Dearest J. A.
Here's my very best New Year's greeting and hopes for a better year than '26! Please don't think that what follows is irony! It's dead earnest. I've told a man named A. Epstein, at present the salaried secretary of the Penna. State Commission on old age pensions, that he may use my name and I will beg you to let him use yours, to promote a National Association for Old Age Pensions. It is really true that our names have value!
The Penna Court has held their state law unconstitutional. But that does not prove that it is. [page 2] Meanwhile Mr. Epstein's salary and office and his appointment run to May 1st. We think he can build up enough memberships to run itself thereafter, between now and May 1st.
We don't ask anything "off" your dear self but your name as an Honorary V.P.
That is worth diamonds and pearls for a national undertaking.
Isn't it hideous that we had over 700 suicides in this town last year? Many, many of them lonely old people! In the midst of all this wealth!
Herewith I'm sending a copy of our latest little publication. It is fine to have Illinois publishing current facts in monthly bulletins. [page 3] Do you know who started the Labor Commissioner to doing that? No other one does that. I'm referring now to children's compensation for injuries in industry, about which it is so exceedingly difficult to get any current facts.
Will you please tell me in what year you graduated from Rockford Female Seminary? In my notes of Sixty Years I'm referring to you, J. C. L., Anna Howard Shaw, and Mrs. Catt as being students while I was, 1876-1886, not all that time, but in that decade.
Isn't it fine to see England forced to [page 4] yield to China?
I've just finished the biography of the Fourth Earl of Clarendon who died in 1870. It was amazing to read his terrified prophecy of the present ascent of England to the rank of a second class power. But he expected it even earlier!
I hope you're not overdoing! I'm so restive on this chaise lounge, I do not know how much longer I can hold out. No one knows how I've admired your long patience!
Your devoted old
F. K.
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