The Grandparents : Part 7

The Family and it's Members
by Anna Garlin Spencer

(Page 11 of 24)

The high speed of machinery, the extreme competition in business, the monotony of the specialized manufacturing groups, the weight of great financial enterprises and the struggle to make the family setting equal to the family desires or even the family needs, all tend to make men in middle life fail so often in health and so often leave behind their better sheltered and more tenderly cared-for wives. There is a new movement of great social importance, and one tending directly toward the saving of one-half of the family circle, which is now taking a front place in social interest; namely, the movement for annual medical examinations. The work of the Life Extension Institute leads toward this end and seeks the better adjustment of life and work in the interest of simplicity and mutual service in the family and the better health of all its members.

It is not, however, in the power of the wisest and most unselfish of individuals to so manage the work-power as to insure against premature old age from too great speeding and overstrain. There must be social movement of the most thorough-going sort to prevent the waste of the laborers in all fields. Social workers should remember that it is not alone important to try to safeguard the health and strength of mothers and of potential mothers by laws protecting women and girls in industry. It is as vital a need to safeguard the health and strength and perpetuate the work-power of fathers and potential fathers in order that old age may be not a terror but a blessing to the family. This is emphasized by recent indications that the increase of the diseases of middle age is already checked and that we are gaining ground in this particular.

A recent report of the Federal Department of Commerce through the Bureau of Census shows that there has been a decline in the death-rate for all age periods during the last decade. In the rate for infants under one year of age a decline of twenty-six per cent., or from 13,804 per 100,000 in 1910 to 9,660 per 100,000 in 1920. The death-rate for middle-aged and old people shows an encouraging decrease, that of twelve per cent., in the period above seventy-five years of age. This shows that we are gaining on disease and premature death with every new advance in preventive medicine and the crusade against bad living conditions. This, again, means that in the future we shall have more aged persons in ratio of population than we have had in the past, and indicates the great need of taking measures betimes to make old age not only more mentally strong but more happy and comfortable in condition.

Check Extreme Requirements for Youth in Labor. - There are many requirements for youth in offered opportunities of training and of work which are distinctly detrimental to respect for, and possibility of continued service of, the old. Take, for example, the age limit in many departments of business and manual labor. During the war we had in the countries most denuded of young men a new sort of trial of the middle-aged in positions where it had been thought youth was required. What was the result? The trial made in Chicago by fifteen large employers of labor under the leadership of Mr. Benjamin Rosenthal, was distinctly, to use his words, "to upset the fallacious theory that men between the ages of 45 and 65 are fit only for the scrap-heap." The result of this experiment showed that in some phases of work the older men did as much work in a given number of hours as the younger men; in other departments they did as much in the week or month, from their steadiness and devotion to their work, but not as much in any one day. That is, the older men were less quick, but more steady and, therefore, in the end accomplished as much. In some kinds of labor the older men did better than the younger because usually more patient of detail and less restive in monotonous toil. In the larger enterprises older men are proverbially less speculative, more conservative, less venturesome than the young. American business would, perhaps, not suffer if a larger admixture of these qualities were found in all the walks of commerce and business.

The fact that when a man is at the head of a concern, large or small, he is valued usually more at sixty-five than at thirty-five, and the further fact that thirty-five is often the dead-line for admission to the lower ranks of the same industry or commercial position, is a proof that this age-limit of the worker in lower position is not one of definite knowledge of actual incapacity after forty years of age but rather due to other conditions. Those conditions are, first and foremost, the easier management of younger than of older subordinates. It is hard for many men to "order about," in peremptory fashion, a man older than themselves, and few men can command without abruptness or sharp orders. It is still harder for most men to order about as office assistant or clerk or secretary a woman older than themselves. And fewer men can assume a respectful yet commanding attitude toward women than can do so toward men in their employ. Some embarrassment has yet to be worn off in business relations of the sexes. Moreover, the tendency toward upspeeding of all mechanical manufacture is a part of the rushing spirit of an age which has invented more fast-going things than it has as yet mental power to use wisely or with social safety, and it is true that fewer men over forty can rush in their work than can do so below that age.

Youth is nimble; youth can be snubbed for errors of accomplishment without hurt to a "gentleman's instincts;" youth, although so careless as to often get injured by the swift-going machines, can yet exult in their rapid swing; and, above all, youth is flexible and can be shaped to any form of business requirement decided upon by those higher up. Hence a fictitious value is assigned to youth in all departments of work to-day. Hence, again, a special movement for actual trial of the relative values of workers of different ages in special kinds of work is necessary if we would know whether or not it is possible to prevent that premature old age and tragical financial helplessness at fifty-five or sixty, which makes the workless man or woman a burden where many believe he or she might be still a help to the family income.

We have been a nation of the young. We shall more and more balance the different age-periods, as is already done in the older countries. We should prepare, betimes, for this new aspect of the future's census, by providing against preventable old age by the wiser use of all laborers as long as work-power can be made available for self-dependence.

Need of Experience in Many Fields of Work. - There are certain fields of work on the higher side of social ministration in which the more experienced are more needed than the young. Some one has said that "no man is fit to be a pastor of a church until he has been something else for several years and knows something of life." There is a very real demand for any one, man or woman, who ventures to deal with the spiritual life that he or she shall have more than youth can give of sympathy and understanding. There is need also for larger experience and greater breadth of view in professional social work of all sorts, more than the young man or woman can give who has had college, plus "School for Social Work," and nothing else; but who, because "trained," feels expert. There could not be a greater social mistake than is made by schools which attempt to train for child-care, family visiting, rehabilitation of the dependent, aid to the "down-and-out," succor to the tempted and help to the weak, and yet deny the opportunities of their classes to men and women over thirty-five. The giving of "auditors' privileges," or "special courses for volunteers," or like makeshifts for regular student privileges is not what is required; for such provisions carry with them the idea of less than professional standing and usefulness.

Copyright, 1923 by J.B. Lippincott Company

About the Author

Anna Garlin Spencer (1851-1931) was an American educator, feminist, and Unitarian minister. Born in Attleboro, MA, she married the Rev. William H. Spencer in 1878. She was a leader in the women's suffrage and peace movements. In 1891 she became the first woman ordained as a minister in the state of Rhode Island.