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THE PRESBYTERIAN PENSION FUND 56 1
our church has had a pension system. It has been as much the policy of the Presbyterian Church to try to care for its disabled and aged servants as it has been to hold Sunday services." And it was even more of a surprise for many of our people to hear that "the Presbyterian Church was the first pension-paying agency on the North American continent. Several generations before a soldier of the Revolutionary War received the first pension from the government, the Presbyterian Church created its Tund for Pious Uses.' "
By 1923 it was felt that the time was ripe to push toward what was hoped would be a "final solution" to the problem— placing the fund on a sound actuarial basis. Times and costs had changed enormously. The Laymen's Committee was instructed to "devise and launch a pension system which would be adequate and in keeping, to some degree at least, with the power and wealth of the Presbyterian Church and with the worthiness of the objective." The wisdom of this strategy grew more and more apparent as the movement developed, for it made the matter a laymen's undertaking for the purpose of doing justice to the ministers, rather than a movement in which ministers would be obliged to take aggressive leadership in behalf of their own future welfare.
The General Assembly lost no time in seeing that a Laymen's Committee of thirteen was appointed. At the first meeting, in my absence, I was elected chairman. I soon realized that no man could have conceived a finer, abler, or more devoted group of men.
Without question, the movement owed an incalculable debt to the influence and generosity of the Honorable Andrew W. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury and the foremost fiscal figure in the world, who served throughout, with the utmost faithfulness, as treasurer of our fund.
I remember clearly my first visit with Mr. Mellon to talk about the plan. I knew that he was a Presbyterian and that his whole family were very liberal supporters of a strong Presbyterian church in Pittsburgh. When I went to see him it was with a very firm hope that he would consent to be treasurer. I explained that we wanted him to serve in that capacity so that every check, whether for fifty cents or fifty thousand dollars, would be made out to him; I said that this would give a sense of stability to the fund and of assurance to every donor.
He immediately said: "I cannot do that. You know as well as anybody how busy I am. Just yesterday I declined, under a good deal of pressure, to act as treasurer, at the request of General Pershing and others who personally asked me to do it, in the raising of the money to finish the Episcopal Cathedral here in Washington, and I just can't do it."
However, we continued to discuss the whole matter at some length. The result was that before I left him that afternoon he agreed to be treasurer of the fund, and he further promised me two checks, each for