Such studies, however, are prophesied in a small "endowment for the study of diseases of the aged" already given, and more in the statement of appeals for increase of such endowment.

The tendency now is setting strongly not only toward the lengthening of life but toward the lengthening of the mental and physical power that alone makes long life desirable.
We shall see more and more of this interest as medical science reaches out further and further toward lessening all the ills that flesh is heir to.
Meanwhile, what is the actual condition in the various strata of life, in our own country, for example, in respect to the protection, the care, the comfort, the happiness, and the general welfare of the aged?
In the first place, the speeding up of machinery has made many manual workers prematurely old.

The worst thing, perhaps, about child-labor has been that, owing to premature "laying off" of the fathers, the children have been set to earn money for family needs, and have acquired, with their pay envelope, a contempt or disrespect for the father in ways that have reversed the natural relationship and given society much use for the Children's Court.

This disrespect shown the father, even when he is only of middle age, passes on in increased measure to the grandfather who has been pushed aside from self-support and family support while still comparatively young and has never been able to again catch on to the wheels of industry.

The fact that he eats and does not work; that he takes space in the crowded tenement and does not aid in paying its rent; that he has no light employment that can give his fading mental powers an impulse toward ambition and energy, all make the position of the grandfather in many homes of struggling poverty a most unhappy one.