surance for old age is an impossibility; for
it would certainly be repudiated by the working classes.

A large group of proposals are to the effect that old-age pensions
should be granted to all poor persons over the age of sixty-five whose
total income is less than 10_s._ a week, provided that a certain
portion of that income consists of a fixed annuity acquired by their
own industry and thrift. It is urged that in most of the great
branches of industry a deserving man in his earlier and stronger years
could easily earn such an annuity; and it is suggested that the State
should double it, or add to it sufficient to make it up to 10_s._ a
week, or supplement it by a fixed grant of 2_s._ 6_d._, or 5_s._, or
even 7_s._ a week.

The objections to such schemes are very serious. It is obvious that if
they encourage a workman to save up to the amount required to secure a
pension, they would have a directly opposite effect as soon as that
amount had been attained. The first result of any addition to his
income would then be to disqualify him for a pension. It is also
obvious that the pensioner of sixty-five would have a strong
inducement to abstain from the work he could easily do, and that if he
continued to do it he would compete on exceptionally favourable terms
with the workman who, though he had passed the prime of life, was not
yet entitled to a pension, restricting his means of employment and
beating down his wages. Many of the most necessitous and deserving
poor would also be left unrelieved.

Although it is true that in the more flourishing trades men could
easily in early life save out of their wages a sufficient sum to
acquire this annuity, there are large fields of industry in which such
a saving would be almost or absolutely impossible. We have had
melancholy evidence of how utterly insufficient most forms of women's
wages are to provide the needed margin. The same thing is true of the
agricultural labourer in the more depressed districts in England and
in large tracts of Ireland and Scotland. Even in the more remunerative
employments innumerable special circumstances would prevent a thrifty
and deserving man from obtaining this annuity. Certainly no one is
more deserving of compassion and State aid than the widow and young
orphans of a working man; but the scheme we are considering would not
only not help them, but would most seriously injure them. It is a
direct incentive to the workman to sink his savings in