n. The
infrequency of railroad strikes may be attributed largely to the almost
perfect control of the head officials of the brotherhoods over their
membership.

CHAPTER II.

DEATH BENEFITS.

The most needed trade-union benefits are those against death and these
were the first to be established. At the present time about one half of
American national trade unions maintain death benefit systems. In 1904,
out of a total of one hundred and seventeen national unions affiliated
with the American Federation of Labor, fifty-three were paying death
benefits.[87] Of those unions not affiliated with the American
Federation of Labor, ten were also paying such benefits.

[Footnote 87: Proceedings of the Twenty-fourth Annual Convention of the
American Federation of Labor, 1904, p. 46.]

The development of death benefits in American trade unions resembles
closely the growth of the insurance systems described in the preceding
chapter. The first unions to adopt death benefits, for example, paid for
a time a sum fluctuating in amount. The benefit was in each case the sum
raised by per capita assessments, and the yield varied according to the
membership. Thus, the Iron Molders paid a fluctuating benefit from 1870
to 1879.[88] Upon the death of a member, an assessment of forty cents
and later of forty-five per capita was levied. At Detroit in 1873 the
Cigar Makers inaugurated an endowment plan which provided for the
payment of a death benefit, the amount of which was to be the sum raised
by an assessment of ten cents on each member. Similarly, the Glass
Bottle Blowers, introducing the benefit as late as 1891, made provision
for paying the amount secured by an assessment of twenty-five cents per
capita.[89]

[Footnote 88: Iron Molders' Journal, Vol. 25, June, 1889; Constitution,
1878 (Cincinnati, 1878), Art. 17.]

[Footnote 89: Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Annual Convention,
Milwaukee, 1901; Report of Secretary Launer (Milwaukee, 1901).]

When the fluctuating benefits were inaugurated the unions were without
experience in the exercise of beneficiary functions. They could not
calculate with any exactness the amount of the assessment necessary to
provide benefits in fixed sum. They preferred, therefore, not to
guarantee the payment of any amount. The character of the first death
benefit in the Granite Cutters' Union illustrates the reluctance of the
Union in assuming the responsibility of guaranteeing fixed benefits. In