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It may be interesting to add that the idea of insurance with the 
Government against sickness received strong support as far 
back as December, 1872, when an influentially signed memorial 
to that effect was laid before the Royal Commission on Friendly 
Societies then sitting. The Commissioners could not recommend 
the adoption of the memoralists’ request. A Select Committee, 
appointed by the House of Commons in 1885, to investigate 
Canon Blackley’s proposals, reported unfavourably with regard 
both to sickness pay and the principle of compulsion being 
applied to insurance. 
Compulsory National Insurance is already, as regards sickness, 
in active operation in Germany. Over 11,000,000 workpeople 
are enrolled, and the subscriptions paid weekly and subsidized 
by the State, amount to about 14 per cent. of the average 
earnings. The Rev. W. Moore Hde explains the method 
adopted: ‘‘ Hach insurer is provided with a card divided into 
47 squares; each week as he makes his payment a stamp is 
fixed to one of the squares, as is done with our Post Office 
Savings Bank Cards. When the 47 are filled up he has made 
one year’s contribution. He is thus allowed five weeks for 
holidays and broken time. If out of work, he does not get his 
squares filled up, and when he comes to claim his pension, the 
number of years for which he has been a contributor is 
determined by the number of squares he has filled.” 
Germany’s action, and the suggestions of Mr. Tremenheere, 
demand investigation in the face of large poor rates, and the 
mass of pauperism huddled behind them. As a Poor Law 
Guardian, I cannot consistently argue against compulsion per se, 
and it is as logical to insist upon reasonable provision being 
made during working years against sickness and old age, as to 
enforce payments from the energetic and careful for the support 
of those who have been reckless, idle, dissolute or improvident ; 
and however charitably disposed we may be, we are driven by 
hard facts to acknowledge that to one or other of these causes 
we owe the bulk of our pauperism, and yet it is painfully true 
that many good men and women, after a life spent unselfishly 
and without reproach, find, through long-continued sickness, 
and the loss or weariness of friends, their last shelter within the 
walls of a workhouse, Nor can we refuse to reason out. the case 
for or against compulsory insurance on the ground of its 
impracticability. 
Again, the education grant, at a cost to the State for each 
child quite equal to the payments an actuary would look for to 
insure such child from maturity to old age in cases of sickness, 
and to make provision in the event of survival beyond the age of 
65, takes away every argument from the parents or guardians 
who have accepted the same, and from the child on becoming an 
