A movement is growing up for the extension of old
age pension schemes throughout the United States, and in con-
nexion with it this week an interesting example of charac- teristic American private philanthropy has been much discussed. Unlike England the United States has no national scheme, and the present movement is directed to the adoption of local schemes by the various state legislatures rather than by the Federal Government. Ten States have now passed legislation for this purpose ; four States, California, Minnesota, Utah, and Wyoming, are doing so this year. One of the remaining thirty-eight States, which have no provisions of the sort, is Delaware, and there a leading industrialist has come forward with an offer to pay, out of his own pocket, pensions to " all the aged deserving poor," in the entire State. While on the one hand the offer is widely welcomed, its acceptance is also strenuously objected to by a number of citizens on the ground that to allow a large part of the electorate to be under so vital an obligation to one individual is to court obvious political dangers. Delaware is the smallest State in the Union except one, and cast only 104,345 votes in the last Presidential Election.
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