Report from the Select Committee on Aged Deserving Poor ; together with the proceedings of the Committee, minutes of evidence, and appendix.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on the Aged Poor
Date:
1899
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report from the Select Committee on Aged Deserving Poor ; together with the proceedings of the Committee, minutes of evidence, and appendix. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    113/466 page 63
    12 June 1899.] Mr. Davy. [Continued. Mr. Llewellyn—^coatinued. was told in Copenhagen there was not; but up to 1867, apparently the whole of the relief in Denmark was practically administered bj^ un- paid officers, and after about that date they had no unpaid officers in Copenhagen. After that date in Copenhagen they had a very complete staff of relieving officers, with the result that the jjauperism of Copenhagen fell about half in two or three years; but I should suppose in a great many of these small parishes they have no paid ofHcers, and that the investigation is undertaken by the chairman of the commune. In that case, naturally, very much would depend upon the character of the person who happened to fill that office; it would not be, judging from all analogy, as accurate an investigation as would be undertaken by paid officers. 1026. Would you imagine it would be an easier task there to check the accuracy of these statements where people do not move about as they do in England than it would be here?—I do not think so. I think that life in Denmark, except for thai fact >that ^they have so many persons who own their own land, is very much like life in England. They have not vagrants, but I think the strftistics show a very free migration of people from place to plaice. For instance, in Copenhagen no less than 10 per cent, of those getting pensions are non-settled persons, and the accounts of moneys received on account of what we should call non-settled pension relief are very complicated, they amount to large sums, and they show an increase; people do move about a good deal. 1027. At the last meeting of the Committee you stated incidentally that children were boarded out. I do not know whether it would be within the scope of this inquiry to ask any questions about the boarding out of children; it would be very interesting to hear it if you are prepared to answer questions on the point?—I know something about it. I may tell the Com- mittee at once with regard to Copenhagen that they board out all their children outside Copen- hagen. They have between 600 and 700 children boarded out, and they are looked af^er by volun- tary committees the same as they are here, and the younger the child is the more they pay for it. The children are boarded out under careful supervision. For instance, no child must be boarded out in a cottage unless the foster-parent has a cow so that a child shall get milk, and there is all that sort of minute care there as in England. But in the countiy I think it is not so; different people I saw had very different views, and some said they could not get proper foster-parents, and some had just the same objections to boarding-out as we have here. On one of the Poor Farms I saw children bad been removed from boarding-out, and were inmates of the Poor Farm. Mr. A. K. Loijd. 1028. Is Denmark the only European country where a system of old age pensions is in force? —The Germans have a scheme based upon con- tributions ; but that is a very thorny question, and I am not prepared to go into it. 1029. Am I right in saying that the bulk of the rural population in Denmark consists of peasant proprietors ?—Yes. Mr. A. K. Loyd—^continued. 1030. So that the poverty is not very wide- spread or urgent in the rural districts?—Tho history of the Poor Law would tend to show thav the rate of Poor Law relief has always been very high in rural districts; in fact, the Report of the Committee of 1867, which was appointed to investigate the subject of the Poor Law in Denmark, reads very much like our Report in 1834. Tlie parson of the parish was the chair- man of the body administering the relief, and the relief was apparently investigated in a very casual way. 1031. As regards the poverty in Copenhagen, was it more severe or widespread than in the rural districts, or about the same?—That I can- not say. The rate of pauperism in Denmark now is certainly higher than the rate in England. 1032. Some of the questions that have been put to you by the Committee rather tended to this point, that the getting up of this system of pensions might be regarded in the nature of a political job; but from what you are now telling me I gather rather it is due to the severe poverty , and it is an attempt to deal with the problems oi severe poverty ?—I should not put it either one way or the other. One has rather to search for a way of putting it. I think the introduction of that Bill depended verj^ largely upon what may be called the political exigencies of the time. 1033. Shifting the local burdens upon the Imperial Exchequer?—I think so. The Poo: Law Relief Bill was in contemplation, and was, I believe, framed before the Pension Bill was introduced. 1034. But, at all events, as I gather from your last, answers to me^ thel problem of poverty has for some time been a very severe one in Denmark; the proportion of poverty is unusually great?—^Certainly, pauperism in- creased very fast up to the late eighties. Up to 1886 I have the returns here, and there seems a great increase of pauperism. 1035. Has socialism made any very great progress in Denmark?—They have a strong party of Social Democrats who seem to be making their way even in the towns, which were formerly in the hands of what they call the Con- stitutional Party. 1036. What I was directing my question to was this : Can you give us any other reason besides the exceptional pauperism of the country, for Denmark being ahead of the other countries, if one may so call it, in the way of providing a- scheme of old age pensions ?—Denmark is y&rj much to the front in a great many matter* of the kind. I may say that some years be- fore the present Act was passed the ministry introduced a pension scheme on the basis oi contribution by the working people, rather like Mr. Chamberlain's original scheme; but that found no suppoitters, and the matter seemed to have dropped for two or three years, when this question of the beer tax came up, as I said in a previous day's evidence, and finally the present scheme, which is not that which was originally proposed, was adopted as a sort of compromise. 1037. Can you give us any statement of the differences of the conditions between Denmark and England to show us whether we can satis- factorily draw inferences from Denmark with a view
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