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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXI. No. 791 



estsof teachers. The underlying principles' 

 which seemed to be clear were these : 



1. The retiring allowance must come to 

 the teacher as a right and in accordance 

 with fixed rules. 



2. It should form a fair proportion of 

 his active pay and a larger proportion of 

 small salaries than of large ones, a condi- 

 tion which was rendered fair by paying 

 the same proportion of the first thousand 

 dollars of active pay to all. 



3. The retiring allowance should be 

 available at some fixed age and after some 

 stated period of service. 



4. Some account should be taken of disa- 

 bility. 



5. The retiring allowance system should 

 embrace in its provisions the widows of 

 teachers who under the rules had become 

 eligible to retiring allowances. 



The question of the minimum limit at 

 which retirement on the ground of age 

 should be permitted was one concerning 

 which there was wide difference of opinion. 

 The two ages most often suggested to the 

 trustees were sixty-five and seventy. A 

 number of teachers argued that seventy 

 was early enough for a fiLxed date for re- 

 tirement. More than one teacher of prom- 

 inence urged that a teacher was at his best 

 between sixty-five and seventy (these were 

 all men past sixty-five). On the whole, 

 however, it seemed clear that if the right to 

 a retiring allowance did not mature till the 

 age of seventy, a large part of the benefit 

 of the endowment would be lost. The trus- 

 tees therefore fixed upon sixty-five as a 

 reasonable minimum limit upon which re- 

 tirement on the ground of age could be 

 claimed, leaving the question of the con- 

 tinuance of a teacher's service beyond that 

 period to be determined entirely by the 

 college and himself. The rule which re- 

 sulted from this action is as follows: 



RtTLE 1. Retirement on the Basis of Age. — Any 

 person sixty-five years of age, who has had not 

 less than fifteen years of service as a professor 

 and Vfho is at the time a professor in an accepted 

 institution, shall he entitled to an annual retiring 

 allowance, computed as follows: 



(a.) For an active pay of twelve hundred dollars 

 or less, an allowance of one thousand dollars, pro- 

 vided no retiring allowance shall exceed ninety 

 per cent, of the active pay. 



(6) For an active pay greater than twelve hun- 

 dred dollars the retiring allowance shall equal one 

 thousand dollars, increased by fifty dollars for 

 each one hundred dollars of active pay in excess 

 of twelve hundred dollars. 



(c) No retiring allowance shall exceed four 

 thousand dollars. 



Ck)mputed by the formula: R = A/2 + 400, 

 where R = annual retiring allowance, and A = 

 active pay. 



It seemed extremely desirable that a re- 

 tiring allowance system should include 

 some provision for teachers who, after 

 long service, have become broken in health 

 or who by physical infirmity, such as the 

 loss of hearing, are incapacitated for their 

 calling. Among the most pathetic eases in 

 the profession of the teacher and those 

 most embarrassing to the colleges them- 

 selves have been the ones in which teachers 

 have, after faithful service, broken in 

 health and found themselves with ap- 

 proaching age practically helpless. In 

 consequence the trustees adopted a second 

 rule providing for retirement on the 

 ground of service, intended to meet such 

 cases as those referred to, together with 

 the rare cases which now and then arise 

 when a man of real genius as a scholar 

 might prefer to accept a smaller pension 

 and devote himself exclusively to produc- 

 tive work in science or literature. The 

 trustees realized that retirement below the 

 age of sixty-five threw upon the founda- 

 tion a larger load than the retirement of 

 one above that age. It was believed, how- 

 ever, that the number of teachers who 

 would avail themselves of retirement under 



