THRIFTLESS THRIFT.

MR. FAWCETT's short pamphlet on Aids to Thrift now offered by the Post Office-issued early in this year and to be had at any post office free of charge-in drawing the attention of the industrial classes to the agencies opened to them by the Government for the investment of savings, describes one which, on account of imperfect legislation, disappoints the desire it is intended to encourage.

In chapter iv. the Postmaster-General shows "How Lives can be Insured." But the minimum sum that can be insured for is £20, and the experience of the seventeen years since the Act passed establishing this system of insurance through the Post Office has conclusively proved that the amount of contribution required for insuring this sum and the method of paying it deter the labouring classes from accepting the offer; the more so as it is also far above their wants.

In 1868, four years after the Act had been in operation, the late Lord Lichfield brought in a Bill to amend it, especially as to the assuring of payment of money on death, and proposed, "that the enactment that no contract with the Government for payment on the death of any one person should be of less amount than £20 should be repealed." That portion of the Bill was strongly opposed on behalf of Insurance Companies and other bodies whose interests were supposed to be at stake, and it was not carried.

Six years afterwards, namely in 1874, the Commissioners on Friendly Societies revived that question, and urged very strongly in their Fourth Report ($3 851, 852) that "the system of insurance through the Post Office be amended, so as to reach more completely the wants of the labouring classes." They state that the regulation that a man cannot insure his life at the Post Office for any sum below £20 "excludes at once the large class of persons who do not want to provide an inheritance for their children, but who do want to provide against becoming a burden on them at death, and against the risk of being buried as paupers." They add that, "This is the class which now insures in the Burial Societies, subject to all the disadvantages and the risks to which the members of these societies are exposed." Mr. Scudamore, then at the head of the Savings Bank Department of the Post Office, informed the Commissioners that the poor did not use the Government system. From the time that the Act took effect in 1865 up to the close of 1872, the Government had issued only 3,885 life policies for a total sum of £293,467, giving an average of £76 per policy, "showing very plainly that the trifling results produced by the Act, such as they

are, have been produced at the top and not at the bottom of the scale." And this remains true to the present day. The Report of the Postmaster-General for 1879, published 14th August, 1880, showed that the number of policies had only increased to 5,740, and the sum insured to £451,930, giving the average of nearly £80 per policy. The report for 1880 shows the number of life policies to be 6,224, the sum insured to be £491,930 and the average per policy a fraction less than £80. "Mr. Scudamore," the Commissioners remark, "would allow insurance to be effected to as low a sum as £5, which would generally meet the demand of those who join the Burial Societies."

Notwithstanding the efforts of Lord Lichfield and the subsequent recommendation of the Friendly Societies Commission, this subject was not included in the Act of 1875, which consolidated and amended the law relating to friendly and other societies; and it still remains in abeyance.

No attempt, I believe, has been made to dispute the fact that it would be an essential service to the industrial classes to reduce the minimum sum that could be insured for at death to £5. If interested bodies still stand in the way, it is time that the grounds of their resistance should be reconsidered. These bodies are principally the Burial Societies and Burial Companies; and there are few chapters in our social history more curious than the one describing these great societies which pervade the country, numbering their members by millions of the wage-earning classes, and having the disposal of a vast amount of capital, of which a large portion is wasted, to the great loss and disappointment of the contributors.

The story is told in the Fourth Report of the Commissioners on Friendly Societies (1874), and has been continued to the present time in the Annual Reports of the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies. The revelation of the enormous amount of abuses described by the Commissioners led to some corrective legislation in 1875, but, as I have briefly noticed in the number of the Nineteenth Century for August, 1880, more is wanted; and to this end it is necessary that the whole subject should again be brought prominently before the public.

The strong and very general instinct of the humbler classes to provide against what they deem the disgrace of a pauper's funeral, and their desire also to prevent the cost of their burial from falling upon their relatives, gave rise to these societies. They appear to have originated in Lancashire and Yorkshire in the early days of the modern manufacturing system, and to have grown with its growth. Their primitive form was that of a number of artisans who lived in the same neighbourhood agreeing to a levy of a shilling on the death of one of themselves, and "sending round the hat" to collect it.

The collector was also one of themselves, and the management was usually prudent and inexpensive. But in such societies, as the elder members begin to drop off, the levy increases to two, three, or more shillings; in less than a generation the club comes to an end; and there is scarcely a town or large village, at least in the south and west of England, that has not its tale to relate of frustrated hopes, and the contribution of years thrown away.

The frequent failure of these primitive clubs called into activity another organization, that of Local Collecting Burial Societies, having "an elaborate system of paid collectors, and paid office-holders ". president, vice-president, treasurer, secretary, and committee-menwith the natural result, in a large proportion of cases, of expensive management. These societies are chiefly found in Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Cheshire. They numbered in 1874, according to the estimate of the Commissioners, about 550,000 members. Particulars as to the expenses of management were obtained from sixty societies, comprising about 500,000 of the above number of members. One society (the Blackburn Philanthropic), with the large membership of 130,000, enjoyed the solitary distinction of keeping its management expenses down to the very low point of 2 per cent. on the total expenditure. In thirty-nine societies, numbering 250,000 members, or one-half of the whole, the cost of management on the total expenditure varied from 17 to 30 per cent. In the rest the expenses for the most part were not much below 17 per cent.

The success of these local Collecting Burial Societies, which came into existence in the forty years between 1820 and 1860, and whose operations were confined chiefly to the great towns in the counties mentioned and to a small radius beyond them, proved that there was a wider field of enterprise open to the class of persons whose inclinations led them to undertake such offices as that of collectors, presidents, secretaries, &c., to societies of this kind.

Accordingly, a new variety of these societies has sprung up, chiefly within the last thirty years, called General Collecting Burial Societies, whose operations range over the whole kingdom. A list of twenty of the most important of them is given by the Commissioners, sixteen of which have been formed since 1850, with an estimated membership of 800,000 for England and Wales (leaving for the moment Scotland and Ireland out of the account), thus giving a total of 1,350,000 members of the principal Local and General Collecting Burial Societies in England and Wales, according to the most recent statistics available in 1874. Resort must be had to the Reports of the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies for an account of them since that date. The Report for the year 1877 (Part II. A. p. 246) contains a return from thirty of the larger Local and General Collecting Burial Societies, and shows a total membership of at least 1,600,000

for England and Wales. Upon the returns received in the year 1878 the Chief Registrar remarks (Part I. p. 7) that "most of the larger collecting societies show more or less increase in numbers, funds, and receipts." And it is also worthy of notice that so numerous are the members of these Collecting Burial Societies that they constitute more than 43 per cent. of the members returned for the whole of the Friendly Societies in England and Wales.—(Ibid. p. 6.)

To these societies have to be added a remarkable group of Companies registered under the Life Assurance Companies Act of 1870, but carrying on the same business as the Burial Societies, under the title of "Burial (or Industrial Assurance) Companies." Of these, nine, existing or dissolved, were referred to in the evidence laid before the Commissioners; but 66 Companies" having been somewhat beyond the scope of their inquiries, they only examined into the details of the most conspicuous of them, The Prudential, the growth of which is noticed by the Commissioners as having been very remarkable. In 1867 it had 358,000 members, in 1872 it numbered 1,013,041, showing that it had nearly trebled in five years. This number had again greatly increased in 1877, the report for that year stating, on the authority of the return made to the Board of Trade, under the Life Assurance Companies Act, that "the number of policies in force, and consequently the number of members existing in the Industrial (Burial) Branch of that Company at the end of that year, was 3,216,190. Adding the number of members given for these Local and General Burial Societies and the Prudential Company together, they amounted in 1877 to a total of at least 4,816,190, to which, as mentioned above, there was an increase in 1878; thus plainly showing how largely the wageearning classes in this country are interested in the honest and economical management of these institutions.

And this will further appear when it is borne in mind how large are the funds with which these institutions have to deal. The Report of the Registrar of Friendly Societies for 1877 states the assets of the societies receiving contributions by collectors as amounting to £1,032,752. The Report of Mr. Dewey, the Actuary of the Prudential Company on its Industrial Branch, for the year 1876, states that on the 2,643,665 policies in existence in that year, yielding a premium income of £980,575, the sum insured was £22,303,959. And Mr. Sutton, the Actuary to the Friendly Societies' Office, in commenting on the Prudential Company's accounts for the year 1877, shows the number of policies to have increased to 3,216,190, yielding a premium income of £1,227,803,

(1) Deduction being made of one-fifth of the total number returned (1,998,325) for double insurances, as in the estimate of the Commissioners in 1874.

and insuring approximately the sum of £27,927,000. These amounts have considerably increased since 1877, the number of policies according to the report of the company for 1880, issued in March, 1881, being close upon 4,898,500, the premium income £1,608,849, and the sum insured may be safely stated at about £36,594,000.

Now it is obvious that the organization of these institutions, and its results, are a matter of the greatest moment to those who intrust to them such large sums from their earnings to purchase the object aimed at. Let us see what that organization is, how it has worked, what attempts have been made to improve it, how far they have been effectual, and what more is required.

The organization of these General Burial Societies and Companies remains substantially as described by the Commissioners on Friendly Societies in 1874. They are managed, with a few exceptions, by practically self-elected and irresponsible committees. As the members of these societies are scattered over wide areas, often in counties far distant from the chief office, only those who live near it can exercise any control even if disposed to attend the general meetings.

These are

Under the committee is a large body of collectors. generally men of the labouring class who give their whole time to the work of collecting. They must necessarily be very numerous as they have to seek contributions over large districts. In the largest society (the Royal Liver, whose chief office is in Liverpool) they were estimated to be from 2,000 to 4,000, no exact account being accessible. In the Prudential Insurance Company they were stated to amount to 4,000.

In describing the manner in which the collectors are paid, the Commissioners remark that the position of a collector in a General Burial Society must offer enormous attractions. He is paid by entrance fees, a commission of 25 per cent. on collections, a present of the first or second six weeks' contributions of every new member, transfer fees, and other perquisites which do not figure as a rule in the reports or balance-sheets; all these sources yielding from about £200 to £400 a year, "a very fortunate position," as remarked by one of the witnesses, "for a man originally a labouring man at £1 a week." And beyond this he may possibly work his way into the committee of management, which includes all the paid officers, and receive a salary varying from about £400 up to certainly £800 a year. It is obvious, therefore, that the society must be carried on in what is called the collector spirit. And so sure a source of income is a collector's book when once it contains a considerable number of members, that it is the subject of habitual sale, the prices rising up to £600 and £700.