Referring to the reports from abroad on recreation activities, which were an interesting feature of the proceedings, one of the speakers reminded the delegates that the conference had to deal with the leisure of the Canadian people who, he declared, "are doers and not thinkers, empire builders not dreamers, farmers not artists." Among the outstanding topics taken up by the conference were organized games, physical education, control of radio, the improvement of moving pictures, the right use of leisure for the production and enjoyment of good literature, support for Canadian literature, and the contemplation of spiritual things, the last-mentioned means of education being emphasized by Tagore, the Indian poet, who also declared that "the spirit of progress occupies a great deal more of our mind to-day than the deeper life-process of our being which requires leisure for its sustenance." TH CARE OF THE AGED Meeting of American Association for Old-Age Security HE second national conference of this association was held in New York City, April 26, 1929, with two sessions during the day and a dinner and addresses in the evening. The program included a number of well-known speakers and there was free discussion from the floor. The points especially stressed were the inability of the average worker to make sufficient provision for his own old age, the social unrest arising from the resultant sense of insecurity, the inadequacy and unsatisfactory character of private industrial pension plans, and the growing interest and support behind the old-age pension movement throughout the country. In connection with the difficulty the average worker finds in providing for his old age, emphasis was laid on the age limit in employment. Speaker after speaker called attention to the fact that at a time when the average expectation of life has been increased, the working period is being sharply limited by the unwillingness of employers to take on a man of 45 or over- some speakers put the age even lower-who finds himself out of a job. Theodore L. Bierck, chairman of the New Jersey Commission on Old Age Insurance and Pensions, dwelt on the connection between this situation and the crime wave. He held that the threat of economic insecurity is a main contributing cause of the crime wave. To-day a man of forty-odd years, capable and in full health, is not wanted for employment. What is the thought in that man's head? What is his future? The increase of criminals is receiving recruits from those who are desperate. It is all well and good to respect law, but we must have respectable laws. We who are fortunate must have regard for those who are less fortunate. The State by law should in its sovereign right decree that those who have reached an age when their labor is impossible shall be cared for. Mr. Murray W. Lattimer, of the Industrial Relations Counselors, discussed the pension plans maintained by private employers, tradeunions, and other nonpublic organizations. The majority, he concluded, are not on a sound financial basis. The systems maintained by industrial organizations are unsatisfactory, since the employer has a right to impose and change the conditions for securing pensions as he pleases. They can be used as a means of tying the worker to his job and preventing his effective protest against undesirable employment conditions, and very few of them give the worker any contractual rights, no matter how faithfully he observes his side of the plan. As for the trade-unions, their plans, which at present cover about 11,500 employees, are, he stated, in quite as precarious a situation financially as the schemes of the industrial employers. Technically, most of the plans in both groups are in a state of bank ruptcy, since they are merely meeting present needs and not making adequate provision for the steadily increasing pension demands of the future. At best they cover only a fraction of the industrial army, and there is little indication, he thought, that their coverage would increase to any great extent. Mr. Elmer Spahr, president of the Pennsylvania Conference of Bricklayers, pointed out as another defect of the private systems their failure to provide for workers who, like those of his craft, were seldom long in the employ of any one company. A contractor employs the bricklayers he needs for a particular job, and when that job is finished lets them go. A bricklayer may work for three, four, or more contractors in a single season; how can he fulfill the conditions of continuous employment usually imposed in any pension plan? Miss Frances Perkins, commissioner of labor for New York, emphasized the same point. Speaking of the industrial pension plans discussed in a recent report of the Pennsylvania Commission on Old Age Pensions, she said that in most of the plans studied the minimum length of service demanded before the worker becomes eligible for a pension is from 20 to 25 years. In view of the fact that there are authoritative statistics which show that only about 4 per cent of the male workers in industry remain with the same employer for 20 years or over, and only less than 3 per cent of the woman workers stay that long on one job, it is difficult to see how the total number of workers who can qualify for industrial pensions under rules of this sort can grow to such proportions as will serve to reduce materially the great army of indigent aged in this country. Rabbi Edward L. Israel, of Baltimore, speaking on the challenge of old age, pointed out that the United States has not kept up with other countries in providing for its dependent aged. Much of the present unrest, he held, is due to the slight hold workers have on their jobs, and this condition is aggravated by the changing industrial demands. While medical science has added a few years to life, industry, by shortening the years of labor, has brought old age nearer to the working masses. The pensions of the individual corporations will not solve this problem any more than the company union solved the problem of labor. The time must come when society will reward its heroes of peace and progress as it does now its war heroes. Dr. Eveline M. Burns, of Columbia University, gave a brief review of the English old-age pension system, stating that approximately 1,750,000 persons in Great Britain are now receiving some form of pension after reaching old age. That the system has commended. itself to the people as a whole appears from the fact that at a time when the most rigid economy is being exercised in health and social welfare work, and even army and navy appropriations are being pruned to the limit, the old-age pension acts have not only been retained uncut, but their scope has been enlarged and their maintenance is no longer a political question. The question at issue between the political parties is no longer whether or not pensions are socially desirable but merely how far they should be extended, and whether the additional sums should be raised by general taxation or by contributions from employers and workers. Mr. Thomas Kennedy, of the United Mine Workers of America, told of the fight his organization had been making to secure State legislation for the aged in Pennsylvania. Dr. Royal Meeker, formerly United States Commissioner of Labor Statistics, spoke on the place of old-age and invalidity benefits in a system of social insurance, pointing out the extravagance and inadequacy of our present treatment of old-age dependency, and of the need for a comprehensive system covering the poverty arising from unemployment and illness, as well as from old age. Even on financial grounds alone, better provision for the aged would be justified. The cost of an adequate old-age pension plan can not be compared with the present cost, since the real burdens of old-age dependency are borne by countless persons and can not possibly be estimated. Neither can these costs be measured in dollars and cents. If the aged were taken care of systematically the cost would not be greater than now, but the results would be highly more satisfactory than under the present inadequate system. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise made a strong appeal for better care of the aged on ethical grounds. Citing the "hundred neediest cases" for which a New York paper seeks special contributions at each Christmastide, he pointed out in how many cases the need is caused by the infirmity of age, and asked why their wants should be supplied only once a year. Why should people grown old be dealt with as beggars because they are without means of subsistence? No fairly civilized society would dream of penalizing old age as we do. To be subjected to the indignity of partial, temporary, and pitifully inadequate aid, except during the Christmas season, is a cruel wrong to people whose only sin is that they were not able to accumulate a competence. A number of others spoke on various aspects of the question, and Mr. Abraham Epstein, the secretary of the association, gave a résumé of the progress of the movement during the year just completed, reporting encouraging progress. Several telegrams were read from those who had been invited but found themselves unable to attend. One from Senator C. C. Dill, of Washington, announced his willingness to help the aims of the association by introducing a bill for a national system of old-age pensions into the Senate, and by working for its passage. Secretary Davis, of the Department of Labor, telegraphed his cordial good wishes, and urged the special need for a pension system at this time when new machines and new methods are daily displacing workers— nearly always the older employees so that the automatic processes of life tend to increase constantly the thousands of those caught in later years without the means of even a meager existence. We can not safely tolerate these conditions. It is nothing but good business to halt this process which tends to create a permanent class of the unemployed and helpless. If we do not grapple with this growing condition, it will, in the end, turn and tear our prosperity to pieces. IN Old-Age Pensions in South Africa 'N THE first half of 1928 the Union of South Africa passed legislation establishing an old-age pension system, to come into operation January 1, 1929. (See Labor Review, September, 1928, p. 101.) The South African Social and Industrial Review, in its issue for March, 1929, states that in reply to a question in the legislative assembly the Minister of Finance gave some data concerning applications for benefit under the system. Up to December 31, 1928, applications to the number of 24,884 had been granted, of which 14,980 were in the Cape, 1.285 in Natal, 2,751 in the Free State, and 5,868 in the Transvaal. The total annual liability incurred up to the end of December was £662,077.1 1 Pound at par=$4.8665; exchange rate for 1928 was about par. |