Grande Railroad Company Employees' Relief Association provides medical care and attention to any employee, on request, either at his home or in the hospitals of the relief association at different points on the road, for which a charge of 50 cents a month is deducted from the wages of all employees. (12) The Plant System of Railways.-The Plant System Relief and Hospital Department, with sick and other benefits, medical attention, and hospitals supported by contributions from railroad and employees. (13) The Lehigh Valley Railroad Company has inaugurated a relief fund for the benefit of persons in the employ of the Lehigh Valley and associated companies. It is maintained by voluntary contributions from such persons and from the companies themselves. These 13 roads are among the larger railroad corporations of the country and operate 48,195 miles of line and employ 309,664 men. Doubtless many of the roads which replied that they did nothing by way of direct company relief, have on their lines organizations of their employees for hospital and other relief purposes, but sustained entirely by the employees; even in such cases the companies usually at irregular intervals contribute something, either by gifts of ground or memorial buildings, especially to the hospital associations. I. Accident insurance.-Taking up for further discussion the various forms of company relief indicated in the above replies, we have first of all to discuss the provision made for accident insurance. Of the companies already mentioned, that of the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad Company is worthy of special mention, because the company itself apparently carries the insurance. The company issues a policy providing for certain benefits in case of accident and for certain death benefits payable to the families of their employees in case of death. The following are the sample forms of application blanks and certificates for these nolicies: 1 D 3 ONE PER CENT. Residence 190-. No. 48176. I hereby apply to the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad Company for an accident insurance policy, and request said company to advance for me the premium thereon, as hereinafter specified; and I agree to accept said policy subject to all its conditions and provisions. Death loss under such policy, if any, to be made payable to ——— if to my legal representatives. survive me; otherwise I hereby authorize and direct the paymaster of said company to deduct from my pay each month, so long as I shall remain in the service of said company, and until such policy shall be canceled by said company in accordance with the provisions thereof, one per cent of my usual monthly wages, For the purposes of such insurance I hereby agree that $- shall be considered to be my usual monthly wages, and shall be the basis for the computation of all premiums and benefits to be paid under such policy. Office men, station men, passenger conductors, tower men, and flagmen All others per cent of wages. 2 per cent 1 per cent "* The applicant must sign his own name in full if he can write. If he can not write, he must make his mark, which must be witnessed. Form 1 D 8. No. READ CONDITIONS CAREFULLY. per month. This is to certify: That employed by the CHICAGO AND EASTERN ILLINOIS RAILROAD COMPANY as -, residing at is insured, subject to the conditions hereinafter mentioned, against accidents resulting in bodily injury or death. By the terms of his insurance said insured will receive, through the paymaster of said Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad Company (on regular pay days only), in case he shall sustain accidental injury at any time after the date hereof, and while he remains in the employ of said company (uniess this certificate shall be sooner canceled, as hereinafter provided), the following benefits: 1. In case of accidental injury not resulting in death, one-half of his usual wages during such time (not exceeding fifty weeks) as he shall be totally and necessarily disabled from all work by reason of such injury; the total in no event to exceed the sum of one thousand dollars. Such benefit shall not accrue nor be payable except on presentation of certificate of attending surgeon as to consequent disability, and the certificate of the local surgeon of the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad Company shall determine the period of such disability. 2. In case of accidental injury resulting in death, - of insured, if surviving, otherwise the legal representatives of said insured, will receive one-half of his usual wages for one year (less such amounts as shall have been paid to said insured by reason of such injury during his lifetime); said company will also pay funeral expenses and doctor's bills (not exceeding one hundred dollars), the total in no event to exceed the sum of one thousand dollars. For the purposes of this insurance it is hereby agreed that dollars per month shall be consid ered to be the usual wages" of said insured, and shall be the basis for the computation of all premiums and benefits to be paid hereunder. Such benefits shall not accrue except for accidental injury sustained by said insured while he is actually engaged in the service of said company, nor unless immediate notice of such injury shall be given by said insured to his superior officer. No benefits shall accrue hereunder for any injury that may be sustained by said insured by reason of the act of God, or of accident occurring as the result of a riot or other violation of law. This insurance does not cover injury of which there is no visible mark on the body. Whenever said insured shall change his employment in said company's service he must make appli cation for a new certificate. Said company reserves the right to cancel this certificate at any time, provided that thirty days' notice of such cancellation be given to said insured by written notice delivered to him, or by printed notices posted on its various bulletin boards, and at the stations on its railroad. This certificate is issued in accordance with the application of said insured and bears same date. Dated at Chicago, Illinois, this —— day of June, 1901. By CHICAGO AND EASTERN ILLINOIS RAILROAD COMPANY, This certificate will not be valid unless countersigned As already stated in the reply of this company, quoted above, the company makes itself liable for all deficits, inasmuch as this form of insurance is not selfsustaining on the basis of the premiums charged, as indicated on the application blanks. The department was put in operation June 1, 1893, and up to January 1, 1901, the company had contributed the sum of $3,065.59 over and above premium receipts. The Illinois Central Railroad Company has simply made arrangements with a strong accident-insurance company whereby the most favorable rates are obtained for its employees on the entire system. The same is true of the Texas and Pacific Railway Company. Many railway companies urge their employees to carry policies in life and accident insurance companies. In some cases the railway corporations collect the premiums on these policies by deducting the amounts from the wages of the employees, handing them over to the insurance companies. The Ann Arbor Railroad requires all employees in the train service to carry such policies in a regular specified insurance company. The Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railway for some years past has encouraged various accident and life insurance companies to do business on its roads, assisting them in securing as many policies as possible, and collecting premiums without charge. It was, furthermore, announced on July 12, 1897, that the receiver of the road had arranged with the Railway Officials and Accident Association, of Indianapolis, to issue policies of insurance upon the conductors, engineers, firemen, brakemen, bridge carpenters and signalmen, yardmen and foremen in its employ, at the regular rates, and that the railway company would, until further notice, pay 45 per cent of the premiums named in the policies. Employees are not compelled to insure, but if they do they are obliged to pay only 55 per cent of the regular premiums. All occupations in the railroad service are classified, and the premiums vary with the degree of hazardness of each class of labor.1 The Railroad Gazette of November 3, 1899, gives an account of the plan adopted by the Chicago and Alton Railroad Company, in which it says: The Chicago and Alton has notified its employees that it will aid them in securing life and accident insurance. The terms on which this is to be done are set forth in a circular which reads: "The company has entered into a contract with the Etna Life Insurance Company, of Hartford, Conn., the largest company in the United States issuing both life and accident policies, whereby all employees may obtain insurance upon most favorable terms. To aid its employees to secure the best accident insurance at the lowest rates, the company will bear one-half of the premium of the insurance company for all conductors, baggagemen, brakemen, engineers, firemen, bridge carpenters, and yardforemen and switchmen; and for all other employees, on account of the low rates of premiim to them, it will bear 30 per cent of the premium. In connection with this accident insurance the management has also provided for the issuance to those of its employees who may desire it, a term life policy, insuring for a term of not exceeding five years, the employee against death from natural causes; and in aid of the employee desiring the term life policy, the company will bear one-half of the premium for the first year, the employee paying the premium for all subsequent years during the term. This term life policy, however, will be issued only to such as hold an accident policy in the Etna Life Insurance Company, as provided for by this company, and for the same amount. The management offers this opportunity (it is in no respect compulsory), believing the faithful service of its employees, in all departments, warrants it in rendering them substantial aid in the protection of their families and of themselves." The Union Pacific Railroad Company has also recently put into force (January 1, 1901) a plan whereby its employees obtain accident insurance policies partly at the expense of the company. The company pays one-third of the premium for those in the most hazardous occupation and one-fourth of the premiums in all other cases where the cost of the insurance is lower. 1 See article on Brotherhood Relief and Insurance of Railway Employees, by Prof. E. R. Johnson, labor bulletin, July, 1898. Especially in justification of this kind of insurance, and, indeed, applicable to all forms of company relief, it may be said that railroad men as a class need some stimulus to make them protect themselves properly against the risks of their occupation and to enable them to overcome the obstacles they sometimes meet with in applying for ordinary insurance. As a class, the railroad employees are comparatively well paid. Many branches of the service require a certain degree of intelligence which entitles the possessor to good wages. But in spite of the economically favorable position of the greater number of railroad employees, they seem, as a class, to be proverbially improvident and indisposed to systematic saving, unless by means of some quasi-obligatory arrangement, such as dues to a beneficial society. Their itinerant life is not conducive of regular, thrifty habits. Their wages vary greatly, according to the fluctuating activity of the lines with which they are connected. Formerly, when accidents, sickness, or death, resulting from one or the other, overtook the railway employee, this calamity was frequently altogether unprepared for; and particularly in the case where a wife or family was dependent upon the wago-earner the economic consequences of such a misfortune were disastrous. Not only on account of the danger of accident usually associated with railway labor, and which, no doubt, leads the insurance companies to consider this occupation as hazardous, but because of the exposure of many railroad employees to the inclemencies of the weather in a manner adapted to the contraction of illnesses, some provision against calamity has generally been considered necessary. Such provision could, of course, be made by railway employees themselves. insurance companies, the savings banks, the beneficial associations-all these are open to them for this purpose. Railway employees are, however, a class by themselves, with special needs and special conditions of existence; they are naturally drawn together by a community of interests. Where they have seen fit to enter beneficial organizations, they have consequently drawn together into brotherhoods exclusively organized for railroad men-for engineers, for firemen, etc. These brotherhoods invariably have, as one of their principal objects, relief in case of accident, sickness, or death. Besides these brotherhoods and various orders of railway employees which are doing good work in their respective fields of mutual assistance, there are in the United States numerous local organizations which furnish aid in a small way to railway employees and their families. The The general life and accident insurance companies charge for railroad employees rates which are almost prohibitive, and in connection with them the collection of benefits is too often accompanied with delay, annoyance, and expense. Nor do railroad employees frequently patronize the mutual benefit associations of a general character, because many of them are unreliable and not based on sound financial principles. Toward savings banks railroad men often feel a certain mistrust, or are kept from depositing in them because of inconvenient location or want of familiarity with business methods. II. Hospital relief.-Such relief is one of the oldest forms, and is very general. It is frequently organized exclusively by the employees themselves, but frequently with some aid from the companies. The usual plan is for employees, under the direction of the company, to form an association to provide hospital accommodations for sick and injured employees of certain classes. The company then directs that a specific deduction from the monthly pay of employees in these classes be made and then aids the hospital association, sometimes with gifts of land or buildings or both, and sometimes by way of making up annual deficits to provide the amount of relief actually needed. The rules of the Kansas City, Fort Scott and Memphis Railroad Company Employees' Hospital Association as adopted August 1, 1897, declare that since the association has agreed to furnish necessary medical, surgical, and hospital treatment to such employees of the associated companies as may be ill or injured while in the service, and to erect and maintain hospitals for the use of such ill and injured, and such plan having received the consent of the employees, a deduction shall be made on the pay rolls of each company from the pay of employees, as follows: 50 cents per month when pay amounts to $50, and 35 cents when over $5 and less than $50. The railroad companies agree to contribute to the hospital association the sum of $500 annually. Ill and injured employees are entitled to hospital care and treatment free of charge for a term not exceeding 1 year continuously, unless by permission of the board of trustees of such hospital association, so long as they continue to obey the rules established for their protection and require surgical or medical treatment. Foremen are supplied with blank certificates, which, when filled out, entitle an employee to receive from the head of his department free 1 See section 10 of this report. transportation over the company's lines to the hospital, which in dangerous or emergency cases may be telegraphed for. Minute instructions to conductors of trains with reference to summoning emergency aid from surgeons or getting injured employees to the emergency hospitals and finally to the general hospital are prescribed in the book of rules. Employees are entitled to receive medicines upon a prescription from a regular physician when forwarded to the hospital or nearest dispensary, provided the proper certificate, signed by the employees' foreman or superior officer, shows that he is entitled to it, and provided also that no prescriptions for patent or proprietary medicines are filled. Medicine is forwarded by train without charge. The general hospital of the association is located at Kansas City, but emergency hospitals are located at Fort Scott, Kans.; Springfield, Mo.; Memphis, Tenn., and Birmingham, Ala., and in addition to these there are a number of dispensaries. The employees' relief association of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad Company in its constitution, revised September, 1890, provides that members shall pay monthly dues amounting to 50 cents for each employee, provided those who work less than one-half a month shall pay one-half the full rate, and those who work more than half a month shall pay the full rate. Such amounts are deducted from the pay roll, but no payment is required in any month where there is no time reported upon the rolls for the employee. The association is controlled by a board of 11 trustees, 6 of whom must be employees, 2 each from the three departments, machinery and car department, engineering and maintenance-of-way department, and transportation department. The general manager of the road appoints the additional 5 trustees, all of whom serve for one year. All hospitals, dispensaries, and medical and surgical treatments, including furnishing of all medicines, are, by the rules and regulations, under the control and direction of the medical department of the company. Sick and disabled employees are entitled to treatment free of expense other than the monthly dues as provided. The hospitals of the company are governed by the rules of the hospitals association. which has also power to establish additional hospitals. The benefits and relief furnished to all contributing employees of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad are such as prescribed by the board of trustees in their by-laws and rules, provided that the benefits and relief, as enumerated in the rules of the company, as follows, are guaranteed. First. Sick employees will be treated at the hospitals of the association, or at the office of the medical staff, by the physicians and surgeons of the association, free of charge; provided, that relief shall be withheld, except as hereinafter provided, from persons afflicted with chronic diseases, or diseases contracted prior to entrance into the service of the company, and from those afflicted with venereal or contagious diseases, and from those whose sickness, disability, or death results from intoxication or the intemperate use of stimulants or narcotics, or by the hand of justice. Second. Employees disabled by accident will be treated at their homes, if practicable; otherwise at a hospital of the association. Third. Medicines will be furnished free from the dispensaries of the association on the prescription of any surgeon of the association. Fourth. At points where there may be no dispensary of the association and no company physician. all reasonable expenses of sick or disabled employees at such points for treatment and medicines will be defrayed from the fund hereby created, on order of the chief surgeon; provided, that if, in the opinion of the chief surgeon, it is advisable to remove the patient to an association hospital, in that case it shall be done; otherwise the fund hereby created shall not be liable for the expenses incurred. Fifth. Employees shall be entitled to free vaccination. Smallpox is a contagious disease provided for by the municipal authorities, and will not be cared for at the expense of the association." Sixth. No greater sum than $25 will be allowed from the relief fund for funeral expenses of deceased employees from accident in line of duty, or from sickness contracted during employment, and that only in case of necessity. Seventh. Employees who shall become intoxicated in the hospital, or become insubordinate to the rules thereof, may be discharged therefrom and excluded from the benefits of the fund at once, upon the order of the chief surgeon. The Southern Pacific Company has a hospital association organized on essentially the same plan as that just described. The contribution of 50 cents a month is collected from all officials and employees with the exception of Chinese and those excluded from all benefits by direction of the chief surgeon. The contribution is due on the third day after entering the employ of the company, and is collected for that month and monthly thereafter by deduction on pay roll; but contributions are not collected for time away from duty on account of sickness or injury after the month in which same commenced. Benefits provided for contributors to the fund as subject to the regulations are: Hospital treatment, medical and surgical treatment outside the hospital, special treatment at the Hot Springs sanitarium, medicine and surgical dressings, artificial limbs and appli ances. The Northern Pacific has a beneficial association whose object is the medical and surgical care of its members and provision for burial expenses at their death. It operates also the hospital of the Northern Pacific Railway at Missoula and the one at Brainerd for the gratuitous care and treatment of its members, but takes into these hospitals other persons as pay patients. All officers and employees are eligible to membership on approval of the board of managers, and pay monthly dues of 25 cents where the monthly compensation is less than $25; 50 cents where the monthly compensation is over $25 and less than $100; $1 where compensation is over $100 and less than $200, and $2 where the monthly compensation is over $200. The dues are deducted from the monthly salary or wages of each officer and employee, but no payment is required when wages are not received. The association is controlled by a board of 19 managers, ten of whom are elected, one each by ten groups of employees (conductors, brakemen, etc., acting as separate groups), and eight appointed by the second vice-president of the company. The eighteenth annual report of this association for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1900, showed receipts for the year amounting to $122,000 and expenses of $99,000, leaving a surplus of nearly $23.000. Twenty-two thousand two hundred and eighty-two cases were treated during the year. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company has furnished for the use of its employees two hospital buildings and grounds. "This company," declared Mr. Melville E. Ingalls, president of the Cleveland, Chicago, Cincinnati and St. Louis, and of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Companies, in his testimony before the Industrial Commission in 1899, "has had rather interesting and successful results with its hospital system. Our general manager got very much interested in it and he took it up with the heads of these different brotherhoods and their representatives, and they appointed committees which examined into the different systems. They finally agreed to it and fixed a form of assessment on those that belonged. We gave them a hospital at Clifton Forge which cost us $75,000, and which, I think, is as complete a hospital as there is in America. Everybody that can be is sent there, and medicines are distributed from there. They have a good surgeon and trained nurses. It has been running now for two years, and we are establishing branches at other places. It has really been a wonderful success.' The hospital is maintained by assessment on the employees, taken from their wages, and varying from $6, paid by the president, down to 10 cents on some of the men. Membership, however, is optional; it entitles to the privileges of going to the hospital and being taken care of until discharged by the surgeon, without any charge. Members may also have medicines sent to them at the request of the local surgeons. If they are injured at a distance from the hospital, arrangements have been made by which private hospitals take care of them, and the expense is paid out of the fund, which has already accumulated a surplus. The New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Company, whose lines run through a thickly settled country well supplied with hospitals at all points, has made arrangements with numerous hospitals by which injured men are taken care of. The Illinois Central Railroad Company has a hospital founded by the cooperation of the employees of its Louisville Division and the company which formerly owned the line. This hospital is self-supporting. The Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company furnishes free medical and surgical attendance and hospital privileges to all employees in consideration of a deduction of 40 cents each from their monthly pay. The Texas and Pacific Railway Company has hospitals for the benefit and use of sick and injured employees, which are partly supported by deductions from the wages of employees, the balance being made up by the company. The Missouri Pacific Railway Company has a hospital department entirely supported by employees. The regulations of these associations just enumerated almost invariably state that no relief is due to persons afflicted with chronic diseases, or diseases contracted prior to entrance into the service of the railroad company. Relief is likewise withheld, except in special cases, from those afflicted with venereal or contagious diseases, and from those whose sickness, disability, or death results from intoxication or the intemperate use of stimulants or narcotics, or by the hand of justice. III. Railway relief departments. However creditable and important railroad hospitals may be, it can not be maintained that they are a sufficient guaranty against the misfortunes due to the sickness, disablement, or death of railroad employees. For there are others dependent upon the wage-earner, whose economic position becomes disastrous when he is unable to furnish them with the means of subsistence. No matter how well the sick or injured employee may be attended to, or how frequently the company or hospital association may help in case of death to bear the expense of his burial, the wife and children, or perhaps the mother and father, to whose support he contributed, will oftentimes fall into dire want. Hence the general desire among railroad employees to secure financial aid in case of sickness or accident and to obtain a life insurance that |