The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1896-09-13
RIVER AT 8 A. M.
THE UNIVERSAL PENSION.

Hardly any development of the So
the functions of the state is more
harmful and more dangerous than the
spread in the public mind of gen
eral belief in pensions. We find the
great congress of the British trades
unions at Edinburgh resolving that the
government of the United Kingdom
should bring in bill making it COM
pulsory for all municipal bodies to
adopt some practical scheme Of old
age pensions for their employees We
noted at a meeting of letter carriers
in the Northwest a short time ago
proposition that there should be a pen
sion system for superannuated post
men. The idea of an old age pension.
to be paid by the state to everybody,
irrespective of employment, simply
after a certain age limit has been
reached, has been advanced in many
quarters by the more thoroughgoing
representatives of the socialistic idea
We have here, at any rate, evidence
from such different and distant quar-
tiers of the extension of the pension
idea that we may web take heed Of
it as a not remote or impossible
danger to our political system and to
civilization itself.
First comes the notion that govern
ments, national or municipal whose
employees have served them faithfully
until they are incapacitated by old
age for further labor, should take care
of them. Out of that grows naturally
and logically the larger proposition
that the state should provide funds for
the maintenance of all people who
have become unfit for self-support
The holding of this doctrine implies
an entire reversal of the order of ma
ture as we note it. 1t means that So
ciety shall set up a new system of
things, superior and hostile to that by
which society itself has developed.
What the consequences of such clash
between the natural and the artificial
think. They would involve necessar-
lily, possible reconstruction of human
character and the possible destruction
of civilization itself Those who glibly
manufacture statements to order are
apt to forget that men and societies,
as we know them, have been developed
solely through thousands and per-
haps tens of thousands of years, un-
der the guidance of great natural
laws. The most important and benefi-
cent Of all those laws is that a man
shall suffer the consequences of his
own acts. That is statement in our
broader form of the Darwinian prin-
ciple of the struggle for existence and
the survival of the fittest
Whatsoever a man soweth that
shall he also reap" is and has been
the universal law. Since we find that,
under its operation, man has devel-
oped from lower to a higher animal;
that, under 1t, those impulses and
qualities which we characterize as no
OleSl anu pest nave Deen 0eVelOped,
and the world and it's tendencies have
been constantly growing better, 1t
would seem to be a most hazardous
proceeding to step in at this juncture
and not only interfere with natures
law but supplant it with an arrange
ment exactly its opposite He must
be bold man who can contemplate a
defiance of the natural order which
is far more dangerous in itself and its
possibilities than an attempt to defv
the law of grayitation by Jumping
from the top of a high building to the
street. AS far as man has learned
himself by experience he is so con-
stituted as to need for his deyelop.
ment the pressure of necessity, and
especially the stimulus of ACQUIRING
competence for the day when he
shall be no longer able to provide fol
himself. There is not the slightest
evidence that the race has yet devel-
oped to a point where it could gel
along safely without submission to the
so-called primal curse imposing labor
as a condition of life.
Poets and oratorical reformers
whose emotions were developed at the
expense of their Judgment, have be-