Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1909-10-04
Something We Do Not Need.


fact in Germany Six out of nine
of all those who work for wages
are sure by law of an income and
doctors care if they are i'll: three
out of four when they are old or
unable to work: and every man.
woman, and child, except in few
isolated classes of workers, in
cases of accidents met with in their
trades. The Germans are think
ing people; they think for the
world, and all of us go to school
to them, and this great social pro-
ject they have thought into exist
ence, and made it fact which we
have come to uphold in the world
that it is the function of the
state to guard against want in its
members, as we'll as against ignor-
ance and attack. 1t used to be
enough for a man that the state
kept him from being killed: now
education, it is our brag and
boast, that we have come to as
sumo; and Germany has made the
beginning of this new socializing
of life, ten years before Finland
and Norway, seventeen years be-
fore France, nineteen years before
England, and no one knows how
long before America. "-Madge c.
Jenison in Harpers Magazine.
How easy it is to take the paternal-
ism of European nations and assume
that the same institutions would work
as well in free America. The Germans
are thinking people. That they
think for the world, and that ali of
US go to school to them, we doubt.
We grant that it is the function of
the state to guard against want as
well as against ignorance. We doubt,
however, if an insurance is the prop
er way to perform this office. The re-
duction of the consumption of intoxi-
eating liquors by means of prohibit
tory laws: the removal of the likeli-
hood that the workingman will come
to want in his old age; by doing all
possible to increase his earning ca
pacity during the period when he is
performing his best services: increase
his earning capacity by developing his
brain through schools and colleges;
the development of his independence
through self-government and the thou
sand other advantages which accrue
to the workingman in our form of
government constitute in themselves
an insurance. Paternalism is the bas-
to a greater extent than we, in Ameri-
ca, can realize Did the German think
as independently as the writer of the
above would like to have us assume,
he would soon hit upon a way of doing
for himself many of the things which
the state now assumes he is unable
to do. Old age pensions and the like
are badge of shame upon the ma
ton which makes them a part of it's
law. 1t is -~tacit Acknowledgement
that the earning power of the great
majority of the laboring classes has
been reduced to a point where 1t is
practically impossible for the laborer
to prepare for the evening Of life.
America needs no such institution.
The small percentage of our people
who come to want in their old age are
amply provided for and few are made
to feel that the charity they are COM
PEELED to accept is disgrace. AS to
the insurance feature alone-America.
provides for it through private enter
prise and no man who believes IN the
principle of insurance need want for
lack of it.
We do not need the paternalsm of
Germany, of England, of France, of
Finland or of Norway