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the costs of such procedures, recourse was had to their own physician. In other cases the facilities of the community health service and the county medical society were available. Each day upon arrival at the center the child underwent a health inspection, and special provisions were made for isolation or home care for children who showed signs of any indisposition or who became ill at the center. Use of volunteer nurses and household aides was also inaugurated.

The hours of operation at the time of the survey were from 7 a. m. to 6 p. m. In addition to the daily health examination, the program included free and supervised play, story-telling hours, rest and sleep periods, outdoor exercise, midmorning and noon meals, and midafternoon lunch. Cod-liver oil supplemented a scientific diet.

The services of the five full-time paid teachers were supplemented by those of volunteer teachers. These volunteers were first given about 55 hours of training after which they were certified to the child-care centers where they worked 1 to 2 days a week. Under competent supervision they proved to be reliable and effective. The turnover among them was more than offset by new recruits.

Financing the Program

The survey indicated that there were about 69,000 women employed in the Minneapolis area at the beginning of 1943:

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Of the 16,000 in manufacturing, about 8,000 were in direct war production work. It appeared that from 600 to 800 known preschool children required, or would require within a few months, the services. of the child-care centers. Experience with WPA nursery schools had demonstrated that the most practical load per center was not over 40 to 50 youngsters. Consequently the Minneapolis program was based on 20 centers and an expenditure of $224,000 per annum, of which $166,800 was for teachers and other personnel.

It was conceded that in numerous defense undertakings women were being paid unusually high wages. In the Minneapolis area, however, 60 percent of the women using the child-care centers were receiving less than $24 per week. "Of a given 10 women, for example, 6 can pay 50 cents per week for the care of the children; 2 can pay 75 cents; 3 can pay $1.00; and 1 can pay $2.50; or an average of $1.00 per week per child." It was estimated, on the basis of the average attendance at centers and a charge of $1.00 per week per child, that the total income would be $198,000 less than the estimated expenditure.

These circumstances led to the conclusion that appropriations. for child care must be made if the women are to remain at work when they are not able to pay for the care of their children. Local resources may in some cases be able to operate the centers, but "it is probably safe to say that most communities, as in Minneapolis, will have to look to State or Federal funds for the wherewithal to develop new programs for child care or expand those already in existence."

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Utilization of Older Workers

THE economic and human wastage involved in the practice of superannuating workers as they reach the upper age brackets is attacked in two recent articles. One approaches the subject from the educator's viewpoint and the possibility of training older workers for new jobs suited to their ability. The other approach is from the medical standpoint the physical and mental abilities of aging workers. Both reach the conclusion that under the system of scrapping such workers both the persons themselves and society in general lose.

Medical Viewpoint

The physician, approaching the problem not only as a medical man but also as a man with practical trade experience as a worker, emphasizes that enforced idleness for able-bodied persons is not only a waste of human resources but contributes toward an eventual parasitism and degeneration in society.

Those body changes which involve the strength and endurance of the skeletal neuromuscular mechanism and of hearing and vision, he states, are probably the most important to the worker in industry, but it should be recalled that these functions are all dependent upon good diet, a good intestine, good blood, good kidneys, and good lungs. Some of the handicaps of age make their appearance even in the third decade. If all industrial activity required such physical exertion as prize-fighting, professional football, or marathon running, the great majority of workers would be retired at the age of 35.

Normal aging is not like a sudden or acute disease. A man is not worth 100 percent today and worth nothing tomorrow-if it happens to be his sixty-fifth or seventieth birthday. People gradually grow old and less efficient, just as they gradually grow up and become more efficient.

The blind, the deaf, the armless, and the legless are doing useful work. Work suitable to older workers is more easily provided on the farm than in industry, but that industrial jobs can be provided is exemplified in the "Old Man's Division" in the Dodge plant of the Chrysler Corporation, in Detroit, where the ages of the workers average 66, and some of them are over 80. It suggested that a wage scale proportionate to performance would allow older workers to "taper off" industrially and to work as long as failing powers permit. Under a system of equal hourly wage for all, irrespective of skill and efficiency, the older worker who reaches the point where he cannot keep pace with the least efficient is discharged abruptly, terminating thereby his contribution to industry and society.

1 Data are from a paper read by A. J. Carlson, M. D., before the Fifth Annual Congress on Industrial Health, Chicago, January 12, 1943, published in Journal of the American Medical Association (Chicago), March 13, 1943.

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The following general work formula to be used in relation to remuneration is given:

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A. The younger worker: Physical strength and endurance growing, but not at adult par; skill and experience growing, but not at adult par less than adult performance and pay. B. The adult worker: Strength and endurance at maximum; experience and skill near or at maximum maximum performance and pay.

C. The older worker: Physical strength and endurance receding, experience and skill at par = generally less than adult performance and therefore less pay.

This medical man believes possible a future in which society has enough "stoicism to face with equanimity the fact that charity and doles are for the children and the sick, not for the aged unless incapacitated." He then calls attention to the general practice in colleges and universities of paying full salaries to the members of their faculty up to 65 to 70 years of age, and following this procedure with abrupt unemployment on the assumption of total disability. The two basic factors making for such waste are probably, according to Dr. Carlson, (1) the hurry of the younger generation for recognition and higher pay, and (2) the older generation's ignorance of biology which prevents it from seeing the justice of less pay for less capacity and performance. In illustration, the writer cites the recent recall by a large State university of a man 77 years of age, as dean of its postgraduate school a position from which the same university had retired him nearly a decade ago. Dr. Carlson suggests that it is not probable that the recalled dean is now more efficient than he was when he was retired, but that "it seems more probable that this university wasted a valuable human resource for 10 years."

If the trend toward expansion in the over-65 age group in our population continues (and to Dr. Carlson this seems assured by further progress in the science and art of medicine), a half a century hence approximately 15 out of every 100 people will have passed their sixty-fifth birthday. He believes that these older people will be able to carry on even better than the old men and women of today, and points to the fact that the aged ranks of 1940 are more fit than the over-65 persons of 100 years ago. The prevailing theory, that to give up useful work before the infirmities of age and specific disease make it imperative accelerates the approach of death, is difficult to verify. However, as far as idleness reduces the zest of living and mental depression actually affects adversely our physical machinery, this view may be correct, particularly if the pleasure from good food continues to be strong and results in injurious overeating. It is sheer waste, bad biology, and gross injustice all around to feed, house, and clothe this army in idleness. **** The only answer is useful work for pay, plus sickness and accident insurance. When aging has rendered us incapacitated for useful work we are truly sick, and sickness insurance should meet

our need.

Educator's Viewpoint

Vocational and adult education schools in Wisconsin recently cooperated in a survey conducted by the Director of the State Board of Vocational and Adult Education, concerning the relation among age, training, and efficiency in industry, with special reference to the retrai ler men and women.2

The

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he various local directors, coordinators, superemployers regarding their experience, varied

ar Production Industries, by George P. Hambrecht.

(In Public Wel

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