-are away on vacation. Applicant says she has not been able to sell very much as so many people are away and she has not been able to go far from home.

9/30/07-Called and left $1.00 for food. 10/4/07-Called. Left $1.00 for food. 10/27/07-Called. Left $1.00 for food. 10/24/07-Called. Left $1.00 for food. 10/30/07-Called. Left $1.00 for food.

5/2/08-$4.00. Man not well. 5/26/08-Old lady very sick since last visitnot well.

7/29/08-Left $4.00-not able to do very much-has been quite sick since last visitvery grateful for money given.

9/24/08-$4.00. Mrs. F. says they find it very hard to get along-she cannot sell anything. Man not well. Woman asks for outing

11/7/07-Called. Found woman had hurt her hand tearing off paper from wall of room -it was hanging in shreds-visitor promised to get room whitewashed-left $4.00 for next four weeks' allowance.

11/6/07-Left $4.00 for next four weeks' maintenance, also $2.50 for fuel. This was money specially given for purpose.

11/29/07-Called. Left $4.00 for four weeks' maintenance. Girls of Sunday School class gave Thanksgiving dinner.

12/30/07-Called. Left $4.00.

1/30/08-Called. Got some work for woman. 2/13/08-Because of sickness and very little work for woman left $2.00.

2/19/08-Paid $3.00 for fuel out of special fund given visitor for such cases. 2/26/08-Took $4.00.

3/24/08-Took $4.00. Man not well.

flannel to make up into undergarments for the coming winter.

10/19/08-$4.00 for maintenance. On 16th V. called. found applicants in need of foodgave $1.50 grocery order.

11/28/08-$4.00. 12/12/08-$4.00.

1/18/09-Second hand suit for man.

2/6/09-Purchased bed springs and mattress, using money given for purpose. Very much needed as old bed was in very bad condition. 2/16/09-$4.00.

3/16/09-Man has been quite ill-seems more feeble in mind and body.

4/6/09-$4.00 for monthly maintenance.

The Freiheits are still living.

There is their story. Condensed into the space of a white card six inches

across, the dollar a week for maintenance, how long could you live on one dollar? the stiff fingers working at embroideries now pitifully out of fashion; the worn "old ladies' shoes" beside the bed; the German Bible and two frayed volumes of German "Lieder und Gedichte" upon the table; the determined. self-respect-yes, even that in the face of the uncertain charities of Sunday school classes that will go away for summer vacations.

Number 29107 is down on the cards as "feeble minded." He lost his memory years ago or he would not be down on the cards at all. He has lost his memory, but he has preserved his ideas. What would the one who made that entry feel if he were told that, like the Mr. Purcey in the work of John Galsworthy, "He had brought home, not, as he imagined, a lunatic, but only a philosopher."

Individual instances these are, it is admitted. But they are typical of a situation as broad as America. They are typical of the sort of situation that is created in any state, in any country, where no definite, complete, equable system of providing for its worn out workers has been made by a society which has itself become highly organized, highly industrial.

And yet, precarious as this existence. may be, here in this case and in others like it the two old people have their little sacred nook together. However wavewashed their little island may be, they can be alone with some pretenses at privacy. There are hundreds of others who are not so fortunate.

Go out to the homes for the aged conducted by the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Homes for Aged Jews, the Presbyterian and Methodist and Lutheran and Church Homes for the Aged, the Polish and German and Scandinavian old people's retreats. Are these shadows against the wall? Are these hulks of wreckage? Two hundred and forty men and women in one institution, two hundred in another, more than fifteen last year in private "homes" in Chicago alone, twelve hundred on the waiting list of such homes in New York, eight hundred and forty-three receiving "out door relief" because of old age, from the county agent in Cook County alone, in Illinois

alone, hundreds of others on the lists of other county agents all over the country, hundreds in the Soldiers and Sailors' homes, hundreds in the masonic homes, hundreds more making more difficult the living problem of struggling young relatives.

It is estimated that only a small percentage of the employes in the average industrial plant are over forty-five years of age.

What has become of the worn-out workers? There are many answers. A story like that of the Freiheits is one answer. The homes for aged poor are another. The reports of county agents indicate another.

Mr. Charles Booth has filled the closely printed pages of two large volumes with the tabulated stories of a part of England's aged poor.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has appointed a commission which is trying to get a part of the answer for America.

Another part of the answer is found in the pages of patiently accumulated statistics which show that pauperism for all ages is 2.2 per cent. For the ages above sixty it is 13.3 per cent.

answer

Thriftlessness, dissipation, though they may be for many cases are by no means the answer for all. With all the disposition in the world to save enough for old age, there are thousands for whom it is an absolute impossibility. A study of the ratio between the average wage and the average cost of living for a given region will make this clear.

"It is perfectly clear that the common laborer of cities can never on present wages provide for old age without help of employers and the public; the outlook is simply hopeless. The income of the workingmen of cities is too small and too irregular to warrant any unaided attempt to provide for the last period of life."*

It is only within the last two decades -even within the last half-decade, that a new realization has begun to take shape in the national consciousness. That realization, that idea, is, that Industry owes to its wornout workers a decent, independent, self-respecting age.

*C. R. Henderson." Industrial Insurance."

This is not charity. This is not philanthropy. It is simply one of the new ideas in Business.

Listen to the report of the Massachusetts commission above referred to: "The problem of dealing with the aged employes is an urgent one in the modern. business world. To carry them on the payroll at their regular employment means waste and disorganization of the working force; to turn them adrift is not humane. In the past, large employers of labor have tried to meet this difficulty in piecemeal fashion by retiring aged. employes on pensions in certain cases or giving them light work, each case being provided for on its merits; now they are beginning to deal with the problem in systematic fashion, by adopting a uniform method of retirement with pension."

In contrast to such a story as the Freiheits' in the card system of such a charity society, take the equally condensed records of the pension department of a firm which has a system of old age pensions. Such a card as the following, which you

will find in the records of a firm in Cleveland, Ohio.* Changing again only the names, these notes read as follows: "Henry Smith, Tularosa, N. M.

Mr. Smith, we believe, is one of our most progressive. He is located in New Mexico. We give herewith his letter of the 27th ult.

'I am enjoying good health and believe this is the place for the old, broken down war horses to recuperate. I feel at least ten years younger than when I first came here. I trust I have never done anything to bring discredit on the company and that I never will. Since getting acquainted here I have been appointed U. S. Commissioner. Think the com

pany is doing a good act by pensioning its broken down in health old employes. With their assistance it enables them to pass their declining days in comfort.''

This again is an individual instance. It would not be fair to cite it as typical. It is fair to cite it as an excellent illustration of the fine things now being done. for their faithful employes by many large firms in various parts of the United States.

When, in 1884, first of all in America, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad established a pension system for its own em

*American Steel & Wire Co.

ployes, it was performing some of the office of a scientific professor who, walking into a field of circling butterflies with a net and cyanide bottle, thereby converts that field into a laboratory.

That was Business stirring in its sleep.

But Business did

not really begin to awake for another

ten years.

Now the field of American industry is a big buzzing unscientific laboratory

of private experiment, in which every kind of scheme for looking-always individually and privately-after the man who is no longer able to work, is being rapidly tried out, passed on, adopted, modified and imitated, with the greatest good will in the world but also with the greatest confusion.

Sometimes the pension paid to the retiring employe is a pure gratuity, announced by the firm, paid entirely out of the profits of the firm, administered by the firm alone.

In such cases the directors simply announce the terms. For example, the directors of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway began in 1900 a pension system of this kind. Under its provisions, all employes who have attained the age of seventy years and who have been twenty years in the service are retired with an annual fixed salary,-one per cent on their average pay for the last ten years of service for as many years as they have been at work for the company. That is, if a man has worked twenty-one years and a half, his annual pension will be 21.5 per cent of his average pay for the last ten years he has been at work.

Similar pensions are given by other large firms, such as the American Steel and Wire Company, Deere & Company, the Metropolitan Street Railway Association, Standard Oil Company, the Gor

ham Manufacturing Company.

The Western Electric Company in 1906 created a pension fund by setting aside $400,000 out of the profits. The president is further authorized to add $150,000 annually to the fund. Any unused part of this money draws interest at four per cent from the company, interest which is put back into the fund.

In all these cases appropriations to

be used for pensions form a special fund, administered according to fixed, printed rules, so that employes know exactly what they have to expect at the termina'tion of their service, if they stick to the firm. A maximum pension of $1,000 per year is usually fixed and a minimum of $18.00 per month.

Firms such as these are helping to work out, locally, partially, for America the system which England is trying out on a national scale. They are privately making practical experiments which will, perhaps, sometime form valuable material for the study of universal old age pensions for America.

After about twenty-five years of parliamentary commissions, a continuous performance of reports, speeches and dinners by high collared gentlemen and a continuous performance of hunger, wretchedness and disease by low browed persons, England, in December, 1908, determined to give to all persons in Great Britain-with certain exceptions-who for twenty years had been British subjects, who had attained the age of seventy years and whose incomes do not exceed the yearly sum of $157.50, a pension not to exceed $1.50 a week.

These American firms, rapidly, without many words and with little publicity are doing the same sort of thing to the extent of their own powers and responsibilities. Private old age pensions are always

limited in extent; they are meant only to supplement the savings of the workman; they are purposely kept at a minimum in order not to encourage him to be thriftless.

Go back for a moment to those same cards in that same central office of the United Charities in Chicago, and there you will find a card marked 53612Cause, Old Age. It reads thus:

H. Johnson. Born Norway, 1836. Sailmaker. Worked for the Smith and Jones Company for 20 years. Smith, of Smith and Jones, says that he is deserving and worthy and that he does not drink. Smith gives him a ticket to Iowa, 7/17/07. 7/16/8 back in Chicago-sent back by friends. Smith says they refuse to do anything for him. Will see President of Norwegian Old People's Homes Association.

The firm for which Johnson worked,the firm which gave him so willingly after twenty years of service a good character-and a, ticket to Iowa,-employs 200 men and says that it expends. every year about $4,000 on sickness and accident benefits and old age pensions. It has no regular system in which the employes have a definite place, but prefers to keep entire control.

American business has discovered its worn-out workers. But business is just scrambling around looking for its change-pocket. It hasn't orientated yet. Meantime, besides doing a lot of experimenting in the wholesale English fashion it is conducting in other places benefit societies in which the man at the desk and the man at the lever are united. These are doing for certain plants and companies, in restricted localities what Germany has been trying out nationally —that is, they are providing obligatory insurance against old age for men who get wages. To which Germany has added the further idea of possible old age insurance for men who draw salaries.

Now imagine that in that firm of "Smith and Jones" during the twenty years that Johnson was in their employ, there had prevailed such a system. Imagine that "Smith and Jones" had gone over the benefit societies which have an old age feature in them,-such as those of, say, Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett, the First National Bank in Chicago, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, the Grand Trunk, the Elgin Watch

Company, the Crane Company, the International Harvester Company, the Bausch & Lomb Company, the Pittsburgh Coal Company,—and averaged them into a compulsory, contributory old age benefit scheme of their own. What would have happened?

Every week during his period of service, Johnson has paid in ten cents to the "Smith and Jones Benefit Club." This benefit club is an organization with carefully prepared rules, administered by a select board chosen from the company and from the men in the plant.

Sometimes there have been weeks when Johnson would rather have put his ten cents into two "babies of beer" than into a "benefit club." But that was one reason why it was a benefit. It insisted upon helping him even when he didn't feel like helping himself.

The company has met Johnson's ten cents a week and the ten cents a week of every other employe with another ten cents of its own. These sums, invested carefully, form the funds of the Benefit Club. Smith and Jones themselves attend to the operating expenses.

Because other features were included in the benefit club besides old age provisions, these operating expenses cost the firm from one dollar to one and a half per member.

Money from the pension fund has been paid out to other pensioners only upon approval of the executive board. That executive board consisted not only of three men from the company-for whom Johnson might have a personal liking but a professional distrust,-but also of three men from the plant for whom Johnson might have a personal dislike but a professional confidence.

Any way he has gone on putting in his ten cents a week. His sixty-fifth birthday comes the tenth of May. May the eleventh finds Johnson at his Superintendent's window.

"I am sixty-five years old. When do I quit ?"

"That's right. Sixty-five."

The superintendent gets out a card. from the filing cabinet of the Benefit Department and consults it.

"Sixty-five; twenty years working for us salary average for the past ten years, $650.00.