6 4 POLITICAL ECONOMY 



must be chiefly due to the supervision under which every such 

 member lives a supervision of great service to the really sick, 

 but fatal to malingering. Mr. Allan in fact here completely re- 

 futes the calculations, and the constancy of the payments year 

 by year proves that their small amount does not depend on any 

 exceptional youth on the part of the members. The superannua- 

 tion allowance, on the other hand, has not reached its maximum 

 among the engineers ; it has increased from \d>. per month per 

 member in 1852 (and in 1851) to 3d. in 1865 and 1866 still 

 very far from the 2s. 2d. which Mr. Tucker would relentlessly 

 exact from every subscriber. This enormous discrepancy is due 

 to three causes : 



1. The maximum has not yet been reached. 



2. No man has a right to the superannuation allowance at 

 any given age, but must continue to work so long as the society 

 can find employment for him, so that a very large proportion of 

 the men work till they die. 



3. One-third of the members fall off before becoming entitled 

 to the allowance. 



Mr. Glen Finlaison will in course of time tell us how much all 

 these circumstances ought theoretically to diminish Mr. Tucker's 

 estimate. 



The payment per month per member for the burial benefit 

 shows a gradual increase, rising from l^d. to 3d. in the sixteen 

 years, but during the last nine years the increase has been very 

 slow, being 2fd. in 1858, and 3d. in 1866. Out of every 100 

 men in the society at a given time, 33 do not die at all, but 

 retire ; this ought therefore to diminish Mr. Tucker's estimate 

 by one-third ; but these men who never receive the funeral 

 benefit contribute to the fund from which the others are paid, 

 and diminish by so much their contributions. The longer they 

 stop in the society the greater is this action ; without any very 

 complex calculation, we see that from this one cause Mr. Tucker's 

 estimate must be diminished by considerably more than one- 

 third, nearly by one-half in which case the actual payments of 

 the engineers will, even from Mr. Tucker's table, have nearly 

 reached their maximum. If the average age of members, as 

 would appear from this, has reached a constant maximum, in 

 which case 8%d. for sickness, with 3d. for superannuation, and 



