““It is notorious that the insatiable factory wears out its workers with great rapidity. As it scraps machinery so it scraps human beings. The young, the vigorous, the adaptable, the supple of limb, the alert of mind, are in demand,” wrote economist Edward Devine in 1909. “Middle age is old age, and the wornout worker, if he has no children and if he has no savings, becomes an item in the aggregate of the unemployed.””
