In all cases where the addition of a few dollars weekly to the family income is an actual and obvious help to family comfort, state pensions for the aged have worked good results in family feeling and good-will and affection.

Where, however, the state aid comes without any contributory savings from the individual or his employer and where to qualify for its benefit all must have an income of very small proportion, it is in effect a class measure and obviously for the relief of the very poor.
The higher family interest demands that every system of insurance or of subsidy, or of occasional aid to any member of the family, should tend directly and powerfully toward and not away from thrift, work capacity, and sound business principles.

Society-at-large must now make good in some makeshift fashion for many social failures of the past, but its main currents of pressure upon the individual life should be in the production of a line of normal and successful men and women, rather than attempts to make all share alike, whatever their personal quality, when old age comes on.

This principle makes it imperative that some larger and wiser plan than has as yet been attempted shall make all systems of financial care of the aged a positive aid toward self-dependence and social serviceability.
=Old-age Home Insurance.=--In this connection a radical suggestion is offered, namely, a scheme for Old-age Home Insurance.

It is a well-known fact that the waiting list of most private Homes for the Aged is long, and that men and women wait piteously for the death of an "inmate" to give them entrance to the only place of comfort and security life can offer them.