The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-09-18
QUESTION OF oLD-AGn PENSIONS.
-dward Everett HaIe's Solution of
the Problem.

From the Christian Register
suppose that all persons who have con-
sldered the subject regret that the English
commission on old-age pensions has re-
ported that 1t cannot report. 1t confesses
its inability. 1t had 100 plans before IT,
All of them proved to be wrong. And the
commissioner very able and Impartial
commsslon-whilei IL knew enough TO find
out that they were all wrong, confesses its
inability 10 prepare the right plan. 1t only
agrees on the necessity of some plan. bur
what that plan is the commission cannot
tell
one may say, in passing. that such an
answer as this is a melancholy evidence of
what comes from the analytic-critlcal
shall we say mugwump?-habit in the
study whether of public or private affairs
Ihat man Will never succeed as an ad-
Illustrator who studies only the difficult
ties of his task" "If You have a subordl-
nate to appoint, consider what he can do
first, and afterward ask what he cannot
DO These are true statements. There
Is happy remark in a late number of the
Times. Shafter had been condemned, by
some of the Easy Chair critics, for at
tempting what by the rules of war was
impossible with the force he had at hand
Precisely" saws the great Philistine jour
nal land il is to such attempts that Eng
lanu owes every accession to her dominion
which she has made In a century,"
How not to do it is a curious and some
times interesting question. How to do 1t
Is more interesting; and one wishes that a
board so able as Lord Rothschild's had
been forced, by some immediate pressure
to say what is the best thing to be done
in the matter of old-age pensions seeing
that almost all of them believe some
thing should be done. The disappoint-
pqapt their fnfitra out-
slders the more because Joseph Cham
bSrlain-to whose patronage If one may so
speak, the commission owes it's existence
probably-is not in the habit of falling and
has generally shown success in putting
things through. Let us nope that such
success awaits MIN still.
The abstracts of the report which have
reached us show that the difficulties
which, for the present purposes, are called
the impossibilities-are the same in i9ng-
land as in America. They fall back on
the awful question of settlement" and II
is clear that no man IN his senses likes to
tackle that question, in the present state
of our social order. Tom Vagrom Is born
in the little, rural township of Hayseed,
He leaves 1t when he is %. For the next
40 years he drifts. He is two or three
years in Boston, two or three in Lowell,
once or twice in the army, seven years in
Manila, nine in prison in Liverpool, and,
at tNG age OF Oh years ana Ii IaOHlnS -
sent by the relieving officer Of Little Ped
lington back to New York because he be
longs in America. At Castle Garden they
hear his story, and send him to the over
seers at Hayseed, because he started from
Hayeeed. Surely, Ii Is hard on the Hay
seed people to have to pay him odd
age pension for what is left Of his unval-
liable life. And here is the difficulty at
which Lord Rothschid and his committee
have fiinched.
On the other hand, however, If Tom Va
grom had been a seaman, by virtue of the
United States statute, now more than 100
years old, he would go to a United States
hospital, and be cared for for the rest Of
his life. Why should not the empire of
Great Britain, or why should not the state
of Massachusetts, take as good care of en-
old man who has worked upon the land as
Uncle Sam can take of old man who
has worked upon the sea? This Is the
question before which Lord RothSchild's
commission has quaied