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 Preparing for Old Age.=--First: There must be devised, as indicated above, better and surer ways of insurance, savings, and pensions, by which the grandparents can be made more or less independent even in families of limited means.
Second: There must he measures established for the prevention of premature old age, measures operating in health and in labor-power to prolong self-dependence by means of individual earnings, to the fullest extent possible.
Third: There must be for men, as for women, provision in vocational training by which each person may have in reserve some light and interesting form of activity, possibly of earning value, which may serve as occupation when strenuous work is outgrown.
Fourth: There must be a clearer understanding of the mutual obligations of parents and children so that the care of the aged may seem more often, what it really is in most cases, not a charity from within the family circle, to be passed around with jealous eye for just distribution of family burdens within the group of children, but a family debt, for the payment of which early and constant provision must be made by all members of the family during the years of largest earning power.

If the grandparents have had a chance to save enough to pay all their own share of the family expense to the end of life, well and good.

If, on the contrary, as is so often the case (now that the social standard for child-care and child-education has risen to such heights of parental requirement), the parents, now old, have spent so lavishly on the schooling and marriage setting up of their sons and daughters that they have not been able to save for themselves, then the obligation of the children is clear and the grandparents should never feel themselves pensioners.
Fifth: Actual old age, senility, failure of physical and mental power, should be postponed in each case as long as possible by active measures of mental and moral discipline consciously undertaken by personal effort.

"The making of mind" is not an art of youth alone.

It is an art of middle age and of the older years.