|------------------------------------------------------
Name of Union.|Amount.|Required Period of| Amount.|Required Period of
| | Membership. | | Membership.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Bakers........| $50 | 6 mo. | $50 | 6 mo.
Carpenters....| 50 | 6 mo. | 25 | 6 mo.
Cigar Makers..| 40 | 2 yr. | 40 | 2 yr.
Painters......| 25 | 6 mo. | 50 | 1 yr.
Typographia...| 25 | 1 yr. | 50 | none
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The wife's death benefit is not graded except in the case of the
Carpenters, where the minimum benefit is twenty-five dollars for six
months' and fifty dollars for one year's membership. The minimum given
in the above table is in all other cases also the maximum.

The success of the wife's death or funeral benefit is not beyond
controversy. The Tailors, who began to pay the benefit in 1889,
abandoned it in 1898. The benefit was at first seventy-five dollars
after three months' membership, but it was remodelled until in 1896 it
became a graded benefit ranging from twenty-five dollars to fifty
dollars according to the length of membership. The chief objection to
the benefit was that unmarried members were taxed to support the benefit
although they did not participate in the advantages. In 1898 Secretary
Lennon declared that the benefit "was based on real injustice, giving
one member more benefits for the same dues paid than to another."[119]
In other unions which maintain the benefit this objection has been met
to some extent, as in the Cigar Makers, by paying the benefit on the
death of the widowed mother of an unmarried member provided she was
solely dependent upon him for support. Provision is usually made that no