Siegmund Feilbogen · Year unverified
Feilbogen’s monograph republishes articles advocating compulsory old-age insurance for commercial employees, with implications for other private employees lacking pensions. Its three divisions establish the case for compulsion, estimate costs, and examine voluntary alternatives in Austria, Germany, France, and Britain. The Wiener kaufmännische Verein provides the institutional setting:
Der Wiener kaufmännische Verein hat daher der Frage der „Altersversorgung der Handelsangestellten“ schon seit Jahren die vollste Aufmerksamkeit zugewendet.
English translation: The Vienna Commercial Association has therefore for years devoted its fullest attention to the question of “old-age provision for commercial employees.”
Feilbogen begins with employees’ vulnerability to commercial failures beyond their control. Business collapses threaten clerks’ livelihoods as well as proprietors’ fortunes, yet public concern neglects the former. The pension divide between state officials and comparably educated private employees consequently appears unjustified. Organized commercial employees should lead a reform benefiting salaried workers without provision.
His defense of compulsion distinguishes immediate freedom of choice from lasting security. Youthful delay in saving can make adequate insurance prohibitively expensive; individual prudence cannot guarantee protection across an occupational group. Compulsory schooling supplies an analogy for preventive state intervention. Early contributions lower costs, while universal participation reduces recruitment expenses and distributes obligations among competing employers. Feilbogen expects employers’ contributions eventually to enter commodity prices, treating old-age provision as a legitimate production cost.
The cost discussion limits what compulsory insurance should promise. Actuarial technique cannot generate generous benefits from negligible payments, and protection against destitution does not entail comfortable early retirement. Feilbogen distinguishes pensions for employees still capable of working from benefits for those incapacitated earlier:
Der Umstand, daß für diesen letzteren Fall speciell gesorgt wird, macht es möglich, das Alter für die Pension der Erwerbsfähigen ziemlich hoch anzusehen.
English translation: The fact that special provision is made for this latter case makes it possible to set the pension age for those capable of earning a living fairly high.
His principal proposal combines pensions at sixty-five with protection against earlier incapacity. Four pension classes range from 300 to 1,200 gulden, with annual contributions initially estimated at roughly ten percent of the promised pension. Employers would bear a larger share for the lowest-paid. These calculations remain provisional, qualified by uncertain disability risks, administrative expenses, and the need for strict assessment of incapacity. Mandatory insurance establishes a minimum without displacing supplementary private provision, although that minimum remains differentiated by occupational circumstances.
The comparative investigation asks whether voluntary institutions can achieve adequate coverage without compulsion. Feilbogen grants their administrative successes but distinguishes institutional prosperity from population-wide security. Vienna’s pension association offers improving benefits and employer assistance, yet reaches only about 900 employees after nine years. Exclusions, discretionary rejection, and surrendered policies obstruct continuity and universality. Its disability arrangements also expose the inadequacy of an old-age pension for someone who loses earning capacity much earlier.
The German Wilhelmsspende similarly combines subsidized administration with limited participation and withdrawals. France’s Caisse Nationale demonstrates how extensive collection networks can assemble an immense fund from small savings, but aggregate wealth conceals low individual benefits and restricted effective coverage. Falling interest rates further unsettle attractive promises. Feilbogen thus assesses institutions by adequacy, continuity, and social reach rather than fund size alone.
Britain supplies a demanding test because of its traditions of self-help and insurance. Feilbogen traces the movement from guild charity to friendly societies, distinguishing discretionary assistance from calculable entitlements. Mortality tables and probability theory make dependable provision technically possible, enlarging the scope of social responsibility. Nevertheless, sickness and burial insurance flourish more readily than old-age and disability protection. State supervision assists mutual societies, while voluntary government annuities attract few participants; Blackley’s compulsory-insurance campaign reveals dissatisfaction without resolving every actuarial difficulty.
The argument ultimately requires cooperation between employees and employers rather than isolated individual effort:
Auch in der Frage der Altersversorgung bedarf es unbedingt des beiderseitigen Zusammenwirkens.
English translation: In the question of old-age provision, too, cooperation between both sides is absolutely necessary.
State-enforced participation supplies the framework for that cooperation. Feilbogen joins actuarial restraint to a reformist claim: dependable security should replace precarious saving and humiliating dependence on charity.
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