Old Age Insurance in Germany.

All the old age pension or national insurance schemes which have been propounded are modifications of one or other of these types, and it is hardly necessary to say that none of them has yet attained or approached to realisation in any English-speaking country. In Germany and Denmark, however, there are schemes in actual operation. The Old Age Insurance Law of Germany, which came into force on January 1, 1891, applies to wage-earners, clerks, apprentices, and other employés earning less than £100 a year, and compels each of them, after the age of sixteen years and during employment, to contribute a premium of from ¾d to 1½d a week, according to his wages, his employer being liable for collecting the amount and for supplementing it with a like sum. Ac the age of seventy the worker becomes entitled to an annual pension of from £5 6s 5d to £9 11s, according to his payments, and in the event of total disablement from work before that age he is also entitled to proportional benefits. The premiums are paid in stamps affixed to official cards, and the process has proved so cumbrous and irksome that the law is commonly spoken of as "the stamp-sticking nuisance." When the first pensions fall due there will be close on 3,000,000,000 of these stamped cards in the Government archives. Casual laborers and unemployed do not come under the law. The whole procedure is far too harassing to be ever tolerated in a free country. Its difficulties would have been enormously mitigated if Canon Blackley's principle of securing the premiums in early life had been adopted.