The Holbrook news., 1911-02-03
.FOR AGED MPLOYES
Plan for Retirement Now Being
 Worked Out by Board.
Retiring Fund Suggested Which Is in Effect Compulsory Saving Scheme-MaII Cost to Roads
 Being Investigated.

for the retirement of aged civil service employees. Economy and improvement boards have been holding almost daily meetings.
 The presence in every department of scores of men and women sixty, seventy and eighty years old, has been great obstacle to the adoption of the progressive plans which the investiga- tors are working on. Not all these aged clerks are inefficient, to be sure, but as a rule a persons abilities do not expand much after the age of six ty, and it is a fact that hundreds of venerable men and women are carried on the pay rolls who not only are worth nothing, but are a positive det- riment to the service. How to get rid of them without causing hardship is very serious problem and one to which the best brains in the departments and in congress are giving attention.
 Merritt c. Chance, auditor for the post office department, has touched on this important problem in his annual report and has helped to put the sub ject into concrete shape for discussion by recommending with a trifling amendment. the passage of the bill introduced last April in the house by Frederick c. Gillett of Massachusetts. and in the senate by MT. Perkins of California This bill makes provision for retiring civil employees on annui- ties purchased by themselves by means of monthly deductions in salaries. It is in effect a compulsory saving scheme. the government merely to stand back of it by guaranteeing a rate of interest at BE per cent. ta- king care of the small expense of ad- ministration and providing the annui- ties for services rendered up to the passage of the bill. The annuity would be payable quarterly throughout life and would be equal to 1 11 per cent. of the annual salary for every full year of service or major fraction thereof between the date of the passage of the act and the arrival of the employe at the age of retirement The bill di- vides the employees, for retirement pur- poses, into three groups, two of sixty five years and one of seventy years each. It empowers the president to designate the branches of the service to be included in each group.
 The bill permits employment after reaching the age of retirement, but provides for a deduction of ten per cent. of the pay, the same to be treat ed as a savings account and interest paid thereon and returned to the em- ploye when he leaves the service Three options are allowed on retire ment: The first an annuity payable quarterly throughout life, the second the same, with the provision that in case of the death of the annuitant be- fore he has received in annuities the 1 amount of his savings with interest, | the balance shall be paid to his legal | heirs, and the third that he may draw i his money in lump sum.
 If, after retirement, the employe | does not avail hemself of one of the l, foregoing options, but leaves the | at the rate of two per cent on the l original sum left on deposit shall be credited for 20 years. If the money is not then withdrawn, it goes to the | treasury. Mir. Chance suggests as an that the retirement pay of honorably discharged veterans of the Mexican and Civil wars shall be not less than 50 per cent. of the aver age annual compensation during the entire period of employment in the civil service. The auditor says this plan, compared with a straight civil pension paid out of the federal treas oIx hnfh for the government and for the em ployes.
 Simple and RusinessIike.
 Mir. Chance, himself in a report to the secretary of the treasury. made last February, showed how relatively simple and businesslike the civil serv- Ice retirement idea is if the govern nent would get down to brass tacks and put it into operation. He showed that in his own office, where more han 700 persons are employed, there were 42 persons, seventy years of age and over. receiving salaries aggrega- ting $54,5S0. Three of these persons were more than eighty years and ten were over seventy-fve. The average
 
 .wo-thirds years and the average sal ary $500.
 Under the Gillett bill these AZ em- 1loyes would receive annuities aggre- yating S27,096 MT. Chance recom- nended that without changing his ap- at all a proviso be added the secretary of the treas Y lry to retire all clerks who are seven " years or over and who served under he civil service on an annuity equal to F per cent. of the annual pay by the number of years of service. This would give total an- nuity of s27.096. He then proposed T. hat the difference, $27,4S4 be used for ! he employment of clerks selected rom the civil service registers to fill 4 their places. He suggested also that