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VOICES FROM THE PAST |
1 From: Social Insurance With Special Reference to American Conditions. New York: Henry Holt Company; 1913:301–317.
THE GREAT DISCOVERIES of Metchnikoff have given the human race a new hope, a new conception of what the normal span of life ought to be. But while these discoveries have not yet reached the stage of practical application, discoveries equally remarkable in their time, in the domain of medicine and personal and public hygiene, have already accomplished a great deal in decreasing mortality and prolonging normal human life. Within the last century the popular concept of the normal milestones between youth, maturity, and old age has been very much affected. . . . now we quite earnestly speak of a young woman of forty, and of a man of sixty as being in the prime of life. Commerce, the professions, and politics—especially politics—have furnished numerous examples of the admirable vigor and useful activity of men past sixty and even seventy. We look askance at the man who dares to aspire to the highest and most trying political office of the land before having reached his fiftieth birthday. . . .
Unfortunately, these blessings of civilization, like most other blessings for that matter, have not benefited all classes of society—not in the same degree, anyway. For side by side with the achievements of old age in arts, literature, business, professions, science, and statesmanship, modern civilization on its industrial side has created the very grave problem of superannuation—the problem of the jobless, helpless, incomeless, and propertyless old man of fifty.
Individual aged paupers there always were in organized society, or at least for thousands of years back. We find frequent references to them in Scriptures,—but they were primarily individual problems and not social. Presumably individual methods of relief, private or church charity, served as a sufficient remedy. But the socio-economic problem of the old man or woman, as we know it to-day, is specifically a problem of modern society, a result of the rapid industrialization of production within the last century. It is a problem radically different from that of accidents, in that it is not an abnormal occurrence, but a normal stage of human life. It is different from sickness in that improvement in hygiene seems to aggravate it rather than relieve it. . . .
What is the modern problem of old age? It is the problem of poverty caused by inability to find employment because the productive power has waned—and waned not temporarily, but forever. Evidently, in this form, the problem could not exist until the majority of mankind became dependent upon a wage-contract for their means of existence. . . .
Of all men who have reached the age of thirty, nearly three-fifths may expect to reach the age of sixty-five, at which time they may expect to have eleven more years of old age; of the same men at thirty, nearly one-half survive at seventy-five, and still hope for eight and one-half years on average. . . .
It is true that, as has been established by statistics of industrial insurance companies, which extend their operations primarily over persons of the poorer classes, their mortality rate is considerably higher and their longevity correspondingly lower, but among them, too, some improvement has taken place. . . . Ten to fifteen years of life (over sixty-five) is, therefore, a certainty to more than one-half of the wage-workers. . . .
Under normal physiological conditions, old age, unless preceded by a definite chronic ailment, should lead to a gradual failing of the productive powers. As the medieval independent worker became old, he worked less and produced less, but he went on working as long as he could produce something. In an agricultural community, the usefulness of an old man or woman does not cease until actual senility is established, and actual senility is a comparatively rare phenomenon. But under a wage-system, the condition is altogether different.
The economic disability of old age may arise suddenly while the aging worker is still fit for productive activity, but finds himself below the minimum level of productivity set by the employer.
Thus the economic activity, and, therefore, the income, stops, not because productive powers have altogether failed, but because they have begun to decline, and not an accurate physiological test, but the employer’s opinion, has the decisive force. Thus, economic old age in the vast majority of cases arrives very much earlier than physiologic old age, as a result of the wage-system. . . .
Perhaps there is no better illustration of the glaring economic contrasts of modern social life than the difference of the effect of old age upon the propertied classes and the wage-workers. The constant speeding up of the industrial processes, the almost inhuman intensity of effort which grows even more than in direct proportion to the shortening of the workers’ hours, the work at great depths in mines, or dizzy heights in building operations, the ever-present danger of bodily injury, all these facts have their effects. We have scarcely begun to study the problem of pathological effects of fatigue, but that it must result in producing premature old age is quite evident. . . .
In 1890, of all men over sixty-five years of age, 73.8% were gainfully employed; in 1900 . . . only 68.4%. This is a difference of 5.4%, and the total number of men over sixty-five in 1900 being 1,555,000, the inevitable conclusion is that the economic progress of ten years meant an additional 100,000 or so men thrown out of employment. Even these figures do not tell the whole story. In agriculture age is not such a serious obstacle. In professions even less so. As a result we find that in agriculture 6.1% of the men employed are over sixty-five years old, in the professions, 5.5%, but in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits only 3.5%, and in trade and transportation only 3%. In so far as the older men are not altogether thrown out of the industrial field, they are shifted to unskilled occupations. Among unskilled laborers the percentage of males over sixty-five years is 12%, and among railroad employees only 5%. . . .
A chronic disease, a permanent injury are doubly destructive of earning capacity when combined with old age. But in thousands of cases they are of themselves sufficient to produce loss of earnings and destitution. It is for this reason that there is a close relationship between the problems of old age and invalidity, which forced many countries to handle these two problems through a combined organization. For, in one sense, invalidity may often be defined as premature old age. Officially, old age begins at seventy, under some laws dealing with the problem; in other countries, at sixty-five or at sixty; and in a few special organizations for old-age provision, under certain conditions, even at an earlier age. But all these definite limitations between middle and old age are as unreliable as the calendar limits for the coming of spring and summer on a certain date. As economic old age may come long before physiologic old age, so invalidity is but a form of premature physiological old age. . . .
When the statistics of the countries are studied which have introduced a system of old-age relief, the number applying for it is simply appalling. . . . We may briefly state that the British act of 1908 grants a small weekly pension to every person over seventy who is not in possession of an income of $150 per annum. At the time the law passed, it was expected that 386,000 persons would be entitled to this pension. During the first year of the application of the act the number of applicants rose to 667,000, so that in a population of 44,000,000, 9 per 1,000 were over seventy years old and had an income of less than $2 per week. . . . As the total number of persons over seventy years was approximately 1,250,000, this means that nearly 1,080,000, or 86%, of the men and women of that age needed relief. The number of men and women of that age-group with an income sufficient to make a pension unnecessary was estimated originally at 393,000. It evidently proved to be just about one-half of that. . . .
Most aged persons are not actually starving to death in the United States, even when not in receipt of organized public or private charitable relief. Neither were they presumably starving in Great Britain, France, or any country which was forced to institute old-age pension systems. After all, some of them hold on with grim desperation to an opportunity to earn a wage. Not many succeed, to be sure. To return to the United States statistics. There were in 1900 some 1,065,000 men sixty-five years or over engaged in gainful occupations, out of a total of 1,555,000 of that age. But of 1,065,000 men nearly one-half were farmers; and professional men, bankers, brokers, manufacturers, corporation officers, and merchants constituted another 15%, leaving only about one-third for wage-earners. The question is: how many of the 500,000 men over sixty-five years of age and not employed were being supported by charity or private aid; how many of the 1,400,000 women over sixty-five years of age had the comforts of their own homes, and how many were burdens to a workingman’s family? And how many of the 500,000 or 600,000 wage-workers, sixty-five years or older, were earning enough for any approach to a physiological standard? . . .
That in thousands of cases children or relatives are forced to give help is a fact too well know to be disputed. But it is a condition which usually exists, and is the sort of relief always possible, and if possible, desirable? . . .
The long and short of this dependence upon family solidarity is just this:
But, nevertheless, there must be thousands of families where children are either unable or unwilling to render aid to the superannuated workers, but do it, nevertheless, because of deep attachment to the parents, or family pride revolting against application to charity, and that the filial obligation is thus enforced by a neglectful society with the effect of frequently depressing a standard of life already too low, or forcing the old father or mother to eat the daily bread unwillingly yielded, in pain and humiliation, or—preventing the formation of a new family by the dutiful son or daughter, because of the existing obligation toward the ruins of the old family. And these are the results of trying to apply an eighteenth century ideal to twentieth century conditions. . . .
Poor-relief, in all countries, carries with it a social stigma, and in most a definite loss of the prerogatives of free citizenship. . . .The majority of people, even of the poorest class, have a wholesome antipathy to poor-relief, and institutional relief is considered the last hope. But even aside from these moral aspects of poor-relief, materially it has never been sufficient, either quantitatively, or qualitatively, to solve the problem of old age. . . . Thus, the need of some systematic provision for retirement adds additional weight to the old-age problem.
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