SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as have net been reserved for review in other forms.] Transactions of the Second International Actuarial Congress, (C. and E. Layton.)—The second Congress of Actuaries was held last year in London. The most interesting section is doubtless that section which deals with old-age pensions. Papers were read on the systems at work or proposed in Belgium, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, and Italy. There is something to be learnt from all, but nowhere has the experiment been tried on such a scale as to afford any guidance in the gigantic task on which England, as is suggested, is to enter. All have the condition of thrift in the persons to be benefited, this thrift being commonly compulsory. If what has actually been done is of modest proportions, some of the schemes are sufficiently ambitious. M. Lacote, for instance, proposes a pension of 500 fr. for every Frenchman, rich or poor, at the age of sixty. This, he calculates, is to be done out of an annual sum of 150,000,000 fr. (Are there only three hundred thousand men and women above sixty in Prance? It works out at one in three hundred and thirty.) Half of the money is to be furnished by the State ; the other half will be raised by a levy of one or two days' wages, and taxes on bachelors and foreign workmen. Another yet bolder theorist limits his pensions to the poor, and proposes to raise the funds from the rich, the tax on inheritance mounting up in some cases, we presume the largest estates, to 75 per cent. ! Another notable series of papers is that on "Workmen's Compensation for Acci- dents." In France a law exists the result of which will be in the course of time an annual outlay of nearly £4,000,000. The German insurance system, which provides for sickness as well as accidents, is a far larger affair. Herr Unger takes about fifty pages to expound the system, a detailed exposition which we shall not attempt to analyse. He has, we see, a highly favourable opinion of the system. Friendly societies and life insurance are other subjects of great importance with which the Congress con- cerned itself.
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