The old age pensions were already more radical than those of Prussia in that the workingmen do not have to contribute under the British law, while the National Insurance Bill as now enacted surpasses both the former British measure and the German precedent in everything, except that it demands a lesser total sum from the government.

In the insurance against accidents, sickness, and unemployment the government, instead of contributing the whole amount, gives from two ninths to one third, one third to one half being assessed against employers and one sixth to four ninths against employees.

At first this reform, it is expected, will cost only about $12,500,000, and it will be several years before the maximum expenditure of $25,000,000 is reached.

But the measure is radical in several particulars: it applies to clerks, domestic servants, and many other classes usually not reached by measures of the kind,--a total of some 14,000,000 persons; it provides $5,000,000 a year for the maintenance of sanatoria for tuberculosis and creates new health boards to improve sanitation and educate the people in hygiene; and it furnishes physicians and medicines for the insured, thus organizing practically the whole medical force and drug supply as far as the masses are concerned.
In fact, the whole scheme may be looked on not so much as a measure to aid the sick and wounded of industry financially, as to set at work an automatic pressure working towards the preservation of the health, strength, and productive capacity of the people, and incidentally to the increase of profits.

As Mr.Lloyd George said in an interview printed in the _Daily Mail_: "I want to make the nation more healthy than it is.
The great mass of illness which afflicts us weighs us down and is easily preventable.