Introducing Old Age Pensions?

*THE WORKER*

Brisbane, February 16, 1895.

The Editorial Mill.

Our Motto: “Socialism in our time.”

Old Age Pensions – We are by no means ardent in our admiration of Henry Broadhurst, and are very far from regarding him as a man “of light and leading” in the English Labour movement. He lacks the patient consistency of Thomas Burt, the commanding ability of John Burns, and the fine courage of Keir Hardie. Nevertheless he is a man of practical sagacity, and he certainly mounted considerably in our esteem when we read the cable message to the effect that he had given notice to move a resolution in the English Commons giving every person of the age of 60 the title to a State pension. We are of the opinion that such a measure would be a wise and important step in the direction of the ultimate realisation of the principles of social and economic justice. The State could perform no higher or holier duty than that of protecting the workers, the creators of all wealth, against the misery and degradation of an old age of penury and dependence.

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Mr. Frederic Harrison's indictment of the present industrial system has become historic. He says: “Ninety per cent of the actual producers of wealth have no home that they can call their own beyond the end of the week; have no bit of soil or so much as a room that belongs to them; have nothing of any kind except as much old furniture as would go in a cart; have the precarious chance of weekly wages which barely suffice to keep them in health; are housed for the most part in places that no man thinks fit for his horse; are separated by so narrow a margin from destitution that a month of bad trade, sickness, or unexpected loss, brings them face to face with hunger and pauperism. . . . .

This is the normal state of the average workman in town or country.”

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Now black as the picture is, it might without departure from the truth be much blacker. Hard as is the lot of the young or middle-age worker, it is luxury itself compared with that of the aged. The young workman in the worst of times has hope. The lot of the aged worker is utterly hopeless. When the fifties are passed the average worker deteriorates both in speed and excellence of workmanship, and is remorselessly thrust aside by younger men. This is no hasty generalisation; it has been proved by carefully collated statistics. The wage earning capacity of engineers, carpenters, compositors, dockside labourers and other workers rapidly diminishes after the age of 45 until it reaches the vanishing point. The following diagram, based as it is on statistics, is full of instruction. Although it specially applies to the case of dockside workers, it is typical of what takes place in all trades:

Dockside Labourers.

AGE	20	25	30	35	40	45	50	55	60	65	70
WAGES	__	__	__	__	__	___	___	___	___	___

In England, as Charles Booth has clearly demonstrated, 25 per cent of the total population who live to be over 65 are in one way or another dependent on charity, and are therefore in extreme poverty. What is true of England is substantially true of every nation and colony in the civilised world, Queensland of course included.

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Here the question naturally presents itself Ought a civilised community to contemplate facts like these with equanimity? It cannot be contended seriously by those acquainted with the facts that it is possible for the average worker to make provision by saving for his old age. The saving which must needs imply lack of sufficient food, clothing and education for the family is not really saving, but waste of an extravagant and almost criminal character. Old age is not a crime. It cannot be avoided; it is as inevitable as death. Yet when it comes it means for the majority of men and women either poverty or dependence, or both. Surely this evil could and should be removed. We so-called civilised people shudder when we read of savage tribes remorselessly killing their aged. But surely there is no essential difference between the savagery that kills outright and the civilisation that accomplishes the same result by the refined process of slow starvation.

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The immediate remedy for this evil is a course of State pension. The proposals for some kind of provision for the aged have taken various forms. About one hundred years ago Thomas Paine wrote in favour of granting to persons arriving at the age of 60 a pension of £10 per annum. A system of old-age pension exists in Germany, and another, much superior, in Denmark. In England, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain has long advocated a scheme of State pension for old age. His proposal is that the state should pay a pension of 6s. per week at 65, and make certain provision for widows and children in case of death, for the payment of £5 before 25 and £1 per annum until the 65^th year. Such a scheme is altogether objectionable. It would involve an expensive system of collection for one thing, and for another it would impose a heavy tax on those least able to bear it, many of whom would die long before the pension age. The only scheme worthy of the support of true Democrats is that advocated by Sydney Webb and Mr. Charles Booth, viz., to grant to all persons arriving at a given age universal free pensions without specific contributions. A simple increase in taxation – say an extra tax on income and land – involving no extra expense in collection, would be sufficient to make the needful provision.

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Of course the Dalrymples of Queensland will raise the cry, “Communism!” Well we frankly admit that such a system would be Communistic. But then even the Dalrymples have already connived at Communism to such an alarming extent that it were mere timidity to fear to go further in the same wicked direction. What is our present educational system but Communism? Does not the state wickedly compel John Smith, the bachelor, to pay for the education of the children of Tom Brown, who is the happy father of a round dozen of little Brown's? And if the State may set apart a portion of its revenue in order that children may have ideas, need it hesitate to appropriate a further sum in order that old people may have food? Those who connive at, and even justify, the one form of Communism have no logical right to object to the other.

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It will also be held by many that such a scheme would fatally discourage thrift among working people. To this it is sufficient to reply that it would in a corresponding degree encourage that admirable virtue among the wealthier classes, where its cultivation would have ample scope. Thrift on the part of the worker is an exceedingly doubtful virtue, even were it a possible one. Thrift means buying less; buying less means consuming less; consuming less means producing less. But diminished production means diminished wages and poverty. Yet, according to Fat Man economics, if workers would only go on exercising the virtue of thrift until there was nothing bought and therefore nothing produced, they would be richer and happier by the process. Individual thrift, like individual theft, may help the individual, but general thrift like general robbery, would spell general ruin.

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We are very far from regarding the most admirable system of old age pensions as anything like a final solution of the great problem of human poverty. At most it would be but a meagre instalment of the just demands of the people. None the less it would blot out for ever a terrible wrong, a wrong that does violence to the sense of justice and humanity of civilised human beings, the wrong of compelling the aged worker to starve in the midst of the very wealth his labour has helped to create. That such a measure should be seriously brought forward in the British House of Commons is profoundly significant of the onward march of that mighty movement which has for its ideal and its inspiration the establishment of social and economic justice, and which seeks to make possible for all men, even for its enemies, a higher and holier life than yet has dawned upon the earth.

PROMETHEUS.