Will Family Allowances Cure Poverty?

After the last war perhaps the most popular reform proposal and one that was most attractive to the workers was the plan to have a national minimum wage below which no worker should be paid. The Labour Party supported it and the Independent Labour Party carried on much propaganda for a more elaborate scheme called “The Living Income.” It lost its popularity particularly after the Labour Government would have nothing to do with it. Now its place has been taken by the growing popularity of “family allowances,” the payment of grants by employers or the State to help support the children of working class families. Since it is popularised in the form of an addition to existing wages it has a specious attractiveness. Every mother who thinks that she will have more to spend on her children is inclined to support the scheme. Indeed it may be conceded that if it were introduced at least some families with a very small income might be better off, at least for a time. But what of the wider aspects ? Will it raise or help to raise the working class as a whole out of poverty ? Will it even be a permanent gain for those who are better off at first ? Will it mean an addition to the wages of the working class or only a redistribution of the total amount of wages among the workers, so that some gain and others lose ? Will it strengthen the trade union efforts of the workers in their struggle against the employers or will it weaken them by setting the married against the single ?

We can get an answer from the actual experience of capitalism and from the more candid admissions of the advocates of the scheme.

The broad answer is that any change which lowers the cost of living for the workers immediately produces a tendency for wages to come down accordingly and experience of family allowance schemes show that they are no exception. Vibart in his “Family Allowances in Practice” quotes the statements of continental trade union officials based on their experience. He writes : —

“All these statements tend to suggest that the allowances have been and are regarded as a part of labour’s remuneration and that the idea of “more allowance, less wage,” was familiar to many of the employers and was carried into practice by some of them.”

Mr. L. Ross, of the Australian Labour Party, using the experience of family allowances in Australia, wrote that—

“The new South Wales Scheme instead of redistributing wealth actually meant a reshuffling of wages between single and married men”.—(Socialist Review, December, 1928.)

When the advocates of family allowances gave evidence before the Royal Commission on the Civil Service in London in 1930 they were quite prepared to consider providing the allowances “by a small reduction in the salaries either of men or women.” The question Socialists would put to all of the advocates of family allowances is this: If the object of the allowances is to abolish the poverty of a section of the workers, as it is claimed to be, and since Socialism alone will abolish poverty entirely, why are they opposed to Socialism ? To the workers in general we say : “Which do you prefer, capitalism plus the palliative of family allowances or Socialism under which all such palliatives will be unnecessary ?”