OLD AGE PENSIONS IN ENGLAND AND GERMANY 1G5 



improvements into our social and economic conditions, but 

 whether his earnest endeavours to help the people to their own 

 will ever result in real good, is exceedingly doubtful. 



The tyrannous party demon, which always dominates the 

 position, has strangled effort and killed individuality on count- 

 less previous occasions, and if Mr. Lluyd-George escapes the 

 clutches of this malign spirit, then Demos will prevail — not 

 otherwise. 



What the People have a Right to expect 



Whatever may be the outcome of Mr. Lloyd-George's 

 German visit, our workpeople, as citizens of the Empire, want 

 a reasonable practical recognition of their claims to considera- 

 tion, and not charity. The Government have an excellent 

 opportunity of showing them such consideration by the intro- 

 duction of some scheme of old age and infirmity pensions, which, 

 while ensuring the oUigatonj insurance of all persons working 

 for wages or salary whose income does not exceed, say £100 

 per annum, will improve the position of the people by en- 

 couraging co-operation, thrift, and economy ; some sensible 

 scheme, in short, that will help the people and not humiliate 

 them, that will uplift and not cast down, that will provide for, 

 and not pauperise, them. 



It will be borne in mind in connection with the German 

 scheme that, although it is a co-operative arrangement between 

 State, employer, and employed, the employers and employed 

 contribute more than two-thirds in equal parts, while the State 

 subvention amounts to less than one-third of the whole. In fact, 

 the State contribution means little more than the working 

 expenses. 



If, after satisfying himself of the contributorn co-operative 

 fundamental basis of the German scheme, Mr. Lloyd-George 

 persists in thrusting a non-contrihutory Old Age Pensions and 

 Infirmity scheme upon this country, the British people will be 

 as justified in denouncing that gentleman as Socialist as though 

 he wrote " Comrade" before his name. Anon-contributory scheme 

 is nothing more nor less than spoliation of the British tax-payer 

 and confiscation of his means, and it is this that Mr. Blatchford, 

 Mr. Hyndman, and the more violent among the Socialist leaders 

 advocate — that, and nothing more ! 



" I will say this much — as far as old men and old women over 

 seventy arc cunccrned — I am of opinion that their cases are best 

 dealt with by a uou-contribiuory system." 



said the Chancellor of the Exchequer to his Puidical interviewer. 



