Railwaymen have, again, exceptional opportunities for getting cheap holidays. In addition to the regular holidays given to members of the salaried staff, most of the grades of the wages staff who have a certain period of service to their credit get from three to six days' holiday a year, with pay. In some cases the railway company provide special trains enabling their employees in some railway colony—Swindon, for example—to take a holiday en masse, the said colony becoming, temporarily, a deserted village. The free passes given to members of the staff are sometimes available for travel over the lines of other companies as well.
The concession, also, to railway servants of what are known as "privilege tickets" enables them and their families to travel at exceptionally low rates. These tickets are granted so freely that the number issued by one company alone during the course of a single year has been nearly 800,000.
Provision for the railwayman's old age is assured by superannuation funds in the case of the salaried staff and by pension funds in the case of the wages staff.
The whole question in regard to the standing of these funds was investigated by a Departmental Committee which was appointed by the Board of Trade in 1908, and presented its report [Cd. 5349] in 1910. It was the position, more especially, of the superannuation funds that gave rise to the uneasiness leading up to the appointment of this Committee. The earliest of the said funds was started by the London and North-Western Railway Company in 1853, and other companies followed the example thus set, the Committee reporting on, altogether, fifteen superannuation funds brought to their notice. At first no doubt was felt as to the stability of the funds; but when the railway companies, with a view to maintaining the efficiency of the service, enforced the retirement of officers at the age of sixty-five, or in some cases at the otherwise optional age of sixty, heavier demands were made on the funds at the same time that the benefits were being increased. Actuarial investigations disclosed substantial deficiencies, and some of the companies sought to cover these by abandoning actuarial valuations altogether and guaranteeing payment of claims out of their revenue, this being in addition to the ordinary contributions which, in one form or another, all the companies were making to the funds. A certain want of uniformity followed, and the Committee now made various recommendations in regard to the future working both of the fifteen superannuation funds and of seventeen pension funds applying to the wages staff.
There is no need here to enter into the details of the actual or proposed arrangements. Suffice it, therefore, to point to the existence of these funds, with their accumulated reserves of close on £11,000,000, as designed to assure the future of nearly 300,000 railwaymen, over and above whatever salary or wage they may receive while in active employment.
The Railway Guards' Universal Friendly Society was established in 1849 to encourage thrift and to provide, among other benefits, permanent pay for life to disabled members and annuities for the widows and orphans of deceased members. The total amount expended in relief down to the end of 1910 was over £358,000, and there were then 250 members and widows in receipt of life allowances amounting to £4758 per annum.
Further provision either for railwaymen themselves in times of distress or for their widows and orphans is made through various organisations which are supported by the contributions alike of railway servants, of the railway companies and of the general public.
At the head of these excellent bodies stands the Railway Benevolent Institution, which attained its jubilee in 1908. The objects in view, as summarised by Lord Claud Hamilton at the fifty-third annual dinner on May 4, 1911, are: (1) To grant permanent annuities to railway officers and servants in distressed circumstances; (2) to grant permanent pensions to widows in similar circumstances; (3) to educate and maintain orphan children between six and fifteen years of age, and then give them a start in life; (4) to give by gratuities and by contingent annuities temporary assistance until permanent relief can be secured from the funds of the Institution; (5) to grant gratuities from the casualty fund to injured servants and to widows of deceased servants; (6) to enable officers and servants to insure their lives in the best approved companies on special terms; and (7) to relieve distress whether arising among subscribers or non-subscribers.
No fewer than 157,000 railwaymen of all classes are subscribers in one form or another to the funds of the Institution, which, apart from amounts given as gratuities, conferred its benefits in 1910 on 2,672 annuitants and children, the total outgoings for the year under all heads being £55,396. To particularise only one phase of this varied activity, the number of children—mainly orphans of railwaymen killed in the service—who have been educated in the great Railway Orphanage at Derby (a branch of the Institution) has been over 2000.
Another leading railway charity, the United Kingdom Railway Officers and Servants' Association, founded in 1861 to grant assistance in time of distress and necessity to railway officers and servants, their widows and orphans, held its jubilee festival on April 28, 1911, when Viscount Castlereagh, M.P., who presided, announced that since the establishment of the Association the relief afforded had been as follows:—