Facing Old Age

...Thus 8.08 percent of aged farmers, or about twice the normal, are still gainfully at work after their sixty-fifth birthday...

...As our standards have risen and comforts have diffused to the great masses of people, the question how to remain secure in old age is confronting millions of American men and women today...

...These figures show that while the aged are still holding their places among the gainfully employed in agriculture, in the professions, in small businesses and even in the public service, they are practically eliminated from all the major industrial occupations...

...In the city's male population, 27 percent were between the ages of forty-five and sixty-four, but in the shops studied, only 17 and 12 percent of the workers were between these ages...

...The new conditions offer a challenge to our intelligence...

...People must never get too much of a habit...

...There are no exact data...

...The ranks of the destitute aged contain only too frequently the once wealthy and prosperous...

...The 1920 United States Census data support the Middletown findings...

...The sharp decline in the stock market a short while ago unquestionably augmented the army of aged dependents...

...The age group of sixty-five and over constituted 7 percent of the total male population in the city, but the shops which were investigated employed only from I to 2 percent of these older workers...

...With the rapid expansion and mechanization of our industries, the migration from rural to urban centres, the disappearance of free land and the shortened working period of life, old-age dependency is assuming quite a different aspect today...

...Unemployment is another devastating cause of old-age poverty...

...The automobile industry, third in the value of products in 1919, is entirely a child of this century...

...Among lawyers, judges and justices more than twice the normal average of aged are still holding their positions...

...Through the development of medical science and sanitation a phenomenal increase in the average span of life has been made possible...

...The introduction of new inventions and more specialized machinery generally involves the replacing of men...

...As competitors in the modern industrial system, the aged are faced with innumerable obstacles and with few opportunities of overcoming them...

...The conditions found in Middletown are typical...

...L. W. Squier in his book, Old-Age Dependency in the United States, calculated on the basis of data presented by the 1908-1910 Massachusetts Commission on Pensions, Annuities and Insurance-the first state commission to study the problem-that approximately one and a quarter million persons sixty-five years of age and over in the United States depended upon public and private charity...

...Our fortune has become dependent upon altogether too many forces beyond our control...

...Families are growing smaller...

...Our country's industrialization and urbanization, the main factors responsible for the acuteness of the present problem, occurred a good deal later than in the older industrial nations...

...Granting, however, that possibly better conditions may exist in our less industrial states, it would seem rather conservative to state that approximately one-third of the aged population in the United States is definitely dependent in part or entirely upon children, relatives or organized charity for their support...

...Indeed, the above findings justified the director of the two last-named studies in declaring that About 38 percent of the men and women in Massachusetts over age 65 are supported in whole or in part by children, relatives or by organized charity...

...Guesses vary all the way from "almost no dependency, aside from those actually receiving public or private charity" to the statements, for years circulated by insurance companies and banks, that about 90 percent of those reaching sixty-five are dependent upon children or upon charity...

...It is obvious that a person at sixty-five with no property of at least $1,000 and no income of approximately $1.00 a day, is either already dependent or is on the verge of dependency...

...That it is as yet imperfect in this country may be explained by the fact that industrialism is a very recent phenomenon and yet the mother of the problem...

...In addition to the general trends discussed above, there are a number of specific forces which tend to drive thousands of workers toward helplessness in old age...

...Illness and accidents come first...

...A few years later Dr...

...In a recent article Mr...

...In these occupations the old seem to have no place, and only from one-fourth to one-fifth of the general average of gainfully occupied aged persons are still working...

...We can, however, approximate an estimate of the probable number of aged dependents...

...The city apartment is replacing the old homestead and family ties are weakening...

...There is no fireside in the majority of modern apartments for "grandfather's corner...

...With Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt we are also becoming conscious that No greater tragedy exists in our civilization than the plight of the aged, worn-out worker who after a life of ceaseless effort and useful productivity must look forward for his declining years to a dismal poorhouse with the accompanying loss of self-respect and interest in life...

...Accordingly, of the approximately six million persons sixty-five years of age and over in the United States at present, about two million are supported in one way or another...

...Once sickness has set in, the savings of a lifetime may be wiped out soon enough...

...This paper is intended to be merely an outline of existing conditions, which the author has studied during many years...

...Less than 2 percent of miners, clerks, mechanics, molders, printers, plumbers, engravers, compositors, etcetera, are at work after their sixty-fifth year...

...How many of the 6,000,000 aged are dependent is frequently asked...

...Poverty in old age can no longer be made impervious by mere hard work, frugality and good habits...

...We can mention but a few...

...The motion-picture industry was unknown twenty-five years ago and many of our largest corporations, such as the Ford companies, General Motors, Radio Corporation and the like, have grown up in the last decade or two...

...The 1925 Massachusetts Commission on Pensions had gone into the subject at considerable length...

...they require the formulation of the most socially constructive and statesmanlike program to meet them...

...Innumerable forces beyond the control of the individual contribute to make this period the most insecure in life...

...The thousands who fail receive but scant notice in the press...

...While we are decades behind other industrial nations in our attempt to make this period of life more secure, our backwardness in this respect is not entirely surprising...

...Our sluggish national conscience has finally been provoked by the saddest of life's tragedies because the dreaded spectre of destitution at the end of life is assuming even greater terror than formerly...

...Among the males fifteen years of age and over in the entire city population, 12 percent were between the ages of twenty and twenty-four...

...THERE are good reasons why America is at last awakening to the seriousness of the problem of old-age poverty...

...While the difficulties of finding a job in middle age and after are increasing, the period of old age itself is growing longer...

...As a result of this development, the number of aged persons in the United States has been increasing both absolutely and relatively...

...Standardized production has largely eliminated the need for skill and experience-the sole assets of the older employee under the handicraft system...

...How these conditions can be ameliorated and how old age can be made more secure will be discussed in an article by Professor Carlton J. H. Hayes to be published later...

...In a pioneering country, "Each for himself and the devil take the hindmost" gets accepted as a sound social philosophy...

...Ill health stands out as the largest single factor of dependency...

...Since the older workers find it harder to adjust themselves to new processes of work, they are the first to be let out...

...Today the number of these aged is close to six million, and they constitute about 5 percent of the total...

...A leading insurance authority estimated recently that only about I percent of our present industrial establishments are a generation old...

...For bankers, brokers and money-lenders the proportion of those still employed at sixty-five is 5.4 percent, while the percentage of aged manufacturers and officials still gainfully occupied is considerably higher than the average...

...Because of the constant displacement of workers by machinery and labor-saving devices, the number at present is probably considerably higher...

...Of the 17,420 persons sixty-five years of age and over interviewed by the Commission, 39.4 percent reported ownership of property valued at less than $1,000, while 30.8 percent stated that they possessed no property at all...

...A prominent woman doctor applied to the Pennsylvania Commission on Old Age Pensions because an illness which overtook her at sixty had eaten up the accumulation of her thirty years' practice and left her penniless at seventy...

...However, an investigation of two of the city's leading machine shops showed that the proportion of male workers in this age group was 19 percent in one and 27 percent in the other...

...The swifter pace required of the modern workman also helps to wear him out at an earlier period...

...Every day finds over two million persons ill in the United States...

...In such a well-organized community as New York City, the Welfare Council can account for only about fourteen thousand old persons as being cared for by public and private charitable agencies, of its estimated total of 28,000 aged dependents in the greater city...

...At the same time the earlier possibility of support from children is also diminishing...

...As against an average expectancy of life of forty years in 1855, the present life span is fifty-eight years...

...We hear only of the successful business men...

...Recent studies made by the National Civic Federation-an opponent of old-age pensions-also show that 32.9 percent of the aged persons interviewed had annual incomes of less than $300...

...So long as our population remained largely rural and we had an ample supply of free and fertile land, there was no serious problem of old-age dependency...

...Even in normal times, about 10 percent of our labor supply is unemployed...

...Business and banking failures also frequently transform prosperous individuals into paupers and dependents...

...The difficulty of finding a job after the prime of life has passed has become proverbial...

...Only a small proportion of these are under the care of organized philanthropy...

...The annual toll of from 2,500,000 to 3,000,000 industrial accidents occurring in the United States helps further to increase old-age destitution...

...From the above discussions it is plain that the problems facing the aged today are quite different and more complex than those of a generation or two ago...

...Retail dealers, generally made up of independent small business men, also retain a higher than average percentage in old age...

...In 1870, men and women sixty-five years of age and over numbered but little over a million, and constituted 3 percent of the population...

...Many industries now limit the hiring age to forty and thirty-five years, which considerably limits the possible number of a man's working years...

...It found that 32.8 percent, or approximately one-third of the population of Massachusetts sixty-five years of age and over, not in receipt of aid from public or private organized charity, had individual incomes of less than $300, and 36.8 percent had incomes of less than $400 a year...

...The United States Steel Corporation did not come into existence before the beginning of this century...

...A. M. Edwards, of the United States Census Bureau, estimated that the proportion of aged dependent men was somewhere between a minimum of 17.9 percent and a maximum of 40 percent, with strong probabilities that the actual proportion approaches 40 percent...

...One New York home for the aged houses, among others, an artist, a musician, a broker, an engineer, a teacher, a clergyman and a lawyer, all of outstanding accomplishments and some of international reputation...

...It will be followed next week by a second article on the subject, by Professor Carlton J. H. Hayes, which will discuss remedial possibilities.-The Editors...

...Recent bank failures in New York brought to light some pitiful cases...

...Henry Ford was quoted as saying: The man who has never had any experience at all is the best fellow when it comes to fitting him into a new scheme of production...

...Such a basic industry as iron and steel, which was second in value of products in 1919, did not begin on a large scale before the nineties...

...It is the paramount cause for charitable relief...

...Among those seventy years of age and over, 39.9 percent had individual incomes of less than $300 and 43.6 percent possessed incomes of less than $400 per year...

...Since the estimates of the Massachusetts Commission were based upon the most thorough investigation ever undertaken by a state commission, they may probably serve as fair indications of the prevailing conditions in the entire country...

...But what a different tale is told by the statistics of industrial and mechanical pursuits or of transportation...

...Children or relatives generally took care of the old men and women who fell by the wayside, or these derelicts were thrust into our poorhouses where they were soon forgotten...