27th

In Bremer County, Iowa, back in 1906, a tall, gaunt, 42-year-old man named Joseph Newt Finney was blasting rock at his trade of fence-builder. A charge of dynamite went off prematurely. But he lived. He was blown up again in 1910. But when he was hit in 1922, he was blown to the gates of Kingdom Come. While the local doctor was working over him, neighbors remarked dolefully that it was good he was a bachelor and would not leave a widow to grieve for him.

But Joe Finney did not pass through the pearly gates. Last week he was still in Bremer County, still a bachelor. At 70, he is stooped from the explosion which crippled and palsied him. Nowadays he does odd jobs, chiefly picking beans for a local cannery. This year his total earnings were $31, but he still dresses as neatly as his income will allow and the county thinks highly of the beetle-browed, mustachioed old man.

To Joe Finney last week came $23 from the sovereign State of Iowa. It was an old-age pension check-- the first he had ever received, the first Iowa had ever paid. It marked the start of Iowa's new old-age pension system which will distribute up to $25 per month to indigent persons over 65. The money is raised by a $2-a-year head tax on all lowans over 21.

When Iowa sent a pension to Joseph Newt Finney, she joined no less than 26 other States, Alaska and Hawaii, in pensioning her aged.* In six States pensions are optional with each county, which pays at least part of the cost. In the other 22, pension laws are mandatory and the aged, over 65 or 70. get from a maximum of $390 a year in New Hampshire to a minimum of $150 a year in North Dakota, provided they can prove their need.

Ten years ago only Montana had an old-age pension law. Only four States had such laws prior to 1929. The New Deal and Depression gave the first real impetus to the movement; ten States and the Territory of Hawaii passed such laws in 1933. This winter President Roosevelt will move in Congress to nationalize the old-age pension idea, spread it over all the U. S.

*The other States: Ariz., Calif., Colo., Del., Idaho, Ind., Ky., Me., Md., Mass., Mich., Minn., Mont., Neb., Nev., N. H., N. J., N. Y., N. Dak., Ohio, Ore., Utah, Wash., W. Va., Wis., Wyo. Pennsylvania's law goes into effect Dec. 1, 1934.

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