MAJORITY REPORT. 
1553 
Sr EE 
ticular woman, who leaves her work some time before her con- 
finement, has definitely given up her status as a wage earner 
lies at the root of the matter. Some test would have to be 
applied if the right to benefit depended on the settlement of the 
point. The choice of a test which is equitable and at the same 
time easy to apply has in similar circumstances in the past, e.g., 
in the original provisions of the 1911 Act relative to insured 
women giving up their work on marriage, proved to be so serious 
a difficulty as to have led to the abrogation of the system under 
which it arose, the right to benefit being now based on entirely 
different considerations 
345. We have considered, as a possible way of meeting the 
difficulty of ascertaining ** intention,” a suggestion that the bene- 
fits should be paid at the confinement of every insured married 
woman, whether she was an ordinary employed contributor or in 
the special class (Class K), or in the ordinary free year’s insur- 
ance following cessation of employment. Under this plan the 
benefit would be paid yearly to about 91,000 women in Class K 
and to about 94,000 women who were either employed or in the 
free year. The number in the free year is probably relatively 
small. The suggestion then comes to this, that in order to pay 
about 90,000 women, who are normally working so as to induce 
them to stay away from work before and after confinement, 
payment would also have to be made to at least 90,000 other 
women who have recently married and in whose case the pre- 
sumption is that they have entirely given up work. We do not 
think that such a result can be contemplated. In the circum- 
stances we have not felt justified in asking the Actuarial Com- 
mittee to proceed further with the subject. 
346. To one general point we may in conclusion refer. It 
would appear open to question whether in practice the benefits of 
this type could be, for long, limited to employed women. It 
seems not unreasonable to assume that following the adoption of 
such a scheme for the wage-earning mothers there would spring 
up an immediate and insistent demand for the extension of the 
benefits—or at any rate a part of them—to all mothers irrespec- 
tive of any question of employment. Such a demand would be 
Peculiarly difficult to resist. It would be urged—and with good 
reason—that the home-keeping mother was as deserving of 
the assistance of the State as the woman who had continued 
In industrial employment. The contrast between the position of 
the home receiving two sets of wages and the maintenance 
benefit with that receiving only one set of wages would be too 
marked to escape criticism. And if such criticism led to the 
extension of the provision to all mothers, the cost would at once 
be enormously increased and an expenditure of £6 to £8 millions 
a year, for maintenance alone, might have to be contemplated. 
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