Facing old age

The progress of a nation may be marked by the care which it provides for its aged. The nineteenth-century doctrine of laissez-faire, as applied to aged and superannuated wage-earners, has been practically discarded by most civilized nations, including every English-speaking country in the world except the United States. Instead, a definite policy of social legislation has superseded the chaotic and degrading practices of alms-giving and poor relief. The enemies of social legislation in this country, however, still contend that the millions of workers in our industries “are working for themselves; that they have unrestricted control over the expenditures of their incomes, and that they have their future fate in their own hands.”^[1] As a nation, we are still frightened at the thought of becoming “our brother’s keeper.” In spite of superior wealth and accumulation of goods, our national conscience is not in the least disturbed when the former creators of our wealth are forced to drag out their final days, physically exhausted, friendless and destitute, in the wretched confines of a poorhouse, or to receive some other degrading and humiliating form of pauper relief.

To protect the wage-earners in their old age is merely to recognize the changes wrought in our industrial system. Old age was not universally dreaded before the industrial revolution or the advent of the modern factory system. On the contrary, it was even looked forward to with a certain feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. In the patriarchal state, old age was revered and the aged person in tribal economy was considered the embodiment of wisdom and authority.^[2] In an earlier system where the tribe or clan was a unit, the old remained supreme and their superiority continued beyond their productive years. Under the feudal system the lord was obliged to take care of his workers in case of sickness, accident, and old age. The artisan or labourer in mediaeval times ordinarily continued to work as long as he could produce something. In the early state of the factory system also the economic relations between men were more inter-dependent and of a more permanent character. The labour contract was usually lifelong, and the employer took a personal interest in the welfare of his workers. Again, in an agricultural society men and women are still useful in their old age, and their activities rarely cease before actual senility has set in. Under these conditions, men and women did not look with dread upon approaching economic old age, and there was little necessity for individual provision against it.

Our modern wage system presents an entirely different spectacle. Today, most men and women are dependent upon their daily toil for their daily bread. The pace of the present industrial system tends to wear workmen out rapidly. Fatigue produced by over speeding as well as the hazards characteristic of modern industry have shortened the period of effective production of industrial workers. Increased industrial efficiency, “scientific management,” the “bonus system” and specialized and standardized production are forces which are increasingly using up human energy at greater speed and in a briefer period of life. Often, at the age when the worker in agricultural pursuits is considered to be in his prime, the industrial worker is found to have become worn out and old. And, in industry, once the approach of old age becomes apparent, the worker is thrown upon his own resources.

Unlike the gradual physical decline in old age characteristic of agricultural and less developed industrial countries, economic superannuation, which takes place abruptly and earlier in life, stands like a spectre before industrial workers. Few industrial wage-earners may expect to continue at their accustomed work until the end of their days. Because of the developed efficiency standards, so essential to successful business, the wage-earner finds the problem of old age principally one either of increasing inability to find employment or at best of employment at low compensation. After a certain age has been attained, although the worker may still be able to do fair work, if he is no longer able to maintain his former speed, he is likely to be eliminated from industry. The old man finds it difficult to secure work even at low wages. Rowntree and Lasker, in a study of unemployment in Great Britain, found old age the primary causal factor in 23.3 per cent. of the cases studied. These investigators assert that: “It is unfortunately indisputable that when a skilled worker gets past 40, he finds it very difficult to meet with an employer who is willing to give him regular work.”^[3] What is true in England in this respect is equally true in the United States.

Contrary to the conditions existing in the professions, in business, or in politics, where men often do their best work at about the age of 60, and where experience and long standing count a great deal, the industrial worker finds himself not infrequently eliminated from productive industry after passing his fiftieth birthday. With the continuous introduction of new machinery and newer processes of work, age and experience are of little value. The labor contract in the factory system is made only for a temporary period, and the employer ordinarily does not feel under obligation to support his workers during their declining years of inactivity. Thus it is not uncommon today to find aged and decrepit workers relegated to the industrial scrap-heap as useless and of no economic value. Says Prof. E. T. Devine:

“It is notorious that the insatiable factory wears out its workers with great rapidity. As it scraps machinery so it scraps human beings. The young, the vigorous, the adaptable, the supple of limb, the alert of mind, are in demand. In business and in the professions maturity of judgment and ripened experience offset, to some extent, the disadvantage of old age; but in the factory and on the railway, with spade and pick, at the spindle, at the steel converters there are no offsets. Middle age is old age, and the worn-out worker, if he has no children and if he has no savings, becomes an item in the aggregate of the unemployed. The veteran of industry who is crowded out by changes in processes and the use of new machinery is obviously an instance of maladjustment.”^[4]

It will become evident in the discussions that follow, that the problem facing the aged today is largely the creation of the modern machine industry with its components of specialization, speed, and strain. It is a result of the elimination of large numbers of workers as soon as they are unable to keep up fully with the demands of modern methods of production. The introduction of new inventions and more specialized machinery, inevitable in the evolutionary process, while resulting in an ultimate good, always involves the replacing of men, which in the case of the aged, has an absolutely harmful effect, as it leaves them destitute. For, in addition to preventing their continuity in their regular work, it precludes also their adaptability to newer processes of work. The lot of the aged and superannuated worker is thus adversely affected by practically every step of industrial progress; and little or no benefit is derived by old wage-earners from industrial improvements.

Not infrequently when the difficulties facing the aged wage-earners are set forth, the smug and complacent citizen replies: “As one makes his bed, so he lies.” Poverty in old age, it is asserted, is chiefly the result of improvidence, intemperance, extravagance, thriftlessness, or similar vices. As a result of this convenient philosophy, we have made practically no attempt at the amelioration of the adverse conditions facing old age. More and more, however, it is coming to be recognized by all students of social and economic conditions that with the cost of living soaring continuously the great masses of wage-earners cannot lay aside from current wages sufficient to provide for possible emergencies. This has become especially patent as careful data on wages and incomes have been gathered by such students and responsible organizations as, Chapin, Ryan, Streightoff, Nearing, the United States Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the United States Department of Labor, the National Industrial Conference Board, and many of the state bureaus. This entire problem will be discussed at length in Chapter VI. It is sufficient to state here, that under present economic conditions and those of the past decade, the average wage-earning family must indeed be possessed of great resourcefulness even to make both ends meet, to say nothing of being able to save. In this connection it must also be pointed out that saving for old age is especially difficult because the need is remote and current demands press. The dangers of poverty in old age hardly impress the minds of the young. Most people have a working belief that things will be different thirty or forty years hence, a time which, indeed, seems unreal and distant. As Professor Seager aptly points out:

“The conditions of modern industry have failed to supply motives for saving sufficiently strong to take the place of those that are gone. It is true that saving is still necessary to provide for the rainy day, for loss of earning power due to illness or accident or old age, but against these needs is the insistent demand of the present for better food, for better living conditions, for educational opportunities for children. This demand is not fixed and stationary. It is always expanding.... One consequence of our living together in cities and daily observing the habits of those better off than we are is that we are under constant pressure to advance our standards. This pressure affects the wage-earner quite as much as it does the college professor. Both, when confronted with the problem of supporting a family in a modern city, find the cost of living as Mark Twain has said “a little more than you’ve got.””^[5]

The problem to be faced in old age by wage-earners may thus be summarized as being two-fold in character. First, the wage-earner is confronted with the fact of being compelled to discontinue work much earlier in life than should be necessary, not because he is completely worn out, but because he is unable to maintain the pace necessary in modern production; and secondly, he faces the inability to provide individual savings to support himself in old age.

In addition, the above conditions of impotence in old age are augmented still further by the break-up of the family unit in modern society. With increasing rapidity home ties and family solidarity are being weakened and broken by the mobility so essential to modern industrial development. This is especially true in the United States and among wage-earners. The migratory and immigrant labourers move from lumber-camps to harvesting fields, railway construction, and public works as the change of employment offers. Thousands of aged workers find themselves in a strange country without friends or relatives. Many of these have never had children, or if they are parents, their children are unable to assist them. Ordinarily, the children are either unattached migrants or are married and have children of their own who must be supported and educated. No one contends that it is good social policy to have children undernourished and set to work early in life in order that they may help support the passing generation. And as a result one finds that the only source which secured sustenance and bare comfort to old age, in an earlier society, has disappeared for a great many. We, therefore, send these unfortunates, in our laissez-faire fashion, to the unfriendly poorhouses to secure the care and comforts available. Do they secure it? Says Professor Devine:

“Suicide, friendless old age, unemployment under ordinary industrial conditions, some forms of insanity and other disabling disease, immorality and crime, owe a part of their prevalence and their virulence to the absence of the capacity or opportunity for personal friendship, to the absence of those social props and safeguards which our friends naturally supply. The almshouse is the final apotheosis of friendlessness.”^[6]

Indeed, once the difficulties faced in old age by the great majority of workers are realized, one cannot but wonder whether the fact that the aged population in the United States has increased from 3.5 per cent. for those 65 years of age and upward in 1880 to 4.3 per cent. in 1910, and that the expectation of life has improved, has been a desirable thing and is to be considered much of a blessing by the aged poor. Faced with conditions such as described above, and with the almshouse as the final destination of a life of destitution and drudgery, do they not look upon modern industrial development, as well as the advances made in medical progress and health as the creations of an evil spirit, which have, on the one hand, curtailed their period of production, and, on the other hand, prolonged their years of misery by the increased duration of life?

The prospects of living to old age are becoming increasingly better as methods of sanitation and public health are improved. According to the United States Life Tables, the American vital statistics in 1910 showed that out of every 100 persons at the age of 20, 64 will reach the age of 60; 54, the age of 65; and 42, the age of 70. Of 100 persons alive at the age of 30, 53 will reach the age of 65, and 48 will not die before 70. In other words, of all men alive at the age of 30, more than one-half will reach 65. A person who has reached the age of 65 may still expect to live 11 more years, and the person who has reached the age of 70 may still hope to have nine more years of life. In 1880, according to the U. S. Census, the number of persons 65 years of age and over in the entire population constituted 3.5 per cent. This aged population increased to 3.9 per cent. in 1890, to 4.2 per cent. in 1900, and to 4.3 per cent. in 1910. Of males 15 years of age and over, the number of those 65 and over increased from 54 per thousand in 1880 to 60 in 1890 and 63 in 1910. It is thus clear that the proportion of older persons in the United States has been constantly increasing.

In 1900 there were in the United States 3,083,995 persons 65 years of age and over, constituting 4.2 per cent. of the total population. In 1910 this number increased to 3,949,524 and constituted 4.3 per cent. of the population. Of the nearly four million persons 65 and over in 1910, 1,679,503, or 42.5 per cent., were between the ages of 65 and 69. The magnitude of the old age problem is more easily appreciated when one reflects that this aged group outnumbers the entire population of the United States during the time of the Revolution—the first Census of 1790 giving the total population of the United States as 3,929,214. No State in the Union, save the States of New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio, has a greater population; and the aged population in 1910 was greater than the combined populations of the states of Arizona, Delaware, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Wyoming, the District of Columbia, and Alaska.

According to the United States Census of 1910 there were in the United States at that time 38,167,336 persons 10 years of age and over engaged in gainful occupations. These constituted 53.5 per cent. of the entire population of that age, an increase of 3.1 per cent. over those reported gainfully employed for the same ages in 1900, and an increase of 6 per cent. in the population of the same age as compared with the proportion gainfully employed in 1880. In the case of the male population 10 years of age and over, 81.3 per cent. were recorded as gainfully employed in the United States in 1910 as compared with 80.0 per cent. reported in 1900, and 78.7 in 1880. Of the female population 23.4 per cent. of those 10 years of age and over were reported gainfully employed in 1910 as compared with 18.8 per cent. employed in 1900, and 14.7 per cent. in 1880.

That few wage-earners are able to continue at work until the end of their lives is known to all. While the percentage of the entire population which must secure its livelihood through gainful work has steadily increased in the United States, it is significant to note that the same Census figures show that after middle age the percentages of those engaged in industry and trades have been continuously diminishing. Out of every 100 males in gainful occupations in the United States in 1890, thirteen and one-half were between the ages of 45 and 54; eight between the ages of 55 and 64, and five and three-tenths were 65 years of age and over. In the same year, ninety-six and six-tenths out of every 100 males between the ages of 45 and 54 were found gainfully employed. Of those between the ages of 55 to 64, 92.9 per cent. were still found occupied, while of those 65 years of age and over, 73.8 were still recorded as engaged in gainful occupations. Ten years later, in 1900, the percentage of males employed between the ages of 45 and 54 was 95.5; of those between 55 and 64, 90 per cent., and the percentage of those over 65 who were still occupied dropped to 68.4, a decrease of 5.4 per cent. in 10 years. The 1900 Census figures also show that of all the males 55 years of age and over, 85 per cent. were found gainfully employed in 1890, but only 80.7 of the same were employed in 1900, a decline of 4.3 per cent. in 10 years.

The 1910 Census gives no age classification over 45. The information available shows, however, that while in 1900, 87.9 per cent. of all males over 45 were gainfully employed, the percentage declined to 85.9 in 1910. Assuming that the same rate of decrease of the gainfully employed males 55 years of age and over held true in the period between 1900 and 1910 as that which took place between the decade of 1890 and 1900, there would be only 76.8 per cent. of males 55 and over, in the United States employed in 1910, as compared with 80.7 in 1900, and 85 in 1890. Similarly, in regard to those 65 and over, 63 per cent. of the males in the United States would have been employed in 1910 as compared with 68.4 in 1900 and 73.8 in 1890. Thus it may be assumed that of the 4,660,379 males 55 years of age and over in 1910, 1,081,208 were already eliminated from the gainfully employed class.

The steady reduction in the percentages of those gainfully employed in the later years of life, as shown by the United States Census reports, is largely due to the decrease in the population of those ages engaged in industrial and manufacturing pursuits rather than agricultural and professions. This is obvious from the following: Of the total 38,167,336 gainfully employed persons in the United States in 1910, 12,567,925, or 32.8 per cent., were engaged in agricultural pursuits; 10,807,521, or 28.4 per cent., were engaged in manufacturing and mechanical occupations; 7,605,730, or 20 per cent., in trade and transportation; 5,361,033, or 14 per cent., were found employed in domestic and personal services, and 1,825,127, or 4.8 per cent., were engaged in various professional vocations. The tremendous expansion in the manufacturing and mechanical pursuits is apparent from the fact that the population engaged in these occupations in 1900 was only 7,085,309. There was an increase of more than three and one-half millions in 10 years. On the other hand, of the 1,065,000 men 65 years of age and over reported gainfully employed in 1900, approximately 50 per cent. were engaged in agriculture, a considerable number were engaged in the professions and business, and only about one-third of the number were employed as wage-earners. In 1900 the persons 55 years of age and over constituted 12.3 per cent. in all occupations. When this group is classified in accordance with the nature of its work, it is found that 15.1 per cent. of this group were engaged in agricultural pursuits; 15 per cent. in professional vocations; 10.5 per cent. in domestic and personal services; 10.5 per cent. in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, and 9.5 per cent. in trade and transportation. Thus while the aged group of 55 and over constituted 12.3 per cent. in all occupations it is much higher than this average in the case of agricultural and professional pursuits, but is much below the average in the case of manufacturing and transportation occupations. This is practically the reverse of the proportions found among those gainfully employed in the various industries in the earlier age groups.

Further light upon this phase may be gleaned from the Twelfth Census. According to the 1900 Census enumeration, the percentage of the total number of workers in all occupations between the ages of 45 and 54 formed 25.8 per cent. of workers of all ages employed in all occupations. The percentage of those employed between 55 and 64 was 12.3, and that of those 64 and over, 4.4 per cent. These figures were obtained after the elimination of certain occupations which have a large proportion of boys as well as those in which the majority of workers were women. A comparison of the percentages for all occupations with the percentages of those engaged in the industries given in the table below reveals the fact that, while in the outdoor industries the percentage of those employed between 45 and 54 holds approximately true, it is considerably below in the case of the heavier industries, and much below the general proportion after the 55th birthday has been reached.

The Thirteenth Census does not give the age classifications which would make a similar comparison possible. However, the Massachusetts Commission on Old Age Pensions, Annuities, and Insurance, found in 1910, in a study of 870 aged persons, that the average age at which the wage-earning power was completely lost was 68 years. The average age at which the earning power was partially impaired, in a study of 872 partially incapacitated persons, was 64. In 1918, the Ohio Commission on Health Insurance and Old Age Pensions found in six foundries employing 500 moulders only three men over 50 years of age engaged in heavy floor moulding. Ten men over 60 were engaged in light bench moulding.

The table below shows succinctly that the strain of modern machine industry permits only a few wage-earners to remain at work after they have passed three score and five. It is further proof of the above figures pointing to the constant reduction of those 65 years of age and over engaged in mechanical and manufacturing pursuits. An examination of the table compiled in 1920, regarding the ages when actually pensioned as compared with the ages required by these large concerns for obtaining a pension, reveals the fact that in spite of the strict regulations provided, a number of these have actually been pensioned before the specified age. Thus more than one-half of those on the pension list of the United States Steel and Carnegie Pension Fund have retired before the age of 65, although the age for voluntary retirement is set at 65. In the case of the pensioners of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, while the compulsory age of retirement is set at 70, 44 per cent. had been placed on the pension list before they had reached the compulsory retirement age. Similar proportions are found in the case of most of the other industrial pensioners.

The extent of disability of wage-earners as they are affected by both age and occupations has been brought out in a comprehensive manner by Dr. Boris Emmet from studies recently made of the Workmen’s Sick and Death Benefit Fund of the United States, for the United States Bureau of Labour Statistics.^[8] These investigations show conclusively that age and occupation are the two most important factors in determining the duration and extent of disability. The average number of days of disability per member was found to be 6.6 per annum. An examination of the age groups shows that up to the age of 45 the disabilities’ duration is below the average, but from that age on, it increases steadily until it averages 15.2 in the case of those who are 70 years of age and over. By the different age groups the percentages above (+) or below (−) the average are as follows:

The occupational hazards of certain of our large industries are presented so clearly in the table below that no comment at length is necessary. While in the professions the average number of days of disability per year is 2.6, it progresses continuously until in the case of miners it reaches 9.7, almost four times as great.

A valuable investigation in regard to this phase of the problem was made by the Pennsylvania Commission on Old Age Pensions, during 1918–19. This Commission interviewed over 4,500 people, 50 years of age and over in a house-to-house canvass in the cities of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Reading. It also made a study of the ages of partial and total impairment of workers in several industries. A case of partial impairment was assumed when the individual sustained a reduction in wages, either because of displacement or change in job as a result of sickness or old age. The Commission states that its studies revealed the following:^[9]

(a) The earning power of many workers in Pennsylvania is impaired before they reach the age of 40. The percentages of partial impairment at the age of 40 were found to vary from 2.6 per cent. among indoor and sedentary trades, to 16.4 in the steel industry, and 57 per cent. in the case of railroad workers. Only in the steel industry, however, were there many who were totally incapacitated before the age of 50. In the building trades, 12.6 per cent. were partially impaired before the age of 50; while 6.3 per cent. were totally incapacitated before reaching the same age. On reaching the above age it was found that 55.3 per cent. were partially and 14.1 per cent. were totally impaired in the case of steel workers. Of those engaged in casual occupations 26.7 per cent. have had their earning power partly, and 8.4 per cent. wholly reduced before attaining 50 years of age. Of indoor and sedentary trades the percentage of partially impaired workers before the 50th birthday was 15.2, while 8.3 were wholly disqualified for service at that age. Nearly 27 per cent. among glass blowers had had their earning power reduced before reaching 50 years of age, and 20 per cent. were permanently incapacitated at the same age. Of skilled workmen in the various trades, 29 per cent. were impaired partially and less than three per cent. entirely, before attaining their 50th birthday. Among railroad workers, those whose incomes were affected before the age of 50, the percentages were 64.3 to a partial extent, and 6.2 entirely.

(b) At the age of 60, the proportion of workers, whose earning power had not yet been affected, according to the various trades, were as follows: In the building trades, 55.1 per cent. suffered no loss of income before reaching the age of 60. In the steel industry only 13.2 per cent. were earning the same amounts as in their earlier days at the above age. Thirty-six per cent. of workers, at 60 years of age, were still found to be engaged in casual occupations. Among workers in indoor and sedentary trades, 46.4 per cent. were found without reduction in their earning power at the age of 60. Only 26.9 per cent. of glass blowers were in their full capacity at the age of 70. The percentage of skilled mechanics found in good health at 60 was 25.5, while 28.2 per cent. of railroad workers were found to be in unimpaired health at the age of 60.

The Commission concludes: “An examination of the total number of aged persons in all the three cities from whom the previous and present occupations were ascertained, shows that men past a certain age must quit even the skilled trades in which they have been engaged the greater part of their lives. Modern industry, apparently, has little use for the superannuated worker. A few men can continue working at the same occupation after they have reached a certain age. While 36 per cent. stated that they were skilled or semi-skilled mechanics in their earlier days, only 23.8 per cent. of men past 50 years of age were still engaged in the same occupation. The percentage of those doing unskilled or common labour or clerical labour, on the other hand, remained stable. It is also to be noticed that in their earlier days less than two per cent. were not working because of incapacity, but 26.6 per cent. were found not to be working among those 50 years of age and over. The fluctuations of the minor occupations are inconsiderable.”^[10]

Similar studies of several hundred bituminous miners scattered through a dozen mining districts in Pennsylvania and of about two hundred steel workers were recently completed by the writer for the above Commission. The investigations disclose that of 368 miners, 50 years of age and over, 177 were still in fair or good health, while 191 or somewhat more than 50 per cent. of those investigated, were found to be either partially or totally incapacitated. Of the 112 reported as partially incapacitated, 79, or 70.5 per cent., became so before the age of 60; of the 79 reported as totally incapacitated 38, or 50 per cent., were thus disabled before the same age. While most of those reported as partially incapacitated were still engaged in some form of work or other, this was irregular and uncertain, as most of these persons were suffering either from chronic sickness or the consequences of serious accident.

In the case of 146 steel workers, 50 years of age and over, investigated in Homestead and Steelton, 90, or 62 per cent., were found to be either in part or completely impaired in respect to their health and earning power, the great majority of these becoming incapacitated before the age of 60. The causes of impairment assigned in more than three-fourths of the cases of both classes of labour were either sickness or accident. Old age, as such, was given only in a few instances as a direct cause of incapacity.

The reports of the different State Industrial Accident Commissions and Compensation Bureaus corroborate further the evidence at hand that there are fewer persons past middle age engaged in industry than the proportion of the same group in the entire population. The Industrial Commission of Wisconsin reported in 1915 that of all persons injured at work in that state, 53 per cent. were under 30 years of age; 67 per cent. were under 40; 5 per cent. between 50 to 55, and only 5 per cent. more above that age. For the population 15 years of age and over as a whole, 7 per cent. were 50 to 55, and 16 per cent. were 55 and over.^[11] The California Industrial Accident Commission reports that in 1918, of 2,100 permanent injury cases, 1,729, or 82.3 per cent., were under the age of 50; 257 were between 50 and 60, and 114 above that age.^[12] Of 2,569 fatal accident cases which occurred in Pennsylvania in 1919, 1,932 or 75.2 per cent., were under 50 years of age; 262, or 10.2 per cent., were between the ages of 50 and 60, and only 136, or 5.2 per cent., were above that age. The ages of the rest were not ascertained.

Even more significant in this respect are the disclosures of an investigation of several trade union locals recently made by the writer. Printers are known to work much longer in life than do workers in many other crafts. In spite of this fact, it was found that of a membership of approximately 1,500, the Philadelphia Typographical Union No. 2 had on its lists only 145 persons, approximately 10 per cent., who were 60 years of age and over; and 47 of these were already on the pension roll of the International Typographical Union. Local No. 98, Philadelphia, of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers had no one 60 years of age or over on its membership roll of approximately 1,250. Workers in the building trades, it is frequently asserted, work until very late in life. An examination of the ages of 450 members of Carpenters’ Local No. 287 in Harrisburg showed only 25 persons 60 years of age and over. Bricklayers’ Local No. 71, in the same city, had only 14 members between the ages of 50 to 60 and a similar number 60 and over among 152 members. Carpenters’ Local No. 1073, Philadelphia, has been in existence since 1902 and has a membership of over 1,400. There were in this local only 60 men who were 50 years of age and over, and only seven of these were above 60. A canvass of over 600 miners’ locals with a membership of over 120,000 persons, made a few years ago by a Committee of the United Mine Workers of America, showed that there were in these locals a total of 6,283 persons 60 years of age and over, of whom only 2,084 were 65 years and upwards.

From the foregoing evidence it seems obvious that modern industry finds little use for the worn-out workers. It replaces and discards these aged wage-earners as it is in the habit of replacing and discarding the worn-out and inefficient machinery. Once economic old age has set in, the road to dependence is short. Says Mr. L. W. Squier: “After the age of sixty has been reached, the transition from non-dependence to dependence is an easy stage—property gone, friends passed away or removed, relatives become few, ambition collapsed, only a few short years left to live, with death a final and welcome end to it all—such conclusions inevitably sweep the wage-earners from the class of hopeful independent citizens into that of the helpless poor.”^[13]