The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-08-18
PROVIDE FUR TIME
 YOU CAN'T WORK The Old Age Pension and the
 Annuity INTERESTING EXPERIMENT How Annuities May Be Bought at Savings and Insurance Banks.
 Origin of the An
 nuity Plan.
INTERESTING EXPERIMENT I

Boston, August 7.-(speeial. .)-old age pensions without socialistic features. The annuity, long popular in most European countries, may yet give the thrifty Amer ican workingman a chance to provide voluntarily for his old age instead of being taxed by the state or by his em- ployer on that account. In Germany life and old age insurance is compulsory. That may be all right for the Germans. if they like it, but that isn't the American way. We don't believe in making the indivld- ual merely ward of the state. Our idea is to encourage him to do things on his own hook; to look out for himself instead of being looked out for.
 That is why schemes by which the state is to pension people are never seriously entertained in the United States. Massa- chusetts for several years past has had experience with an agitation, carried on energetically by a small group of we'll meaning persons, for the establishment of a system by which the workman will automatically pay taxes during his pro- due tive years and automatically come into a pension after he has passed a certain age or has become disabled This plan would be compulsory. No escape from the taxation. No choice in the matter. AS the average American does not like to have virtue rammed down his throat, he has not shown great enthusiasm for this method of giving him a pension.
 Old Age Pensions.
 A much more American scheme of old age pensions is offered by the savings annuity, so say enthusiastic profnoters of tho u1ap ruhi win ho, aF the Bay State have been authorized at any time after November 1, 1907 to es- taplish departments for dealing In annui- ties as well as fin small industrial life insurance policies. Because of the oppo- stlon of certain interests to the idea of a savings institution issuing life pol icies-tbough insurance is basically only form of savings-less public attention has been directed to the importance of the provisions in the Brandeis- White bill regarding annuties of $200 each which any resident of Massachusetts may purchase of any savings bank which takes advan- tage of the permission granted by the new law.
 Yet. chance is really offered, which, if the departure is found successful in one American state, will almost certainly be taken up in others. for enabling per sons of thrift and foresight to pension themselves, in the most economical man ner possible. Henceforth 1t will be "up" to the forehanded.
 Annuties, to be sure, have been less in vogue in this country than in most coun- tries up to this time. There have been greater profits for insurance companies in handling the various kinds of life poll eies. Annuties have been issued for the most part as gifts from some wealthy person to a poor relative or a dependent. Now and then man of wealth provides for himself In this way against all pos slble vicissitudes of the stock market The most noted market operator in Boston is said thus to have secured his future with an annuity of $35, 900.