Page:Engines and men- the history of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. A survey of organisation of railways and railway locomotive men (IA enginesmenhistor00rayniala).pdf/282

 paid out many times since, and gratefully acknowledged in the "Journal" by the recipients, but I want to remark here that some- times the gratitude is overdone. For what a man pays, his mourning relatives are entitled to receive as a right, and not as a favour. For kindness and courtesy in administration I like to see appreciation, but profuse thanks for what the member provided before-hand belong to his memory.

Under the new rules of the Assurance Fund, formerly Benevolent Fund, the benefits ranged from £5 to £38, according to years of membership, and the same scale of benefit was applied for loss of situation through error of judgment, for accident which leads to removal from the footplate, and for failing to pass the eyesight test, very important additions to the material advantages of the Society, and £20 was allowed to a member on retiring at 60 years of age or over. A retiring allowance was provided for members at 60 with ten years membership, fifteen years membership, and twenty years. Thus members were able, after 1918, to pay for death benefits of £5 to £20, £25, £38, £44, or £58 as they desired; and for £7 10s., £1, £15, £20, or £35 retiring allowance at sixty, in addition to weekly superannuation of 4s., 5s., 6s., to 7s. per week. These were notably good benefits, a possible further need being the increase, as funds allow, of the superannuation allowance to sums that meet more accurately the post-war cost of living.

The year 1918 brought an extension of the military age to fifty years, all men under that age being liable to conscription. The extension led to large numbers of grey-haired men, and many physically unfit men, being paraded before the medical boards. At fifty there is hardly a more fit class in the country than our drivers, and consequently large numbers of them were notified to muster for examination, regardless of the occupational exemption they carried, which caused the doctors to labour in vain, and caused the Executive and General Secretary a good deal of extra work in taking care that the exemptions were properly observed. Many ridiculous things were done in the re-shuffling of men, skilled accountants being turned into butchers, and teachers into farm