Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions

The study traces how trade unions gradually developed beneficiary functions, outlining three historical phases and surveying national and local practices. It analyzes types of benefits—death, sickness, unemployment, disability, and retirement—and compares union definitions and administration with commercial insurers, noting differences in disability coverage and combined accident-life policies. Using union records, conventions, assessments, and statistics from railway brotherhoods, the author examines problems in administering benefits, claim patterns, and fiscal arrangements. The monograph closes with discussion of organizational and administrative structures and the influence of local mutual-insurance practices on national benefit systems.