5o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



and the spirit in which it is accepted. In a well-conducted pension 

 system the administrators have in the main to come to a judicial 

 determination as to whether a specific individual has complied with the 

 conditions or not. If he has so complied, the awarding of the pension 

 is very much like the payment of a salary. 



Most persons who have thought concerning this matter feel much 

 more strongly the argument that pensions discourage thrift than they do 

 the objection that they cause a loss of independence. Thrift is a funda- 

 mental human virtue. Hard to build up in races and individuals, it is 

 easy to break down in both. The true course in the training of human 

 individuals and in the training of human communities would seem to 

 be not to set thrift in opposition to the moral results achieved by a pen- 

 sion system, but to realize that the growth of thrift is analogous to the 

 growth of all spiritual and moral faculties. It is just because the habit 

 of thrift is so difficult to acquire and to retain that pensions are not 

 antagonistic to it. The security given by a pension system is really the 

 acquisition of a certain equity which will result in benefit to those who 

 participate in it. Such a consideration, if rightly used, can be made to 

 minister to the idea of thrift, not to break it down. 



In fact, the whole theory that possible destitution in old age is the 

 prime cause of thrift seems to need revision. Hope, not fear, is the 

 great moving power in humanity. To save so that the income will be 

 a decent support seems to many, and these often in highly respectable 

 callings, so hopeless a task that to undertake it unaided appears foolish, 

 but with a living assured in old age there is an incentive to save in order 

 that additional pleasures or greater advantages for others might then be 

 possible. It must, however, be admitted that the contributory type of 

 pension lends itself more directly to the upbuilding of such a spirit than 

 the non-contributory type. From the larger economic as well as from 

 the larger moral standpoint the plan of a contributory pension seems to 

 promise least danger to society and the greatest result. I am inclined 

 to believe from such evidence as the pension systems which now exist 

 can furnish that a justly regulated compulsory contributory pension 

 system, on the whole, promises most both for the individual and for the 

 social organization. 



The economic argument that pensions depress wages is too vague 

 to furnish any sound basis of objection. From the economic point of 

 view the argument has weight, but in the actual administration of busi- 

 ness so many factors influence wages that a pension, even if it exercised 

 its influence on this side, must have a relatively small effect. It may be 

 true that in certain cases the existence of a pension system may be used 

 to persuade a man to enter a given calling and to undertake a given line 

 of work for a smaller recompense on the ground that he is to receive a 

 pension in the future. This argument certainly may apply to teachers 



