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A WORD WITH THE WOMEN
(By Elia W. Peattie.)

The women of the Grand Army of the Republic auxiliaries of Chicago have been protesting to the mayor against the age-limit in the employment of old soldiers. The new civil service law contains an age limit, and the men who laid down their arms in '65 are practically debarred from work, in consequence. Government, state, county and city officers are practically closed to them, and in such positions, as is well known, the old soldiers have found the chief opportunity for independent labor. This age limit is placed at 45 years, although most of the civil service examiners are themselves over that age, and not fit, according to the spirit of the new law, to exercise their drooping abilities.

There is little doubt that the civil service law was amended by this age limit in accordance with that feverish desire for rotation in office which distinguishes a republic. Since a man is no longer in danger of being turned from office with each change of administration, an attempt is made to limit his holding of office. Of course there is some danger that the government work might become clogged with superannuated persons, who are in fact mere pensioners, but this danger could be averted by making health and industry a part of the requirements. The government could employ only those men who are in condition to perform the service required. It owes this to the people. It has already provided pensions by which it cares for those who have performed signal services for the government and who are not able to care for themselves. It also has homes, asylums and retreats for persons of all sorts of inadequacy, both of the honorable and dishonorable sort.

But it is absolutely impossible to place any limit upon the age of usefulness. An attenuated clerk may get the rheumatism in the joints and the paresis at 30. A Gladstone, a Bismarck can keep physical vigor and mental genius at 80. And a man like J. Sterling Morton is brighter, healthier and more interesting at 60 than he was at 20. Why, some of us who feel as if the world was just newly ours, and who
can do more work than half a dozen of the degenerate new generation, are get-
ting on toward 45. It's odd, but new generations are always degenerate according to the generations which preceded them!

The Chicago women, after declaring [its?] meeting that it was an insult to every
man who had passed the age of 43 to accuse him of being incapacitated for active employment, passed the following resolutions:

"We protest against the injustice done to the old soldiers by this age limit, in the name of the mothers, wives and daughters of the veterans of the war. We protest against their being denied the right, above all others, of the privilege of competing for public offices on account of their age."

"The people of Chicago would have risen in their might," says a resolution passed by the Woman's Republican club, "to vote down civil service reform if they could have foreseen the unspeakable insult offered the defenders of our homes, and if they could have believed it possible that a republican mayor could fall a victim to non-partisan trickery."

A letter of approval was sent to President Healy of the county board, because of his approval of striking out the clause in the case of old soldiers.

There is no doubt but the government has been hectored beyond endurance, almost, by persons who purport to be old soldiers, and who, ina condition of decrepitude, ask to be provided for in one way or another. These men are many of them mere consumers, taking money without giving anything in return for it, and directly impoverish the government. But these abuses of the generosity of the government should in no way affect the claims of the able men of any age; nor should any hastily made law be allowed to interfere with the rights of the men who preserved the union and made possible the prosperity of this country.

Many of the old soldiers are not disabled in any particular way. They draw no pensions and desire none. But they are not as well able to endure excessive fatigue as are those who have been spared the hardship of long marches, the sleep in marshes and malarious forests, the poor fond, the horrible apprehension
that precedes battle, the nervous tremor that follows it, the misery of war prisons, the unspeakable depression of homesickness- which, breaks the spirit, and, in time, the body as well. These men are injured. They sacrificed all they had to sacrifice. They placed in jeopardy all things dearest in life, and life itself. To say that these men shall not have the consideration of the government is unworthy the government. No country can afford to show itself ungrateful, lest the time will come when men, observing this ingratitude, will refuse the services most mightily needed in some hour of peril.