limit of the worker in lower position is not one
of definite knowledge of actual incapacity after forty years of age
but rather due to other conditions. Those conditions are, first and
foremost, the easier management of younger than of older subordinates.
It is hard for many men to "order about," in peremptory fashion, a man
older than themselves, and few men can command without abruptness or
sharp orders. It is still harder for most men to order about as office
assistant or clerk or secretary a woman older than themselves. And
fewer men can assume a respectful yet commanding attitude toward women
than can do so toward men in their employ. Some embarrassment has yet
to be worn off in business relations of the sexes. Moreover, the
tendency toward upspeeding of all mechanical manufacture is a part of
the rushing spirit of an age which has invented more fast-going things
than it has as yet mental power to use wisely or with social safety,
and it is true that fewer men over forty can rush in their work than
can do so below that age.

Youth is nimble; youth can be snubbed for errors of accomplishment
without hurt to a "gentleman's instincts;" youth, although so careless
as to often get injured by the swift-going machines, can yet exult in
their rapid swing; and, above all, youth is flexible and can be shaped
to any form of business requirement decided upon by those higher up.
Hence a fictitious value is assigned to youth in all departments of
work to-day. Hence, again, a special movement for actual trial of the
relative values of workers of different ages in special kinds of work
is necessary if we would know whether or not it is possible to prevent
that premature old age and tragical financial helplessness at
fifty-five or sixty, which makes the workless man or woman a burden
where many believe he or she might be still a help to the family
income.

We have been a nation of the young. We shall more and more balance the
different age-periods, as is already done in the older countries. We
should prepare, betimes, for this new aspect of the future's census,
by providing against preventable old age by the wiser use of all
laborers as long as work-power can be made available for
self-dependence.

=Need of Experience in Many Fields of Work.=--There are certain fields
of work on the higher side of social ministration in which the more
experienced are more needed than the young. Some one has said that "no
man is fit to be a past