Of course, the railroaders have long since had their insurance, although the regular life companies look upon them with distrust as risks. They have been forced either to pay high premiums in the regular companies or else to organize insurance of their own. Their brotherhoods have carried forth this work with interest and with skill. These brotherhoods, or unions, of the locomotive engineers, the firemen, the conductors, the trainmen, and several other branches of the service, have been mighty agents, too, in the development of the moral fibre of the American railroader. Lack of space prevents a consideration of each in detail. To do them but simple justice, to sing the epic of the mighty Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, for instance (which has only recently finished a great building of its own in Cleveland), would require a volume for itself.

But the railroads have not been negligent in this matter. For instance, a man on the Baltimore & Ohio can pay $1.00 a month out of his pay envelope and have $1,000.00 life insurance. He can likewise pay $3.00 a month, and $3,000.00 will be paid his heirs upon his death. The railroad company stands back of this fund and guarantees the insurance. It makes good from its own treasury any deficit or shortage that might be incurred in its operation.

For twenty years the Pennsylvania has conducted a similar work, under the title of the Voluntary Relief Department. Membership in this is, as the name indicates, purely voluntary, the road’s employees being admitted, after favorable physical examination, up to the age of 45 years and 6 months. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company in this instance also stands as guarantor of the insurance fund.

A close examination of it in some detail may interest. The following table shows the detail—the five classes into which employees may enter:

1st
Class		 2nd
Class		 3rd
Class		 4th
Class		 5th
Class
Monthly pay Any
rate		 $35 or
more		 $55 or
more		 $75 or
more		 $95 or
more
Contributions per month:
Class $0.75 $1.50 $2.25 $3.00 $3.75
Additional Death Benefit, equal death benefits of class:
Taken at not over 45 years of age .30 .60 .90 1.20 1.50
Taken at over 45 years and not over 60 years of age .45 .90 1.35 1.80 2.25
Taken at over 60 years of age .60 1.20 1.80 2.40 3.00
Disablement benefits per day, including Sundays and holidays:
Accident:
First 52 weeks .50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50
After 52 weeks .25 .50 .75 1.00 1.25
Sickness:
After first three days and not longer than 52 weeks .40 .80 1.20 1.60 2.00
After 52 weeks .20 .40 .60 .80 1.00
Death Benefits:
For Class 250.00 500.00 750.00 1000.00 1250.00
Additional that may be taken 250.00 500.00 750.00 1000.00 1250.00

An employee, however, who is under forty-five years of age, who has been five years in the service and a member of the relief fund for one year, may enter any higher class than that determined by his pay, upon passing satisfactory physical examination.

Payments from the fund vary from forty cents per day for sickness and fifty cents for accident in the service, for members in the first class, to $2.00 per day for sickness and $2.50 for accident with a death benefit of from $250.00 to $2,500.00, according to class of membership and death benefit held.

Since the fund has been in operation, the following payments have been made, to December 31, 1909, inclusive:—