fund made up entirely by the employers’ payments.  The burden on the employers is certainly very heavy, seeing that for all kinds of accidents relief may be claimed; the only exception is in cases where the injury can be shown to be wilfully committed[85].  A British Blue-book issued on March 31, 1905, shows that the enormous sum of L5,372,150 was paid in Germany in the year 1902 as compensation to workmen for injuries sustained while at work.

[Footnote 85:  For the account given above, as also that of the Old Age Insurance Law, I am indebted to Mr. Dawson’s excellent little work, Bismarck and State Socialism (Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1890).  See also the Appendix to The German Empire of To-day, by “Veritas” (1902).]

The burden of the employers does not end here.  They have to bear their share of Old Age Insurance.  This law was passed in 1889, at the close of the first year of the present Kaiser’s reign.  His father, the Emperor Frederick, during his brief reign had not favoured the principles of State Socialism; but the young Emperor William in November 1888 announced that he would further the work begun by his grandfather, and though the difficulties of insurance for old age were very great, yet, with God’s help, they would prove not to be insuperable.

Certainly the effort was by far the greatest that had yet been made by any State.  The young Emperor and his Chancellor sought to build up a fund whereby 12,000,000 of work-people might be guarded against the ills of a penniless old age.  Their law provided for all workmen (even men in domestic service) whose yearly income did not exceed 2000 marks (L100).  Like the preceding laws, it was compulsory.  Every youth who is physically and mentally sound, and who earns more than a minimum wage, must begin to put by a fixed proportion of that wage as soon as he completes his sixteenth year.  His employer is also compelled to contribute the same amount for him.  Mr. Dawson, in the work already referred to, gives some figures showing what the joint payment of employer and employed amount to on this score.  If the workman earns L15 a year (i.e. about 6s. a week), the sum of 3s. 3-1/2d. is put by for him yearly into the State Fund.  If he earns L36 a year, the joint annual payment will be 5s. 7-1/2d.; if he earns L78, it will be 7s. a year, and so on.  These payments are reckoned up in various classes, according to the amounts; and according to the total amount is the final annuity payable to the worker in the evening of his days.  That evening is very slow in coming for the German worker.  For old age merely, he cannot begin to draw his full pension until he has attained the ripe age of seventy-one years.  Then he will draw the full amount.  He may anticipate that if he be incapacitated; but in that case the pension will be on a lower scale, proportioned to the amounts paid in and the length of time of the payments.

The details of the measure are so complex as to cause a good deal of friction and discontent.  The calculation of the various payments alone employs an army of clerks:  the need of safeguarding against personation and other kinds of fraud makes a great number of precautions necessary; and thus the whole system becomes tied up with red tape in a way that even the more patient workman of the Continent cannot endure.