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.