It is cheaper and in every way more satisfactory than the ordinary poorhouse system. Because fear of old age and pauperism tends to despondency and often insanity and suicide. Because old age pensioning makes for righteous living and better social and economic conditions. Because it is abnormal for industry to throw back upon the community the human wreckage due to its wear and tear, sickness, accident, and to involuntary unemployment. Because pensioning keeps intact the home which is the foundation on which our country is reared. Because many prefer to starve rather than go to the poorhouse. Because pauperism causes unregeneration of children. Because a pension is the fulfilment of an acknowledged obligation, a deferred payment for services rendered. Because a workingman who has contributed health and strength, vigor and skill, to the creation of the wealth by which taxation is borne has made his contribution already to the fund which is to give him a pension. Because a state that makes it a crime to turn out an old horse to starve should be ashamed to let old men and old women starve or go to the poorhouse —which is more feared than starving. Because it prevents children from being undernourished and set to work early in life in order that they may help support the passing generation. Because the assistance of a small pension added to wages from part-time employment would allow men and women to remain producers instead of non-producers as poorhouse inmates.

He further pointed out that "70 per cent of the people in our country are too poor to own homes; they have only their clothing and a little cheap household furniture."

The Pennsylvania Old Age Assistance Commission also reported to the legislature that a study of nearly 3,000 applicants under the Pennsylvania law revealed that three of every four applicants are already without any definite remunerable occupation. Of those who still claim some earnings, more than half eke out less than $4 per week. Three of every four applicants stated that they never earned more than an average of $15 a week throughout their lives. Two-thirds of the applicants were made up of persons engaged in common labor occupations and of women who depended upon their husbands for a living but who are now either dead or disabled so as to be unable to support them. Only 5 per cent of the applicants claimed to have earned wages in excess of $25 per week.

Ninety per cent of the persons who applied for old age assistance are nativeborn Americans; 88 per cent of the total have been married and reared families, half of them of more than four children each. These children are now married, with large families of their own, and unable to support their parents. It was found that only in rare instances do the children of these applicants rise above their parental economic status. In case after case it was disclosed that not only do the sons of a laborer or miner follow the father's occupation, but in the majority of cases even all his daughters marry people in the same lines of occupation. Where they are able, children were found to make every effort to support their parents, but one-third of the aged applicants have no children living at all. The good character of the applicants was further brought out by the fact that over 95 per cent of their former employers written to regarding the character of the applicants replied in the most praiseworthy manner.

The utter dependency of these aged applicants was brought out by the fact that 73.8 per cent of the applicants stated that, aside from what help some of

them receive from their children and relatives, they have no other means of support except what they can earn from their own labor. Only 18 per cent of the total claim to derive some income from accumulated savings. The average of these savings amounts to $376 for the person having such, and $6.75 for all applicants. Even in the overwhelmingly rural counties only less than onefourth of the applicants have been able during their lifetime to save up a homestead. This against a home ownership of 44.9 per cent for the entire state, although but little over one-half of these are entirely free. The average value of the homestead amounts to $571. The average total possessions of all applicants, including the values of the homes, savings, and various other possessions, when divided by the total number of applicants studied, amounted to but $23.84 per person. This in the face of a per capita wealth in Pennsylvania in 1923 of $1,931.80 for every man, woman, and child.

One would naturally assume, of course, that after all these disclosures the movement for constructive legislation for the aged would now grow by leaps and bounds all over the United States. Instead, the year 1925 opened up with bleak and dreary prospects for the advocates of old age pension legislation. The Pennsylvania law, declared unconstitutional by a county court in August, 1924, met with the same fate early this year in the state supreme court. This decision was based largely on a section in the Pennsylvania constitution which prohibits the legislature from making appropriations "for charitable, benevolent, and educational purposes." In both Montana and Nevada bills were introduced repealing the 1923 acts, with the result that the latter law was promptly repealed. At the same time strong opposition developed in every legislature where bills were introduced. Of course, the tactics of misrepresentation and prejudice used in defeating the child labor amendment were employed also in the case of old age pension bills.

The end of the legislative year, however, brought considerable progress, though not without new dangers. Bills introduced this year passed one house in Indiana and New Jersey. State commissions to study the subject were created in Colorado, Utah, and Minnesota. In Nevada a new law replaced the one repealed. In Pennsylvania the legislature created a new commission to study the subject further, and also passed a resolution providing for a constitutional amendment to permit appropriations for old age pensions. The California legislature, by a large majority, adopted a bill modeled after the Pennsylvania law. This, however, was vetoed by Governor Richardson because "it was harmful to the spirit of thrift and economy." A law passed by the legislature of Wisconsin was recently approved by Governor Blaine.

Thus, while the advocates of this legislation are undoubtedly justified in feeling gratified with these achievements, it is now meet to pause from the exhilaration for a moment and take stock of the new dangers ahead. Unfortunately these pitfalls are more menacing inasmuch as they come from the friends of this legislation. The Montana law was, perhaps, inevitable, but the wisdom

of the present laws adopted in Nevada and Wisconsin may seriously be questioned by students of the problem. A true examination of these laws may justify them as improvements in outdoor relief, but they can hardly be termed effective old age pension laws.

The Montana law sets up old age pension commissions composed of the boards of county commissioners, who are generally also in charge of county poor relief, with no central state supervision whatsoever. That this, in practice, is merely an extension of the principle of outdoor relief, and fails even to remove one of the main objectionable features-the stigma of pauperism-is evident from the fact that the state auditor's report for 1924 shows an average allowance per applicant of $151.74, as against the maximum of $300 allowed under the law. Obviously, these grants are not based on the principle of adequate pensions and are hardly more than the accustomed poor relief given prior to the enactment of the so-called pension law. A canvass recently made of these commissioners revealed that the great majority continue to look at these grants as merely poor relief.

But at least under the Montana law the county commissioners are required to act as old age pension commissioners. The law is made compulsory. The new Nevada law eliminates even that, and provides for old age pension boards made up of the county commissioners, who are also the poor-relief officials, who may authorize this pension if they decide to do so. It is but natural that they should continue to look at this as merely poor relief under a new name, despite the specific provision in the act that this pension is to be given "in recognition of the just claims of the inhabitants upon the aid of society, without thereby assuming the stigma of pauperism by legal definition." Legal definitions without an administrative system to back them up cannot be expected to remove traditional social prejudices.

The Wisconsin law even goes one worse and provides for a county pension system which may be adopted by "a two-thirds vote of the members elected to its county board," and, "having operated under such system for one year or more, any county may abandon such system." Will not this prove excellent political material to the enemies of a better system of care of the aged by adopting the plan for a year and then giving it up because "it could not be made to work"? The advisability of making, under the Wisconsin law, the county judge the pension official is also seriously to be questioned. Our county judges are already overburdened, and even with authority "to make or cause to be made such investigation as they may deem necessary" it is doubtful whether such individual local systems could even provide efficient and harmonious administration. After all, to be effective an old age pension system must be placed on a state-wide basis at least. And it must be taken out, entirely, of the realm of county poor relief!

It was not without many years of laborious effort that we succeeded in placing on the statute books of most of our states fairly effective workmen's com

pensation and mothers' pension laws. At this critical moment the challenge of the aged goes forth to the social workers of the nation in a plea to think in terms of more constructive forms of relief than the only available means at present— that of depending upon relatives, public charities, and poorhouses. It is time that those engaged in the alleviation of poverty and suffering should also work for constructive legislation which, instead of branding our worn-out toilers and aged mothers, after they have spent their lives in the promotion of our own welfare and happiness, with the odious stigma of pauperism, will provide them with at least the necessities of life, honorably and magnanimously, during the sunset days of their lives, as they have richly deserved.

THE LABOR COLLEGE MOVEMENT

G. S. Lackland, President, Denver Labor College, Denver

Charles Schwab, shortly after the war, told a group of American business men that they would witness labor assume more and more political and economic control of the world. No more important question confronts the student of social movements than that of what the workers will do with power when once they have secured it.

According to the International Labor Department of the League of Nations, organized labor groups increased in the decade 1910-20 from 10,835,000 to 32,680,000. In America the members of the families of organized workers represent approximately one-sixth of the population. In some cities they represent from one-fourth to one-half the voting strength.

Labor is being tested as never before in industry. It bargains with the most closely knit organized group of industrialists the world has ever known. It is confronted by credit organizations with international ramifications. Business today hires the best technical and legal skill obtainable. The influence of commerce upon our press, political parties, educational system, organized religion, and our courts cannot very well be questioned.

For workers to attempt to deal with such an efficient organization with mere demands backed by numbers is to invite economic catastrophe. Too long has labor ignored its just appeal to public opinion. It has looked askance at technical experts. It has distrusted educators, and has been too ready to yield educational and other organized sections of society to business, with a gesture of resigned helplessness. It has underestimated its friends. It has forgotten that most technicians are children of their own loins. With one breath they curse the intellectuals and then blindly worship at the shrine of Marx, Engels, Shaw, Wells, McDonald, and Lenine.

Meanwhile the field of consumers' cooperation, partnership in industry, new forms of trade agreements, new opportunities for government service, and

constant international and racial challenges are being hurled into the midst of labor assemblies.

Profanity and force are antiquated instruments with which to meet a situation of this type. In the industrial, political, and cooperative fields education is the crying need. Wherever these movements have failed, the main reason was the lack of trained leaders. The British cooperative movement failed until its economic measures were accompanied by an educational program. It is significant that the Franklin Cooperative Creamery in Minneapolis is spending most of its earnings for educational purposes.

The labor movement has always been an educational movement. The dignity of raising vocational crafts to the standards of professional service has often been underestimated. Organized efforts on the part of workers usually have drawn together groups that have been hungry for a larger life for their children. The first public schools of America were made free by the objection of the better class workers to the stigma of designating as paupers those children whose parents could not pay tuition.

With the consciousness of the obligations that would rest upon the leadership of labor and of the unfulfilled intellectual hunger in the hearts of workers, a conference of trades unions, cooperatives, and educators met in England in 1903 and launched the Workers' Educational Movement of Great Britain. It had been pre-dated by the founding of Ruskin College by three Americans in 1899. In 1907 it was organized under its present form under the able leadership of Albert Mansbridge.

To full-time institutions such as Ruskin College at Oxford and the London Labor College were sent promising young men by their respective trade unions and cooperative organizations. Upon their completion of their courses they returned to serve as secretaries, organizers, or teachers in their respective local groups. It was upon such leadership as this that the British Labor Party was constructed. To this type of training is due much of the success of the British cooperative enterprises. Last year witnessed 30,000 British workers in tutorial classes.

Only since the war has any serious workers' educational program been attempted in America. The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, as an organization, was a pioneer in practicing educational methods within the organization. Both elementary and advanced schools were organized. A system of popular mass education was successfully promoted.

The Pennsylvania State Federation of Labor deserves the credit, under the able leadership of James H. Maurer, for introducing the idea of a state department of labor education within the State Federation of Labor. This organization has reached a high state of efficiency under the competent direction of Dr. Richard R. Hogue. Practical research work is being undertaken by several of these schools that has resulted in better-wage agreements and a finer relationship between the management and the men employed.