The Able-Bodied Old
By DR MARGARLT NELSON JACKSON I 4t 'M poor, I'm proud, and I'm particular," the old song ran ; "1 don't like work, I never did." The cynicism pleases because it hits home on a common human failing ; but, like other cyrucisms, it is not wholly true. We don't like work, perhaps ; but we detest having nothing to do. The retired man who hurries to his grave is a well-recognised figure; he misses the social life, as well as the responsibility, which his job gave him, and is literally bored to death. The dangers of retirement—which are real and serious enough, whether one is head of the firm or an unskilled worker in the factory—have been obscured of late by our concern over the plight, which recent studies have revealed, of sick, neglected and solitary old people up and down the country. In fact, we have two clear issues to settle : how to look after ailing and infirm old people, and how to ensure that healthy people of pensionable age go on using their powers and experience, The urgent needs of the first group led to the founding of the National Old People's Welfare Committee, which co-ordinates all the work done for the aged by both voluntary bodies and local authorities, and the National Corporation for the Care of Old People, financed by the Nuffield Foundation and the Lord Mayor of London's National Air Raid Distress Fund, which offers substantial grants towards welfare schemes for the aged. Much is being done. Local old people's welfare committees are being set up in all parts of the country; residential homes, clubs and convalescent homes for old people are being opened ; solitary old people are being visited, helped with their housework, and supplied with cooked meals by the "meals on wheels" schemes of the Women's Voluntary Services and other bodies ; attempts are being made to find more hospital beds for the elderly, to treat their infirmities actively so that they get up and go home instead of lying for years in institutions, to ensure them good .care by part-time nursing schemes, and to build suitable dwellings or them in the new housing estates.
This work is well begun, though it is nothing like comprehensive enough ; we have all read of serious cases of hardship, which multiply lin winter weather, and no one grudges the cost of the services to ;relieve them. Nevertheless, we must take stock of our outlay and the means we have of meeting it ; for as Mr. W. A. Sanderson, assistant secretary of the Nuffield Foundation, said at a conference on i the care of old people* last week, we can only do these things to the limit of our capacity—that is, of our producing-power. At present, he said, to house and care for 50,000 sick old people in hospitals and 55,000 in homes costs £20 million to £25 million a year ; and these represent only one in 50 of people over pensionable age. In 1947-48 the Royal Commission on Population found that old-age pensions, to women over 6o and men over 65, cost £265 million. Since that time both the number and proportion of pensionable people have increased,
*Arranged by the National Old People's Welfare Committee in associa- tion with the National Council of Social Service. and they will increase still more. A Liberal Party report published last year put the position tellingly : "Persons of pensionable age were one in 17 of the total population in 1901 and one in ten in 1931; in 1961 they will be one in six." It has been estimated- that by 1978 the cost of retirement pensions will have risen to £5oo million. This prospect and all it implies is not an argument, Mr. Sanderson con- siders, for going back, or going slow, or reducing pensions. It is, however, an argument for not putting any obstacles in the way of those who want to go on working.
Among present obstacles the compulsory retiring-age ranks high. Many firms, most banks and all public services, have fixed retiring ages for their staffs—usually 65 for men and 6o for women. Yet men at 65 may expect more than ix years of life and women at 6o more than 17. Women, after being paid lower rates than men all their lives, may well be puzzled to find themselves treated with such inexplicable tenderness in old age. They live longer than men, and on the whole take great age more actively and cheerfully ; yet they are invited to retire from productive work five years earlier.
They go on doing housework, of course, from which they never retire. Most self-employed people also go on working after retire- ment age ; and some industries, it seems, keep on their older workers, often finding easier jobs for them as their years advance. One firm has even re-organised a department so that messenger work, formerly done by juniors, is now done by elderly people, and better done.
Mrs. Barbara Lewis, who mentioned this experiment at the conference, said that the old people had to be taught this new job ; and she noted that though elderly people learn more slowly than juniors, they also learn more accurately and less expensively, for they spoil less material in the process. Moreover, they have a greater respect for tools, keep better time, and average no greater loss of hours from illness than other age-groups.
Not all industries, however, offer suitable work for old people ; and though some employers will keep on their own old workers, it seems that few will take on old men from other places. Thus not all those who are willing to go on working get the opportunity to go on. Again, every industry must now take its quota of disabled persons, and some employers fear to load themselves with elderly workers as well. This fear is partly based on a misconception. Now that we live longer we also have a longer working-span. The fact that the country carries many ailing and infirm old people should not deceive us into supposing that everybody over 60-65 is about to crumble before our eyes ; indeed, we know by watching our friends that nothing of the kind will happen. We should perhaps begin to classify people of pensionable age as they do the senior patients in some hospitals—into the old (70-75 and onwards) and the com- parative youngsters in the sixties.
It is one thing to encourage employers to use willing workers who have passed retiring-age and another to encourage less willing workers
to postpone retirement. Some incentive is offered by our pensions system; those who choose to keep on working add to their pensions, when they eventually retire, is. for every six months worked beyond retirement age. Thus a man who carries on to the age of 70 gets an extra los. added to his weekly pension of £1 6s. This inducement is not .felt to be very great. Moreover, if a man retires he is not allowed to earn more than Li a week at casual work without having the excess knocked off his pension. This is not paralleled in other walks of life ; no one thinks of docking an admiral's pension if he chooses to become a company director.
Sir Ernest Rock Carling, F.R.C.S., who took the chair at one session of th-z conference, outlined some conditions which must be fulfilled if the elderly are to continue at work. There must be no unemployment in the country, and no question of using the elderly against their will, or as cheap man-power, or of working them to the detriment of their health ; and the elderly themselves must be willing to resign the senior posts, so as to make way for the pro- motion of younger men. So far, however, we are unable to guarantee jobs for those who wish to keep at work, and have done little to encourage those who are less enthusiastic.. Yet if we are to do all for the aged and infiarm that their great need demands, the sound elderly must helv us to do it
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