Timeline

1790–1879 ∼ Recognizing the Need for Retirement

State legislatures introduced policies of mandatory retirement for some public officials between 1790 and 1820 / Business begins to regard unemployment as a distinctly different problem from poverty (mid 1880s) / 70 percent of American males over the age of sixty-five still work (1840) / Some, but not all, states require judges to retire due to advancing age (1860) / Congress establishes a system to provide pensions for disabled soldiers (1862) / American Express establishes the first railroad pension plan (1875) / Massachusetts is the first state to collect unemployment statistics (1878)

MILESTONES: Decline of the apprenticeship system (1820–1860) • Factories employ entire families of immigrants (1820s–1830s) • Old Immigration from England, Ireland, Scandinavia and Germany (1830–1870) Census shows great increase in the types of occupations (1850) • One-fifth of the American population is killed in the Civil War (1861–1865) • First labor union formed in the U.S. (1866)

1880–1899 ∼ Early Pension...