The large proportion of "general labourers" is very striking, while those describing themselves as dock, bricklayers' and general labourers together form one-fourth of the whole. It will also be noticed that 9,469 agricultural labourers "followed the plough to the workhouse door." In passing, I may remark that in the list of female "occupations" the presence of 15,000 domestic indoor servants should not go unnoticed.

The almost universal approval which the proposal to grant Old Age Pensions elicited would probably have carried it to fruition long before the date of the Old Age Pension Act, 1908, but for one thing and one thing only—the question of cost. It is amusing to note that the "Small Committee of Persons Interested in the Controversy respecting Old Age Pensions,"[61] practically a Committee of the Charity Organization Society, who actively opposed Old Age Pensions in 1899-1902, placed in the forefront of their "objections" the following:

"That the cost would be an insuperable difficulty, for to grant 5s. a week at age 65 in respect of the population of England and Wales only, would involve about £20,000,000 per annum for the present recipients, and by 1941 the figure would have risen to £36,000,000."

In "Riches and Poverty," edition 1905, I said:

"Our examination of the National Income and the manner of its distribution disposes of this objection. The question resolves itself into this—Ought the 5,000,000 persons who have an aggregate income approaching £900,000,000 to be taxed to the extent of £15,000,000 to provide pensions for the aged poor? If the facts illustrated in the frontispiece of this volume could be brought home to every elector there would be no doubt whatever as to the decision of the country on the subject. With the gross assessment to Income Tax at £900,000,000 the expenditure of £15,000,000 on a small provision for the aged strikes one, not as extravagant, but as an exceedingly modest proposal to mitigate the evils of the Error of Distribution.

"I have named £15,000,000, and that is all that the scheme would cost. It is not a universal superannuation scheme that is wanted; I find it difficult to regard very seriously the proposal that, for fear of "pauperization" we should pay every person, rich and poor, aged 65 and upwards, the sum of 5s. per week. The idea appears to be that if the scheme is not made universal some stigma will attach to those who are pensioned. Surely this is an exaggerated view. The majority of those aged 65 are poor, just as the majority of the whole population are poor. If there is a stigma in such a case it attaches to those who go to form the top part of my diagram—to those whose absorption of an undue share of the national income connotes poverty for millions at the other end of the scale.

"My own feeling is that we should make the pension, like the superannuation benefit of Trades Unions, claimable by those aged 65 and upwards who have not an income of more than £1 a week or property valued at more than £250. We should then probably have to provide for about 1,400,000 to 1,500,000 pensioners, at a cost of £18,000,000 to £20,000,000. Administration would cost about £500,000 and we should save about £4,000,000 in poor rates. Thus the net addition to taxation would be about £15,000,000."

Mr Asquith's Old Age Pensions Act of 1908 made the receipt of an Old Age Pension a citizen right, claimable by every person filling certain statutory conditions. These conditions are:—

The receipt of poor relief (medical relief excepted), habitual idleness, lunacy or conviction for crime, are statutory disqualifications.

The amount of the pension varies from 1s. to 5s. per week according to the following sliding scale:

It was expressly stated in the Act that the disqualification of those who had been in receipt of poor relief was to cease on December 31st, 1910, and the Budget of 1910-11 accordingly made provision for the payment of the pensions to such paupers after that date.

The following statistics show the payments under the Act at December 31st, 1909 (the Act having come into force on January 1st, 1909):

THE FIRST YEAR'S WORKING OF
MR ASQUITH'S OLD AGE PENSION ACT

It was a defect in the Act that the possession of a certain amount of property, as well as the possession of a certain income, was not made the disqualification that I suggested it ought to be. A man with £500 of property, yielding an income of £20 a year, ought not to be qualified for an Old Age Pension.

It is notable that, in introducing his Budget of 1908, Mr Asquith, in expounding his scheme of pensions, estimated that it would cost not more than £6,000,000 a year. As we have seen, the cost has proved to be very much greater. It is fortunate that the under-estimation was made. If Parliament had known that the cost would be £9,000,000 instead of £6,000,000 Old Age Pensions might not now be law, so slowly is the lesson learned that, to a nation of 44,000,000 people, with an aggregate income of nearly £2,000,000,000, an expenditure of £9,000,000 is a small matter, relatively as small as though the reader expended a few shillings.

But it is, of course, a misnomer to speak of "expenditure" in this connexion. The National Dividend is not diminished by the transfer of £9,000,000 from the well-to-do to the poor. No more is spent through the transfer; all that takes place is a transfer of the power of call for commodities, and a consequent change of the form of a certain part of the National Dividend, not a change of its size. The production of luxuries is slightly—very slightly—stemmed; the production of necessaries is slightly—very slightly—increased.

Mr Asquith's valuable Act needs to be amended by the reduction of the pensionable age to 65 and to be supplemented by a State scheme for sickness and invalidity insurance. (A minor defect which has revealed itself is the continued disqualification of a man whose wife is in receipt of relief.) The case for the amendment has been already discussed in these pages; the case for invalidity insurance is that old age is not the only determinant of dire poverty for the wage earner. The facts adduced in Chapter 10 are eloquent of the need for succour which exists in tens of thousands of cases.