,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-