Meanwhile, what is the actual condition in the various strata of life, in our own country, for example, in respect to the protection, the care, the comfort, the happiness, and the general welfare of the aged? In the first place, the speeding up of machinery has made many manual workers prematurely old. The worst thing, perhaps, about child-labor has been that, owing to premature "laying off" of the fathers, the children have been set to earn money for family needs, and have acquired, with their pay envelope, a contempt or disrespect for the father in ways that have reversed the natural relationship and given society much use for the Children's Court. This disrespect shown the father, even when he is only of middle age, passes on in increased measure to the grandfather who has been pushed aside from self-support and family support while still comparatively young and has never been able to again catch on to the wheels of industry. The fact that he eats and does not work; that he takes space in the crowded tenement and does not aid in paying its rent; that he has no light employment that can give his fading mental powers an impulse toward ambition and energy, all make the position of the grandfather in many homes of struggling poverty a most unhappy one. In such homes the grandmother is often still seen to be really useful. She may make it possible for the young mother to earn outside the home. She may, if skilled in sewing, ease the expense of ready-made clothes. She may, at least, and usually does, relieve the mother of much care of the babies. There are several reasons why more aged men are sent to public institutions for final care than aged women of the same general type of family, but the most important reason is that most women have skill in domestic matters; and domestic service is needed everywhere, no matter how many unemployed walk the streets. Needed most in the poorest home, the help of the grandmother is often appreciated in inverse ratio to the income. In the circles above the poverty line there is much variety in the estimation and in the treatment of grandfathers and grandmothers. The ideal picture of a family always has in its background, if not in the very front, an old man and an old woman, benevolent and sweet-natured, who can be depended upon to be more indulgent to the children than even the father or mother and who appear always in family emergencies to renew their youth of service in behalf of the younger generation.