T.U.C. EXAMINES PROS AND CONS

OF FAMILY ALLOWANCES
but nothing is likely to happen yet
(From our Labour Correspondent)
A joint committee representing the Labour Party Executive, and the Trades' Union Congress General Council is at present examining the question of introducing a National Scheme of Family Allowances.
It is expected that before the end of this month the report of the investigating committee will be available to the Labour Party Executive and the T.U.C. General Council.
The result of the deliberations is awaited with some eagerness by the growing body of Labour M.P.s who favour some scheme of family allowances, to relieve the present unequal burden of those workers who have families as compared with those who restrict them.
I am informed that in T.U.C. circles the result is not expected to be definitive. The committee is unlikely to urge that a national scheme of family allowances be introduced into the Labour Party's political programme, despite the increased support which the scheme has won recently among Labour M.P.s.
A NATIONAL COMMISSION
The outcome is much more likely to be pressure by the Labour Party for a Commission to enquire into a national scheme, as desirable and practicable.
However, the T.U.C., which has always adopted an attitude of extreme caution, if not hostility, to family allowances, has already gone a long way in accepting the Labour Party Executive's suggestion that the joint committee should investigate and report
Its present interest, despite the fact that the chairman, Mr. Gibson, is a known opponent of Family Allowances, is significant, because apart from private and individual champions such schemes have hitherto found their
warmest supporters outside the ranks of those associated with the workers.
With the theoretical opposition of the T.U.C. to family allowances, those who look to a Christian social order can have some sympathy. The T.U.C. has always held that the introduction of any scheme of family allowances would defer indefinitely the minimum family wage, and be used to depress basic wage rates rather than improve them.
ALL WAGE DISCREPANCIES FROWNED UPON While recognising that family allowances under the present economic system are merely a palliative, it is still possible to give a wholehearted practical support to any concrete suggestion for their introduction on a national scale that may be the outcome of the present moves.
lf, however, the profit motive is insufficient for the general economic basis of the life of the community, the profit or higher wage motive is insufficient in regard to workers and their share in producing the common weal.
At least by implication this lies behind the whole of the attitude of the T.U.C. to wages. It frowns on discrepancies in wage rates and makes as a concession the differentiation between skilled and unskilled labour. How lar this attitude is the outcome of an ethically Christian attitude towards the worth and destiny of human endeavour, and how far it derives from unethical and unorthodox
Liberalism which sees all men as equal, is doubtful.
The adoption or interest of the T.U.C. in this pressing practical problem should, however, be watched by all Catholic trade unionists, who ought to press for any responsibilities the State is asked to undertake in this connection, being placed on a family basis.
SOCIALIST PARADISE
Commenting on the news of the joint committee's deliberations, the Daily Herald. after recalling T.U.C. objections, said: It can be argued, however, that those war time conditions make the idea of family allowances more unscientific and more undesirable than ever.
As the war goes on we are bound to see an extension of communal arrangements for feeding, and its many cases housing. The amount that the wage or salary-earner receives for his work may become of less and less importance in deciding the quantity of food, or the nature of the accommodation his family receives.
Already the State is committed to very substantial expenditure in providing for
evacuated families. These hastily built-up schemes are certain to be extended and put on a more permanent footing.
The tendency seems to he towards a wide scale of free—or nearly free—provision of the essentials of life for the community
Introduction of family allowances would fit ill with such a development and seems to be inconsistcnt with it.
BRAVE NEW WORLD
Along that road of development, the State, after assuming responsibility for providing for the family, will in its next step quite " scientifically " assume responsibility for begetting the family, and we are in the pages of Brave New World—that scientific socialistic eugenic pagan paradise—not the Christian Social Order.
A large number of Catholic leaders in Social Reform have consistently urged family allowances as a present practical altei native to the family wage. Outstanding among these Is Mgr. Williams, Archbishop of Birmingham. As reported from time to time in this newspaper, a number of firms have adopted private schemes of allowances to workers with families.