London, March 31.
High prices affect everybody, but the one class in the community which has been hit hardest of all is the man on a very small pension. This country is full of such people and if civil servants are so affected thst they are running on organized lines a colossal agitation, it may well be imagined in what a serious plight pensioned teachers, police, railway officials, and pensioners of all little undertakings which fixed their seales prior to the war, now find—themselves. Since the war pensioners have nothing to complain of, their pen-tone being. Bxod with dae neared to the prest purchasing power of money, but those who were put on the shelf prior to 1914 have had nothing done for them, and sre not likely to have. The most the Government has expressed its willinges to do in respect of the police though this may form a precedent, for othars—ts to consider hard cases. They point-blank refuse to increase all official pen sions automatically.
Os THe Epos or Starvation:
Hero are some typical instances:
A policeman wath 30 years service retired before the war with a pension of £1.14, with a wife and a feeble minded daughter aged 31 to heap, His rent is 5/- per week, his washing bill 1/9, his insurance bd. This takes 7/2 out of 21/4 on which three people have to live. since the wife is nearly blind and can do nothing, and tha man is oldish naturally.
Take the case of a school teacher and visitor—and it is one of many—a man now 81 who worked 31 yours as a school visitor among the poorest parts of London. In. the course of his duties he took home an infectious disease from which his wife and two children died, whilst the cost of medical attend: ance swept away savings. His pension is 10/- per week which precludes him from receiving the full ordinary old age pension, the sum allowed to him from ' this source being only 8/-. He now has to live on 18/- wer week out of which he pays 7/- for a room.
here are many teachers who worked for 30 years and do not receive more than £50 per year pension, and how they are to exist on that in these days must be a problem.
On the other hand, everybody hesitates. to shoulder the liabi ich would be entailed by increasing these amounts. It would cost the State anything from 10 to 50 millions. The favourite argument urged against increasing the pensions is that, supposing a man had invested his savings in an annuity, with an insurance company, he could not mow expect them to pay him more than they stipulated.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.