ked, or it may
be a threefold provision contributed to from the savings of the
laborer, the quota from the employer, and the state subsidy. Since no
insurance system that discourages thrift, or fails to encourage it, is
socially sound, the latter seems the best ideal. There may be, in
addition, or as a substitute, a family provision on the plan so well
suggested by Mr. Taber in his book, _The Business of the Household_, a
plan that calls for the definite setting apart of an "Old-age Fund,"
to which each child shall contribute in the years when he is earning
most, not as a gift but as a "deferred payment," as it were, for all
that the parents give in childhood. To this Old-age Fund any savings
of the father and mother may be added until a sufficient sum is
secured for comfortable care in old age. Mr. Taber indicates that at
least five dollars out of every twenty-five saved should be thus
assigned and invested only in the safest manner and held inviolate, no
matter what the temporary needs of the family may be, until the
work-time has passed. Whatever plan may be adopted, it is certain that
family well-being and the happiness of the aged alike call for a
better and more adequate old-age provision.

The laborers who earn less than the required sum for a decent standard
of life for father, mother, and children cannot, of course, make any
provision for their own old age or care for dependent parents. In such
families the public institutions or privately endowed and managed
"Homes for the Aged" offer the only and often a comfortable and
sometimes a happy place for the grandparents. The movement for this
social care of the aged has many phases. In some countries, as in _The
Danish Care of the Aged_, so well described by Edith Sellers in her
book of that name, there is a far more complete and generous use of
public funds than we have in the United States, a possibility of
careful grading of persons in appropriate groups, and a removal of the
crushing sense of public charity which those of English ancestry so
often feel when obliged "to go upon the town;" yet this leaves much to
be desired.[6]

In the grade of economic condition above that in which it is a dire
struggle to make both ends meet for the husband, wife, and their
little children, there are to be considered five ways in which the
care of the aged can be made adequate and not too great a burden upon
those of young and those of middle life.

=Needed Ways of Preparin