies granting to them superannuation allow- 
 ances in the form of continuous sick-pay — a system 
 admittedly unsound economically, and injurious to the 
 well-being of the societies. 
 
 Any very considerable reduction, however, in the cost
 
 Rough Estimate of Cost 51 
 
 of Poor-Law administration so far as regards old-age 
 pauperism cannot be at first looked for ; but by en- 
 couraging people to avail themselves of the benefits 
 which friendly societies offer, and so increasing their 
 number of members, it seems to me that we may con- 
 fidently anticipate a gradual and satisfactory diminution 
 in the cost of able-bodied pauperism. Each young 
 person, by qualifying for a pension, will practically be 
 giving a guarantee that in no event will his maintenance 
 become chargeable upon the rates— will be insuring 
 himself during youth and middle-age against sickness, 
 in old age against destitution, upon death against funeral 
 expenses. The yearly cost of an indoor pauper is now 
 some ^"26, of every pauper receiving out-relief some £13. 
 A pensioner will claim the price only of outdoor relief, 
 and that but during the last years of his life ; or half 
 the annual expense he might have put the community 
 to for his maintenance over a period of several years. 
 The benefit societies are said to disburse some ^"12,000 
 or ^14,000 every day in sick and funeral pay. In 
 default of the societies a large part of this ^"4,000,000 
 to ^"5,000,000 a year would be thrown upon the poor 
 rates. Mr. Tidd Pratt, in 1859, when these societies 
 were comparatively in their infancy, reported, as 
 registrar, that they saved the country ,£"2,000,000 a year 
 in poor rates. If it is the case now that a member of a 
 friendly society very seldom applies for official relief, 
 much more so will it be the case when upon such applica- 
 tion he forfeits his right to an old-age pension. 
 
 4—2
 
 52 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 Sir Hugh Owen's evidence before the Commission on 
 the Aged Poor supports this view : that by offering a 
 further inducement to people to avail themselves of the 
 benefits of friendly societies, in so far as that inducement 
 succeeds in swelling the membership of these societies, 
 a substantial reduction will result in the poor rates. On 
 the other hand, if the membership of the societies 
 remains stationary, so will the cost of the pension 
 scheme. 
 
 Sir Hugh Owen said : " I referred to the extension 
 " of friendly societies as having a material effect in the 
 " reduction of the number of persons coming upon the 
 " rates. First, you have those who obtain assistance 
 " from their friendly societies in case of sickness. Those 
 " persons are relieved from the necessity of applying to 
 " the guardians for medical attendance, and it too fre- 
 " quently happens that a person, after he has been 
 " getting medical attendance at the cost of the rates, 
 " afterwards applies for relief of a more substantial char- 
 " acter. . . . Then you come to a large number of 
 " cases in which payments are made in the event of 
 " death, death of husband, or of wife, or of child. The 
 "assistance obtained in that way relieves many people 
 " from becoming a charge upon the rates — for funeral 
 "expenses; and the sum which a widow may receive 
 " may be sufficient to start her in some small business, 
 " or, in other ways, help her to avoid coming on the 
 " rates altogether."
 
 Rough Estimate of Cost 53 
 
 VII. Restriction of Outdoor Relief. 
 31. But the national economy, resulting from the in- 
 stitution of old-age pensions, is not to be measured by 
 the sum of the savings accruing from instances of 
 individuals who keep clear of parish relief, instead of 
 becoming a burden upon the rates. It will, at last, be 
 possible to attain that stringent administration which it 
 is admitted is essential to the economic and moral success 
 of our Poor-Law system, and to the neglect of which its 
 comparative failure is attributable. At present the 
 ethical force at the back of our workhouse system to 
 render its severe application possible does not exist. No 
 law can now be effective in Great Britain which is not 
 agreeable to the general sense of justice among her 
 people, and the sense of justice among the great majority 
 of Englishmen is manifestly against clothing, in old age, 
 the industrious in the pauper garb. The danger result- 
 ing from this feeling leads those who do not favour old- 
 age pensions to tolerate outdoor relief, and even to 
 recommend its extension, in spite of the abuses of the 
 system and its inconsistency with Poor-Law principles. 
 The Commissioners also say: "We are convinced by 
 " the evidence that there is a strong and prevalent feel- 
 " ing in favour of greater discrimination, especially in 
 " the case of the aged, between the respectable poor and 
 " those whose poverty is distinctly the result of their 
 " own misconduct. Unless this distinction is more 
 " clearly recognised than it has hitherto been, we fear
 
 54 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 " that the agitation against the whole policy of the Poor- 
 " Law may gain in strength and lead to changes which 
 " we should deprecate in the general interests of economy 
 " and morality." During the period immediately follow- 
 ing the adoption of State endowment for old age, Boards 
 of Guardians must be left to exercise some discretion in 
 the matter of granting out-relief. But a measure upon 
 the lines indicated would give to all men under 50 years 
 of age a fair chance to secure themselves, by joining a 
 substantial benefit society, at once against immediate 
 pressure and ultimate pauperism. A man can make no 
 claim to special treatment if he neglects this opportunity. 
 Laxity of administration would no longer be counte- 
 nanced by the same popular sentiment as at present ; it 
 might be successfully discouraged, and speedily reduced 
 within narrow limits. The Rev. T. W. Fowle, who, in 
 his volume on the " Poor-Law " in the " English Citizen 
 Series," strongly condemned outdoor relief and lax ad- 
 ministration, is now convinced that an improvement in 
 administration can only be secured after providing some 
 pension system for the aged. In a pamphlet published 
 in 1892, he writes: "Outdoor relief would be got rid of 
 " in the only way possible, i.e., by fair and reasonable 
 " bargain, in which it would be quite apparent that the 
 " motive was not the mere saving of money, but the 
 " spending it in a more judicious, and to the working 
 " people more honourable, way. The dangers of a re- 
 " action towards out-relief are obvious and urgent " if no 
 system of pensions can be devised. 
 

 
 Rough Estimate of Cost 55 
 
 VIII. Relief to Charitable Allowanxes. 
 
 32. While the poor rates will be lightened, a consider- 
 able sum, now devoted to charitable gifts to the aged 
 poor, will be set free to flow into other philanthropic 
 channels, or to meet any increase of taxation necessitated 
 by a national system of pensions. In the stricter Poor- 
 Law unions especially a large number of poor people are 
 now supported in old age by private benefactions, which 
 take the place of, or supplement, parish relief. Without 
 the co-operation of charity, it is admitted that it would 
 be impossible to insist on strict administration in respect 
 to the aged. The bulk of the funds the Charity Organiza- 
 tion Society is able to dispose of in charity is applied to 
 providing aged persons with weekly allowances. In 
 January, 1890, for instance, the Stepney Committee of 
 the Society had 70 old pensioners on its books with an 
 average weekly stipend of 4s. ; the St. Pancras Com- 
 mittee in 1889 gave pensions to 49 people. The munifi- 
 cent gifts which support our voluntary hospitals and 
 other institutions of wide beneficence and utility are 
 doubtless among the noblest features in the history of 
 our time. But precarious donations by individuals to 
 deserving individual cases, though necessary under exist- 
 ing conditions, are unsatisfactory to the giver and deroga- 
 tory to the recipient. The fact that deserving old people 
 are in need of such assistance is a fruitful source of 
 dishonest pretences, while advantage is too often taken 
 of the loose and overlapping manner in which charitable
 
 56 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 institutions and persons apply their funds. Moreover, 
 while some individuals contribute largely to the main- 
 tenance of the aged poor, others who can equally afford 
 to do so give little or nothing. By a national system of 
 pensions the burden of providing for the necessities of 
 industrious old persons will be more equally and equitably 
 distributed. 
 
 By the provision of pensions all the resources from 
 which the old now draw their support will be to a 
 certain extent relieved, private charity and relations will 
 be largely relieved, the burden of continuous sick -pay 
 on the funds of friendly societies will be removed, and 
 employers and traders, who in many instances now either 
 bestow some allowance upon an employe who is unfitted 
 by old age for work, or continue from charitable motives 
 men in their employ who no longer can perform their 
 tasks with efficiency, will be relieved in a great measure 
 of such obligations, and trade and industry will reap 
 some advantage by the lightening of these charges upon 
 them.
 
 X. 
 
 CONDITION AS TO INCOME OF PENSIONER. 
 
 33. I have remarked upon the vital importance of 
 eliminating the taint of dependence from any measure of 
 State pensions. To avoid the possibility of its presence 
 is one of the motives which prevailed upon Mr. Booth to 
 recommend a system which would be universal in its 
 application. These pensions, however, are manifestly 
 not intended to add to the comfort of the well-to-do, 
 but to be a barrier against want. To make them 
 contingent upon membership of a benefit society seems 
 to avoid at the same time the wastefulness of endowing 
 the rich with superfluous funds, and the pauper stigma 
 which pursues any preliminary investigation into character 
 or means of subsistence. It may be expedient to fix 
 some limit of income above which the pension could not 
 be claimed : liability to income-tax would form a con- 
 venient line of demarcation. But at the same time 
 every individual is free to avail himself of the benefits 
 offered by a friendly society, if he is qualified by its rules 
 for membership; and, indeed, it is possible that a man,
 
 58 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 at one time in easy circumstances, may eventually be as 
 much in need of an annuity as any other member of a 
 friendly order. There is no personal State selection, 
 and none of the inquiries as to character and opportunities 
 which render out-relief, or even a charitable allowance, 
 alike pauperizing in their nature.
 
 XL 
 
 POSITION OF BENEFIT SOCIETIES IN RELATION 
 TO A PENSION SCHEME. 
 
 I. Friendly Society Superannuation Scheme 
 Unsuccessful. 
 
 34. The whole question of the position of friendly, 
 trades union, and cognate societies in relation to the 
 provision of pensions for aged persons, and to any old 
 age pension scheme, is of primary importance. 
 
 It has been suggested that provision for the poor in old 
 age will be gradually brought about by the independent 
 action of these societies. This view, however, seems to 
 rest on an assumption that a radical change will take 
 place in the inclinations of the working-classes. Hitherto 
 the efforts of friendly societies in this direction have not 
 been successful. In the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows, 
 with some 700,000 members, only 500 have up to now 
 insured themselves for the old-age provision under tables 
 prepared so long ago as i882. :;: Yet this society has in its 
 
 * By a Return in an Appendix to the Report of the Committee on 
 Old Age Pensions it appears that now eighteen members subscribe 
 to a central superannuation fund, and about 1,100 to branch funds 
 out of a total membership of nearly 800,000.
 
 6o Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 ranks the pick of the wage-earning classes, who would be 
 most inclined to avail themselves of such a scheme. Mr. 
 Reuben Watson has stated: "Since the establishment 
 "of the Manchester Unity none of its functions have 
 "been expounded with greater earnestness than the 
 " necessity for superannuation allowances after the age of 
 " 65 years. Notwithstanding the advocacy and plan pro- 
 " pounded, the members have not yet proved amenable to 
 " the persuasiveness of the supporters of superannuation." 
 
 Mr. Stead's evidence upon the amount of success 
 which has been achieved by a similar scheme in regard 
 to the Order of Foresters, with some 717,000 male adult 
 members, is still more significant. In 1882 a super- 
 annuation fund was started on a 4 per cent, basis. The 
 scheme was in operation for nine years ; during that time 
 three members only took advantage of it. In August, 
 1892, fresh tables were drawn up on a 3 per cent, basis, 
 for returnable and non-returnable pensions, but not a 
 single member of the Order is insured under them." 
 
 It may be safely affirmed that not one member in 
 4,000 in the affiliated friendly societies is paying for a 
 pension, although it is stated that these societies contain 
 65,000 members of upwards of 65 years of age ; and 
 Mr. Hardy gave emphatic testimony before the Com- 
 mission to the effect that, in his opinion, it was im- 
 possible for friendly societies ever to deal with the 
 demand for old age pensions. 
 
 * In the Return now made it is stated that three members are 
 now insured, and that some branches in Sheffield require a super- 
 annuation contribution from new members.
 
 Position of Benefit Societies 61 
 
 II. Merely Deferred Annuities. 
 
 35. And this view coincides with the probabilities of 
 the case. If the subscription for the pension benefit is 
 voluntary, the pensions are merely deferred annuities 
 without concurrent advantages, and all the objections to 
 deferred annuities hold good. Thus, as might be antici- 
 pated, we find that Mr. Watson, in the case of the 
 Manchester Unity, attributes the failure of the system 
 " to the indisposition of the young to provide specifically 
 " for old age;" and Mr. Stead, in the case of the Foresters, 
 to " the usual indifference of youth to the necessities of 
 " old age." 
 
 III. Beyond Reach of the Very Poor. 
 
 36. But if the contribution for the pension benefit is to 
 be a compulsory condition of membership of a society, 
 the difficulty is not in reality avoided. The payment 
 necessary to insure for the pension cannot be reduced if 
 the society's financial position is to continue a sound one ; 
 it is merely added to the amount of the contributions 
 demanded for the ordinary benefits. The members have, 
 of course, to pay for their pension just the same, and it 
 is this increased payment which is beyond the means of 
 some considerable portion of the working-classes, a point 
 which has been dealt with. In the case of the Odd- 
 fellows the inclusive contribution for the sick and pension 
 benefits is, at the age of 18, 2s. iid. on the unreturnable, 
 and 2s. 6d. on the returnable scale, instead of is. 2d., or 
 slightly less to slightly more than double the ordinary
 
 62 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 contribution now demanded, and this without any pro- 
 vision for returning payments in the event of lapses. 
 The double benefit has been found possible in a few 
 patronized societies such as the Dunmow Society. But 
 even in the case of the Dunmow Society, it appears that 
 more than half its members seceded because of the high 
 rate of contribution entailed, and the consequent com- 
 petition of other societies offering larger immediate sick- 
 pay though no distant old age benefit. The dual system 
 has also been tried in two or three of the lodges of the 
 Manchester Unity, but it is clear that unless the double 
 benefit is made compulsory by law, the more poor, at 
 any rate, will avail themselves of such existing societies 
 which continue to provide only for the ordinary risks at 
 the lower rate of contribution, or of new societies which 
 would spring up to satisfy the demand. Such a result 
 cannot be contemplated with satisfaction. 
 
 To insist by law on the dual benefit would, however, be 
 productive of a still greater evil. The tendency of almost 
 every corporate body as it becomes firmly established, 
 and attains a stronger financial position, is to grow more 
 select. It may be good policy on the part of some of 
 the older societies to insist on the double benefit, and to 
 cater chiefly for the wants of the more skilled artisans 
 and better paid labourers ; but that is no reason why 
 other societies should be restricted from carrying on their 
 business on cheaper lines, so long as the contributions 
 they require are not inadequate to support the benefits 
 they promise. The alteration in the law would not 
 secure old age provision for persons already enrolled in
 
 Position of Benefit Societies 63 
 
 friendly societies ; men now middle-aged could not be 
 called upon to pay the high contributions necessary in 
 their case to insure for a pension at 65. It would no 
 doubt result in a material increase in the number of 
 young men who would pay for the pension benefit ; a 
 good proportion at any rate among the less badly off of 
 the working- classes would prefer to meet the increased 
 contribution than to go without the insurance against the 
 more certain and immediate risks of death and sickness 
 which they rightly value. But this addition to the 
 number of persons insured against old age would come 
 for the greater part from the ranks of the better paid 
 section of wage-earners, and from the small shop-keeping 
 and trading classes ; while, on the other hand, the higher 
 contribution would be a deterrent, or at the least a 
 discouragement, to the poorer classes of workmen from 
 insuring themselves against the more imperative risk of 
 sickness, and would check the development of friendly 
 societies in the work which experience has proved them 
 to be especially capable of undertaking. Such a result 
 would react disastrously upon the saving habits and 
 independence of the poorer classes. 
 
 IV. Juvenile Insurance no Solution. 
 
 37. It is suggested that the insurance for a pension 
 should be commenced in a friendly society at a vei y 
 early age indeed, so that the annual payment may be 
 small. For this purpose the Friendly Societies Act of 
 1875 would have to be altered, to permit of the fusion of 
 juvenile and adult societies, and enable members to be
 
 64 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 enrolled at any age ; and it should not be overlooked 
 that the Select Committee which inquired into the work- 
 ing of the Act in 1889 expressed strong objection to the 
 unrestricted insurance of children, though this objection 
 was mainly directed to a payment of any kind on death. 
 But a practical reason against this suggestion having any 
 claim to sufficiency or finality is that there is no clear 
 probability of parents being inclined to avail themselves 
 of such an amendment of the law on behalf of their 
 children. If young persons neglect facilities for them- 
 selves to make provision for old age, it is not likely that 
 parents will make use of them for their children. It is 
 not pretended the demand for such facilities is an urgent 
 one : it is hoped that it can be manufactured. A poor 
 man with a large family, who already does not find it 
 easy to pay his own contribution to a benefit society, 
 cannot be expected to find the payments required to 
 secure old age pensions for all his children on the re- 
 turnable scale. Taking into account the risk of the 
 insurance lapsing through failure of contributions, and 
 the risk of death, the wisdom of the investment would be 
 doubtful in any case, and on the non-returnable scale it 
 would be almost improvident. And even should a fair 
 number of parents avail themselves of the facilities so 
 offered, it is not just that the claims of a deserving man 
 should be prejudiced because his father may have been 
 too poor, too thoughtless, or disinclined to insure him in 
 his childhood against the contingencies of age. It is 
 impossible to regard a slight amendment of the law, 
 which cannot operate in tangible benefit to any individual
 
 Position of Benefit Societies 65 
 
 for some 50 or 55 years to come, and will then be of 
 benefit only to a fraction of the deserving aged members 
 of the working-classes, as an attempt to meet in any 
 degree the demand for some system of pensions as a 
 substitute for relief under the Poor-Law, and a main- 
 tenance provision for the worthy poor in old age. 
 
 V. Superannuation by Continuous Sick-Pay Injurious. 
 
 38. But while unable to induce their members to make 
 the necessary payments for provision in old age, the 
 friendly societies are in a large measure Riving them that 
 provision without receiving the covering contributions, 
 and are impairing their financial stability by their efforts 
 to keep their old members off the rates. Not the least 
 admirable feature in a national pension scheme is the 
 opportunity it affords to benefit societies to attain a 
 higher degree of financial stability than they can now 
 boast, by putting an end to the faulty system of accord- 
 ing superannuation allowances in the guise of sick-pay. 
 The Manchester Unity of Oddfellows have been advised 
 by their actuary that it is financially unsafe to continue 
 sick benefits to members who have passed the age of 65. 
 These pensions in the form of permanent relief during 
 illness to old persons whose illness is but the debility 
 which accompanies length of days seriously endanger 
 the standing of many societies. 
 
 No provision is made in the sick benefit subscription 
 for any old age pension in most societies, and yet the 
 benefit is being granted in the shape of reduced sick-pay. 
 
 5
 
 66 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 The Registrar-General, in his annual report for 1893, 
 says : " The great fault of the friendly society system is 
 " an attempt to provide old age pensions by means of 
 " a subterfuge. The established object of friendly 
 " societies is to provide for such sickness as happens to 
 " a man when he is unable to work, and it is not the 
 " business of a sick society to provide for old age." 
 
 This evil is so manifest that it is recommended that the 
 law should be altered so as to forbid the payment of sick 
 benefits to a member after his reaching the age of 65. 
 But unless this alteration of the law is accompanied by 
 the provision of a pension, it will operate with great hard- 
 ship on some of the most deserving old members, and 
 will tend to increase old age pauperism. 
 
 In conjunction with the institution of an adequate 
 system of pensions such an amendment of the law would 
 be of benefit to the best societies, and should be an 
 integral part of any national pension scheme. The 
 existence of this unsound form of superannuation allow- 
 ance is, however, only another illustration of the strength 
 of the sentiment against deserving old people being 
 forced to have recourse to the Poor-Law, and cannot be 
 remedied except by making some other and equally 
 acceptable provision for their old age. 
 
 VI. Self-management of Societies not to be 
 
 INTERFERED WITH BY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 39. The objection entertained to a scheme of State 
 pensions by many of the leading members of friendly
 
 Position of Benefit Societies 67 
 
 societies originates, as I understand it, mainly from the 
 fear of two consequences following from such a scheme : 
 that it might result in men neglecting the insurance pro- 
 vided by friendly societies in favour of insurance against 
 old age, and in some measure of State control or inter- 
 ference with the self-management of the societies. If 
 these results are obviated, the virtue of the objection will 
 be removed. Mr. Watson says : " Members of friendly 
 " societies are exceedingly jealous of outward interfer- 
 " ence, either by the Government or any other authority, 
 " but they are amenable to reasonable persuasion and 
 " advice ; and it is possible that some might be found 
 " who would be encouraged by a liberal subvention, if 
 " such a method of help could be tendered and received 
 " without infecting the recipient with the pauper taint." 
 Mr. Hardy, the actuary of the Hearts of Oak Society, is 
 in favour of a pension scheme which is not on a con- 
 tributory basis ; and the dislike to State pensions is 
 probably stronger among the officials than the rank and 
 file of friendly society members. There seems to be no 
 feeling against State pensions among the majority of 
 trades unions, and the resolutions passed at friendly 
 society gatherings have not always been adverse to their 
 institution. 
 
 The fear that a pension system will compete with sick 
 insurance cannot apply to a system of pensions which is 
 not based on contributions, and the gratuitous endow- 
 ment of members of friendly and their kindred societies in 
 
 5—2
 
 68 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 old age must operate, if at all, in the direction of increas- 
 ing the membership of these societies. 
 
 The dislike of the societies to outside interference has a 
 serious bearing on the acceptability of the proposals of 
 the informal Parliamentary Committee, as given in evi- 
 dence by Mr. Chamberlain. The third alternative plan 
 contained in their proposals, involving the co-operation 
 of friendly societies, is the plan from which Mr. Cham- 
 berlain seemed to anticipate the best results. The 
 individual desiring the State-aided pension has to insure 
 in a society for a pension of £6 ios. a year, and make a 
 deposit in the Post Office, and when he arrives at the 
 pension age the State would double the society pension. 
 It seems that the person so insuring at the invitation of 
 the Government would have a right to expect that the 
 Government, having required him to make a deposit to a 
 Government department, on accepting that deposit, has 
 entered into a contract with him that when, and if he 
 reaches 65 years of age, the pension to secure which it 
 was made will be paid to him. It would be difficult to 
 persuade him that he had no State guarantee for his 
 annuity, for the full relief for which he had subscribed. 
 " He would practically view the State as the predomi- 
 " nant partner in the insurance, and look to the State for 
 " its complete fulfilment." 
 
 If the Government arouses such expectations, and 
 accepts such responsibility, it is manifest that it cannot 
 run the risk of allowing the individual to insure for his 
 pension in some practically insolvent society. The State
 
 Position of Benefit Societies 69 
 
 contribution might then be indefinitely increased through 
 the failure of insuring societies, and would be impossible 
 to estimate in advance. Mr. Chamberlain himself seems 
 to think that it might be necessary to separate the society 
 superannuation from its ordinary funds, and to exercise 
 some State control over the former. " We feel our- 
 " selves," report the Commissioners, " that, if an old age 
 " pension, to be paid wholly or partly by the State, were 
 " in any way contingent upon a sum provided in a 
 " friendly society, the State would be wanting in its duty 
 " if it did not see that the contributions for such an object 
 " paid to the society were actually sufficient and properly 
 " invested." 
 
 Immediately upon the State taking such action, the 
 objection to any State control or interference is realized, 
 and the complete independence and self-management of 
 the societies destroyed. It is the possibility of this out- 
 side interference, even though limited, which the friendly 
 societies resent, and which they fear will tend to go 
 beyond the limits originally put to it. 
 
 It will involve also a considerable increase in the cost 
 of administration ; and, in the event of the failure of an 
 insuring society, will, I imagine, throw the burden of 
 collecting the pension contributions of members in a 
 society which has thus ceased to exist upon the Post 
 Office. 
 
 It is the deposit paid to the Government, and the fact 
 that the Government requires the depositor to contribute 
 to some society so as to become entitled to a pension,
 
 jo Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 from which the liability on the part of the Government 
 to see the depositor obtains what he pays for will be 
 inferred. But if no deposit and no payment is required, 
 if the pension is in the nature of a free gift and endow- 
 ment, such liability does not exist. Under the scheme I 
 have indicated, the State is not required to take any 
 cognizance or give any guarantee as to the soundness, or 
 want of soundness, of a society. The contributions which 
 a man pays are to cover the ordinary risks which the 
 society accepts, and no more. However grievously the 
 failure of his society may press upon the individual, he 
 has not paid for a pension, and if he does not receive it, 
 through lack of qualification, he cannot complain of any 
 breach of faith on the part of the State. His contract 
 was with the society, and to no degree with the State. 
 The State merely offers a free gift of a pension to those 
 who can show that for 40 or 45 years they have not come 
 upon the parish for relief, and have throughout that 
 period been insured against sickness and funeral expenses. 
 It is not proposed that the Government should in any 
 degree guarantee the financial stability of a society ; the 
 societies would be exempt as heretofore from any inter- 
 ference whatever from outside in regard to the complete 
 independence of management to which they rightly attach 
 great value. 
 
 VII. Efficient Registration of Societies. 
 
 40. But, while avoiding any steps which would entail 
 interference with the self-management of the friendly
 
 Position of Benefit Societies yi 
 
 societies or amount to a State guarantee of their stability, 
 it seems to me unwise and impolitic that the Government 
 should continue to register societies without ascertaining 
 that it is probable that they will remain financially 
 capable of fulfilling their obligations, and that the con- 
 tributions they require from their members are reason- 
 ably sufficient to support the benefits they promise. The 
 Commissioners state that " there can, unhappily, be 
 " no doubt that unsound and badly-managed friendly 
 " societies, although less numerous than formerly, often 
 " exist. The evil done by such societies is incalculable, 
 " and appears not only in the hardship resulting to the 
 "individual members, who are deprived of the benefits 
 " to secure which many may have devoted the savings of 
 " a lifetime, but in the general discouragement to thrift 
 " induced by each failure." Parliament, therefore, would 
 be well advised if it decided to render the test of regis- 
 tration somewhat more stringent and effectual, simul- 
 taneously with the passage of legislation creating a 
 system of pensions. 
 
 The Select Committee on National Provident Insur- 
 ance made the following report in 1887 on this subject : 
 " The present system of registration of friendly societies 
 " cannot be considered satisfactory. Societies are allowed 
 " to register without any requirement on the part of the 
 " registrar that their scales of contribution are adequate 
 " for the benefits promised. Your Committee would 
 " suggest that ... a minimum contribution for a given 
 "benefit should be fixed when the constitution of the
 
 72 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 " society will admit of this, and no society in future 
 " should be registered with less than that minimum, and 
 " that it be provided by the rules that the contribution 
 " be raised, or the benefit reduced after valuation, if 
 " necessary, on pain of suspension of registry. . . . 
 " Were this plan carried out, and greater powers given 
 " to the office of the registrar of friendly societies than it 
 " at present possesses in connection with the registration 
 " of societies' rules, and with a view to the securing an 
 " efficient audit, the proper investment of funds, and the 
 " protection of benefit funds from any inroads upon them 
 " for management expenses, it is believed that registra- 
 " tion would be of far greater value to the members of 
 " these societies than under the present arrangements. 
 " It is desirable also that the facilities for the prosecution 
 " by a public authority of societies or officials, especially 
 " when fraudulent practices have taken pla'ce, should be 
 " enlarged." 
 
 The incomplete nature of present registration require- 
 ments are further commented upon in the report of the 
 Select Committee of 1889 upon the Friendly Societies 
 Act, 1875. Canon Blackley holds that " the law should 
 " make it impossible for any new society to be established 
 " without good actuarial certification as to the reasonable- 
 " ness of the tables which they offer" ; and Mr. Fatkin 
 advocated the registrars being empowered to have the 
 books and documents of societies inspected from time to 
 time. The Manchester Unity of Oddfellows, at a general 
 meeting, passed a resolution in favour of some legislation
 
 Position of Benefit Societies y^ 
 
 " to prevent societies enrolling members by promising 
 " larger benefits than the contributions can meet." 
 While the larger societies appear to make every effort to 
 satisfy the criticisms which the registrar may advance, 
 some of the smaller bodies seem entirely to ignore his 
 advice. 
 
 Steps should be taken to carry out these reforms so far 
 as practicable, in the direction of enabling the registrar 
 to refuse to register societies which are not substantially 
 sound, and to suspend the registration of societies which, 
 after inquiry, he discovers to have become unable to 
 fulfil their obligations, and are not prepared to remedy 
 their position ; and, in the event of a national pension 
 system being instituted, superannuation allowances in 
 the form of continuous sick-pay to old members above 
 the pension age should be made illegal. 
 
 It is inexpedient to insist on the compulsory registra- 
 tion of all benefit societies ; but the enactment of a 
 pension scheme of the character I have advanced would 
 operate as a strong additional inducement to working- 
 men to become members of a registered in preference 
 to an unregistered society, and consequently for unregis- 
 tered societies to bring themselves up to the registration 
 level. With the satisfactory tendency now existing for 
 soundly-conducted to replace ill-managed societies, and 
 with a more effectual registration test, it may be fairly 
 anticipated that members of friendly societies would 
 enjoy reasonable certainty as to the security of benefits 
 for which they insure.
 
 74 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 VIII. Trades Union and Employers' Societies. 
 
 41. The permanent and certain character of the 
 society's sick and funeral benefits are the features to 
 be considered in deciding whether the members of a 
 society are to be entitled to pensions. In the case of a 
 trades union society which proposes to come under the 
 pension scheme, it would be necessary to insist upon 
 the sick funds being distinct from its general funds, so 
 that they could not be drawn upon to meet some 
 industrial emergency. The union, however, would be 
 compensated for having to conform to this requirement 
 by the greater security given to its members, by the 
 inducement to membership afforded by the prospect of 
 an assured pension, and by the relief to its superannua- 
 tion payments. Superannuation allowances have become 
 a heavy drain on the resources of many unions, and in 
 several instances they have found it necessary to substitute 
 the payment of sums down for such allowances. 
 
 Sick insurance funds in connection with industrial 
 undertakings, and contributed to by employers, are 
 open to the objections that, in some instances, the 
 private undertakings to which they are allied are not 
 themselves of assured permanence ; that they are liable 
 to be dissolved at the will of the employer ; that 
 employes, if dismissed upon reduction of staff, or for 
 inefficiency or misconduct, or upon leaving the employ- 
 ment, cease to be entitled to avail themselves of the 
 benefits of the fund, and as a general rule merely have 
 the contributions they have made returned to them.
 
 Position of Benefit Societies 75 
 
 It would be necessary, before the registrar certified 
 that a society of this nature was entitled to come under 
 the pension scheme, that he should demand such altera- 
 tion of rules as would secure that the society was not 
 liable to be dissolved on the mere initiative of the 
 employer, and that men who were members of the 
 society, upon leaving the employment from whatever 
 cause, except upon being convicted of a crime, should 
 be still entitled to contribute for, and to receive, the 
 sick benefits provided for by the society, or have the 
 same benefits secured to them in another fully registered 
 society. 
 
 IX. Dissolution of Societies. 
 
 42. I think it possible to meet, to a great extent, the 
 difficulty and hardship to individuals arising from the 
 failure of a registered society providing the required 
 benefits, and the case of a man who desires to exchange 
 his own for another society, whether from choice or in 
 consequence of a change of employment, by a general 
 provision covering such cases. The qualification entitling 
 to the State endowment is that the individual should 
 have insured himself against sickness and funeral ex- 
 penses from 25 years of age up to the pension age. If 
 the society in which he has insured himself breaks up, 
 it is unjust that he should forfeit his claim to a pension 
 if he is willing to preserve that claim by joining another 
 society, and paying the higher contributions which will 
 be demanded to cover an insurance commenced at a later 
 age.
 
 yd Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 It would be to impose but a small amount of labour 
 on the secretaries of the registered societies qualified to 
 come under the pension scheme, or upon their district 
 or lodge secretaries, if they were required to send in an 
 annual list to the registrar's office of the names — giving 
 also the age, employment, then residence, and date of 
 application for membership — of the new members they 
 had enrolled in the course of the year, and of those 
 ceasing to be members through death or secession, 
 noting those new members who had been transferred 
 to their district from another lodge of the same society, 
 or had joined from another society. Nor would the 
 arrangement and preservation of such lists at the 
 registrar's office entail any considerable yearly outlay. 
 To compile, on the initiation of the pension scheme, a 
 complete list of the existing members would, no doubt, 
 be a laborious and expensive business, the cost of which 
 would have to be borne by the State, and conducted 
 under the direction of the registrar's department ; but 
 this expense would not be repeated. 
 
 Such a complete record of membership, available for 
 reference in the registrar's office, would supply a safe- 
 guard against imposition and be of use in the settlement 
 of a doubtful claim. In applying a solution to the diffi- 
 culty raised in this paragraph, it would be invaluable. 
 Upon an individual over 25 years of age being proposed 
 for membership of a registered society, on account of 
 failure of his own society, or his desire to exchange it 
 for another, or upon his leaving employment which had 
 a benefit fund in connection with it, the secretary of the
 
 Position of Benefit Societies jj 
 
 society or lodge of the society to which the proposal for 
 membership was made would notify the application to 
 the registrar, who would thus be able to verify the claim 
 of the applicant that he had been continuously insured 
 since the age of 25 years. 
 
 In the case of the failure of a society, its members 
 would be allowed a reasonable time of grace — three 
 months or so' — in which to join, if they so desired, 
 another society. 
 
 X. Membership prevented by Ill-Health. 
 43. The case of persons unfitted by ill -health for 
 membership of a friendly society may deserve excep- 
 tional treatment. Friendly societies usually require 
 candidates for membership to pass a medical examina- 
 tion before admission, and some societies exclude 
 members of unhealthy trades. Various ways of over- 
 coming this difficulty might be suggested. It has been 
 proposed to establish a State-aided sick-club, which 
 persons either medically unsound or engaged in un- 
 healthy trades can enter at the ordinary rates ; but the 
 objections to such a scheme are great. Some provision 
 might be made that a man on being unable on account 
 of health to obtain admission into a friendly society, 
 upon notifying his disability, and upon a certificate from 
 a competent medical authority as to his unfitness, should 
 not be refused an annuity if he lived to the age when it 
 becomes payable, even although he had been unable to 
 provide against sick and funeral expenses, and had 
 occasionally received medical relief from the parish.
 
 XII. 
 
 THE PENSION AGE. 
 
 44. To fix the age at which a man is to begin to enjoy 
 his weekly allowance at 60 instead of 65 years, the 
 pension age approved by Mr. Charles Booth and Mr. 
 Chamberlain, and most usually suggested, will, it has 
 been seen, almost double the annual cost of the endow- 
 ment. It is, however, essential to the efficacy of the 
 proposal that the interval between incapacity for work 
 and the pension becoming due should be rendered as 
 brief as possible. With the expectation of this State 
 allowance, an individual would doubtless exert himself 
 to the utmost to bridge over, without parish relief, the 
 period intervening between his ceasing to earn a regular 
 wage and his ability to claim the annuity. He would 
 be aided in these efforts by his relations, by charity, by 
 his friendly society. But while we may fairly hope that 
 his lodge of the society would aid a member to surmount 
 any obstacle which may threaten to deprive him of his 
 title to State endowment, it is well to avoid exposing 
 societies or their district lodges to the strong tempta-
 
 The Pension Age 79 
 
 tion of relieving members incapacitated through age, to 
 the detriment of the general interests of their body, by 
 making the pension age approximate to the period in a 
 man's life when inability to earn a sufficient wage com- 
 mences. 
 
 The tendency of modern industry is to favour the 
 young. Its methods demand a higher rate of speed 
 than formerly as well as of excellence, and therefore a 
 more rapid expenditure of energy ; the reserve of vital 
 force in the worker is more quickly used up. It is 
 increasingly difficult for the poor to obtain employment 
 in old age ; a man over 50 years old who loses a job 
 through illness will find it hard to replace it with 
 another. Miners, as a rule, are incapacitated for work 
 at the age of 60. In the iron and steel trades artisans 
 earn their best wages from the ages of 25 to 45 ; at 55 
 their earning power is diminished by one -third to a 
 half; after 60 it is estimated that 10 per cent, are living 
 on their savings, 50 per cent, on their relations, and 
 40 per cent, on the parish. A puddler in Staffordshire 
 of 55 years is not often able to follow his calling ; a 
 dockside labourer of 50 is fortunate if he gets perma- 
 nent employment except when trade is brisk ; and in 
 the case of the hands engaged in the glass bottle trade 
 in Lancashire, the rules of their union provide for super- 
 annuation pay at the early age of 40. A fair indication 
 of the time in life when the powers of working-men 
 begin to fail to meet the requirements of the more active 
 branches of employment is supplied by the age adopted
 
 80 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 by trades union societies to commence their superannua- 
 tion allowances. The average superannuation age among 
 these societies is fixed at 55. Sixty years, I believe, is 
 generally accepted by Boards of Guardians as the 
 dividing line between able-bodied and aged pauperism. 
 While it would fairly meet the necessities of the case to 
 settle the pension age at 60, I am of opinion that to fix 
 it higher would be deleterious to the effectiveness and 
 sufficiency of the reform, and would result either in 
 perpetuating the undue strain upon the resources of 
 friendly societies, or in compelling many deserving 
 people, having exhausted their savings, to appeal to 
 the Poor- Law authorities, and thus forfeit their right to 
 a pension.
 
 XIII. 
 AMOUNT OF PENSION. 
 
 I. Five Shillings a Week. 
 
 45. As to the sufficiency in amount of the allowance, 
 I have accepted 5s. a week as the sum contemplated in 
 both Mr. Chamberlain's and Mr. Charles Booth's pro- 
 posals. It is the average cost to the parish of outdoor 
 relief to an individual. No doubt the objection may 
 fairly be raised that ^"13 a year does not represent even 
 the sum necessary for bare livelihood. The reform, how- 
 ever, is admittedly in the nature of an experiment. To 
 fix the State endowment at 7s. a week would, to my 
 mind, be decidedly preferable. But to swell the initial 
 cost, already heavy, of the scheme is to minimize the 
 chance of a favourable reception. If experience establishes 
 the economic advantages of the change, and that the 
 financial relief anticipated from it is substantiated, the 
 expediency of approximating the amount of the pensions 
 to the bare cost of living may become apparent. 
 
 There is, besides, a general agreement that an annuity 
 of £13 will give a man a measure of independence in old 
 
 6
 
 82 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 age. It will render him a not expensive, and often help- 
 ful, guest in the house of a relation or a friend. It will 
 supplement any savings he has been able to put by. 
 The prospect of this certain endowment will encourage 
 an individual while at work to lay by such additional 
 sums as, in conjunction with the State assistance, will 
 enable him to spend his last years in decent comfort, 
 and relieve him of the constant apprehension, too often 
 justified at present, that any little capital he may have 
 been able to collect, a few months of want of employ- 
 ment will suffice to dissipate, and will only avail to defer 
 for a year or two the inevitable drift into pauperism. 
 The certainty of enjoying the results of thrift makes 
 thrift attractive ; but, as yet, the improbability of being 
 able to put by sufficient against old age is a discourage- 
 ment to any thrift at all. It may well seem a hopeless 
 job to many a working-man to save enough during his 
 manhood to provide for independent livelihood from 60 
 years to death, yet, to qualify for out-relief, he must 
 prove, at least technically, entire lack of means of 
 sustenance. Under present conditions, to save a little, 
 and to use that little carefully, is to forfeit any claim for 
 State assistance. 
 
 A curious illustration of the partial working of our 
 present system of relief was elicited by Mr. Chamberlain 
 from a witness who gave evidence before the Royal Com- 
 mission on the Aged Poor. In the parish for which he 
 was a guardian the board grants out-relief of 4s. to a 
 person possessed of savings equal to 3s. a week ; but if
 
 Amount of Pension 83 
 
 an industrious applicant has put by a sum producing 5s. 
 weekly, the Board of Guardians limit their allowance to 
 2s. 6d. The more thrifty person is put on an exact level 
 with the less thrifty, and receives less generous treat- 
 ment ; while the man who has saved nothing is offered 
 by the board only the workhouse, and he immediately 
 proceeds to cost the parish about twice as much a year 
 as his more deserving fellows. 
 
 I have already quoted from the evidence of Mr. Pitkin, 
 a sober and industrious agricultural labourer, who has 
 hitherto, by hard work and rigid thrift, maintained in- 
 dependence. But, although -he has made savings, he 
 fears they are not sufficient to carry him through to the 
 end. " I shall keep on as long as I can : I want to be 
 " independent as long as I can ;" but he expects that the 
 loadstone of pauperism will draw him to the workhouse 
 before he dies ; and that that State aid which is denied 
 to him so long as he is manfully endeavouring to battle 
 with poverty will be obtainable when he has utterly 
 succumbed to it. His children, he is certain, could not 
 afford to keep him ; they find it hard enough to maintain 
 their own families. Five shillings a week, however, 
 would enable him, and probably most old people, to keep 
 a roof above them. It would enable their children, who 
 — with rent to meet, young ones to bring up and do their 
 duty by, and club payments to make — have no margin 
 left to them out of which to support their aged parents, 
 gladly to receive their father or mother as honoured 
 guests, ready to contribute a small sum to household 
 
 6—2
 
 84 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 expenses, and assist in a few light household duties. The 
 relations between parent and child will be rendered 
 healthier and happier than is now possible. 
 
 II. Supplemented by Endowed Charity. 
 
 46. At the same time, there will probably be instances 
 of the pensioner being unable to maintain his indepen- 
 dence on 5s. a week ; instances of old people whose savings 
 have been exhausted, and without relations or friends 
 able to receive them as paying guests ; and it will be 
 conceded that it would be advantageous to increase the 
 amount of the pension in especially deserving or necessi- 
 tous cases, so long as no further charge upon taxation or 
 the rates is involved by so doing. 
 
 If the views of Sir H. Longley and the Commissioners 
 were carried out in the direction of a further reform in 
 the administration of endowed charities, there would be 
 a large sum annually available in several localities, which 
 might be placed at the disposal of Boards of Guardians 
 for building or maintaining almshouses for old pensioners 
 to live in, or for supplementing their pensions. 
 
 The amount of endowed charities applicable to alms- 
 houses and pensions is considerably over ^550,000 a 
 year, and to doles and general uses of the poor about 
 ^365,000 a year. " The evidence," says the Commis- 
 sioners, " leaves no doubt that the dole charities should, 
 " as far as possible, be converted to other purposes, 
 " especially to pensions." They indicate the legislation 
 necessary to attain this object. While not suggesting
 
 Amount of Pension 85 
 
 that these charities should be alienated from the districts 
 to which they properly belong, it would be of great 
 advantage that such legislation should accompany the 
 enactment of a scheme of pensions, and the Guardians, in 
 co-operation with the trustees of the endowed charities, 
 be directed to use the sums available for their union in 
 the maintenance of almshouses and supplementation of 
 pensions, somewhat on the lines of the Fulham and 
 Hammersmith scheme, and to receive charitable gifts or 
 bequests for the same uses.
 
 XIV. 
 OLD AGE PENSIONS AS AFFECTING WAGES. 
 
 I. Summary of Advantages of Scheme. 
 
 47. I have endeavoured to show that old age pensions 
 conferred by the State on aged members of substantial 
 benefit societies will satisfy the several conditions I 
 mentioned in paragraph 20 as being essential to any 
 satisfactory solution of the problem — that such a system 
 will be an incentive to thrift, and encourage existing 
 methods of thrift ; will ensure that provision is made 
 against illness during the working years of a man's life ; 
 will be of some immediate benefit ; and will be within 
 the reach of the bulk of the poorer classes. The ques- 
 tion of simplicity in administration remains to be con- 
 sidered ; but before suggesting the lines upon which the 
 scheme could be administered, there are two points of 
 importance which require consideration — its influence 
 upon the remuneration of labour, and its application to 
 women.
 
 Old Age Pensions as Affecting Wages 87 
 
 II. Pensioners not to be in Regular Employment. 
 
 48. That legislation creating old age pensions will 
 indirectly affect the rate of wages, and disturb the natural 
 play of forces which settle the remuneration of labour, is 
 a possible danger. There was abundant evidence before 
 the Poor-Law Commission of 1834 that the indiscrimi- 
 nate distribution then prevailing of outdoor relief had a 
 serious tendency to force down wages, and to keep the 
 remuneration of labour at a low level. This system of 
 relief, said one witness — an agricultural labourer — in his 
 evidence before the 1834 Commission, " is the very worst 
 " thing that ever happened for the labourers of this 
 " country ; that is the way our wages are kept down. A 
 " farmer wants to get some work done ; he proposes 
 " starvation wages to the labourer. If the labourer 
 " refuses them, he says, ' Very well ; I do not want you ;' 
 " and sends to the overseer, and gets a man to whom he 
 " pays what he likes, and who gets the rest from the 
 " parish." " People may say what they like," declared 
 another working-man witness, " but it is this parish 
 " relief that has completely ruined the labourer." The 
 inquiries of that Commission revealed a pitiable story of 
 the worthy ruined for the sake of the worthless ; of 
 industrious men left out in the cold, while their thriftless 
 fellows, with relief-money in their pockets, accepted a 
 wage wholly insufficient to keep a labourer and his family 
 in respectable independence. 
 
 It is to avoid the possibility of a repetition, in however
 
 88 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 modified and limited a form, of the evil consequences of 
 such mischievous laxity of administration, that I have 
 suggested that the State allowance should not be payable 
 to persons in regular employment. I confess, however, 
 it seems to me extremely doubtful whether any such 
 provision is necessary as a protection against harmful 
 economic results, although, on other grounds, it may 
 find favour ; and it may be argued that the pensions are 
 intended for people not merely old in number of years, 
 but experiencing the feebleness of age. The radical sin 
 of the unreformed Poor-Law was the dispensing of in- 
 discriminate relief, not only to those incapacitated from 
 work by illness or age, but also to the able-bodied. No 
 return to such methods is suggested ; rather, the tendency 
 of the alteration proposed would be still further to restrict 
 out-relief, with a view to its early extinction. The change 
 may affect such wages as old persons may now manage 
 to claim, but it will open no new cheap-labour market to 
 the employer. Professor Marshall does not anticipate 
 that pensions for the old would influence in any degree 
 the natural rise or fall in the rate of wages ; and the con- 
 ditions upon which labour and industry are organized are 
 very different to those prevailing 60 years ago. In most 
 commercial undertakings it would not be worth the 
 while of an employer to engage men of inferior capacity, 
 strength, or activity, even at a reduced cost. Good 
 labour is worth a good price ; inferior labour is practically 
 valueless. 
 
 In manufacturing industries, and with unskilled work
 
 Old Age Pensions as Affecting Wages 89 
 
 requiring any high degree of strength, it is the efficient 
 labour which settles the remuneration of labour through- 
 out the trade. Wages are held up by the younger 
 men, and there is no place for the serious competition of 
 the old ; while, in those branches of business in which 
 trades unionism is influential, employers are practically 
 debarred from offering a lower scale of pay for inferior 
 work. 
 
 At the same time, many witnesses before the Com- 
 mission were strongly of opinion that the pensions should 
 only begin with the cessation from regular work, and it is 
 the custom of trades union societies to give superannua- 
 tion allowances only to members incapable of earning the 
 ordinary rate of wages.
 
 XV. 
 
 APPLICATION OF THE SCHEME TO WOMEN. 
 
 49. The immediate action of the scheme I have in- 
 dicated admittedly, in any case, will be incomplete ; but 
 especially so in the inadequate relief it will, at first at any 
 rate, afford to female pauperism, if the insurance against 
 illness is insisted upon in order to entitle a woman to an 
 allowance in old age. 
 
 A fair proportion, no doubt, of the women of the 
 poorer classes would in the course of a few years be 
 brought within the scope of the scheme. Already 
 several temperance societies and the Rational Sick and 
 Burial Association, among similar institutions, have a 
 fair contingent of female members. Mr. Stead declares 
 that the promotion of women's lodges in connection with 
 the Order of Foresters is being actively pressed forward, 
 and the Oddfellows have also decided to admit females 
 as members. It is reasonable to anticipate that the en- 
 actment of a pension scheme, applicable to all members 
 of benefit associations, would tend to expedite this move-
 
 Application of the Scheme to Women 91 
 
 ment, so that the measure might be serviceable to both 
 sexes. 
 
 But it is clear that the case of women presents ex- 
 ceptional difficulties, and owing " to the unequal con- 
 " ditions under which they have often to compete in the 
 " labour market," to their being " less financially re- 
 " sponsible," to their low earnings and intermittent work, 
 and to their home-ties and duties, they are often unable, 
 especially in the case of married women, and certainly 
 less likely than men, to become members of friendly 
 societies or to insure against the risks of sickness and 
 funeral expenses. 
 
 The proportion of aged women who are given outdoor 
 relief is far greater than that of aged men, but to counte- 
 nance the continuance of such relief to any large section 
 of the community in the construction of a pension scheme 
 would militate against the successful attainment of one 
 of the chief objects of such a scheme, the minimizing of 
 lax administration. 
 
 On the other hand, the system of pensions suggested 
 is based on the assumption that insurance in a friendly 
 society is within the reach of the great majority of men 
 of normal capacity and health. If this assumption is 
 not true of women, and especially of married women, 
 many of whom can engage in no wage-earning pursuit, 
 they are clearly placed in a position of disadvantage. 
 
 It has been suggested to me by a lady of great 
 experience in Poor -Law management that a remedy 
 might be found by continuing the pension of a man to
 
 92 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 his widow so long as she remains unmarried. I am 
 unable to estimate with any accuracy what increase of 
 expense this proposal would involve in the cost of the 
 scheme ; but it appears from the Post Office tables that 
 an annuity, to begin at the age of 65, which would cost 
 ^150 if for a man alone, would cost ^"200 if with con- 
 tinuance to the wife should she survive him. The 
 expense, therefore, of the scheme might . be increased 
 by one-third, but it is probable that the majority of old 
 widows of the working-classes now get parish-relief, so 
 any additional cost would have this saving to set off 
 against it. 
 
 I should, therefore, propose that where a man and 
 woman had been married for not less than 10 years, on 
 the death of the man, if he was then in receipt of a 
 pension, that pension should be continued to his widow 
 if she was over 55 years of age, unless and until she 
 married again a person also in receipt of a pension, in 
 which case her pension would lapse. 
 
 This would not prevent single women, and any married 
 women who were able to do so, taking advantage of the 
 pension scheme by joining a friendly society ; but no 
 woman would, of course, be allowed to be in receipt of 
 more than one pension in her own right. 
 
 Provision might be made for women who insured for 
 smaller benefits at a lower rate of contribution than men, 
 receiving a pension less in amount than 5s. a week in 
 proportion to the smaller banefits for which thsy insured 
 
 In the event of a married man dying before reaching
 
 Application of the Scheme to Women 93 
 
 the pension age, but who has been up to his death in 
 continuous membership of a benefit society, the societies 
 might be willing to agree that the widow should be 
 allowed to continue her husband's contributions. Her 
 husband's length of membership would then be placed 
 to her credit, and on reaching the pension age she would 
 become entitled to the State annuity.
 
 XVI. 
 ADMINISTRATION OF THE PENSION SCHEME. 
 
 I. Division of Cost between Imperial and Local 
 Taxation. 
 
 50. The method of the administration of the scheme 
 remains to be considered. It would not be unreasonable 
 for the Government to refuse to bear the whole cost of 
 providing pensions for the aged poor on the ground that 
 such pensions will tend to relieve the local poor rates, 
 and to release allowances which may be made by the 
 employers in a district or by charitable people to old 
 members of the working-classes, and that the locality 
 will be directly benefited by so much of the State en- 
 dowment as is appropriated to its old residents ; and, 
 therefore, to demand that half of the cost of pensions 
 payable to persons residing in the locality shall be paid 
 by the local authority out of local taxation. 
 
 In dealing with the administration of the scheme, I 
 accept the view that the State is to bear only a moiety 
 of the cost. I also think it important that the Govern- 
 ment should be relieved, so far as is possible, of the
 
 Administration of the Pension Scheme 95 
 
 labour and cost of the actual administration, following 
 in this respect the general principles of the Poor-Law, 
 for the administering of which local authorities, repre- 
 sented by Boards of Guardians, are chiefly responsible, 
 being only subjected to general Government control and 
 regulations. 
 
 I propose that the body responsible for the moiety of 
 the cost shall be the council of each county district. 
 
 II. Formalities of Administration. 
 
 51. When a member of a registered benefit society, 
 properly qualified for the purposes of the Pension Act, 
 is within a year or six months of the pension age, the 
 secretary of the society, or the lodge of the society, would 
 notify, on a form and in a manner prescribed, the claim 
 of its member for a pension to the Board of Guardians of 
 the union in which the claimant resided. He would have 
 to certify the number of years the applicant had been a 
 member of the society (or whether he had previously 
 been in another society, and for how many years, or had 
 been transferred from another lodge of the same society) ; 
 his age at joining the society and present age ; the district 
 in which he had chiefly resided during the last 5 years ; 
 his own belief as to the identity of the applicant ; and 
 that he was engaged in no regular employment. This 
 form would be accompanied by a declaration signed by 
 four of his fellow-members of their belief in the identity 
 of the applicant, and that he was not engaged in any 
 regular employment.
 
 g6 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 False statements or information, knowingly given, 
 would expose the culprit to criminal proceedings. 
 
 The applicant would be required, within a fixed time 
 of the claim being sent in, himself to see the relieving- 
 officer or other official selected by the Board of Guardians 
 for this purpose, to make a declaration that he had never 
 received Poor- Law relief, and swear an affidavit on the 
 points mentioned. 
 
 If any doubt was entertained, either by the society's 
 secretary or by the Guardians, on any of these points, 
 the statements could be verified by reference to the 
 Registrar of Friendly Societies, who, under a provision 
 I have suggested, would have in his possession a complete 
 list of the members of registered societies, the dates of 
 their becoming members, and their ages at joining, and 
 showing any transference of membership which has 
 occurred. 
 
 The Guardians, if they had no reason to doubt the 
 accuracy of the information given them, and having fairly 
 satisfied themselves that the applicant had never received 
 parish relief within their union, and made such inquiries 
 as they deemed sufficient upon this condition from the 
 Guardians of any union in which the applicant had 
 previously resided, would forward the claim to the 
 County Council for the county district in which their 
 union was situate. 
 
 If the applicant had not principally resided in their 
 union during the five years previous to his claiming the 
 pension, the Guardians would transmit his claim to the
 
 
 Administration of the Pension Scheme 97 
 
 union in which they were of opinion his residence had 
 chiefly been. 
 
 The County Council would then proceed to pay the 
 pension by quarterly or half-yearly prepaid payments to 
 the friendly society or lodge of the society to which the 
 pensioner belonged ; and the pensioner would receive his 
 pension at the quarterly or monthly meetings of his 
 lodge, or in such manner and instalments as the society 
 might decide conformably to any regulations enacted by 
 Parliament. 
 
 The Government would pay annually to each County 
 Council half of the actual sum the Council had paid away 
 during the year in pensions. 
 
 In the event of a pensioner moving into another county, 
 the secretary of his society or lodge would notify the 
 change of abode to the Guardians of the union to whom 
 the claim had been sent in the first instance, and they 
 would communicate it to their County Council. The 
 Guardians of the union into which the pensioner had 
 moved, upon notification by the secretary of the society, 
 lodge, or branch to which the pensioner had been trans- 
 ferred, or the representative of the society in the county 
 into which he had moved, would communicate with their 
 County Council, which would pay the pension through 
 the society to which the pensioner was attached in the 
 district, and would receive annually a sum equivalent to 
 the amount of the pension from the County Council to 
 which the pension was primarily charged. 
 
 In the event of the pensioner's death, the secretary 
 
 7
 
 g8 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 of the society or its lodge, as the case might be, would 
 communicate the fact to the Guardians, and the County 
 Council would cease forwarding the amount of the 
 pension. 
 
 If the Guardians informed the council of the pensioner 
 having applied for Poor- Law relief, and of his inability 
 to maintain himself without such relief, the pension 
 would be cancelled, but its equivalent paid to the Poor- 
 Law union to which the pensioner was chargeable for 
 maintenance, so long as he was supported by the union. 
 
 Imprisonment, upon conviction, for an offence would 
 also cancel the pension. 
 
 III. Advantages of Method. 
 
 52. I believe that some such method of administration 
 would prove inexpensive, relatively to the considerable 
 magnitude of the undertaking, and eminently so as com- 
 pared with the administrative expense of some other 
 schemes which have been suggested, and will afford 
 ample security against imposition or mistake. 
 
 It would be comparatively inexpensive, because no 
 minute or difficult inquiries have to be undertaken. The 
 necessary information to test the presence of the claimant's 
 qualifications to a pension is within the knowledge of 
 those individuals or bodies who have to assure themselves 
 that the qualifications are existent. The persons who 
 can easiest acquire the information are the persons re- 
 sponsible for its application. The Government exercises 
 a general control, is the arbiter on disputed claims, and
 
 
 Administration of the Pension Scheme gg 
 
 its Registrar of Friendly Societies will be consulted when 
 the validity of a claim is not apparent, so that he may 
 test its validity by the complete record of membership 
 which he is to be supplied with. Perhaps the Govern- 
 ment might deem it advisable to engage a few inspectors 
 to pursue inquiries in any particular instance in which 
 laxity or fraud is suspected. But, beyond these general 
 functions, its sole responsibility is to pay each year to the 
 various County Councils half of the sums they have 
 expended in pensions. 
 
 The functions of the County Councils under the scheme 
 are mainly financial and clerical. They, again, may think 
 fit to employ one or two outside officials to supervise and 
 test the efficiency and accuracy of the work performed by 
 the Boards of Guardians ; but the expense to the Councils 
 in administration will be mainly confined to an increase 
 in their clerical department. 
 
 The main investigations will be conducted by the 
 Boards of Guardians and the officials of the friendly 
 societies ; but the inquiries of either will extend only 
 to matters fairly within their knowledge, or upon which 
 they can obtain information without difficulty. 
 
 At the same time, the tests they can apply to satisfy 
 themselves of the genuine nature of the claim are fairly 
 exact, and will afford substantial security that the qualifi- 
 cations of the claimant, if allowed, are in accordance with 
 the requirements of the scheme. 
 
 The chief points to be verified are the age of the 
 claimant, his identity with the individual entitled to the 
 
 7—2
 
 ioo Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 pension, his not being engaged in regular work at a 
 regular wage, and his not having received Poor-Law 
 relief. 
 
 His age at the date of his becoming a member of the 
 society is on record in the books of the society, and can 
 be verified, if required, by a search through the docu- 
 ments at the registrar's office. His identity is familiar to 
 his fellow-members. In these two respects there is little 
 room for mistake. 
 
 Whether the condition, if insisted upon, that the pen- 
 sioner should not be in regular employment is satisfied, 
 cannot be ascertained with equal certainty. But whether 
 he is continuing in any employment or not is probably 
 within the knowledge of some of his acquaintances in his 
 society. This is a condition enforced successfully by 
 many trades unions in relation to their superannuation 
 funds, and, with a certain latitude as to the amount of 
 earnings, by the Hearts of Oak Society. If the pensioner 
 infringes the condition his pension is forfeited, and he 
 renders himself liable to further proceedings. He runs 
 the risk of being informed against by a fellow-workman, 
 or a man who is desirous of getting his job, or by the 
 officers of a trades union, who would be anxious to see 
 this provision rigorously enforced. The evidence of 
 witnesses before the Royal Commission inclines to the 
 view that no material difficulty would be found in seeing 
 that this rule was generally observed, and the Guardians, 
 through their relieving-officers, would often be able to 
 hear of any instance of its being disregarded.
 
 
 Administration of the Pension Scheme 101 
 
 The report made upon the claimant's qualifications 
 in these three respects would be verified by the regular 
 officials of the Boards of Guardians, who have a suffi- 
 ciently intimate knowledge of the position of most of the 
 poorer residents in their union to be likely to detect any 
 inaccuracy or fraudulent representation. 
 
 No direct contribution towards the provision of 
 pensions is thrown upon the vestry or poor rates ; but 
 to secure proper verification of the claimant's qualifica- 
 tions in the first instance, and to minimize the possibility 
 of subsequent attempts at fraud, it is possible a slight 
 increase of their staff would be found necessary by 
 Boards of Guardians. The further duty of the Guardians 
 is to ascertain whether the claimant has received Poor- 
 Law relief, and this information they are, through their 
 relieving-officers and books, able to discover with suffi- 
 cient accuracy to afford a fair presumption that in the 
 great majority of cases a man whose qualifications for a 
 pension are admitted will not have been the recipient of 
 parish relief.
 
 XVII. 
 
 ALTERNATIVE SCHEME ON SAME GENERAL 
 LINES SUGGESTED. 
 
 53. While anxious to insist upon what I conceive to 
 be the advantages in principle and method of the scheme 
 I have submitted, I am equally desirous of pointing out 
 that, without materially altering its basis, it can be 
 varied and adapted if it be judged that the cost of its 
 application is excessive, or that its proposals form too 
 generous an endowment to benefit societies, and do not 
 sufficiently insist upon self-provision against old age on 
 the part of the pensioners. To meet these objections, it 
 has been suggested to me that the State pension should 
 not commence till the age of either 67 or 68 years, but 
 that a benefit society should agree to continue its sick- 
 pay in the form of a superannuation allowance to a 
 member who has reached the age of 65, upon the con- 
 dition that it is relieved of all responsibility upon his 
 arriving at the age of 67 or 68, and of the State then 
 endowing him with a pension. This proposal is based 
 on the belief that the present contributions required by
 
 
 Alternative Scheme on same General Lines 103 
 
 the large friendly societies are actuarially sufficient to 
 meet the liability of providing for members up to 67 or 
 68 years of age, if their funds are entirely freed from any 
 subsequent obligation. If this is ascertained to be the 
 case, and the suggestion is entertained by the societies, 
 the cost of the scheme will be very considerably reduced 
 (by some two-thirds as compared with the cost of a 
 pension at 60 years of age under the proposals already 
 made), while the advantages of the scheme to the in- 
 dividual will be preserved. 

 
 XVIII. 
 
 SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS OF THE SUBMITTED 
 SCHEME. 
 
 54. In conclusion, I will briefly summarize the pro- 
 posals of the scheme, and the provisions which I suggest 
 should form part of it. 
 
 Amount of Pension. — Thirteen pounds a year, paid 
 monthly or quarterly to the pensioner through his benefit 
 society. 
 
 Half the cost of the pensions to be borne by Imperial 
 taxation, and the remaining half to be a charge on the 
 rates levied by the County Council of the county district 
 in which the pensioner has chiefly resided during the 
 five years preceding the date of the pension becoming 
 payable. 
 
 Boards of Guardians are empowered to supplement 
 the pensions, by the provision of almshouses or an 
 additional allowance, out of any endowed charities 
 within their union. 
 
 No person to receive more than one State pension. 
 
 The pension to be inalienable, and might be protected 
 from all process of debt.
 
 Summary of Provisions of the submitted Scheme 105 
 
 Pension Age. — Sixty or sixty-five years. 
 
 Qualifications entitling to Pension. — Continuous member- 
 ship, since the 25th birthday, of a registered benefit 
 society which provides sick and funeral pay on the 
 basis of members' contributions. 
 
 Ten years' membership to be the qualification for 
 members already enrolled in such societies when the 
 scheme becomes law. 
 
 Special provisions to meet the case of persons now 
 over 25 years of age, and not now enrolled in a society. 
 
 The test of registration of a society to be rendered 
 more stringent and effectual, and fuller and more exact 
 information to be at the command of the registrar. 
 
 Abolition of superannuation allowances in the form of 
 continuous sick-pay to people over the pension age. 
 
 Provisions to secure the permanent and certain char- 
 acter of the sick and funeral benefits in connection with 
 trades union or employers' societies. 
 
 Special provisions to meet the cases of an individual 
 changing his society through choice or the failure of his 
 society, and of persons unfitted by ill-health for member- 
 ship of a benefit society. 
 
 Special Provisions for Women. — Upon death of husband 
 who is a pensioner, pension to be continued to widow if 
 not in receipt of a pension in her own right, unless and 
 until she marries again a person also in receipt of a 
 pension. Also power to the widow to continue her 
 husband's contributions to a society, this entitling her to 
 a pension on attaining the pension age.
 
 106 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 Permanent Disqualifications. — Receipt at any time of 
 Poor- Law relief. Exceptions in cases of relief given in 
 form of labour in a " distressed district " during periods 
 of exceptional distress through want of employment, and 
 of an individual unfitted by ill-health for membership of 
 a benefit society. 
 
 Having undergone imprisonment upon conviction for 
 an offence. 
 
 If a pensioner is unable to maintain himself indepen- 
 dently of the Poor-Law, the pension is cancelled, and 
 is paid to the Guardians of the union to which the 
 pensioner becomes chargeable. 
 
 Partial Disqualifications. — While in employment at 
 regular wage or remuneration (if a provision of this char- 
 acter is deemed advantageous). 
 
 If income assessed to income-tax, so long as it remains 
 at income-tax level. 
 
 For mode of administration, see paragraphs 51 and 52. 
 
 Abolition of outdoor relief to be ultimately provided for, 
 subject to certain exceptions. 
 
 An alternative scheme is suggested in paragraph 53, under 
 which the pension age is fixed at 67 or 68, the benefit 
 societies agreeing to provide a superannuation allowance 
 for members between the age of 65 and the pension age, 
 the other provisions of the scheme, as summarized above, 
 remaining unaltered. .,—
 
 LIST OF THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION 
 CHIEFLY RELIED UPON. 
 
 The paragraphs are taken consecutively, and the chief 
 sources of information relied upon for the statements 
 advanced in each paragraph are given under its number. 
 
 By " Commission " is meant the Royal Commission 
 on the Aged Poor, and the reference is to the number of 
 the paragraph, whether of the Report or Evidence. 
 
 Para- 
 graph. 
 
 2. Commission, Report, 23, 27, 33 ; Evidence, 10,852, 
 
 10,860, 10,909, 12,170, 12,177, 10,879, i7>848. 
 
 3. Commission, Report, 24; Evidence, 5473, 11,701, 
 
 14,269, 17,720; and evidence of Mr. Booth. 
 
 4. Commission, Report, 36, 91, 93, 174, 31 ; Evidence 
 
 of Sir Hugh Owen, Mr. Knollys, Mr. Hedley, 
 and Mr. Davey. 
 
 5. Commission, Report, 50 ; " Old- Age Pensions and 
 
 Pauperism," by C. S. Loch, page 22. 
 
 6. Commission, Report, 47, 48, 50, 53, 54, 56 ; 
 
 Charity Organization Review for March, 1896, 
 page 1. 
 8. Commission, Report, 54, 60, 61, 328 (section 4); 
 Summary of Report, 2, 3, 4.
 
 io8 Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 Para- 
 graph. 
 
 10. Commission, Report, 259, 243 ; Evidence, 8108, 
 
 8111, 8740, 8885, 11,085, 10,463, 11,375. 
 
 11. Commission, Report, 263, 264; Evidence, 14,116, 
 
 14,170, 14,225, 14,327, 14,481. 
 
 12. Commission, Report, 262, 263, 265 ; Evidence, 
 
 8735, 8740 ; " The State, and Pensions in Old 
 Age," by J. A. Spender, page xxv. 
 
 13. Commission, Report, 262, 263, 325, 341; Mr. 
 
 Loch's Memorandum to 18; Evidence, 11,458, 
 
 n,5 I 3> 11,686, 11,887, ".794s i4> Il6 > H> 22 5> 
 14,481 ; Labour Commission, Evidence, Sec- 
 tion C, 23,564, 23,606 ; Select Committee on 
 National Provident Insurance, 1887, Report, 
 page v. 
 
 14. Commission, Report, 324, 325, 329 ; Mr. Loch's 
 
 Memorandum to, 18; Mr. Broadhurst's separate 
 Report, 7; Evidence, 11,458, 1153, 11,887, 
 
 IJ >794> 1 7M°^ J-M 16 , i4>4 81 - 
 
 15. Commission, Report, 326 ; " Pauperism : an Argu- 
 
 ment," by Mr. Booth, Part II., page 63. 
 17. See paragraph 39. 
 19. Commission, Report, 77, 78, 79, 94. 
 
 22. Commission, Report, 53, 296, 298, 300 ; Evidence, 
 
 11,706, 10,929. 
 
 23. See references to paragraph 13 ; Commission, Re- 
 
 port, 235 ; and evidence of Messrs. Manley, 
 Pitkin, Allen, Walker, Disley, Edwards, and 
 of Mr. Booth. 
 
 28. Commission, Report, 174, 175 ; Evidence, 264, 283. 
 
 30. See paragraph 27 ; Address by C. Graham on 
 Old Age Pensions, before Norwich Church 
 Congess of 1895 ! Commission, Evidence, 395, 
 533) 534» 535-
 
 List of the Sources of Information 109 
 
 Para- 
 graph. 
 
 31. See references to paragraph 4; Commission, Re- 
 
 port, 91; Evidence, 12,190; "A Proposed 
 Solution," by the Rev. T. W. Fowle, M.A. 
 (1892), page 18. 
 
 32. Commission, Report, 77, 194, 205, 56 ; Summary 
 
 of Report, 18 ; Evidence, 1096, 10,865, 10,900, 
 10,901, 2066, 2177 ; Labour Commission, Evi- 
 dence, Section C, 27,733. 
 
 33. Commission, Report, 282, 298, 300; Evidence, 
 
 10,929, 11,706, 13,447, i3>553> I 7>7 2 5- 
 
 34. Commission, Report, 218, 219; Evidence, 11,657, 
 
 11,692, 11,791; "The Problem of the Aged 
 Poor," by G. Drage, page 171. 
 
 35. Commission, Report, 219 ; Evidence, 12,453. 
 
 36. Commission, Report, 215, 218, 225 ; Evidence, 
 
 11,390. 
 
 37. Commission, Report, 236, 238, 239, 244 ; Select 
 
 Committee on the Friendly Societies Act of 
 1875, Report in 1889, pages vii, x, xiii. 
 
 38. Commission, Report, 217, 220, 245 ; Summary of, 
 
 20, 21 ; Evidence, 16,677, an ^ of Mr. Brabrook ; 
 "Address, 1895, on Old ^» e Pensions," by 
 C. Graham, page 2. 
 
 39. Sec paragraph 9 ; Commission, Report, 336, 337 ; 
 
 Evidence, 11,436, 11,692, 12,429, 12,438, 12,824, 
 12,861. 
 
 40. Commission, Report, 209, 210, 211, 213, 214; 
 
 Evidence, 11,708, 11,712, 11,881, 17,975 ; Select 
 Committee, National Provident Insurance, 1887, 
 Report, pages viii, ix ; Select Committee on 
 Friendly Societies. Act, Report, page xix. 
 
 41. Commission, Report, 228, 229 ; Evidence, 11,692, 
 
 11,675, Il6 7-
 
 no Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions 
 
 Para- 
 graph. 
 
 43. Commission, Report, 241. 
 
 44. Commission, Report, 31 ; Evidence, 10,869, 10,873, 
 
 14,898, 3819, 17,559, 17,807, 17,878, 17,678, 
 I 7»7 I 5« 17,848, 10,785, 4744, 13,335, 10,336 ; 
 " The State and Pensions in Old Age," by 
 J. A. Spender, pages 25-27, 37, 39. 
 
 45. Commission, Evidence, 10,962, 10,964, 12,218, 
 
 16,615, 2194, 2208, 2167, 14,225, 14,266, 14,270 
 
 H,327, 14,335- 
 
 46. Commission, Report, 180 to 190. 
 
 48. Report of the Commissioners on the Poor-Laws, 
 
 1834, Evidence of Thomas Bayce and Charles 
 James; Commission, Evidence, 10,279, 10,280, 
 10,789, 11,687, 11,827, 17,743, 11, 3 12 - 
 
 49. Commission, Report, 39, 240; Evidence, 1259, 
 
 11,206, 10,863. 
 52. Commission, Report, 262, 263, 259, 284 ; Evidence, 
 10,924, 17,745, 11,827. 
 
 • 85 
 
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