Alfred Dolge

Alfred Dolge, who pioneered the world's first employer-based pension, disability compensation and profit-sharing programs, is best remembered today in Dolgeville, the industrial village he founded in central New York State. Dolge came from Germany in 1866 as a skilled piano maker and made a fortune manufacturing piano components, but his primary goal was never to make money for its own sake. Inspired by his father's revolutionary past, as well as by such diverse authors as Adam Smith and Karl Marx, Dolge set out to establish a social democratic utopia in which working people could share in the wealth they created and enjoy lives of pride and satisfaction. In pursuit of this goal, he endowed public schools, parks and a cultural center. Yet in 1898 he was forced into bankruptcy by a betrayal of his closest advisers and all his promises became impossible to fulfill. This short biography is designed to introduce to the contemporary reader to a neglected forerunner of social security programs in the United States and other liberal democracies.