Senescence, the Last Half of Life

by G. Stanley Hall

Nevertheless, under the conditions of life in the modern city, and especially since the Industrial Revolution and the employment of masses of women and men at wages that always tend to gravitate toward a minimum, it is impossible for many to save and also to rear families, while intemperance and vice always furnish their quota to the classes that outlive their serviceable years in dire poverty and, as old age advances, become increasingly dependent not only for subsistence but also for personal care. There are still a few students of the social and economic questions here involved who urge that all the aged, even the latter group, should, if possible, be cared for in their own homes by their children and grandchildren and that to remove them to institutions, public or private, not only robs them of interest in life but weakens filial piety and is detrimental to the interests of the family and to the instincts upon which it rests. They urge that all children owe to all parents this return for the care that was bestowed on them during their early, helpless years and that such ministrations are essential for a true and complete home, etc. But even if we grant all this, there still remain the childless old and poor who are alone in the world. There are also the vicious, toward whom their children, with too much reason, feel that they owe nothing, that their own very existence was due to the accidents of passion, and that they were not only unwelcome guests but were made the victims of cruelty, want, etc. Then there are the sick who cannot be properly cared for at home and each additional mouth always means less food for all the rest.

The old most of all need personal provision and suffer most from mass treatment, for they are not a class but are hyperindividualized. Not only do some become old while they are yet young in years, and vice versa, but there is the greatest diversity in food, regimen, and in most bodily and psychic needs. To say nothing of disposition, diathesis, or temperament, the old often develop what seem to others senseless idiosyncrasies that are really expressive of essential traits and require not only kindly consideration but careful study. It is hard for them, most of all for old women, to be deprived of contact with the young and to be confined to intercourse with only those of their own generation. It is also hard on them to be denied the privilege of privacy at will, of having certain things all their own, with a secure place accessible to them alone in which to keep them. For myself I am convinced that the so-called moroseness of old age is largely due to the inconsiderate treatment it receives. Its real instinct is to serve no less than to conserve. Even in the best appointed homes for the aged that I have visited the great need seems to me to be occupation with things felt to be useful and individual exemptions from rigid rules mechanically enforced for all. All have their own tastes, aptitudes, habits, as well as mementos and keepsakes, which should always be respected, and every possible facility should be given not only for visits and correspondence but for current reading in order to maintain a larger surface of contact with the world without. The old thus constitute, in a sense, a privileged and even a new “leisure class,” which Veblen omitted to characterize. The very fact that they have survived means that they have borne the burden and heat of life’s trying day better than those who have died. In a large over-all sense, thus, they survived because they were the fittest and even though they may have wrought solely with an eye to their own personal benefit they have, nevertheless, helped on the world’s work. Our streets, buildings, machines, farms, mines, goods, produce, means of transportation—all these are, in a sense, the bequest of vanished and retiring to future generations, and even whatever stamina their children have is more or less due to their virtue, while their very longevity is perhaps the best of all they have transmitted to their offspring for, as A. G. Bell has shown, fecundity and long life go together.

Again, as the young and middle-aged most often show the energy that impels to migrations, it is often inferred that newly settled lands contain the lowest percentages of old people. This, however, seems to be true only for a very limited period and indeed the reverse may soon come to be the case, for the very vigor that impels the emigrant is a trait of those who will also live long; whence it often comes that after a few decades new territories have relatively more aged people than are found in older communities from which the more viable have emigrated and the less viable been eliminated by death. This is, on the whole, fortunate, because the wisdom that only years bring acts like a balance wheel to regulate the impulsions of youth, which always need to be more or less controlled. Thus, in our Western communities we often observe, along with the most advanced ultra-modern steps in material progress and the newest political devices, a certain conservatism in social mores, creeds, etc., which show not only a stagnation but a regression of culture that is typical of progressive senescence and its psychic retardation.

We do little to fit for old age and so come to it unprepared and uninformed. The senses fail, but usually so gradually that we rarely realize the full extent of our loss; at any rate, we have time to become adjusted and perhaps reconciled to it. The muscles very gradually atrophy, so that all efferent energy declines and we can do ever less. Indeed, in a new and quite scientific fashion we can speak of old age as the “great fatigue,” for Hodge, Dolley, and Richardson and Orr have shown that the changes in brain cells are almost identical in both. Loss of memory for recent events disorients the old from their environment. They forget names and their vocabulary contracts as the brain shrinks. The mental pace slows down. Their feelings and emotions are less intense, while control over them is often diminished. The friends of their youth are dead; their authority is gone; they are not consulted where once they had everything to say. And so they come at last by slow degrees to realize that they belong to a generation that is passed and the little world about them of which they were once so vital a part is neglecting if not actually crowding them aside. If they come to see that things go on very well without them, both they and their environment are fortunate; but alas! for both if they gravitate toward the conviction that as they withdraw all goes wrong.

Nearly every civilized country to-day makes some provision for the aged poor. While they are often cared for along with the infirm and sick in hospitals, or with paupers in poor- and workhouses, or allowed to beg on the street, etc., there are now many charitable funds and pensions, public and private, provided especially for the aged. Most funds for all the dependent classes can also be used for their benefit at home or in institutions; and social and philanthropic work, where it exists, is always ready to consider helpless age, which has its own appeal to sympathy and benevolence. The number of such cases is almost everywhere increasing and so are the provisions for them. As charity has always been praised as a virtue, it is now becoming also a science, and the peculiar nature and needs of old age are being better understood, although there is yet very much to be done in studying this stage of life which has in the past been so neglected and misunderstood. We are now far more ignorant of senescence than of adolescence, childhood, or middle age, but it is quite as unique, on the whole, and more apart than any of these other periods. There is a sense, too, in which those in each stage of life know least of it. The child knows little of childhood, which had to be discovered in this “century of the child.” The second childhood of old age often knows itself only little better. The child cannot, the old will not, realize their age for what it is and what it means.

Our conspectus is as follows:

The first German Old Age and Invalidity Insurance Law dates from 1889 and has been modified since by various supplementary acts so that it is now very comprehensive. These acts were due to the social democratic agitation that prompted Bismarck to set a backfire and thus allay the discontent of the working classes. Old-age insurance has been obligatory since 1889 upon practically all laborers and officials paid under $500 a year and the right to insure voluntarily is extended to others. The employer is held responsible for the insurance of everyone and deducts the workman’s share of the premium from his wages. In 1910 some 14,000,000 out of a population of 60,000,000 were thus insured. The obligation to insure begins with the 17th year and a percentage of the wages must be paid for 1200 weeks. The Empire and the employer also contribute—the former a fixed annual sum of $11.90. There are five wage classes and a special postal service with insurance stamps. It is, however, impossible to obtain from German reports much data for old age alone, which is almost always classed with invalidity and often with accident, sickness, etc. As in every country, there was at first much discussion whether such social insurance should be compulsory or voluntary, contributory or non-contributory, universal or partial, etc., and different countries and agencies have decided these questions differently.

Austria since 1906 had a limited system of old age insurance for certain salaried employees of the middle class. But a sweeping change in the bill in 1908 was intended to include nearly 10,000,000 of the population. Old-age pensions could be paid at 65 to those insured for a period of thirty years. The scheme was worked out in very great detail but, as in other German lands, was a distinctly political measure provoked in Austria by the Socialists, who, as elsewhere, at first hesitated to adopt a measure that gave the Government, to which they had been opposed, the prestige of having realized so many of their own ideas by these measures. The movement soon won many supporters, however, from their ranks. As a political coup it was a great success and most Socialists could find no alternative but to accept it, at least in principle, although criticism of the small and inadequate funds received by the pensioners is common.

H. J. Hoare[131] best describes the British Old Age Pension Acts 1908–1911, the scheme of which is as follows: Both sexes, married or single, over 70, of British nationality, who for 12 years out of the last 20 were residents, and whose yearly income does not exceed 31 pounds and 10 shillings, are eligible for pensions. They make no contributions, the money coming from the state. The scheme is worked jointly by the Civil Service and local authorities; and only inmates of workhouses, asylums, inebriates’ homes, prisons, and those who have habitually failed to work are disqualified. The pension cannot be charged or assigned and if the pensioner is bankrupt, the pension cannot pass to a trustee or creditor. The receipt of such a pension deprives of no franchise or privilege and subjects to no disability, as is the case with those who accept the poor rates. In 1913, 363,811 men and 604,110 women were pensioners, 62.5 per cent of all being women. Where the yearly means of the pensioner does not exceed 21 pounds, he or she receives 5 shillings a week; if between 21 and 23 pounds 12s. 6d., 4 shillings a week; and so on through 6 classes, those whose income is between 28 pounds 7s. 6d. and 31 pounds 11s. receiving one shilling a week. As a matter of fact, however, 94 per cent of the pensions are at the full rate. The expense of administering this system is less than half of one per cent of the total amount of pensions.

In 1920, 920,198 old men and women received pensions.[132] The chief grievances the old find against this system are: (1) that it does not begin at 65; and especially (2) that it is so little, for, of course, no one can begin to exist to-day on 5s. a week. Both these limitations cause very acute complaint among the beneficiaries themselves.