administration. In the Carpenters the wife's funeral benefit of
twenty-five dollars and fifty dollars to members in good standing for
six months and one year, respectively, costs each member about fifteen
cents annually. The cost of the seventy-five dollar wife's funeral
benefit in the Tailors' Union ran in the first year as high as
eighty-six and two thirds cents. At the time the benefit was abolished
the amount paid was practically the same as that now paid by the
Carpenters and the per capita cost had fallen to about seventeen cents
in 1896. It may fairly be concluded that a wife's funeral benefit of
twenty-five dollars will cost each member of the union about fifteen
cents annually.

The consideration of the cost of the death benefit has been deferred
until an examination of the cost of the disability benefit and of the
wife's funeral benefit had been made, since the member's death benefit,
the disability benefit and the wife's funeral benefit are regarded in
the unions with the most highly developed systems as parts of a single
benefit. In only a few unions are the payments for these several
purposes separated. The unions thus differ so widely in the character of
the death benefit paid that it is impossible to institute any comparison
as to the relative expense of maintaining the benefit. Some of the
systems combine death and disability benefits, some group the death and
disability benefits, some pay a wife's funeral benefit while others do
not. It will be possible to describe certain typical systems and to
indicate the cost of the benefit in the particular system and certain
general differences.

The death benefit of the International Typographical Union may be
regarded as the simplest type. The greater number of the death benefit
systems found in American trade unions are of this general character.