CARNEGIE'S PENSIONERS

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11412, 8 January 1923, Page 4

CARNEGIE'S PENSIONERS

SIX HUNDRED ON LIST. INCOME TAX WAIVED. Six hundred men and women ere on the pension list of the late Andrew Carnegie, the Bcottisk-bom steel manufacturer ana philanthropist/ who died in 1919. Their, annuities have just been legally declared to be tax-free. Documents were made publio and filed in the Appellate Divtaidn of the Nhw York Supreme Court in support' of an appeal asking that a J 0 ,000,000 pension fund created by Carnegie's will be declared untaxable. -The documents showed ■that of the 600 pensioners' most are more than sixty, and many more than eighty years of age. Some of -the Beneficiaries receive Jt3 2s a month) { others get incomes that approximate aWOOO a year. Most of them are men who were enlisted in the service of Andrew Carnegie. Miss Helen Keller, the famous .woman who is deaf and dumb and Mind, receives an annuity of J 8555. Viscount Morley, the English statesman, -is provided with <6IOOO a year. »> Hundredn of others, whose names are Unfamiliar to the general public, hut which were once written on the pay-rolls of steel mills and plante-in Pennsylvania, receive incomes or varying else . Several letters from Mr Carnegie jp regard to the care of obscure friends are now made publio by Mr Robert A. Franks, who for many years directed the disposal of the pension fund. One says °r an old man and hie wife:— They are old, no longer able to work, and on the verge of losing their/tninde. The arrangement I suggest. I hope, will make them comfortable to the end." Th® app«»l for the ruling dispensing with taxation of the fund—which Was granted—was partly based on proofs offered to show that the pension fund constituted bp* a small part of the philanthropies of the ironmaster, who gave and dled worth lei » than