Salt Lake City, Utah, Sunday Morning, June 30, 1935. Pensions for the Old and Blind CAST me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth. This was the theme of a song chanted by the sweet singer of Israel and recorded in the 71st Psalm. Some 350 years ago, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, some Englishman conceived the idea of opening an institution, maintained by the crown at the expense of the people, for segregation of the helpless old and poor, the indigent, the crippled and the wholly incompetent. It was known as an alms house and later on as the poor house. There were two sides back of this establishment one of sympathetic consideration for those who could not help or support themselves; the other to shift neglected or irksome responsibilities from individuals to the public. Similar schemes were reluctantly adopted by other peoples until China and India are probably the only nations that have no old-age security systems. Where begging for daily bread is regarded as an honorable profession there is an obvious advantage in being infirm, crippled, afflicted and wretched. But elsewhere the spirit of compassion has marched to the music of the psalmist until varied methods, often defective, have been attempted, with occasional reforms, to free the white hair, the wrinkled brows and bent bodies of the old from care and anxiety. Progress in almost every other direction has been more marked, however. We have added constantly to our comforts and conveniences, to our facilities for achievement, to the program of our pleasures and to ways of getting the most out of life. But we are only beginning to turn our thoughts to those whose comforts are few and whose opportunities for ease and solace are almost gone. We have exchanged the cart for the automobile; the stagecoach for the streamlined train and the airplane; the muddy trail for the paved highway; the hand borne letter for the wireless message; the candle for the incandescent light; the flintlock musket for the machine gun; but we have clung to obsolete methods of caring for helpless friends and relatives for over three centuries of amazing transformations and achievements. We still have poorhouses and still confine within their enclosures men and women whose only offense is growing old. Once in a while some shell-bark politician is heard to say that old age dependency results from lack of thrift. This charge may apply to a smaller percentage of the old than to the young who are enjoying fruits and favors indirectly provided by the sacrifices of the indigent old. In the depression period youth lost its place on payrolls maturity its livelihood and age its savings. The young and the still vigorous have time to recover and strength to renew their struggle. These essentials of success cannot be reclaimed by the aged who were no more to blame for the general depression than for inexplicable and unforeseen calamities, afflictions, or personal troubles which sometimes follow and harass individuals, families, colonies and countries through long years. When a great nation, guided by its strongest minds, its ablest financiers, its most resourceful statesmen, backed by marvelous ingenuity and inexhaustible resources, nevertheless suffers periodically from economic ailments, why arraign average mortals who are subject to hereditary ills, to epidemics,