TOO OLD AT 35

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19998, 15 November 1927, Page 7

TOO OLD AT 35

MIDDLE-AGES HANDICAP SITUATION IN NEW YORK. “MR ACTION’S" CRUSADE. NEW YORK, Oct. 29. A determined effort is unidier way in this city to persuade employers not to discriminate in favour of youth and against middle-age. A wealthy business man, who has chosen to mask his identity behind the pseudonym of “Mr Action," has lately called several mass meetings of persons . beyond thirty-five years of age, the tacitly accepted “deadline" of employers, with the hope of bringing their plight to the attention of the general public. These have been held, have produced much oratory and a ripple of interest in the newspapers, and have then died away into silence. The cult of youth is pursued so fiercely in America that it is difficult for anyone with grey in his hair to obtain ordinary clerical employment; and the discrimination is even more marked in the case of women than of men. Trying to Look Young.

One result is that most people try to look as young as possible; and one may see in the streets any day women who are nearer fifty than forty, mincing along in knee-length dresses and high heels, painted and coiffed like a chorus girl, or men who retain by an obviously painful effort the slender waistline and clastic step of a lad of twenty. Some employers say frankly that they get better obedience to orders from young people whose characters have not matured; that these work harder, and for smaller wages. The practice of group insurance for employees, now prevalent in America, is also blamed, as the insurance companies will not include persons over fifty in their “blanket” policies. The Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations, which operate employment bureaus, are said by “Mr Action" to discriminate against older applicants for positions, and this practice is also alleged to be in use by the commercial employment agencies.

NOT WANTED AT FORTY PLIGHT OF THE ENGLISH CLERK. Protests against the veto “Too old at forty," a matter which has been keenly exercising the Executive for a long time, wer made at the annual meeting of the British National Federation of Provident Associations of Clerks and Warehousemen at Southport, when a membership of over 90,000 was represented. Reference was made to it by the Mayor who, in welcoming th delegates, said “Too old at Forty" was one of the most unfortunate phrases ever invented, and he trusted they would be able to do something to protect such people who, at that age, were probably more capable of discharging their duties than they were in their youth. The President (Mr H. W. Cotterill, London) said the position of the unemployed clerk was no better, and was getting worse. “In the retail textile trade., amalgamations and absorptions of large businesses have been steadily developed during the last year," he said, “and although on occasion we have seen it given out in public on the authority of those responsible for the amalgamation or absorption that the old staff would not bo displaced, the pledge has not been kept. Older Men’s Claims. “Day after day all the advertisements of employment appearing in the newspapers are for young men under the age of thirty. These men are in most cases married, and they claim the right to a decent standard of life for themselves and their dependents. They want honest work and a living wage. “I would be the last to decry the young man, but I do maintain that the extra business experience of the man of mature years is of some additional value to the employer, and, therefore, he is worthy of every consideration in his endeavours to obtain employment. 1 There has been an improvement in trade, but the outlook for the unemployed member of mature years does not improve in proportion.” The secretary (Mr J. H. Ethridge, Liverpool) pointed out that in Germany new legislation would compel commercial employers to employ one man of forty to every five younger employees, on pain of having the older man forcibly installed by the local labour bureau, and this legislation, which had been agreed to by every party in the Reichstag, was said to be the most important protective Act of recent years.