5o 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



The history of this pension fund has been perhaps the greatest scandal 

 which has fastened upon our government. This enormous payment 

 represents not devotion to the patriots of the Civil War, but political 

 truckling in its smallest and most objectionable form. With this lesson 

 before them the people of the United States have hesitated to deal at 

 all with the question of pensions for civil servants. 



Notwithstanding the unwillingness of the national government to 

 deal with the question of civil service pensions such pensions are being 

 widely extended amongst the large business corporations and railroads. 

 The New York Central Railroad, the Pennsylvania Railroad, the 

 United States Steel Corporation, and many other railroad, banking and 

 industrial corporations have established systems of pensions for their 

 officers and employees. An interesting type of such a system has 

 recently been authorized for the Boston and Maine Railroad by the legis- 

 lature of Massachusetts. In addition, several states of the union, the 

 last of which is Wisconsin, have inaugurated pension systems for public 

 school teachers, maintained in considerable part by deductions from the 

 salary of the individual. 



Before the establishment of the Carnegie Foundation, pension sys- 

 tems for teachers, quite limited in their provisions, were in operation in 

 the University of California, Columbia University, Cornell University, 

 Harvard University, McGill University and Yale University. Pension 

 systems have since been instituted in Haverford College and for those 

 teachers connected with Teachers College at Columbia University who 

 do not come within the rules of the foundation. In most of these 

 colleges the entire pension was to be paid by the institution. In some 

 of them — as, for instance, at Cornell — the pension was to be paid in 

 part from an endowment fund and in part from the payments of the 

 professors. 



The various pension systems thus briefly alluded to as now being in 

 operation may be divided into two general types, the non-contributory 

 and the contributory, and the latter type must be subdivided into two 

 subtypes — that in which the contribution of the prospective pensioner 

 is voluntary and that in which the contribution is compulsory. It goes 

 without saying that the variations under these types and subtypes are 

 endless. For example, in the compulsory contributive type contribu- 

 tions may be required from others than the pensioner himself. Thus, 

 the German old-age pension system regards three parties as partici- 

 pating — the imperial government, the employer and the employee. The 

 last two contribute equal amounts. In the year 1907 the contributions 

 were as follows : 



Imperial government M49,600,620 



Employers 89,321,600 



Employees 89,321,600 



Total M228,243782(T 



