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A Bismarckian Measure

A Bismarckian Measure image
Parent Issue
Day
26
Month
December
Year
1889
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Mention has been made of Bismarck's iavorite plan for abolishing pauperisra In the Germán empire. The plan is downright state socialism, pure and simple. It originates with Bismarck himself, however, and not with some poor, half starved, long haired crec.ture, out at elbowa and hunted of men,, and that makes all the dilïerence in the world. The chancellor'a systern for abolishing the poor consists of three different laws, the last of which ha3 passed the reichstag. In 1883 a law was enacted providing for the insurance of the workingman against sickness. During health a small 6um, amounting to 1$ or 2 per cent. of his wages, is required by law to be paid into the sick fund. His employer is obliged to pay one-third of the sum. During Uness the workingman receives half pay for a term not exceeding thirteen weeks. If he goes to the hospital his family receive half his allowance. The next step on the road to state socialism was an accident insurance law, enacted in 1884. lts operation extends to sailors, tillers of the soil and to workmen in the building trades. Employers must pay all of the guarantee fund in accident insurance. The workman who is entirely disabled by accident receives as a pension two-thirds of his regular pay and a proportional sum for partial disablement. If he is killed his widow receives as pension 20 per cent. of his wages and each child 15 per cent., up to 60 per cent. , which is the limit. A man's fellow workmen are the jury to pass on the amount of injury he has received. It will have a tendency to make employers careful of those in their hire. The tbird and last law is the oíd age insurance act. It goes into operation in 1891. Under its provisions all Germans, male and female, above 16 years old, who work for wages, must pay regularly into a state insurance fund to take care of them when they a: too old to labor or become invalid. Employers pay half the sum required for this fund and employés half. The payments are very small, being from 3 to 7 cents a week. Froni these insignificant sums will be secured pensions ranging from $15 to $91. The state adds in each case $10 a year to the pension. The governnient pays the insuranee of men while they are in military service. In a free republic, where working people get good wages, why can they not do for themselves what Bismarck and the government are doing for the laboring classes in Germany? The French kill swallows by a method which might be adopted in America for destroying the pestiferous little English sparrow. Hundreds of wires, charged by powerful batteries, are strung along the coasts when the birds arrive from the south. They alight upon the wires to rest and fall dead. Then they are prepared for the milliner and the stuffed skins sent to Paris by the thousand to adorn the hats of tender hearted ladies, who woukl weep over the indigestions of a pet poodle. But a strange fact, which is reason, instinct or something else, haa been notetl the present spring. The Bwallows have avoided the district of the deadly wires in their niigration tvïrt.Vi wa.rl . There is only one thinethat pleases woman more than to be referred to as a dove, and that ie to hear a man referred to as the hawk. There are ocly a few certainties in the world. One of them is the mother; you can always depend upon her. As soon as a man pets the fire built and the room warm, his wife comes along and wants to "air the house."

Article

Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Register