The Family and its Members Part 6

=Savage Treatment of the Old.=--In the annals of savage life we find many gruesome tales of intentional disposal of the aged. The use of the old grandmother as a target for the training of young boys in the art of slaying one's enemy is an extreme example. The pathetic couple left behind when the tribe migrated, often with a small supply of food saved for them by some pitiful member of the family from the scanty h.o.a.rd that must suffice until the next harvest or the next hunting, the neglect and the actual abuse that often made the last days quickly ended, all show that when life is too hard there is no room for the old.

=The Relation of Ancestor-wors.h.i.+p to Respect for Aged Men.=--Two things, at least, helped to give the aged a better place in the social esteem and in the provision for necessities as primitive life developed toward civilization. One was ancestor-wors.h.i.+p, which made the father and the grandfather a link, indispensable and therefore honored, in the chain of blood relations.h.i.+p which carried on the generations. This type of religious belief and practice did not, however, work to ease the lot of old women. If the young wife did not have a child, especially a son, she could be repudiated often, and lose her standing in the family relation and hence be subjected to hards.h.i.+ps that made her early old and often ended her life while still in middle age. If she had a son and rose to be a grandmother she might attain a most honorable position, having her son's wife to be her servant and her son's son's wife to be her slave. Even with the best intentions, the patriarchal father could not attend to all the details of government within his usually extensive household, and no man has yet lived who could manage una.s.sisted a group of women, such as legal polygamy and concubinage brings under one roof, each one determined to get from him the best possible conditions for her own life and that of her children.

=The Position of Chief-mother in Ancient Family.=--These facts often made the position of the chief-mother in a family one of such importance that they became her insurance against want and ill-treatment. The position of the chief-mother in the collective family is now one of the vital problems of Eastern nations trying to adjust the family system to modern ideas. The father's power is so much a delegated responsibility and the relations.h.i.+p between the lesser wives and the younger wives so much closer to the chief-mother than to the chief-father that the grandmother's position may be that of a tyrant. A series of questions which a group of Chinese students in an American university has drawn up include such as the following: "Where a young girl is brought into the home to be reared as the future bride of the boy in the family, is there any limit to the authority of the mother-in-law?" The mother-in-law in such cases being usually the older or chief-mother, she is really the grandmother-in-law.

=Memory of the Aged Valued in Primitive Life.=--The position of aged men in primitive life secured some advantages because of the dependence upon memory for the carrying on of continued and conscious social existence before literature was born. The aged man who had been an important member of some military order or "fraternity" and remembered the exact words and motions of a valued ritual could be sure of having his continued life provided for by all those who desired to learn and to retain the means of perpetuating the religious cult thus expressed. Also those who remembered vital tribal occurrences and dealings with other tribes and could rehea.r.s.e the same with exactness must have been considered of social use, and the older they were the more their memory gathered and the more their recital seemed sacred and hence the more the reciter was cherished.

Nothing corresponding to this social value of the aged man, who could make permanent in ritual or in song or in story the experiences of the group, can be traced in the valuation of the experience of the aged woman in the periods before written literature. There were, however, as we can clearly see, traditions and customs, taboos and permitted familiarities so many and varied that old women with good memories and a personality that commanded attention must have had some accepted value within the inner circles of family experience. We get from folk-lore some clear intimations of this prestige and power of the ancient old woman in intimate social relations.h.i.+p.

The power of old men received a great accession when political and religious orders and legal rules began to make social organization more definite and precise. "Old men for council; young men for war"

had an early meaning. "The venerable Senate" is not a modern phrase.

The "reverend father of the church" is an ancient allusion to the respect for and leaders.h.i.+p of the aged in religious circles. The Popes of to-day begin their high service at an age that is in many positions a "dead line." The hardening of the social arteries in religion, government, politics, and law, however, while making old men more sure of their place in life, made old women less valued and worse treated.

The ages of mediaeval experience and of the feudal order, until chivalry began to affect the s.e.x-relation, show almost unbelievable cruelty toward many aged women. The idea of the church fathers that women were, at best, a necessary evil and at worst the form most often a.s.sumed by the Devil of temptation, made it seem that all divergence from the purely domestic type was proof of collusion with evil powers.

And all nervous ailments were once deemed a sign of the witches compact with Satan. Hence, since the unmitigated drudgery and the hard conditions of the lives of most women made them not only prematurely old but also given to nervous prostration (before that t.i.tle appeared in the medical lists), the numbers of old women tortured, burned, drowned, beaten, and stoned to death, and otherwise destroyed, seems almost incredible to modern ideas, although so well authenticated in history.

=Old Women and the Witchcraft Delusion.=--The young woman, being necessary for the bearing and rearing of children and the carrying on of important, although despised, labors, might escape active ill treatment. The old woman, old at thirty-five or forty, often, was not only considered a useless burden but a positive nuisance if she were at all "highstrung" or "meddling." Hence the natural conception, in a time of superst.i.tious fear of evil spirits, of her complicity with those spirits made her seem a danger to society. The history of the witchcraft delusion and the cruelties that were a part of that delusion show that aged women almost alone suffered from that nightmare of human ignorance.

Doubtless, however, there were even in those days grandmothers beloved and protected, busy even to the last with caretaking of childhood and the rites of hospitality; grandmothers whom their sons and even their sons-in-law revered for some quality of gentleness and sympathy found useful in family emergencies; grandmothers whose shrewd wisdom of experience and fine gift of understanding made them invaluable members of the family circle. Folk-lore and ancient song give hint of these.

The waste of old age in women, however, is, as has been indicated elsewhere by the writer, the greatest of all social wastes since time began. The idea that women were serviceable only for the procreative function and the hardest drudgery of family service, and that they lost all social value when they ceased to be attractive to the senses of men or ended their personal ministrations to their own little children, long obtained. This idea is responsible for the further conception of old women as not only useless but a disagreeable burden.

Hence, while old men rose during many ages in social regard and protection and care, old women became more and more miserable and ill-treated where the collective family was superseded by the newer type of individualistic bond between one man, one woman, and their children. In the ancient patriarchal and collective family the oldest mother might reign as queen. In the more modern type of family, made the social fas.h.i.+on by what is called Christian civilization, the aged woman, the grandmother, unless exceptionally attractive and sweet-tempered and exceptionally able to help in the household tasks, was the victim of the change from one system to the other. The fact that women, if well-developed and well-treated, are younger at seventy than are men and that more women than men live to be aged than when the conditions of living were less favorable to the weak and delicate, gave early in our civilization what must have seemed far too many old women.

While women had the constant burden of a "steady job" within the home, harder and more continuous than men had in their handicraft labor, yet men were killed in battle in large numbers, and were physically able to dangerously overdo in some labor "spurt" and hence more women than men lived to be old. Hence, again, there were far more grandmothers than grandfathers in the family in all mediaeval life. This led to many cruelties to old women who were deemed "superfluous." While, however, the actual experience of common people made conditions so hard for grandmothers, the idealism within the religious field was favorable to the mother of any age. The same church fathers who shunned marriage as a cowardly concession to the body, and who wrote flaming animadversions upon women in general, gave the Virgin and Child their adoration and made a place of honor and of comfort to those women who chose the religious vocation outside the home.

=Older Women in Religious Vocations Honored in Middle Ages.=--These women, the Ladies of the Abbeys and the special servitors of the Church, reached the first independent places of distinction which women in Christian civilization attained and to them, at least, age added power and veneration. Hence, even while they ignored their relations.h.i.+p to common womanhood, they often allayed superst.i.tious cruelty toward other old women.

Whenever any subject cla.s.s develops within it a genius or a quality of talent or a specialty of activity that gives personal prestige, that cla.s.s as a whole gains recognition. The Carlisle Indian who beats at the game of football; the Afric-American artist whose works claim admiration; the representative of the backward nation who shows power of achievement formerly supposed to be the sole accomplishment of the conquering peoples, not only makes a place for himself, he opens the door to wider opportunity for his cla.s.s. So the woman of the religious orders, when of scholarly achievement and of commanding intellect, showed these qualities in increasing example as she grew older and more experienced, and so worked to make a place for the older woman in every sphere of life.

Slowly it began to dawn upon the common consciousness that the individualistic family of one young couple and their children needed props from within if it had lost those from without--those ancient props which sustained as well as controlled young fathers and mothers in the collective family. Hence grandmothers, and grandfathers, as well, became of recognized use in the care and upbringing of children.

The picture of the grandmother by the fireside holding the youngest baby and the grandfather coming in with a gift for the young mother, who is manifestly pleased, with the young father in the background delighted at the family welcome for his offspring, is not only old but the theme of many of the world's best-loved paintings and stories.

=To-day Comparatively Few Really Old at Seventy.=--To-day there has come about a wholly new condition in the most advanced centres of social life in respect to the aged. In the first place, there are few "old" grandmothers left. There are grandmothers, but they are sprightly and give little token of being pa.s.see or laid on the shelf.

There are few old men left. There are those who have pa.s.sed the allotted term of threescore years and ten, but they well know and make all others understand that this was a mistaken limit to human powers.

They look forward to usefulness until eighty, at least, and now are encouraged to feel that one hundred years is the natural span of life.

There are, it is true, few really important studies of how to keep people from growing senile and really old before the time now set for failure of powers. Such studies, however, are prophesied in a small "endowment for the study of diseases of the aged" already given, and more in the statement of appeals for increase of such endowment. The tendency now is setting strongly not only toward the lengthening of life but toward the lengthening of the mental and physical power that alone makes long life desirable.

We shall see more and more of this interest as medical science reaches out further and further toward lessening all the ills that flesh is heir to.

Meanwhile, what is the actual condition in the various strata of life, in our own country, for example, in respect to the protection, the care, the comfort, the happiness, and the general welfare of the aged?

In the first place, the speeding up of machinery has made many manual workers prematurely old. The worst thing, perhaps, about child-labor has been that, owing to premature "laying off" of the fathers, the children have been set to earn money for family needs, and have acquired, with their pay envelope, a contempt or disrespect for the father in ways that have reversed the natural relations.h.i.+p and given society much use for the Children's Court. This disrespect shown the father, even when he is only of middle age, pa.s.ses on in increased measure to the grandfather who has been pushed aside from self-support and family support while still comparatively young and has never been able to again catch on to the wheels of industry. The fact that he eats and does not work; that he takes s.p.a.ce in the crowded tenement and does not aid in paying its rent; that he has no light employment that can give his fading mental powers an impulse toward ambition and energy, all make the position of the grandfather in many homes of struggling poverty a most unhappy one. In such homes the grandmother is often still seen to be really useful. She may make it possible for the young mother to earn outside the home. She may, if skilled in sewing, ease the expense of ready-made clothes. She may, at least, and usually does, relieve the mother of much care of the babies. There are several reasons why more aged men are sent to public inst.i.tutions for final care than aged women of the same general type of family, but the most important reason is that most women have skill in domestic matters; and domestic service is needed everywhere, no matter how many unemployed walk the streets. Needed most in the poorest home, the help of the grandmother is often appreciated in inverse ratio to the income.

In the circles above the poverty line there is much variety in the estimation and in the treatment of grandfathers and grandmothers. The ideal picture of a family always has in its background, if not in the very front, an old man and an old woman, benevolent and sweet-natured, who can be depended upon to be more indulgent to the children than even the father or mother and who appear always in family emergencies to renew their youth of service in behalf of the younger generation.

What is thus ideally pictured is a fact in thousands of families. No one can say that it is always best to have three generations under one roof, but all who have had a happy family experience believe that the grandparents should be "handy by," to use the Scotch phrase. The grandparents' house in the country is best of all, where all family and national holidays can be celebrated with due form and in accordance with ancient tradition. The grandparents' house for the city children is next best, if in a suburb near by where more s.p.a.ce and independence of movement are possible than in the city residence.

The grandparents' house or apartment in the same or a near-by city is, however, not at all to be despised as a refuge when "Mother does not understand," or "Father is so particular."

=Is Any House Large Enough for Two Families?=--Although the proverb says, "No house was yet made large enough for two families," the residence of one grandparent (oftener the mother than the father) within the family circle has often proved highly successful if only a few rules have been observed. One of these rules is that each adult person shall have one place strictly his of her own. Another is a rule, so difficult for some aged persons of both s.e.xes to obey, namely, that each person married is doubly ent.i.tled to individual choices in action without interference even from parents, since each such married person has to adjust his or her ideas to another person.

To work out full agreement between themselves is all that any married couple should be expected to accomplish. Hence, in the nature of things, the grandparents who are so near the new family that they know and see everything have a far more difficult role to play than do the grandparents who have their own home and simply visit and are visited.

It is, however, often a necessity of financial provision and often a choice of ease in ministration to the needs of the aged, that brings one grandparent or even two within the daughter's or son's household.

The time-worn jokes about the "mother-in-law" are based upon the fact that it is more often the daughter than the son who is expected to or needs to personally care within her own home for the mother. The son is not so bound by social custom to take his mother in. Hence, more husbands than wives have trials with their parents-in-law.

=Reasons Why Husbands Desert Their Families.=--The statistics of deserting husbands, as compiled in a careful study made by Lillian Brandt and Roger Baldwin, show that among the chief causes of "leaving home" is "trouble with the wife's relations." In these cases it is not only the grandmother, although she is often a member of the disturbed family; it is also often other relatives--a sister, a brother, or a first husband's people--who cause trouble. The wife's mother is, however, often enough a member of the household the husband leaves behind to give some point to the coa.r.s.e and often unjust jokes concerning the mother-in-law.

Where the feeling is right, and both generations reasonable and just, there are still many problems of adjustment arising from an attempt to bring either or both parents of the married couple into the same household. The first problem is that of the financial support. It ought not to be the case that any aged couple or any widowed father or mother should be left wholly dependent upon their children. The demand for better economic provision for the aged is one of the most vital and pressing of social needs. The difficulty of taking care of the father and mother when the children are coming on with pressing needs of their own is felt acutely in cases of narrow income. The call is almost universal to provide more adequately for grandparents. How can we meet this call?

=The Financial Provision for Old Age.=--In the case of those whose earning capacity is not equal to saving a sufficient old-age provision while at work the claim for an Old-age Pension is growing. This may be either a subsidy from the state, a joint pension from the state and the employing business in which the man or woman has worked, or it may be a threefold provision contributed to from the savings of the laborer, the quota from the employer, and the state subsidy. Since no insurance system that discourages thrift, or fails to encourage it, is socially sound, the latter seems the best ideal. There may be, in addition, or as a subst.i.tute, a family provision on the plan so well suggested by Mr. Taber in his book, _The Business of the Household_, a plan that calls for the definite setting apart of an "Old-age Fund,"

to which each child shall contribute in the years when he is earning most, not as a gift but as a "deferred payment," as it were, for all that the parents give in childhood. To this Old-age Fund any savings of the father and mother may be added until a sufficient sum is secured for comfortable care in old age. Mr. Taber indicates that at least five dollars out of every twenty-five saved should be thus a.s.signed and invested only in the safest manner and held inviolate, no matter what the temporary needs of the family may be, until the work-time has pa.s.sed. Whatever plan may be adopted, it is certain that family well-being and the happiness of the aged alike call for a better and more adequate old-age provision.

The laborers who earn less than the required sum for a decent standard of life for father, mother, and children cannot, of course, make any provision for their own old age or care for dependent parents. In such families the public inst.i.tutions or privately endowed and managed "Homes for the Aged" offer the only and often a comfortable and sometimes a happy place for the grandparents. The movement for this social care of the aged has many phases. In some countries, as in _The Danish Care of the Aged_, so well described by Edith Sellers in her book of that name, there is a far more complete and generous use of public funds than we have in the United States, a possibility of careful grading of persons in appropriate groups, and a removal of the crus.h.i.+ng sense of public charity which those of English ancestry so often feel when obliged "to go upon the town;" yet this leaves much to be desired.[6]

In the grade of economic condition above that in which it is a dire struggle to make both ends meet for the husband, wife, and their little children, there are to be considered five ways in which the care of the aged can be made adequate and not too great a burden upon those of young and those of middle life.

=Needed Ways of Preparing for Old Age.=--First: There must be devised, as indicated above, better and surer ways of insurance, savings, and pensions, by which the grandparents can be made more or less independent even in families of limited means.

Second: There must he measures established for the prevention of premature old age, measures operating in health and in labor-power to prolong self-dependence by means of individual earnings, to the fullest extent possible.

Third: There must be for men, as for women, provision in vocational training by which each person may have in reserve some light and interesting form of activity, possibly of earning value, which may serve as occupation when strenuous work is outgrown.

Fourth: There must be a clearer understanding of the mutual obligations of parents and children so that the care of the aged may seem more often, what it really is in most cases, not a charity from within the family circle, to be pa.s.sed around with jealous eye for just distribution of family burdens within the group of children, but a family debt, for the payment of which early and constant provision must be made by all members of the family during the years of largest earning power. If the grandparents have had a chance to save enough to pay all their own share of the family expense to the end of life, well and good. If, on the contrary, as is so often the case (now that the social standard for child-care and child-education has risen to such heights of parental requirement), the parents, now old, have spent so lavishly on the schooling and marriage setting up of their sons and daughters that they have not been able to save for themselves, then the obligation of the children is clear and the grandparents should never feel themselves pensioners.

Fifth: Actual old age, senility, failure of physical and mental power, should be postponed in each case as long as possible by active measures of mental and moral discipline consciously undertaken by personal effort. "The making of mind" is not an art of youth alone. It is an art of middle age and of the older years. Says William James: "The man who daily inures himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition and self-denial in unnecessary things, will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast." Such a one also will resist the decay of powers and be able to keep young when the years tell of many birthdays.

To go over these points with greater detail: The first requirement, namely, to make sure that all possible financial provision is made for grandparents while they are yet young and capable enough in their work to save, is one that is more and more recognized. Moreover, the tendency in every country is increasingly toward state recognition of the duty of society toward its aged members. The proposition of Victor Berger, then the solitary socialistic member of the Congress of the United States, to pension every person over the age of sixty is one that will hardly be carried into effect. The objection, however, to much existing pensioning by the state which this blanket proposition was intended to offset is that its benefits are mostly for those near the poverty line or below it and hence may be and often is a discouragement to thrift and self-dependence rather than an aid to individual effort.

=Pension Laws.=--For example, in Great Britain, the pension law made all eligible to state aid who were over seventy years of age and whose personal income did not exceed one hundred and five dollars per year.

Such were ent.i.tled to aid to the extent of $1.25 a week, and those having incomes above that sum were ent.i.tled to receive a graduated series of state benefits. This aid from the state has doubtless made the condition of many aged persons far more tolerable and even happy in families where, previous to the pa.s.sage of that Act, the extra expense involved in caring for the grandparents was the last straw that broke the back of independency. In all cases where the addition of a few dollars weekly to the family income is an actual and obvious help to family comfort, state pensions for the aged have worked good results in family feeling and good-will and affection. Where, however, the state aid comes without any contributory savings from the individual or his employer and where to qualify for its benefit all must have an income of very small proportion, it is in effect a cla.s.s measure and obviously for the relief of the very poor.

The higher family interest demands that every system of insurance or of subsidy, or of occasional aid to any member of the family, should tend directly and powerfully toward and not away from thrift, work capacity, and sound business principles. Society-at-large must now make good in some makes.h.i.+ft fas.h.i.+on for many social failures of the past, but its main currents of pressure upon the individual life should be in the production of a line of normal and successful men and women, rather than attempts to make all share alike, whatever their personal quality, when old age comes on. This principle makes it imperative that some larger and wiser plan than has as yet been attempted shall make all systems of financial care of the aged a positive aid toward self-dependence and social serviceability.

=Old-age Home Insurance.=--In this connection a radical suggestion is offered, namely, a scheme for Old-age Home Insurance. It is a well-known fact that the waiting list of most private Homes for the Aged is long, and that men and women wait piteously for the death of an "inmate" to give them entrance to the only place of comfort and security life can offer them. It is also well known that there are more aged persons who need the companions.h.i.+p of those of their own generation, who need quiet and relief from the noise and excitement of young children, than can now secure those requirements in the homes of their daughters or their sons. It is again true, although not so well recognized or understood, that most aged persons unable financially to retain a personal home would prefer a choice between residence in a child's family, however dutiful and generous that child might be, and residence elsewhere. It is also true that the care of aged parents in her own home is often too great a tax upon the time and strength of the housemother when there are many young children. Again, it is true that many aged people prefer a place they can call "home," even if it is only one room, to which they can invite their friends and from which they may pay visits to their relatives, even their nearest and dearest, and return to their own small quarters at will. It is also true that although most elderly persons live for years in quite good health and need little actual nursing, they do profit by occasional attentions which a nurse can give, and few such elderly people can afford or obtain this occasional service in either a home of their own or in one shared with a child.

These facts indicate a need for a larger and a more democratic provision of homes for the aged, a provision that can be more easily made by personal effort through the younger years of life, and one that can receive social aid at less cost to personal dignity and with less rigid rules of managing "Boards" than the present prevailing type of Homes for the Aged supply. The boarding house sought by many aged persons who prefer independence of life to living in the family of their children, and sought also by many well-to-do elderly widows and widowers who find that the personal home is too lonely or too expensive to keep up for one alone--the average boarding house is a sorry subst.i.tute for a home. For the young, who hope to escape it soon, it is tolerable. For the aged, who need to feel settled, it is often a most unhappy dwelling-place. Beside, any one who tries to find a place for the elderly boarder will find that prices are often prohibitive for all but the rich, and few boarding mistresses want old people.

A state pension has often, as has been said, been proposed for all aged people. Let us suppose that instead of this some scheme of State Insurance for Old-age Homes be devised; a scheme in which after the payment of a certain specified sum a share in a Boarding Home might be secured. If the state or if any private Agency or Foundation could provide the "plant," a suitable building and its repairs and fundamental expenses of upkeep, with one salaried superintendent whose character and ability could be guaranteed, the running expenses of a Boarding Home could be met easily by the limited means of many who now lack the security of an inst.i.tutional provision and in consequence lack also many essentials of old-age comfort.

A skilled budget-maker could determine the numbers required in each household to make the board low and a sympathetic social worker could suggest the cooperative features of management most likely to give successful results in the composite home. The entrance age in such a Boarding Home could be lower than that required in the usual type of privately endowed Home for the Aged and thus a felt need be met for a suitable home for those between the ages of fifty-five and sixty-five.

In these privately endowed Homes for the Aged the entrance fees range from $100 to $1,000, and beneficiaries are required to give up all the property of any kind of which they may be possessed when they enter this permanent residence. This is not unjust, but it is often an added trial to the independent nature. There is need of far larger provision for the old in Homes for Aged Men, Aged Women, and Aged Couples. No one can give anything but grat.i.tude for the opportunities they now offer or fail to hope for their increase. There is, however, a special need for some social engineering which can initiate Boarding Homes for the Elderly. Many of these are still strong and well, but need special consideration in particular ways. Many others are not ill, but delicate, and in need not of full-time nursing care but of occasional good offices of trained helpers. One nurse, a "practical nurse" or a trained nurse past in age and strength full service of her profession, could easily give occasional service needed for twenty or more elderly persons in usual health or for ten or more aged, in greater need of care but not helpless, if all were under the same roof. The cooperative plans that often fail in serving the family of father, mother, and children, may be found exactly suited to special cla.s.ses, and among them the aged. The Social Settlements were started to serve and have served the neighborhood needs of the poor and the immigrant.

They have also, incidentally, demonstrated the financial advantages of cooperative housekeeping. A company of congenial people living together in groups of twenty to forty can secure the essentials of food, shelter, and necessary service at a cost per person far below the average expense for boarding or private housekeeping. This does not mean that families can combine easily in multiple households. The personal equation counts for its greatest influence in the real family group, of father, mother, and their children under eighteen years of age. Few, if any, schemes of cooperative housekeeping have as yet worked well for the combination of such groups.

The aged, especially the aged widow or widower, are not in the direct family group. They belong to but they are not inside the inmost circle. If one alone is left the life of the personal home is broken for the elderly, however dear and kind the children may be. For such there surely needs something easier than the attempt to maintain a separate home with half its life gone. And also something more independent and more secure than either enforced residence with children or compulsory use of the ordinary commercialized boarding house.

=To Prevent Premature Old Age.=--The second social demand, that premature old age shall be more effectively prevented, is one that is pressed upon this generation with new and imperative considerations. A knowledge of health conditions shows that although infant mortality is greatly lessened and infectious and epidemic diseases greatly brought under control, the diseases of middle age, such as hardening of arteries and kidney and digestive disorders, have increased relatively, while insanity is much more frequent than of old. These facts give us all deep concern. From the failure of health in middle life comes the premature senility and the invalid weakness of old age.

The cause of the increase of middle-life diseases, relatively to those of other periods of life, seems to be princ.i.p.ally the pressure of business and industrial life upon the worker. The high speed of machinery, the extreme compet.i.tion in business, the monotony of the specialized manufacturing groups, the weight of great financial enterprises and the struggle to make the family setting equal to the family desires or even the family needs, all tend to make men in middle life fail so often in health and so often leave behind their better sheltered and more tenderly cared-for wives. There is a new movement of great social importance, and one tending directly toward the saving of one-half of the family circle, which is now taking a front place in social interest; namely, the movement for annual medical examinations. The work of the Life Extension Inst.i.tute leads toward this end and seeks the better adjustment of life and work in the interest of simplicity and mutual service in the family and the better health of all its members.

It is not, however, in the power of the wisest and most unselfish of individuals to so manage the work-power as to insure against premature old age from too great speeding and overstrain. There must be social movement of the most thorough-going sort to prevent the waste of the laborers in all fields. Social workers should remember that it is not alone important to try to safeguard the health and strength of mothers and of potential mothers by laws protecting women and girls in industry. It is as vital a need to safeguard the health and strength and perpetuate the work-power of fathers and potential fathers in order that old age may be not a terror but a blessing to the family.

This is emphasized by recent indications that the increase of the diseases of middle age is already checked and that we are gaining ground in this particular.

A recent report of the Federal Department of Commerce through the Bureau of Census shows that there has been a decline in the death-rate for all age periods during the last decade. In the rate for infants under one year of age a decline of twenty-six per cent., or from 13,804 per 100,000 in 1910 to 9,660 per 100,000 in 1920. The death-rate for middle-aged and old people shows an encouraging decrease, that of twelve per cent., in the period above seventy-five years of age. This shows that we are gaining on disease and premature death with every new advance in preventive medicine and the crusade against bad living conditions. This, again, means that in the future we shall have more aged persons in ratio of population than we have had in the past, and indicates the great need of taking measures betimes to make old age not only more mentally strong but more happy and comfortable in condition.