GRAPHIC EVIDENCE.
It may be of interest to give the details of a group life assurance scheme which covers 12,000 factory workers in Scotland. Under this scheme the workers are assured for £100 each, and the cost to them of the assurance is 3d. weekly. The plan was offered to the employees in December, 1927, subject to the usual qualification that it would go into effect when 75 per cent. of all eligible workers had joined. The requisite number was secured and the plan took effect. In such a large group it was inevitable that the inexorable laws of mortality should soon display themselves. Several assured workers died, and the quick payment of £100 to their beneficiaries was such a graphic object lesson in the value of group assur- ance that the membership of eligible workers in the plan is now 99.63 per cent. of the possible total.
In the first sixteen months' operation of this scheme eighty-nine assured workers have died and their claims promptly paid. In addition to these sixteen workers have been accepted by the assurance company as totally and permanently disabled and the payment of the assurance begun in monthly instalments. Altogether the assurance company has paid, or started to pay, a total of £10,500. This amount of ready money, in homes burdened with disease or death, and in families where the margin between income and living costs is always very slight, has alleviated a great burden of distress to an extent which it would be difficult to exaggerate. In this scheme nursing service is also provided, and in the sixteen months under review a total of 6,225 calls were reported by- the visiting nurses. Actually, the number of such calls is a good deal larger. The nurses become acquainted with workers and their families and often Call in to see how things are going from their own friendly interest without reporting the call.
Perhaps the most noteworthy development of all in this important new movement has been the interest taken in it by the articulate organization of British industry as manifested -by leading trade federations. Two federations have taken up the pension question. In one a plan has actually been adopted and is being installed in a number of plants of member Arms, and in another federation an intensive study has progiessed to a point where the recommendation of a pension plan is practically certain.
[The continuation of this article will be found in our Financial Columns on page 109.]
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