America and the Aged

...As expressed recently by Lieutenant Governor Lehman: Estimates indicate that only one-third of the amount appropriated by the local governments goes for the immediate support of the aged...

...and the question at issue today is whether our newer national life has not made necessary a change in the methods of giving poor relief...

...We should recall that throughout previous Christian ages society recognized its responsibility for its unfortunate members, particularly for the indigent aged...

...Since 1914, the legislatures of fourteen states and the territory of Alaska have passed old-age pension bills of one type or another...

...Our present public institutional life for the aged is not only a blot upon our civilization and an indescribable tragedy to those who are forced to enter upon it, but it is also economically unsound...

...Over a hundred thousand are drawing similar pensions in the Irish Free State...

...About fifty bills have been presented this year in twenty-seven state legislatures...

...Its causes and present status have been discussed in a previous article...

...These nations have recognized that under modern industrial conditions old age must be made a social responsibility, and that the men and women who have given their all in toil and labor are entitled to at least a minimum of comforts when society no longer gives them the opportunity to remain economically independent...

...At the outset it is worth noting that while we are today a supremely industrial nation, we have so far made less endeavor to solve the problem of old-age dependency constructively than has been the case in any other industrial nation...

...Institutional care hardly offers a satisfactory solution of the difficulties of old men and women whose dependency is entirely a result of their inability to participate actively in our industrial world, and who are still physically capable of taking care of themselves...

...The interrelation of this fact to our lack of constructive social provision for old age is self-evident...

...The stigma of pauperism should not darken and blight the last few years of long lives of toil and honest endeavor...

...On the other hand, individual American employers can neither afford nor be expected to assume the entire responsibility for their older workers regardless of the length of service these have given...

...In the state of Washington a bill passed by the legislature was vetoed by the governor...

...Everybody knows that such responsibility was a cardinal principle of the Catholic Church from earliest times, and that in the middle-ages the Church assumed the leadership in the actual grant of poor relief...

...In the other states the laws have not been put into operation largely because the adoption of the plan is left optional with the individual counties...

...I confess to a sense of shame when reflecting that it took the great state of New York, more than a hundred years to make any vital change in its poor laws...

...Such an act causes profound resentment among the workers in the shop, is distasteful to the community at large, and is harmful to the public good-will...

...By the Poor Law of 1601, the state directed the establishment of public poor-houses in the parishes of the land and authorized special local taxation for their maintenance and for the general relief of the indigent...

...We still recognize our social responsibility...

...This was one of the main reasons for the large poor-farms which were attached to them...

...While on the European continent legislative committees were struggling with the matter more than a century ago, we are only beginning to give it consideration...

...In the state of Montana, where a pension plan has been in operation for the longest period in the United States, the average pension amounts to about $219 a year, whereas the cost of the average almshouse inmate amounts to $519 annually...

...The character of the inmates in these institutions today, however, is quite different...

...In Arizona a law adopted in 1914 was declared unconstitutional because of the ambiguity and loose wording of the act...

...Pertinent evaluation of what has and can be done is afforded in the following paper by Professor Hayes...

...Much has been written recently regarding the arbitrary deadline of employment...

...But, unfortunately, only in rare instances do the alms-houses of our counties and townships provide adequate medical care...

...Generally, even the most humane American industrialists feel that unless an employee has rendered from twenty to twenty-five years of continuous service he is not entitled to a retirement allowance...

...It is the principle underlying our pension legislation for mothers, which has been found sound and effective...

...For even a ruthless concern cannot with impunity arbitrarily dismiss an older worker who has no other means of livelihood...

...With few modifications, it still governs the care of our aged, infirm and needy...

...Such plans have been found workable and of benefit wherever they have been adopted...

...That we should provide adequate medical and nursing care for those who are really indigent and unable otherwise to obtain this care, goes without saying...

...The year 1929 marks the greatest progress in the movement...

...The advantages of home care over insti-tutionalism are stressed, and it is shown that public opinion has been steadily advancing toward advocacy of the first-a principle satisfactorily underlying our pension legislation for mothers.-The Editors...

...On the contrary, thousands of our aged dependents today are begging for an opportunity to continue to work and to earn an independent living...

...Healthy and self-respecting old men and women do not belong in an institution which shelters in its walls the miscellany of unfortunates: the feebleminded, the epileptic, the crippled and the imbecile, as well as the retired criminal...

...The monks not only sheltered the traveler and came to the rescue of the prisoner, but ministered to the sick and protected and aided the poor...

...In addition to the passage of old-age pension laws in the states of California, Minnesota, Utah and Wyoming, bills have passed one house of the legislature in six other states...

...Students of the problem, as well as many employers of labor, feel that the assumption of the responsibility of old age by the state would undoubtedly result in greatly lessening this most unfortunate handicap to middle-aged workers...

...It remains to say something of the proposals which have been made for its solution...

...Students of the problem have repeatedly pointed out that from two to three persons could be supported in their own homes for the cost of supporting an inmate in any decently kept almshouse...

...Certainly it is inconceivable that we should still tolerate the daily brutality of separating an old wife from her husband after they have lived together for a lifetime, and at a time when they need each other most...

...The monasteries especially were centres from which charity radiated...

...At this time pensions are being paid in Montana, Utah and Wisconsin...

...It is notable that Catholic groups have been among the foremost advocates and supporters of such measures in Europe...

...Over a million old men and women are drawing pensions from the British government today and have been doing so for over twenty years...

...The bills, as well as the laws enacted, generally provide for the payment of $1.00 a day to the needy at the age of seventy or sixty-five, provided they qualify in regard to citizenship and residence...

...The adoption by the state of an old-age pension system along the lines now in operation in many countries appeals to me therefore as one of the soundest methods of meeting the problem...

...The advantage of home care over institutional care is a good Christian principle and seems universally acknowledged today...

...The man or woman kept in his children's home with a small pension does not need separate buildings and hired servants and there remain small jobs that he can do...

...The other two-thirds are spent for buildings and grounds, maintenance and other forms of overhead...

...Nor can we be too proud of the fact that, with the exception of New Mexico, every state in the union still fulfils its obligation to the destitute aged largely through a three-centuries-old system of almshouses, poor-houses or similar institutions...

...He finds that Americans have inherited "the Elizabethan system of poor relief" which is no longer adequate to deal with modern needs...

...The California law will go into effect January 1, 1930...

...At least 650,000,000 people are now protected under such social provisions...

...The Elizabethan system of poor relief was brought over to this country in the seventeenth century and has continued here ever since...

...Thirteen bills have been presented in the New York Legislature, resulting in the creation of a commission to study the subject...

...OLD-AGE poverty is a very real problem before us in the United States today...

...Thirty-eight foreign nations, including virtually every industrial country on earth, have for several decades dealt with the problem of old-age dependency through a system of state allowances or through the establishment of compulsory insurance...

...And the 1929 Welfare Act is entirely optional with the counties and may not be adopted for many years...

...At this writing, old-age pension laws are on the statute books of California, Colorado, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Wisconsin, Wyoming and the territory of Alaska...

...we have become largely industrialized and urbanized...

...Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt is one of the most ardent champions of pension legislature...

...To the student of history, it seems obvious that seventeenth-century emergency remedies can hardly be made to apply to our twentieth-century problems...

...Only in rare cases are "shiftlessness" or "indolence" responsible for their condition...

...Industrial establishments have therefore been forced to discriminate against those who could not possibly be fitted into the existing pension system, or against those who might possibly become burdens on their hands...

...Because of the lack of better care, American employers are forced to assume the responsibility of supporting such of their aged workers as can no longer earn a living...

...we still maintain an elaborate system of almshouses, outdoor relief and private charity...

...It should also be remembered that the principle and practice of Christian poor relief received a rude setback through the suppression of the monasteries and the confiscation of their endowments in the countries which, in the sixteenth century, became Protestant...

...The German system of contributory pensions dates back to 1889...

...I hope and expect that the New York Legislative Commission on Old-age Security will present an adequate bill to the 1930 legislature, and that Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, backed by the innumerable organizations affiliated with the American Association for Old-age Security, will be successful in his worthy efforts, and that the best possible act will be written into our statute books...

...In England, for example, the suppression of the monasteries, which was effected through the personal ambition and financial greed of Henry VIII and his henchmen, served, in combination with the contemporaneous transformation of much agricultural land from tillage to pasturage, to spread acute distress among the laboring classes and to make their plight much worse than it had been before...

...But even here the age-old tradition of community responsibility for the poor could not be permanently ignored, and under Queen Elizabeth the English state began to do what the Church in England was no longer able to do...

...It is a known fact that employers of labor generally prefer to hire workers under the ages of forty or forty-five...

...The immediate responsibility for their old age having been removed from the individual employer, a corporation would be enabled to select its workers entirely upon the basis of physical fitness, without regard to age...

...But since the seventeenth century the United States has undergone an economic revolution...

...In concluding this discussion I should like to point out further that the adoption of state pension laws for those who have already passed sixty-five years of age seems to be not only a desirable method but also an urgent necessity...

...The majority of our pauperized aged are made up of self-respecting, hard-working, frugal people who have fallen by the wayside because of conditions which they could not control...

...I doubt whether the cost under state auspices would be greater than that now being borne by the taxpayer, while the lot of the individual would be vastly better...

...In Pennsylvania, the 1923 Old-age Assistance Act was declared null and void because of certain constitutional limitations...

...Many of our own poor farms were originally called "houses of employment...

...Originally the poorhouse, or "workhouse" as it is still called in England, was largely a home of forcible employment for those who would not work...

...Encouraging progress has already been made by the movement for old-age security in this country...

...They are denied this opportunity because our Gargantuan industrial development finds no place for them...

...The age level of the group has been steadily rising...