CHAPTER XXI THE MAN WHO PAID OLD AGE PENSIONS
Address to the National Committee on Old Age Pensions—Paying Pensions through the Poor Law—A Walk from West to East—The Living Pension and the Living Wage—Scientific Starvation under Bumbledom—Defending the Living Pension at the L.G.B. Inquiry—Poplar "a Shining Light."
With several other Labour leaders, Crooks was invited to join the National Committee on Old Age Pensions that arose out of Mr. Charles Booth's Conferences at Browning Hall. Mr. Richard Seddon, on his last visit to England, described at one of the conferences the New Zealand experiment.
It was news to all the members of the Committee to hear Crooks unfold the details of a scheme differing largely both from Mr. Booth's and Mr. Seddon's. It was one that had been forced upon him after much reflection and experience.
"For two or three generations the working classes of this country have been asked to vote for Doodle or Foodle and Old Age Pensions. The elector of to-day, like his father and grandfather before him, is still waiting for the fulfilment of the promise. It seems a vain hope. He, too, like those before him, may die of old age still waiting, perhaps ending his days in the workhouse.
"Now I for one have got tired of waiting. I've commenced to pay pensions already. I maintain that it is both lawful, and right to pay pensions through the Poor Law. And I intend to go on paying them, and to urge others to pay them, until Liberal and Conservative politicians cease deluding the people by promises and establish a State system."
He put forward his scheme before many other assemblies. To the argument that this is only a system of "glorified out-relief," he makes answer, "So are most pensions. At the risk of outraging the feelings of economists, I hold that out-relief to the poor is no more degrading than out-relief to the rich. We hear no talk of endangering the independence of Cabinet Ministers or of Civil Servants when they are paid old age pensions.
"It is argued the poor have the workhouse provided for them. True; but was it not Ruskin who pointed out that—
The poor seem to have a prejudice against the workhouse which the rich have not; for, of course, everyone who takes a pension from Government goes into the workhouse on a grand scale; only the workhouses for the rich do not involve the idea of work, and should be called playhouses. But the poor like to die independently, it appears. Perhaps, if we make the playhouses pretty and pleasant enough, or give them their pensions at home, their minds might be reconciled to the conditions.
"Look down as you may on these veterans of almost endless toil, but don't forget they have made our country what it is. They have fought in the industrial army for British supremacy in the commercial world and obtained it. The least their country can do is to honour their old age."
The twofold character of Crooks's Poor Law policy has already appeared. While he wants to make life in the workhouse less like life in prison, he is also anxious that all worn-out old men and women, who have friends to look after them, should be kept as far from the workhouse as possible.
"To do that means the granting of a pension. Call it outdoor relief if you like, but at the same time call the Right Honourable Gerald Balfour's and Lord Eversley's pensions outdoor relief.
"At any rate, relief must be on a more generous scale than it usually is if you are going to keep honourable old people out of the workhouse. Failing that, out-relief has a tendency to perpetuate sweating. Mr. Chaplin was not alone in deprecating inadequate out-relief. The Aged Poor Commission, of which the King was a member, reporting in 1895, called attention to the ill-effects of inadequate out-door grants and suggested that the amounts be increased."
In one of our many walks together about the streets of London, I remember with what animation and depth of feeling he discussed this subject. We began somewhere in Westminster with the intention of taking a 'bus at Charing Cross. We found ourselves still walking eastward as we passed Temple Bar, and then agreed to mount a 'bus at Ludgate Circus. We were still on our feet as we went through St. Paul's Churchyard, so decided to walk on to the Bank. But he forgot everything but the poor again until we stopped our walk for a moment at Aldgate Church. Before a 'bus could arrive he was deep in the subject again, and almost mechanically resumed walking. And so, on through Whitechapel and Stepney and Limehouse into Poplar, he discoursed earnestly all the way on the need for poor people's pensions.
"Since I prefer to call out-relief a pension," he said, "I'm going to see that it is a real pension, and not a dole. Inadequate out-relief gives the sweater his opportunity. A sympathetic half-crown a week to a worn-out old woman making shirts at ninepence the dozen has the effect of dragging the struggling young widow with a family of children down to accepting the same price. It sometimes takes a whole week to earn one-and-six, so little wonder that the pinch of hunger sends many a young widow to the devil. We may preach that the wages of sin is death, but life isn't worth living at all to many people. An unknown hell has no more terrors to them than an awful earth.
"How would I stop this? I would stop it by making it impossible for the old woman to be the unconscious instrument in encompassing the ruin of the young woman. The old woman cannot live on a half-crown dole from the Guardians; so to make a shilling or two more she undercuts the young woman, and the sweater gets them both at reduced wages. Now if the old woman deserves help at all, the help ought to be sufficient to keep her without the necessity of falling into the sweater's net and dragging others with her. The help must be a pension on which she can live. It ought not to be a dole on which she starves."
"Then you stand for the Living Pension as well as for the Living Wage?"
"Precisely. But nearly all pension schemes, like most out-relief systems, fix the allowance at a starvation figure. Sums of four or five shillings won't save old people from hardship. For example, we have in the Poplar workhouse old pensioners who received as much as six shillings a week. They found they couldn't live outside on that, and so had no alternative but the House. Only the other day there was another six-shilling pensioner admitted to the House. He had struggled on outside in his one room, selling and pawning his few things bit by bit to eke out a living until he hadn't a stick left. So, although receiving a pension of six shillings a week, he was forced into the workhouse."
"Do you find the same thing happening in regard to old people assisted by a friendly society or a trade union?"
"Occasionally we do," answered Crooks. "The other day, for instance, a superannuated trade unionist came before the Board, an old man blunt in speech and not without independence.
"'We understand you have a pension of six shillings a week,' says the Chairman.
"'That's all right, guv'nor. But how could you pay three shillings a week out of that for the rent of our one room and then you and the wife live on the rest?'
"Take another case," resumed Crooks as we crossed Commercial Road. "A fine-looking old woman enters the relief committee room, scrupulously clean but poorly clad—a splendid specimen of a self-respecting honourable old English woman.
"'Now, my good woman, what can we do for you?'
"'Well, sir, we've nothing left in the world, and I've come to see if you can assist us?'
"'Where's your husband?'
"'He's ill in bed to-day. He's turned seventy-three. I'm seventy-five myself. We've been living on his club money until now. He had six months' full pay and six months' half-pay. That's as much as the club allows. Now we've got nothing. He worked up to a little more than a year ago; At seventy-three he can't work any longer.'
"'We are very sorry,' says the Chairman, 'but the Poor Law practice is to ask old people like you to come into the workhouse.'
"'Anything but that, sir,' pleads the old lady tearfully. 'Both of us over seventy; we should feel it so much now after working all our lives. We can look after ourselves outside if you can give us a little help.'
"Here, then, you have an honest, hard-working old couple still faced with nothing but the workhouse, although they have been thrifty and done everything which the political promoters of old-age pensions say ought to be done. We made full inquiries, and for a time at least we thought we would meet their wishes and let them live outside. We gave them six shillings a week, and watched the case carefully. We saw that to eke out existence, one by one their articles of furniture were going. Struggle and strive as they did on their six shillings a week, they would have been compelled to come into the House ultimately after a few further stages of this system of scientific starvation if we hadn't found outside help for them from another quarter."
"You want, then, to base out-relief, like an old-age pension, on the Living Wage principle?"
"No other plan will work. No other plan is just," he said in his earnest way. "The out-relief ought to be the pension. There are a lot of old people receiving out-relief grants of three or four shillings. What is the result? They toil and struggle and pine outside on an amount which barely keeps body and soul together. They reach the workhouse at last, as a rule, through the infirmary. That means they break down and have to get medical orders for admission. It has been proved that thirty per cent. of the people in Poor Law infirmaries are suffering ailments of some kind or other due to want of proper nourishment.
"That is what I mean when I say that the present Poor Law, as Bumbledom would administer it, has nothing better to prescribe than scientific starvation to old people who refuse the House. If one is foolish enough to grow old without being artful enough to get rich, this world is the wrong place to be in.
"When old age comes to working people, both thrifty and unthrifty have in most instances to turn to one of two things—precarious charity or the Poor Law. Charity is a splendid exercise for many people, but no law or custom exists compelling its practice. Now the Poor Law can be enforced; only it has been used to terrorise the poor. The State sets up a system to save old people from starvation, and then allows it to be used to perpetuate starvation.
"It won't do. So long as we have this system, I'm going to make not the worst use of it, but the best use of it. And I believe in paying old-age pensions through the Poor Law. The Poor Law ought not to degrade any more than the Rich Law degrades under which Ministers and officers of the State receive their pensions. Why do I say pay pensions through the Poor Law? Because it is here. It is something to begin with at once. It is the thin edge of the wedge of a system of universal old-age pensions, free and adequate."
Pending the adoption of some national system, he practises in Poplar the policy he urges in public, that of paying a living pension through the Poor Law.
His policy received unexpected endorsement in a letter sent to him by an old woman of eighty-three in a provincial town. She wrote to him in the summer of 1906 at the time others were attacking him for his policy.
Your noble efforts on behalf of penniless old people like me I see are being condemned in some of the papers. They can't know the facts. I was managing very comfortably until the Liberator crash took away my income. I started a small school and maintained myself until I was seventy. After that I was no good for work. What I should have done I don't know had it not been for a few friends who, like yourself, believe in out-relief grants of sufficient amount to keep a person living; and they persuaded the Guardians to help me. I thank you for the fight you are making on behalf of hundreds of helpless old people like myself. May the King soon call you Sir Will Crooks.
He was examined at some length on his Living Pension policy at the Local Government Board Inquiry into the Poplar Guardians' administration. He admitted that old people over sixty receiving out-relief in Poplar were costing the borough a sixpenny rate.
"I say it is wicked to compel us," he stated in evidence, "to maintain out of our local rates these old people who ought to be a charge—as I have said hundreds of times, and repeat—for the whole metropolis or for the nation rather than the locality. These industrial veterans are thrust upon us in Poplar to maintain, notwithstanding that most of the wealth they created has been enjoyed by people who live elsewhere, and thus escape their share of the burden of maintaining their old workers in old age. But because this unjust state of things exists, are we, with a full sense of our responsibility, to tell these broken-down old workers that we refuse to bear the burden ourselves, and that they must do the best they can?"
Then followed a rapid fire of questions and answers between himself and the legal representative of the Poplar Municipal Alliance.
Q.—Is not that rather a dangerous doctrine? If local authorities generally allowed their sympathies to carry them into acts not contemplated by their constitution and their powers, what do you think the general result would be?
A.—It is contemplated by our constitution. We are here to relieve distress. We are created for that purpose.
Q.—Do you say there is any machinery or power in the Poor Law which authorises you to give allowances which are, in fact, old age pensions to these people?
A.—It allows us to give out-door relief. You can call it what you like.... We cannot refuse to give people help and assistance in old age.
Q.—I am not quarrelling for a moment with the proposition in the abstract; I am quarrelling with your method of carrying it out in your local machinery.
A.—Tell me what you would do—leave them to starve on the streets?
Q.—I suggest, is it not a dangerous doctrine for local authorities to exceed their statutory powers?
A.—I assure you we have never done anything of the kind, and I challenge you to prove it.
Q.—I ask you to show me any authority for a grant continuously of, say, ten shillings a week to these old people?
A.—The Local Government Board issued an order dealing with the matter.
The Inspector:—You rely on Mr. Chaplin's circular?
A.—Yes, with regard to the treatment of the aged and deserving poor. That circular reads:—
It has been felt that persons who have habitually led decent and deserving lives should, if they require relief in their old age, receive different treatment from those whose previous habits and character have been unsatisfactory, and who have failed to exercise thrift in bringing up their families or otherwise. The Local Government Board consider that aged and deserving persons should not be urged to enter the workhouse at all unless there is some cause which renders such a course necessary, such as infirmity of mind or body, the absence of house accommodation, or of a suitable person to care for them, or some similar cause; but think they should be relieved by giving adequate outdoor relief. The Board are happy to think it is commonly the practice of Boards of Guardians to grant outdoor relief in such cases, but they are afraid that too frequently such relief is not adequate in amount. They are desirous of pressing upon the Boards of Guardians that such relief should, when granted, be always adequate.
That is our authority for what we are doing.... For once in a way one can say this Inquiry at least will be an enlightening one.
Q.—I hope it will, Mr. Crooks.
A.—I am sure it will.
Q.—To other places than Poplar?
A.—I hope so indeed. Poplar will be a shining light in the days to come.