pressing one where
the average earnings are low. In Germany and Austria this development
has been more in connection with other forms of insurance; in Denmark,
Great Britain, and France it has had more the aspect of an extension
of poor relief. In the United States little has been done to provide
for these great needs. Massachusetts in 1907 authorized savings
banks to sell insurance and old-age pensions to those who applied. An
increasing number of corporations, especially railroads, are adopting
a pension system for men growing old in their service, but nothing has
been done of a general public nature toward compulsory and universal
protection against these misfortunes.

The following table shows the situation in some of the leading
countries:

OLD AGE AND INVALIDITY PENSIONS

_Voluntary_.

Belgium, 1850, 1903 (voluntary except for miners).

Italy, 1898, 1907 (all wage earners).

_Compulsory_.

Belgium, for miners, 1868.

Germany, 1889, 1899, 1911.

Austria, 1889 (miners only); 1906 (office employees).

Denmark, 1891, 1908 (noncontributory).

France, for seamen 1850, 1881; for miners, 1894, 1905,
1907 (noncontributory, all indigent citizens); 1910 (contributory,
all workmen and employees; was voluntary
by laws 1850, 1886).

Great Britain, 1908 (noncontributory, old age pensions,
granted by the government).

Sweden, 1913 (universal, contributory).

Sec. 12. #Unemployment insurance#. The most difficult of all the problems
of insurance is that of unemployment. There the amount of the risk
in any case is so largely dependent on the personal qualities of the
worker. There are obvious objections to making the competent, steady,
sober members of any trade bear the burden of the infirmities of their
fellows. But, on the other hand, as we have seen,[4] a large part of
the problem of unemployment is chargeable to social maladjustments
rather than to individual faults.

At present development in this field is along two lines, that
of subsidized trade-union relief (the Ghent system), and that of
compulsory state insurance in certain industries. The former has been
adopted by many cities and by some countries in western Europe, the
public paying a certain proportion (from one sixth to one third) of
the amounts of the benefits paid by the unions. Great Britain is
the only country as yet to adopt a compulsory state system. It began
operation in 1912, and applied to 2,500,000 pe