The English old-age pension law is a mere gratuity in the nature of outdoor relief, giving to everybody who has reached a certain age, without reference to any previous service, tramps or drones as well as workmen.  It is a law indefensible in principle and merely the accident of a radical government.  It provides that every person over seventy whose yearly means do not exceed thirty-one pounds ten shillings (i.e. income from property or privilege) and is not in “regular receipt of poor relief” and has not “habitually failed to work according to his ability, opportunity and need” nor been sentenced to any imprisonment for a criminal offence—­all to be determined by a local pension committee with appeal to the central pension authority—­shall receive a pension of five shillings a week when his annual means do not exceed twenty-one pounds, that is, thirteen pounds a year, down to one shilling a week when they exceed twenty-eight pounds seventeen shillings six pence.

The New Zealand law is more intelligent.  It extends old-age pensions to every person over the age of sixty-five who has resided thirty-five years in the colony and not been imprisoned for a criminal offence, nor has abandoned his wife, nor neglected to provide for his or her children.  It does not, however, appear that any previous employment is necessary.  The pension amounts to eighteen pounds, say ninety dollars, a year and is not given to any one who has an income of fifty-two pounds a year.  The machinery of the law is largely conducted through the post-office and the entire expense is met by the state.  That is to say, there is no contribution from the laborers themselves.

Austria, Italy, Norway, and Denmark in 1901 had also state insurance systems.

The minimum-wage idea has so far been attempted only In New Zealand and in Great Britain.[1] (See above, p. 160.) The New Zealand law of 1899 provided a minimum wage of four shillings per week for boys and girls, and five shillings for boys under eighteen, but the principle has been much extended by a more recent statute.  The English law is not yet in active operation, and may or may not receive great extension.  It provides in substance for the fixing of a minimum wage in the clothing trade or any other trade specified by the Home Secretary.  The obvious probability is that it will, as in New Zealand, soon be extended to all trades.  This wage is to be fixed by a board of arbitrators with the usual representation given to each side, and it will doubtless work, as it does in New Zealand, for the elevation of wages, as such commissions rarely reduce them.