{"value"=>"<p>The files of the Industrial Welfare Department are a primary source for research on old age dependency, pensions, workmen's compensation, unemployment insurance, and voluntary improvements by employers in working and living conditions of employees. The department was chaired by Gertrude Beeks Easley. Later she held the title of director of the department. The department drafted a retirement scheme designed to provide some economic security for employees, and reported on profit-sharing plans by employers. The department also made studies of working conditions in department stores and in textile mills in the South and New England, and made recommendations for improvements. During the period 1925-1931, the Carnegie Corporation funded a statistical survey of the extent of old age dependency in the United States. This survey, the department's most significant task, was intended to complement the statistical data on old age dependency compiled for ten cities and twenty-three towns in Massachusetts and used in a public report prepared by the Massachusetts Commission on Old Age Pensions, Annuities, and Insurance. The NCF survey was directed by Charles L. Edgar, chairman of the Industrial Welfare Department, and P. Tecumseh Sherman, chairman of the Old Age Annuities Committee. The information gathering, statistical analysis, research, and preparation for the survey was supervised by Edmund S. Cogswell, an actuary and former secretary of the Massachusetts Commission on Old Age Pensions.</p> <p>Among the related questions studied by the department were the forms of pension systems in use in Europe and the United States, the relation of voluntary to compulsory forms of insurance, the fundamental principles of different pension systems, the availability and adequacy of homes and hospitals for the aged, and the age at which workers normally cease to be employable. The statistical data for the survey were compiled from field canvassing, the records of infirmaries and homes for the aged, local charity organizations, almshouses, public and private relief agencies, employment offices, insurance companies, and government agencies.</p>"}