The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1913-07-20
PENSIONS For MOTHERS.

The Iowa legislature at its latest
session enacted what is known as
mothers pension law 1t authorizes
the payment of small sums monthly
by local authorities to poor widows
who have small children dependent
on them. The legislature acted upon
the belief that such provision was In
the nature of the highest and best
form Of industrial insurance and
therefore in keeping with the most
advanced thought OF the day. But no
less an authority that DR.. Edward T..
Devine has come out in vigorous
criticism of all such legislation. In
an article in The Survey-not as as
sociate editor of that publication, nor
as secretary of the New York Charity
Organization society, nor as director
of the school of philanthropy or as
professor at Columbia as any
of these, but as an individual, he an
swers the question: when is pen
sion not a pension?
The first point he makes is that
children need protection sometimes
because of poverty alone, but far less
frequently than most advocates OF
mothers pensions seem to imagine.
II the poverty which does lead to a
need for protection is due to any in
surable risk such as death, sickness.
or old age. or even the involuntary
y,yto r1aT, II ,ny,f ~ ho J>~a dx- ~
he holds that that need should be met
by insurance, in the expense of which
industry must bear its due burder.,
the state and the insured also doing
their part according to the principles
of social insurance as they are being
successfully worked out in foreign
countries and in some of our states.
AS an advocate of social insurance
he sharply challenges the proposal
for weekly or monthly payments 20
mothers from public funds raised by
taxation, as not in harmony with the
principles of social insurance; as not
being insurance at all, but merely a
revamped and In the long run I'M
workable form of public outdoor re-
lief; as having no claim to the name
of pension and no place in rational
scheme of social legislation: as en-
bodying no element of prevention or
radical cure for any recognized social
evil; as an insidious attack upon the
family, inimical to the welfare Of
children and injurious to the charac.
ter Of parents; as imposing In the
form in which it is usually embodied
an unjustifiable burden upon the
courts at time when the courts are
having rather more than they can do
to discharge their time-honored func.
tons to the general satisfaction; as
Illustrating all that is most objection.
able in state socialism, and falling to
represent that ideal of social Justice
which the socialist movement, what.
ever its faults, is constantly bringing
nearer. He goes on to say:
Whatever they are called, money
payments to mothers from public
funds are relief-public charity. No
historical denunciation or passionate
protest Will change the bald fact that
the transaction is a gift for which the
persons at whose expense 1t is made
have received no direct equivalent.
Sympathy and not the payment of a
financial obligation explains it. Need
and not exchange Is its basis. The
distinction between the new mothers
pensions and the old county relief. In
so far as 1t is not purely one of adj
ministratfon, is purely a subjective
| difference. This being so, the sound
policy OF reform and progress would
seem to lie in the Improvement of the
administration of public relief where
that system prevails rather than in a
process of sef-delusion and of solemn
pretense that changing the names of
things alters their essential charac
ter"