r member for
the benefit of each totally disabled member--one half the amount
assessed in case of death.[41] The history of this benefit was tersely
summed up by General Secretary-Treasurer Abbott in his address to the
Engineers' Association, December 3, 1871: "The Baltimore convention,
1869, adopted a disability clause, the Nashville, Tenn., convention
amended it, and the Toronto, Canada, convention, 1871, repealed it." At
St. Louis, 1872, the Brotherhood formed a separate association, known as
the "Total Disability Insurance Association," for furnishing insurance
against disability to members. An entrance fee of $2 was required and
the assessment was fixed at $1.[42] In 1876 the convention dissolved the
Total Disability Insurance Association, and the Engineers did not
succeed in establishing a satisfactory system of disability insurance
until 1884, when the prosperous condition of the association enabled the
convention to carry out its long-cherished plan and to make provision
for the payment of the same benefit in case of total disability as at
death.[43] In the call of the Conductors for a convention to effect a
permanent organization issued in November, 1868, the purpose of the
proposed Order was stated to be the protection of "the members and their
families in case of sickness, accident or death."[44] The mutual
insurance association instituted by the first convention paid a
disability benefit equal to the death benefit. The law under which the
association operated was repealed at the second convention in October,
1869; but when the third convention in October, 1870, adopted a new
insurance plan, provision was made that disability insurance should be
paid in an amount equal to that paid in case of death. Not until 1881,
however, did the Conductors satisfactorily solve the problem.

[Footnote 40: Locomotive Engineers' Journal, Vol. 1, p. 9.]

[Footnote 41: Constitution, 1869, in Locomotive Engineers' Journal, Vol.
4, p. 31.]

[Footnote 42: Locomotive Engineers' Journal, Vol. 5, p. 11; Vol. 7, pp.
28, 60.]

[Footnote 43: _Ibid_., Vol. 7, pp. 28-60; Vol. 11, p. 78; Constitution,
1884 (Cleveland, 1884).]

[Footnote 44: Proceedings of the Order of Railway Conductors of America,
1868-1885 (Cedar Rapids, 1888), p. 19.]

The difficulties experienced by the Engineers and the Conductors in
establishing disability insurance, without doubt, served to deter the
Firemen from adopting a similar system until their fifth co