uch as hardening of
arteries and kidney and digestive disorders, have increased
relatively, while insanity is much more frequent than of old. These
facts give us all deep concern. From the failure of health in middle
life comes the premature senility and the invalid weakness of old age.
The cause of the increase of middle-life diseases, relatively to those
of other periods of life, seems to be principally the pressure of
business and industrial life upon the worker. The high speed of
machinery, the extreme competition in business, the monotony of the
specialized manufacturing groups, the weight of great financial
enterprises and the struggle to make the family setting equal to the
family desires or even the family needs, all tend to make men in
middle life fail so often in health and so often leave behind their
better sheltered and more tenderly cared-for wives. There is a new
movement of great social importance, and one tending directly toward
the saving of one-half of the family circle, which is now taking a
front place in social interest; namely, the movement for annual
medical examinations. The work of the Life Extension Institute leads
toward this end and seeks the better adjustment of life and work in
the interest of simplicity and mutual service in the family and the
better health of all its members.

It is not, however, in the power of the wisest and most unselfish of
individuals to so manage the work-power as to insure against premature
old age from too great speeding and overstrain. There must be social
movement of the most thorough-going sort to prevent the waste of the
laborers in all fields. Social workers should remember that it is not
alone important to try to safeguard the health and strength of mothers
and of potential mothers by laws protecting women and girls in
industry. It is as vital a need to safeguard the health and strength
and perpetuate the work-power of fathers and potential fathers in
order that old age may be not a terror but a blessing to the family.
This is emphasized by recent indications that the increase of the
diseases of middle age is already checked and that we are gaining
ground in this particular.

A recent report of the Federal Department of Commerce through the
Bureau of Census shows that there has been a decline in the death-rate
for all age periods during the last decade. In the rate for infants
under one year of age a decline of twenty-six per cent., or from
13,804 per 100