The formative period of the two older organizations furnished opportunities for a study of the disability benefit and showed its usefulness in strengthening the national unions. These organizations, however, experienced grave difficulties in their attempts to administer disability insurance. The Engineers included "totally disabled members" among the beneficiaries of the fund provided for in 1866.[40] The by-laws of the insurance association founded by the Brotherhood on December 3, 1867, provided for assessments of 50 cents per member for the benefit of each totally disabled member--one half the amount assessed in case of death.[41] The history of this benefit was tersely summed up by General Secretary-Treasurer Abbott in his address to the Engineers' Association, December 3, 1871: "The Baltimore convention, 1869, adopted a disability clause, the Nashville, Tenn., convention amended it, and the Toronto, Canada, convention, 1871, repealed it." At St. Louis, 1872, the Brotherhood formed a separate association, known as the "Total Disability Insurance Association," for furnishing insurance against disability to members. An entrance fee of $2 was required and the assessment was fixed at $1.[42] In 1876 the convention dissolved the Total Disability Insurance Association, and the Engineers did not succeed in establishing a satisfactory system of disability insurance until 1884, when the prosperous condition of the association enabled the convention to carry out its long-cherished plan and to make provision for the payment of the same benefit in case of total disability as at death.[43] In the call of the Conductors for a convention to effect a permanent organization issued in November, 1868, the purpose of the proposed Order was stated to be the protection of "the members and their families in case of sickness, accident or death."[44] The mutual insurance association instituted by the first convention paid a disability benefit equal to the death benefit. The law under which the association operated was repealed at the second convention in October, 1869; but when the third convention in October, 1870, adopted a new insurance plan, provision was made that disability insurance should be paid in an amount equal to that paid in case of death. Not until 1881, however, did the Conductors satisfactorily solve the problem. [Footnote 40: Locomotive Engineers' Journal, Vol. 1, p. 9.] [Footnote 41: Constitution, 1869, in Locomotive Engineers' Journal, Vol. 4, p. 31.] [Footnote 42: Locomotive Engineers' Journal, Vol. 5, p. 11; Vol. 7, pp. 28, 60.] [Footnote 43: _Ibid_., Vol. 7, pp. 28-60; Vol. 11, p. 78; Constitution, 1884 (Cleveland, 1884).] [Footnote 44: Proceedings of the Order of Railway Conductors of America, 1868-1885 (Cedar Rapids, 1888), p. 19.]