Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 94, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 April 1910 — FRANCE’S OLD-AGE PENSIONS. [ARTICLE]

FRANCE’S OLD-AGE PENSIONS.

Act Which Propablr Will Pui Follow* German Line*.The French old-age pensions scheme, the bill for which has. just passed its first reading In the Senate, follows the Prussian rather than the English measure. As in Prussia, it is contributory and compulsory, workmen and employers contributing an equal amount annually. Men are to pay SI.BO, women $1.20 and persons under 18 90 cents yearly until their 65th year, when they will become entitled to a pension, which will be paid from the total contributions plus the employers’ qiiota>and a sum of sl2 paid by the State. The conditions for receiving the full pension are that the worker shall have contributed to the fund for thirty years, including in the case of men the two years of military service. Those Who have contributed for more than ten years and less than thirty will be entitled to a reduced pension. Existing friendly societies which may be taken into the scheme will be authorized to collect old-age contributions from their members. They will receive from the State a contribution of 30 cents a head for sickness and insurance, plus an additional sum to cover expenses. The working classes in France are estimated to number 11,000,000. The

government has agreed with the opposition so far as to restrict the principle of compulsory contribution to town apd rural wage earners, otherwise workmen In the ordinary sense of this term, and to make contribution optional to the large class of small farmers, petty land owners and part-profit cultivators (metayers), all of whom are laborers in reality. If they do not contribute they cannot benefit by the pensions scheme. These rural classes are computed at 6,000,000 in number. Forty years hence, when the scheme is in full operation, the pensioners will have SB3 a year. They will start the year after the bill Is passed with $20.40 a year, the pension to rise gradually during the interval, a correspondent of the New York Sun says. The chief newspapers on the government side predict that early in April the bill will become law, and will be regarded as the greatest achievement of the third republic, but a great many prominent poliitcians are not so optimistic. Many Senators have voted for the second reading of the bill for no other reason than getting a better opportunity of making a more systematic and concentrated attack on the compulsory clauses.