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9. The Challenges of Our Aging Nation

If you're a man under forty or a woman under thirty holding a job today, the reports that follow may seem important only to someone else. But of course, you hope to live to be over forty and many years beyond that. When you do, the colossally stupid and cruel conditions about which you'll now read will become of deepest •financial, emotional, and physical meaning to you.

If you're a man over forty or a woman over thirty, you under­stand the implications of what I'm reporting here. To you, no elaboration is necessary.

May I assume the privilege of pleading with all of you who read this to help smash this chapter so far back into history that your younger sisters and brothers won't believe such conditions ever existed in America?

1955. . .

Help wanted male: top-level merchandising and sales man­agement expert, experience required. Age 30-40. Help wanted male: accountant, five years public experience. To age 45.

Help wanted female: senior clerk, real-estate firm. Age to 30.

Help wanted female: secretary, legal firm. Age to 35.

As I scanned the want-ad section in a recent issue of The New York Times, again and again my eye was stopped by the sickening qualification of "age" illustrated by the above typical ads.

If you're a man over forty-five or a woman over thirty-five looking for a job even in this cycle of rising employment, you're facing an uphill struggle. No matter what your skills or experi­ence, the odds are you'll go through some agonizing interviews before you get settled.

The ads themselves are abundantly revealing. A breakdown of unemployment-employment figures underlines the tale. The over-forty-five make up close to 30 per cent of America's unemployed today, Labor Department statistics indicate. But of the half mil­lion who got jobs last month, less than 20 per cent were in this older age group.

Why the brutal discrimination? The employment agencies and company personnel managers are, at least, frank about the rea­sons. For instance, they submit the "traditional" excuses that older workers are less efficient, produce more slowly, find adapta­tion to the job more difficult, are more susceptible to accidents and sickness, are absent more frequently than younger workers.

But study after study proves precisely the opposite! The older worker may not be as speedy in some jobs as the younger one, but he often is superior in a job demanding skill, accuracy, effi­ciency, and judgment. Statistics emphasize that he is less, not more, susceptible to accidents although when he is hurt, it may take him longer to recover. As far as the rate of absenteeism is concerned, this decreases rather than increases with age.

A newer explanation is that a corporation can't afford to hire an older worker because this boosts substantially the costs of its insurance and pension plans. But objective investigations stress the opposite. The rate for workmen's compensation insurance is based on the rate and severity of accidents; since older workers have fewer accidents, hiring them should reduce the cost of this insurance. The difference in the cost of group insurance covering younger or older workers is picayune. Any adverse impact on the expense of pension plans can easily be offset by fixing benefits according to years of service.

The plain fact is that every reason given for not hiring an over-forty-five worker is nothing more than a shabby, flimsy ex­cuse. Every explanation just highlights the prejudice, which seems almost inconceivable in an era when science has made even the sixty-five-year-old "young" and the proportion of aged in our entire population is rapidly growing.

No law can be passed forcing an employer to hire the older worker. But those who discriminate against him can be and should be publicly condemned as guilty of social backwardness, in­dustrial shortsightedness, economic stupidity, and mental cruelty.

1956 . . .

The bias is almost a* strong or as strong as ever, but what the want-ad section told me is that it has just gone underground.

"There may be a slight trend toward acceptance of the over-forty," said a spokesman for the Forty Plus Club, "but we haven't seen it in our experience. What's happening is that the companies are not putting the age barriers in print the way they used to." And he named a nationally famous concern which around the first of the year placed the "under forty" qualification in a series of ads for men. When it received several complaints, it quietly eliminated the qualification from the ad, "but everybody knows there's no point in sending a man who isn't under that age."

"We're not having as much difficulty placing skilled older men and women in fields where the demand for workers is immense, so in that sense you can say there has been an im­provement; otherwise no," was the comment of the head of a major employment agency. "The worst offenders are the large companies in which the 'big brass' leaves hiring to the personnel department. The personnel manager will say 'no' to the older applicant and the big brass can pretend it' doesn't know what's going on."

"The prejudice is subtle and underground," said another. "But it's there as much as ever."

The Department of Labor is compelled to admit that "econo­mic old age" begins at thirty-five for women, and forty-five for men. And this is so even though more than one-third of all workers today are forty-five or over.

Until early summer, J. A. B. was a senior officer and chief accountant in a small electronic firm in the East. At that time, the business was bought out by a bigger company, with its own large department of accountants, its own string of senior officers.

There is no place for J. A. B. in the new setup. "I've committed the crime of being forty-eight years old and losing my job through no fault of my own," he told me. "I'm too experienced for jobs which call for juniors or beginners. My age also seems to rule me out for jobs I can fill. I'm healthy, competent, feel young— yet this is happening to me. . . ."

Until mid-August, I. L. S. was owner of his own business, a tastefully decorated and stocked women's apparel shop in a New York suburb. He had spent years learning various aspects of retailing in large stores; in 1954, he finally resigned and opened his own shop. But the competition, rising overhead, inadequate working capital have proved too much for him.

At fifty-one, I. L. S. is out, his confidence bady shaken but his know-how intact. "I've been turned down cold by places I was sure would welcome me with open arms," he said. "My age is against me. . . ."

The problem of the "older worker" (how I resent that char­acterization!) is getting worse instead of better. Now intensify­ing the problem is the powerful trend toward mergers and reorganizations in America, a trend which is squeezing out men who were at the senior levels of the companies being taken over. And these understandably are mostly in the over-forty bracket. And having the same sickening effect is the soaring trend of small-business bankruptcies.

A question that might be asked is: If the over-forty worker is "old," what is the President's Cabinet with an average age of close to sixty? A center of senility? Or, for that matter, how would you describe the President himself, who is approaching sixty-six?

1957 . . .

By the time a man is fifty years of age, he'll be barred outright from getting a job by over 40 per cent of America's companies. By the time a woman is fifty, she'll be barred by more than 55 per cent, and at forty-five, she'll find one-quarter of the doors of this country's corporations are closed to her.

In Philadelphia, a Labor Department survey a while ago re­vealed the appalling fact that 79 per cent of employers wouldn't hire workers beyond the mid-forties. In Miami, the Labor De­partment discovered 73 per cent of the jobs involved age barriers. In Detroit, Minneapolis, and St. Paul, the percentage was 66 per cent.

In New York City, a recent study of unemployment insurance figures disclosed that 58 per cent of the men and almost 49 per cent of the women claiming jobless benefits were over forty-five. The study also disclosed that over a nine-month period while 50 per cent of the applicants for jobs were over forty-five, only 26 per cent of the placements in jobs were of persons in the over-forty-five age bracket—a discrepancy clearly indicating the seriousness of the older worker's employment problem.

Now comes a glimmer of hope for advance, though.

While the first session of the Eighty-fifth Congress must go down in history as the one which voted the civil rights compro­mise, the second session well may go down as the one which votes the first important legislation attacking job discrimination on the basis of age. In the recent session, Senators Jacob K. Javits and Irving M. Ives introduced a bill making it unlawful to bar a worker from a job on the basis of age. The bill never had a chance, but it hinted at a trend.

In the second session, powerful Senators of both parties will propose amendments to all appropriations bills denying govern­ment contracts to firms which have policies barring workers over forty. A report from Prentice-Hall is that "legislators of both political parties, increasingly conscious of the political potential of older people, are expected to adopt such amendments over-whelmingly. Even the Dixie bloc ... is almost certain to climb on the middle-age bandwagon." Can we be making progress— at last?

1958 . . .

For the first time, resistance to hiring women, due solely to age, actually is showing up below thirty. (A hag at thirty!)

Whatever feeble progress was made during the boom-zoom years has been lost and now, the direction is backward.

"Our most recent survey of corporations employing almost thirty thousand workers reveals that a man or woman over thirty is finding it increasingly difficult to get work—entirely due to age—and at forty-five, the resistance is very heavy," said George H. Gutekunst, Jr., spokesman for the Office Executives Associa­tion of New York, when I interviewed him by telephone.

"What we have found in New York reflects the national pat­tern. Prejudice in New York may even be less than in major manufacturing centers."

"Our inquiries across the country show that discrimination is much worse than it was a year ago—and it was bad enough then," added David D. Kiviat, president of the Forty Plus Club of New York, a nonprofit organization operated by unemployed executives to help find jobs for each other. "Of the last thirteen jobs that we unearthed, only one permitted a man over forty-five. The moment we mention a man is over forty-five, the interest wanes."

Nearly 11 per cent of the companies bar a man from employ­ment before he has reached the halfway mark of his most pro­ductive years and 57 per cent bar him during the second half as too old! About 10 per cent of the companies bar a woman before she has reached the halfway mark of her most productive years and another 48 per cent turn her down in the second half as too old.

There were some faintly heartening reports last fall that Con­gress might do something concrete to prod industry into curbing this discrimination. But since Sputnik, there has been a deafening silence about this in Washington. What, then, can be done?

"Keep pounding at the stupidity of it," says Mr. Gutekunst. "Keep emphasizing it's a never-ending campaign," says Mr. Kiviat.

This is policy among industrialists who know they'll have to pay soaring taxes to support the older jobless—if the workers continue jobless. This is fact in a country in which the over-forty-five will constitute half our adult population by 1975. It doesn't seem credible.

In Houston, an astounding 24 per cent of the companies will not hire a thirty-five-year-old man for an office job, strictly on the basis of his age. In San Francisco, 20 per cent of the com­panies will slam the door on the thirty-five-year-old. In New York, the figure is 7 per cent.

Bad as New York's policies have seemed, New York does not reflect the national pattern. New York's policies actually appear liberal when compared with corporation job restrictions elsewhere.

In over 88 per cent of the cases in both Houston and San Francisco, the age ceiling is not a specifically stated company policy. Rather, it is an "understood routine," a word-of-mouth order passed down from the heads of the companies to the per­sonnel directors to "hire young ones."

Laws won't eliminate the prejudice. Although on July 1 New York State put into effect a law making it illegal to bar a worker because of age and this sort of legislation is a forward step, the prejudice in many cases will just go underground. Education against the stupidity and cruelty of the barriers is the funda­mental answer. A national survey by the United States Depart­ment of Labor of policies across the land is urgently needed to give us the solid facts. Then we must attack the age discrimina­tion relentlessly and pitilessly until we kill it for now and forever.

1960 . . .

During the 1960s two out of every five workers in our land will be forty-five years of age or older. For the first time in our nation's history the so-called older worker actually has become a dominant individual in our labor force.

By the end of this decade over 33,000,000 men and women forty-five years or older will belong to our labor force. The num­ber of older workers is set to soar 5,500,000, a full 20 per cent over today's total. In these ten years the number of women workers will climb at nearly twice the rate for men. By 1970 there will be about 30,000,000 women workers, including a startingly larger proportion of older women.

Yet in the face of the obvious, oft-repeated fact that the per­centage of men and women forty-five years and older in our labor force is climbing sharply and will continue to climb, dis­crimination against employing workers in this age group continues on an ugly scale.

How do you fight and crush discrimination against a worker strictly on the basis of his or her age? By facts.

Below you'll find some new facts just uncovered by the De­partment of Labor on the job performance of clerical workers in various age groups. The study of the production records of 6,000 clerical workers was conducted by Ronald E. Kutscher and James F. Walker of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and was undertaken "to test the validity of assumptions that productivity declines with age." Here are the key findings:

(1)        Differences in the output per hour of office workers among age groups ranging from under twenty-five to over sixty-five are insignificant.
The researchers used the output of workers in the thirty-five-to-forty-four age group as the base of "100." The indices for older workers were within a few percentage points of 100.
(2)        There is, though, considerable variation among workers
within each age group—and large proportions of workers in the
older age groups exceed the average performance of younger
workers.
The top index for output was attained by women clerical workers in the age group of sixty-five and over working in the Federal Government.
(3)        Older workers have a steadier rate of output with substantially less variation from week to week than younger groups. Employees aged fifty-five and over had particularly higher av­erage indices of output in such routine jobs as typing, sorting, and filing.
(4)        Older workers not only maintain an average output equal
to that of younger groups, but also maintain an equal degree of
accuracy.
Workers in the forty-five-to-fifty-four age group showed a 7 per cent greater consistency in their week-to-week performance than workers on average.
(5)        Where difference in average performance do occur, the
main reason for difference lies in experience.

The output of workers in the under-twenty-five age group was impressively below average. But when only workers with nine months or more experience on the job were surveyed, all the age groups had almost similar averages.

Will such facts as these help crush the discrimination? They must! Facts proving to an employer that his discrimination is costly to him as well as cruel to an employee will achieve more than all the emotional outbursts and "be-good" laws put together.

Washington, D. C, June 1960—Senator Pat McNamara (D.-­Mich.), with the co-sponsorship of Senators Jennings Randolph (D.-W.Va.) and Joseph Clark (D.-Pa.)-all members of the Sen­ate Subcommittee on Problems of the Aged and Aging—introduced a bill (S.3726) outlawing job discrimination for reasons of age in the personnel and employment practices of employers holding Federal contracts. Compliance with this policy would be a con­dition for approving such contracts . . .

In introducing the bill, Senator McNamara declared that the "waste of manpower, the effect of such hiring prejudice on the morale of the individual and on the resources of the community simply do not make sense . . . This bill will be a major step toward reducing this shameful and unnecessary practice. . . ."

And what will be the release date on news of the next bill? The next maneuver? The next study? 1962? 1963? 19??

How To Have a Ripe Old Age

There's one thing "I," a typical American, desperately want —but I have only a slim chance of being able to afford it. That's an independent, ripe old age. Right now, I can see I won't be able to afford it unless "I"—again, as a typical American—begin acting at once with courage and imagination to achieve it. And I can see I won't get far unless "I" also can impel all around me—in business, in labor, agriculture, and government at every level—to join me in action.

In this instance, "I" am "you." And that means you, no matter what your age, where you live, what you do. It is with a heavy heart that I submit these figures from a study soon to be released by the Twentieth Century Fund.

Of all Americans over sixty-five, nearly 75 per cent either have no incomes whatsoever or incomes of less than $1,000 a year! More than ten million of our senior citizens are entirely or almost entirely dependent for support on their families, friends, public agencies, or charities.

Only 15 per cent of the millions in the over-sixty-five bracket receive more than $2,000 a year. Of those who retire from their jobs at sixty-five, a monstrous 56 per cent are forced to do so by their employers' policies and only 9 per cent do so because they want the leisure time. And of those who have retired and are living on incomes of up to $2,000 a large majority are deeply unhappy about their fate.

It cannot be emphasized too often. We are a rapidly aging nation. Although our population has doubled since 1900, the number of people over sixty-five has quadrupled and this number is mounting by the hour. If you are sixty-five or over and aren't among the lucky few, you already have become one of the major social and economic "problems" of this era.

If you are younger (and you stay alive), the prospect is over­whelming that you will become this "problem." It's improbable that in this cycle of high taxes and living costs, you'll be able to accumulate a nest egg sufficient to give you independence in your later years. And if you cannot hold your job or get a new one, your older years well may be an abyss of despair, loneliness, and nostalgic remembrance of things past.

What does America's senior citizen want? Survey after survey emphasizes he (or she) has two fundamental desires: To con­tinue to work in some form so as to be active and useful, and to be independent and maintain his own home.

Okay. What can be done to fill both these understandable wants?

(1)        A major drive should be begun now to compel business organizations to raise or eliminate the arbitrary, archaic, cruel sixty-five-year retirement age. While some progress has been made, it's obviously minor; the fact that more than half who retire at sixty-five are forced into it by company rules proves that.
At the least, the retirement age should be boosted to seventy. It would be much better if the limit were erased and retirement were made dependent on the individual's ability and desire to continue. And an older citizen should be able to earn all he can and still be eligible for social security if he wants it.
(2)        A major step forward should be taken at once to provide low-cost housing specifically designed for the older person.  In his State of the Union message, President Eisenhower asked amendments to the Housing Act "to meet the needs of the growing number of older people." Bills already have been intro duced into the new Congress to authorize the Public Housing Commission to build houses and apartments for older citizens in which rents would average only $30.00 or $40.00 a month. Some forward-looking communities are planning or putting up "Senior Villages." Some corporations and unions are moving on
this front.

Proper legislation should be passed without delay. Many more programs should be pushed. Every American should get behind this movement. By any standard of decency, a person who lives to a ripe old age should be entitled to afford it—to work if he wants and to maintain his home if he wants. Let's face the problem and wipe it out!

The foregoing was written in January 1956. The following was written in April 1960, stressing the fact that hard as it is for a "typical" American to achieve a financially independent old age, it's even more difficult for the typical American woman to achieve it.

The Not-So-Golden Years

If you, an American woman, reach the age of sixty-five, you can expect to live an additional fifteen and a half years, and one out of four of you can expect to live at least to eighty-five years of age. If you do achieve this goal—and surely you do not want to die before this age—you might as well recognize now how heavily the odds are against your finding your golden years full and rewarding. The chances are fifty-fifty you'll be impov­erished, in dismal, pathetic financial straits.

Half the elderly women who do have incomes in our country get less than $750.00 a year, and the single elderly woman has an average income of only $880.00. Yet it costs an elderly woman living in rented quarters in an average city area $1,200 a year to live modestly. An elderly woman living alone in New York City needs about $1,600 a year. Even an elderly woman living in the household of one of her children needs between $850.00 and $900.00 a year to maintain an adequate standard.

The chances aren't even fifty-fifty that you'll still have a hus­band. Rather, you face years of increasing loneliness.

Ever since 1945, there have been more women than men in our land, and in the over-sixty-five age brackets today there are 120 women for every 100 men. More than half our women over sixty-five—a full 55 per cent—are widowed. On average, a married woman can expect to be widowed for about eight years. Among the over-sixty-five, the single or widowed woman makes up the largest group—more than 5,000,000 are in this category. While 70 per cent of the over-sixty-five men are married, only 36 per cent of the over-sixty-five women are.

The high probability is you'll be hit by health problems too. Older people generally suffer from failing vision and hearing, gastrointestinal disturbances, dizziness, and fatigue. Women are less susceptible to diseases of the heart and blood vessels but more susceptible to endocrine diseases. On average, women over sixty-five visit their physician 7.6 times a year against 5.8 times for men.

The prospect is you'll desperately need and want to have a job for pay full time if you can manage it, or at least part time. Right now, half the women in the sixty-five-and-older age group are working on a part-time basis—for obvious financial as well as understandable social and emotional reasons. The elderly wid­ow is the most seriously impoverished of all our senior citizens. An overwhelming 80 per cent of them get less than $70.00 a month in social security benefits, with 40 per cent getting between $33.00 and $49.00. Only 20 per cent get between $70.00 and $82.00 a month. The financial dilemma of the elderly widow is intensified by the fact that she receives three-fourths of her hus­band's social security payments, company pensions usually end with the death of the husband, and many elderly women have never either worked outside the home or had husbands covered by social security.

Top news in our nation today is the drive for legislation to help our senior citizens finance medical care. In preparation for the debate now going on in Congress on how to accomplish this, a Senate Subcommittee on Problems of the Aged and Aging, chaired by Senator Patrick McNamara of Michigan, has been collecting data for almost a year. It was from a fact sheet on the "Status of Aged Women in the United States," prepared by this subcommittee, that I obtained the information you've just read.

"While the so-called 'golden years' are a time of increasing loneliness and poverty for millions of aged men, as well as women, it is the elderly women who are most acutely affected by specific problems," says the subcommittee. No adjective-loaded prose is necessary to prove the point. The statistics alone cry the miser­able tale of the woman over sixty-five, wail a warning to the rest of us.

If You Had a Million Dollars

If you inherited a million dollars tomorrow, would you quit your job with that so-and-so, buy a yacht, take off for an indefinite trip around the world or just go fishing? Or, if the fairy god­mother waved her hand over you and gave you the chance to do it all over again, you'd switch from what you are doing to some other line of work?

If your answer to either of these questions is, "You bet I would!" you are in the small minority of employed men in our land.

For some peculiar reasons, a cherished belief among business­men in our country is that most people would rather not work if they had an opportunity to choose between living comfortably with or without a job. For the same or other peculiar reasons, the general impression is that only a lucky few of us really like the work we do and wouldn't shift to other fields even if given the chance.

Yet both common conceptions are complete misconceptions, according to a study on the meaning of work by the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center. Among the significant points emphasized by the study are the following.

Even if they inherited enough money to live comfortably without a job, four out of five employed American men would want to keep on working. More than two-thirds of the nation's farmers and better than three-fifths of those in middle-class oc­cupations would stay in their present type of work.

About two-thirds of all those who say they would keep on working even if they didn't have to cite positive reasons why they like having a job, for instance, keeping occupied and inter­ested, keeping individually healthy, and enjoying the kind of work they do. Of the balance who give negative reasons for wanting to keep on working, most say simply they'd "feel lost or go crazy" without work.

Among different classes of employees, only the unskilled show any major difference in their desire to stay on the job, for almost half of the unskilled say they would quit work if they didn't have to earn a living.

Many in middle-class occupations—particularly professionals, managers employed by others, and sales personnel—make it clear that having a job means a great deal more than just making a living.

Even had this study never been made, I would have guessed precisely these results. If you have ever seen the rapid degenera­tion of a person who retires without interests or have ever looked at the eyes and mouths of those who have nothing but leisure, you would have guessed them too.

The social significance of this study is obvious. Its economic significance, though, warrants considerable analysis. For the fact is that the retirement policies of most of America's corporations are based on the utterly mistaken notion that leisure is a full-time goal of our senior citizens. While more and more noise is being made about retirement problems and literature about re­tirement drips with pompous pieties, a pitifully small number of corporations are doing anything constructive about preparing workers for their retirement years by helping them to adjust in advance, to develop new skills, and to embrace rewarding hobbies. And pitifully little is being done at the local and community levels either.

While leisure time is increasing steadily in our country, there is appallingly little understanding of what leisure time implies and how this time may be satisfyingly used. And the fact is that those who mutter that jobless pay programs encourage people to duck work are sputtering baseless bunk. A tiny minority may goldbrick; most people want to work.

We are the most productive nation in the world and our production is the foundation of our might. Does the reason lie in our machine society, our mass methods? No. The reason lies in us. Americans like to work and like their work. This funda­mental characteristic of ours is the "secret weapon" of our strength.

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