LEARNINO TO EARN LEARNING TO EARN A Flea and a Plan for Vocational Education By JOHN A. LAPP Member of the National Commission on Vocational Education. Secrcury Indiana Commission on Industrial and Agricultural Education, Director of the Bureau of Legislative Information and CARL H. MOTE Author of Industrial Arbitration JVith Introduction by HON. WILLIAM C. REDFIELD Secretary of Commerce INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright 1915 The Bobbs-Merrill Company / V PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N. Y. NOV 261915 ©C1.A416547 INTRODUCTION We are as a people the Wasters of the World and are the Prodigal Son among the Nations. We save enormously every year but waste far more than we save. It seems to be in our national tem- perament almost to rejoice in the prodigality with which we expend our resources or in the happy care- lessness with which we allow them to go unused. We do not confine ourselves, however, to wasting material things. We waste life as no others do. The annual toll of those who are killed 5nd wounded by vehicles in the streets of New York alone would dim the records of many a sanguinary battlefield. Many a war has come, has run its bloody course and has ended without as many vic- tims in killed and wounded as our industries show each year. There are among us excellent people quite disturbed over bloodshed in time of war who have little to say respecting the bloodshed in times of peace. It is true that "safety first" is becoming a familiar motto, but it is also true that the warning falls too often on heedless ears and that the daily sacrifice goes on. There are ways of wasting however, very sad ways of wasting indeed, which the above do not in- clude. There is a way of killing the best in life while the body goes on living, and we have been sin- INTRODUCTION gularly skilful in these injurious processes."^ It is easy to smile at the savage who sets up his grotesque totem pole, believing that thereby he secures the protection of the friendly spirits, but there are national totems as well as tribal and individual ones, and there is a certain danger that we may worship them nearly or quite as blindly as the savage at whom we smile. When we look with frankness and without bias at the results in terms of life of what we are pleased to call education, the question will naturally arise whether this thing of which we are so proud is not as respects most of those who are subjected to its processes something of a grotesque totem set on a pole for us unintelligently to admire. True it works admirably for the few. That is, for the few reck- oned in proportion to the whole. One would not lightly minimize its value for this small proportion of our people nor say aught that would injure the justly high estimation in which the fine work of the instructor in many a useful institution is held. The value of his services to the public is such as to make us ciesire to widen its scope and extend its benign influence. The difliculty is that the fruitful work of the educator reaches at its best far too small a minority among us while it is essential, deeply essential that its influence should be vastly extended. When it is pointed out that a half million physical lives or more are lost among us each year through preventable disease, we feel a certain sense of shock INTRODUCTION and the publicist comes to the aid of preventive med- icine to say these things ought not so to be and to join in strong and unselfish attack on the conditions that permit such things to continue. We are just beginning to realize that by the failure of some phases of our educational systems to meet the living needs of living boys and girls, we are permitting them to enter a sort of death in life which is having most hurtful effects on our country. Our complacency over the value of the common school to our people is being rudely disturbed, for many if not most of our young people emerge from that same common school quite without adjustment to the daily life they must thereafter lead, and al- most if not altogether without the training fitting them for the workaday world in which they must live. There is no cleavage between vocational education and academic education nor aught of hostility. The two are fellows and akin. They stand in a helpful and not in a hurtful relation one to the other. Nay, it is because academic education at its best has pro- duced such noble fruits that the need is more mani- fest for the other type of training for those who in different spheres find academic education neither practicable nor essential. The life in industry, in trades, In the home, on the farm, needs and does not yet receive the corresponding training in principle and practise that is given to the lawyer, the physi- cian and the engineer. It is not the same education that is needed for all these either in kind or in de- INTRODUCTION gree, but it is similar in spirit and in purpose and has for its outlook that the student shall be prepared for the environment which is normal to him. Therefore, this book is to be commended as a thoughtful study concerning things that are greatly needed among us, and as giving an impetus to thought that can only be helpful. None of us can be satisfied to allow things to remain educationally as they are ; to permit our children to go out into a life which is a blind alley; to reach a mental *'im- passe" before maturity is well begun. The path of danger lies that way, and he renders a service to his country who calls a halt and directs our thinking as to how we may avoid the peril. There can be no doubt that when we come to realize the need for greater extensiveness of training for the work of life both for men and women, we shall take the steps^ which shall make that not only possible but certain. To this happy progress this book points the way. Let us hope it will have wide-spread and careful reading. William C. Redfield. Washington, D. C. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I What Are the Purposes of Education? . . 1 New applications of old ideals — Education as adjustment to environment — What adjust- ment means — Self-preservation — Earning a living — Citizenship — Home training — Com- mercial activities — Education for the con- sumer—Education for leisure — Progressive education needed to meet modern means. II Passing Education Around 21 Democracy's demand for equality of educa- tional opportunity — Adjustment to environ- ment must be universal — Individual and en- vironment are variable — Education to extenH throughout life — Putting knowledge to work — Training people at work — Capacity of all for training — Outline of a universal scheme — Vocational education essential — Influences which have thwarted universal education — Examples to follow — Some critics answered. Ill Wherein the Present System Fails ... 39 Statistics of school attendance— Why chil- dren leave school— Neglect of life-career mo- tive — What does education do for those who quit school early? — Schools fail to train for self-preservation— Little vocational training — Rural education unsuited to needs — The weaknesses of agricultural colleges— Devel- opment of agricultural science — Science of commerce and industry still dormant — Im- portant education obtainable only in nooks CONTENTS— Cow^wM^c? CHAPTER PAGE and corners — Schools train for higher grades — No stopping place — Education stops at the school door — Results of education obtainable only by a few — The raw materials to work upon. IV Industry and Its Educational Needs ... 60 The economic and social basis of industrial progress — Lack of skilled workers — Exploita- tion of our natural resources — Collapse of trade union apprenticeship — Opposition to the corporation trade school — Chaos in industry — Waste caused by industrial unrest — Coop- eration is the ultimate goal — The problem of monotony in employment — Training for ac- cident prevention — Our industrial history is ignored in the schools — The importance of a thoroughgoing survey of industry. V Agriculture and Its Educational Needs . . 89 Food production has failed to keep pace with the increase in population — Our farm yields are far below those of European countries — Farm is unattractive as a business opportu- nity — Distribution facilities are inadequate — Greater production in the aggregate means lower prices — Cooperative marketing is a sci- entific undertaking and a problem for trained minds — Why rural education is uninteresting — Agricultural colleges and practical farming — Keeping the boy on the farm — The prob- lems of tenantry, transient laborers and ma- ture workers — Agricultural credit — Farm ac- counting — Diversified farming — Expenditures for roads — Conservation in agriculture — Vision and inspiration count — Careful train- ing essential. CONTENTS— Continued CHAPTER PAGE VI Business and Its Educational Needs . . . 116 Four fundamental processes of business — Distribution is vital to the economic progress of the nation — Exploitation of natural re- sources no longer possible — Specific educa- tion for the science of business is needed — All classes should become familiar with ele- mentary business practises — Agencies of edu- cation have failed to grasp commercial prob- lems — Certain aspects of foreign trade — Germany's commercial prestige founded on the careful training of commercial workers — Our need of trained consuls — Seven million people depend upon "picking-up" process of education — Our commercial failures are in- creasing — Our lack of self-reliance — Labor efficiency is a matter of simplified effortr- Mismanagement of railroads — Training for salesmanship — Advertising — Our banking system is inadequate — Commercial education in Germany — Our educational needs. yil Training for the Home 143 Woman's chief vocational interest Is the home — Effect of industrial changes on the work of the home — Lack of a scientific ap- proach — Meager efforts of the schools to train efficiently for the duties of the home — Variations in the curriculum — General out- line of training: food, clothing, fashions, building, house furnishing, sanitation, the garden, marketing, care of infants, common remedies — Music as a vocation and an inci- dental interest— Education will lighten the burdens of the home. C01<^TENTS— Continued CHAPTER PAGE VIII Vocational Education and Conservation . . 164 The waste of resources— Direct losses— Indi- rect losses — Mining— Lumbering — Soils — In- sect pests — Animal diseases — Weeds — Lack of drainage — Agricultural production too small — Export raw materials instead of fin- ished products — ^Waste of human resources — Child wastage — Preventable diseases — Acci- dents in occupations — Diseases of occupa- tions — Conserving health and strength — Ef- ficiency. IX Prevocational Training 182 Elementary education most important — Ac- quiring tools of knowledge — Education should function in daily life — Child who does not keep up is not abnormal, only different — Correlation of studies — Elements of more things should be utilized — Practical arts should be compulsory to all — Wasted years from fourteen to sixteen — Prevocational courses to fill the gap — Not only vocational but also guidance courses to be given. X The t*LACE of the Vocational School , . . 197 The place of the vocational school — Takes place of apprenticeship — Extent of vocational schools — Professional schools — Vocational schools for defectives and delinquents — Need for vocational schools for the great mass of workers — Requirements — Open to all who can profit by the instruction — To prepare all- round workers — Must be practical — Supply deficiencies of apprenticeship — Needs for many kinds of vocational schools — The heart of the vocational education system. CONTENTS— Cow^mw^i CHAPTER PAGE XI Part-Time Education 213 Needs of youth who quit school — Schools must supply further education if workers are to progress — School has heretofore stopped at factory door — Cont?inuation courses to help misfits — Trade extension courses to in- crease efficiency — Supplementary training re- quires correlation of study with the occupa- tion — Analysis of occupations needed — Part- time education useful to adults — Evening schools — Courses need to be practical and definite. XII Extension and Correspondence Work . . . 231 The place of correspondence and extension work in the educational system — What has been accomplished — Private correspondence schools — Demonstration shops and labora- tories necessary for concrete direction — Itin- erant teachers — Three types of correspond- ence schools — Project system of instruction — Maintenance of centers of instruction — Personal assistance necessary — Special op- portunities in business training by corre- spondence — The chamber of commerce — Centers for home training — Agricultural education by correspondence — The place of the university in correspondence and exten- sion work. XIII The Library and the Worker 249 Part of the library in universal education — Printed matter Is universal In scope — All classes should be served — Libraries weak on the vocational side — Useful arts departments CONTENTS— Continued CHAPTER PAGE successful — Branches in industrial and mer- cantile plants — Chicago's experience — The Marshall Field Store library — Practical value of correlated reading — Library for agricul- ture — Vocational guidance literature. XIV Vocational Guidance 262 Occupational divisions — Educational effort is centered on the few — Jefferson as a voca- tional counselor — New conditions demand highly specialized training — Doctor Parsons' precepts in the selection of a vocation — Psychological aspects of vocational selection — Vocational guidance and conservation — Futility of "compulsory education" — Purpose of vocational guidance — Economic loss from lack of trained workers — A wise choice of vocations is essential in a democracy — Pro- tection of the child involves intimate ac- quaintance with conditions surrounding work — Aids to an industrial survey — Summary. XV Training of Teachers 285 Lack of trained teachers for vocational work — Need of practical experience — Experience in teaching and experience in life — Prejudice to be overcome — Wasted efforts from unedu- cated and inefficient teachers — Various plans for training teachers — The present public- school teacher is not equipped for instruc- tion in agriculture, the skilled trades or household arts — Active business men may be drawn upon for teaching in commercial schools — Shortcomings of the rural teachers — Only one in five teachers is trained — How CHAPTER COlsiTElS^TS— Continued sociological surveys may widen the vision of the untrained teacher — Summer schools, cor- respondence schools and extension work as supplemental aids. PAGE XVI How Shall the Obligation Be Met? . 309 More money needed when education becomes universal — The historical development of lo- cal theory of education — The growth of state supervision — State aid — National aid — Sys- tems of aid most efficient plan — National im- portance of vocational education — Competi- tive trade — Social unrest — Agricultural de- velopment — New burdens — Imminence of the problem — States and communities alone can not meet the needs quickly enough — Differ- ences of financial abilities — Team play of the nation, states and local units needed — The proposal before Congress for national aid. XVII Work and Culture 327 What is culture? — The medieval conception of culture — Introduction of manual training and of the occupational interests into the cur- riculum — The social difference in vocations and the explanation — Culture closely related to thorough and carefully planned methods of doing work — Art and artisans — Homely evidences of culture — Economic phases of culture — Erroneous notions of culture — Cul- ture for our working hours — Universal edu- cation wholly unrealized — Education must dovetail into the life-work of boys and girls. CONTENTS— Continued CHAPTER PAGE XVIII Training for Citizenship 344 Measure of vocational education — Its uni- versal scope — An indictment of the present system — Fails to develop latent potentialities for industrial, agricultural, commercial and domestic work — Relationship between ef- ficient workmanship and citizenship — Effect of habit on education — Economic aggressions due to political power — Wherein classical education fails — Aimless drifting into over- crowded professions and the result — Our wasteful and bad government — People fail in the simplest duties — Individual efficiency means social efficiency — When education is pointless, the level of citizenship falls — The failure of public servants because of ignor- ance — Specific training for citizenship — Teaching the morals of good citizenship. XIX The Ideal School 266 Socializing the school — Meeting the needs of all — No age limits to its service — All educa- tion at public expense and under public man- agement — Studying the vocations — Charting blind alleys — Keeping abreast of the times — Outline of plan — ^Working with workers — The fruits. Bibliography 381 Organizations Interested in Vocational Training 393 Index , 397 LEARNING TO EARN Learning to Earn CHAPTER I WHAT ARE THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION? New applications of old ideals — Education as adjustment to environment — What adjustment means — Self-preservation — Earning a living — Citizenship — Home training — Commercial activities — Education for the- consumer — Education for lei^re — Progressive education needed to meet modern needs. Progress in human affairs makes necessary a con- stant restatement of principles in terms which are appHcable to new conditions. By such restatement only can certain principles endure in the every-day world. Those principles which can not be made guides for common good under changed conditions are rightly discarded. They may be worshiped as fetishes for a time but practise based upon them can not stand permanently against the demands of the practical mind. Worn-out philosophies must go when they obstruct progress, for progress demands a constant adaptation to the things of to-day and the promise of to-morrow. No field offers a more striking opportunity for ob- 1 2 LEARNING TO EARN servations of this character than the subject of this chapter — "What are the purposes of education?" Throughout the ages this question has agitated the minds of schoolmen, philosophers and statesmen. At one time it has been answered and acted upon in one way, at another in a different way. One country and one civilization have adopted one ideal, another a wholly different ideal. The Hebrews sought morality and religion through education; the Athenians aimed at ideal culture; the Spartans sought physical power; the Romans, law, oratory and military prowess; the church in the Middle Ages, preparation for a future state; while modern nations have sought a variety of ends combining many of the ancient ideals with modern needs. One thing stands out in bold relief in the history of education, namely, that thinkers in all ages have believed in the efficacy of education to attain certain ends. It has always meant power expressed accord- ing to the prevailing ideal. Another characteristic feature of educational philosophy, developed throughout the ages, has been its idealism. "To train men to the fullest expression of their powers," according to the ideal of the time was set up as the end of education. In all cases, however, it was the ideal education of the for- tunately circumstanced which philosophers talked about and statesmen promoted. Education was for the few who could profit by the particular education THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION 3 offered. The many went untaught and the problem of teaching them was scarcely considered and not at all acted upon. This philosophy of ideal education has come down to us from the past generations and still persists as the basis of our educational practise and dominates the system in which we attempt to educate "all the children of all the people." In other words an in- herited scheme of education designed to give the broadest culture and information to the few who have no time limits to their educational opportu- nities is applied "willy-nilly" to the great mass of children, half of whom leave the school at fourt^n years of age. The present demand is that we refashion our educational philosophy in the light of the actual con- ditions; that we throw off the shackles of an outworn past ; that we restate our educational prin- ciples; and address ourselves to the task of deter- mining the end of education in this time and in this country where certain facilities for education are universally provided and attendance at school com- pelled. We must find modem substitutes for an- cient ideals and we must make practical the ideals we set up. One of the keenest of our present-day educators has declared the ideal of education to be: "What the best and wisest of parents wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its i. 4 LEARNING TO EARN children. Any other ideal for our schools isj un- lovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy/"^ No one would question that the community should offer the opportunity for the fulfillment of this ideal for all its children. This country has offered such opportunity in the system of public schools which afford the chance for the highest development to those who would pursue knowledge to the utter- most. As a working plan, however, the system quite generally fails. It actually works out to the advantage of a small percentage of youth, while to the great majority — fully ninety per cent. — it is lit- tle more than a dream. In recasting our education to meet the demands of a democracy we may well accept the ideal set forth by Dewey and keep open the way from the kindergarten to the university. But we can not be true to that ideal if we worship it and fail to meet the needs of the vast majority of youth who are unable to stay in school even partially to attain the ideal. With the ideal in mind and the actual conditions understood, our problem is to reassert the estab- lished principles of education in terms of universal application. Not merely what we desire for all chil- dren but what we can actually accomplish by educa- tion for each, should guide us. We must make our educational principles applicable to the education of Dewey. The School and Society, p. 19. THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION 5 the great mass as we find them and not merely to the education of selected groups. We must not close our minds to the educational needs and rights of the ninety per cent, who do not profit by the system of ideal education which we have set up. The best we can do is to keep the door of educa- tional opportunity wide open and encourage and help all to enter, and also strive to educate all of the others who for any reason have not been able to profit by the instruction offered. A theory of perfection will not do if we expect practical results. We are not a nation exclusively of philosophers and our children are not all phil(^so- phers in embryo. Variety is almost as great as num- bers. No two persons are alike physically and the fact holds true mentally. What will train one to the highest good will fall on sterile ground with another. No educational system of uniform rigid application will meet the needs of a democracy. Such a system must be as varied as the infinite dif- ferences of humanity. An examination of society and of the system of education at once establishes the conclusion that whatever philosophy we build our educational sys- tem upon it should be based upon the idea of giving to each person the kind and content of education by which he can profit. Education ought to be suited to the capabilities of each and to avoid an abstract ideal by which the few only may profit. 6 LEARNING TO EARN ^- In seeking the basis of such a philosophy, the idea of education as an adjustment of the individual to his environment has been evolved. The idea is at once universal in its application, and offers the abstract ideal of giving to each the opportunity for the fullest development of which he is capable. Education as an adjustment of the individual to his environment, as here understood, means not merely adjustment to the material things around him, but also adjustment to the larger life which he must lead as an individual, a member or parent of a family, a member of society and a citizen of the state. Education should bring each individual into harmonious relations with all the activities which go to make up his ordinary life. As expressed by Her- bert Spencer^ the ultimate test is : "How to live?^ — Not how to live in the mere material sense only, but in the widest sense. The general problem which comprehends every special problem is — the right ruling of conduct in all direc- tions under all circumstances. In what way to treat the body; in what way to treat the mind; in what way to manage our affairs; in what way to bring up a family; in what way to behave as a citizen; in what way to utilize all those sources of happiness which nature supplies — how to use all our facilities to the greatest advantage of ourselves and others — how to live completely? And this being the great thing needful for us to learn, is, by consequence, the ^ What Knowledge Is of Most Worth. THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION 7 great thing which education has to teach. To pre- pare us for complete Hving is the function which education has to discharge; and the only rational mode of judging of any educational course is, to judge in what degree it discharges such function." Coming to the classification of those activities which essentially make up life, Spencer arranges them as follows: ''1. Those activities which di- rectly minister to self-preservation. 2. Those ac- tivities which, by securing the necessaries of life, indirectly minister to self-preservation. 3. Those activities which have for their end the rearing and discipline of offspring. 4. Those activities which are involved in the maintenance of proper social and political relations. 5. Those miscellaneous ac- tivities which make up the leisure part of life, de- voted to the gratification of the tastes and feelings." In a primitive state of society most of this educa- tion could be obtained from institutions other than the school. Self-preservation from the ordinary dangers, being largely instinctive, there was little that outside direction could do in this part of educa- tion except to protect the child from precipitate dan- gers to which he was not accustomed. In such a society self-support was learned from actual experi- ence. The son followed his father's footsteps and learned the simple things of the trade or of the field which were needed for self-support. Production for simple needs required no elaborate schooling. 8 LEARNING TO EARN Likewise in the home the child learned the methods of the household and the care of children. In such a primitive society, as O'Shea points out,^ "where the individual's adaptations to the world is not, relatively speaking, very complex, and conse- quently when needs are comparatively few each per- son can look after himself quite completely. The mode of settling difficulties between man and man does not call for much beyond muscular force and so the individual has no need for learning a vast body of intricate laws governing social relations. There is no stock of knowledge or experience relating to the nature and method of treating human ailments which makes the services of a specialist in medicine necessary. So the individual can get what food he needs, can make his own clothing, can build his own hut, and so on." The social order in this country is no longer primitive. It grows infinitely complex. Each dec- ade brings with it new problems and new duties. Corresponding responsibilities are placed upon so- ciety if the ideal of education is to be realized and the mass of individuals adjusted to their environ- ment. Take for example, the new things required to be taught in the simplest phase of education men- tioned above — that for self-preservation. Man in the aggregate is no longer a free agent. He can not live unto himself alone. The majority of men Education as Adjustment, p. 119„ THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION 9 must work in connection with other men, in masses — in the factories, mills and workshops, on high- ways, railroads, streets and on the farm. They must work with complicated machinery — they are in fact a part of a great machine. Dangers beset them on all sides. They are subjected to the risk of industrial accidents and to the infections of occupational dis- eases. The very food that sustains them is no longer simple diet, but the product of many lands and of many processes of manufacture. They must know many more facts of physiology and dietetics than their forefathers knew in order to protect their lives and sustain them in vigor. Knowledge for self-preservation is extensive and the individual can not be left to learn by body-breaking experience, the things which organized instruction can give. How to protect life in all of the varied and com- plicated world's work; how to prevent the calamities of occupational accidents and diseases, how to make men keener in self -protection and stronger for the struggle of life, all these throw a great and increas- ing burden upon the agencies of education. Nor does this consist merely in learning a few facts or being trained in the use of safety devices. It is com- prehensive of the whole civic and social life and broadly educational in its content and results. Proper education for self-preservation is at once universal, scientific and practical. To adjust the individual to his environment in the 10 LEARNING TO EARN second great purpose of education, namely, to earn a living, means an entirely different regimen of studies than in the simpler life of the past. The process of conquering the earth and its po- tential powers has evolved a new order and con- tinued evolution is bringing changes whose extent we can only dimly foresee. The people of the world earn their livings to-day in hundreds of ways un- known a generation ago. The people of the next generation will add other hundreds of occupations. In these circumstances of growth and change we readily see the task which education must assume if its ends are to be universally obtained and progress- ively maintained. In former days when the son fol- lowed the father to his shop or into the fields and the girl was the mother's apprentice and the young learned the mystery and art of the trade or other vocation from their elders by practise and precept, the need for other educational agencies to fit for earning a living was not apparent. At least it was not a pressing necessity. The system may not have promoted progress as it should, but it gave at least a passable preparation for work. New economic conditions have changed all of this. Instead of the simple shop where the father or the master carried on his simple trade and taught the mystery and art to his son or to his apprentice, there is the great factory, specialized processes, division of labor, machine production, all resulting in the utter THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION 11 demoralization of the system of education which formerly prepared the young for their life-work. The achievements of the new industrial day are mar- velous, but they are marred by the failure of indus- trialists and the public to see that the right kind of educational advance goes hand in hand with the new industry, supplying the needs of the workers in the new forms of industry with the education which the former apprenticeship system gave in the old and without which, men become slaves to the machines on which they work. Educational agencies absorbed with the fetishes of a worn-out philosophy of edu- cation left industry and the workers severely alone, and industry took advantage of its freedom by ex- ploiting the men and women and the boys and girls, by working them for profit with no thought of an obligation to educate them for permanent and in- creasing efficiency. Instead of the nice adjustment which should al- ways exist between education and work, so that the vision of the worker will be constantly enlarged and so that men may become broadly efficient and economically independent, we have been left by the neglect of the past in the sad state where a great majority of our people receive no adequate prepara- tion for earning a living either through educational agencies or in industry itself. No matter what field of human activity we con- sider, the same facts strike us forcibly — that the 12 LEARNING TO EARN altered economic conditions have made necessary a corresponding alteration of education if the end of education as adjustment shall be realized. The farm furnishes typical examples. The farmer of a few years ago needed little education other than that learned by experience as a farm laborer or as a farm helper in the farm family regime. Small produc- tion largely for home consumption ; few farm tools and simple equipment; rich soils and plenty of new lands and few problems of transportation or the sale of products, needed little education on the part of the farmer other than that gained from experience, tutelage by parents and common observation. To- day the vocation of farming, if successful, requires big, practical, scientific, broadly-educated business men. In no calliiig is so much and such diversified knowledge required. Preparation for this vocation requires a system of education closely adjusted to the needs of the industry in each community and fitted to the capacities of men. Science especially, including chemistry, biology and physics, plays a large part. So does mathematics with particular reference to the formulas for feed, seed, fertilizer and scores of other commodities where mathemat- ical adjustment of parts is essential. Cost account- ing is a neglected but necessary guide to a farmer's work, while to get the part of the product which reasonably belongs to him requires that he have knowledge of the economics of production, trans- THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION 13 portation and marketing. Education to prepare adequately for earning a living on the farm now and in the still more intense future, must keep the balance nicely adjusted between the actual work and the guiding principles of the knowledge suited to the vocation. Education as adjustment to en- vironment should be largely reconstructed to meet the needs of the farmer. Likewise in the home is found the same expan- sion of duties. There are increased difficulties and responsibilities of parenthood; an economic neces- sity for conservation to meet the high cost of liv- ing; and the requirements for human efficiency of better food values; to say nothing of the develop- ment of the artistic and the beautiful in home life. Some can get a reasonably good education and training at home, but in these days most people must be trained for the home by agencies outside the home. In the distributive process — the commercial ac- tivities — the same conclusions hold with even greater force. On the side of distribution it must be ad- mitted we are fundamentally weak. The solution of the problem of getting the goods to the consumer with the greatest economy has hardly yet been touched. Business has been done largely by "rule of thumb." It has been imitative and seldom orig- inal. Great numbers of business men have been merely soldiers of fortune seeking their chance. By 14 LEARNING TO EARN excessive profits in specialties or in special cir- cumstances, many have succeeded. Those who have grasped the commercial problems and have built solidly upon knowledge — in other words those who have been adjusted to their jobs — are few. No bet- ter proof could be furnished — if proof were neces- sary — than the demoralization of American com- merce in the months following the outbreak of the European war. Our commercial adventurers found themselves confused and powerless. It remained for the few who really had grasped the fundamentals of business, who had the requisite knowledge and the vision which goes with it, to bring order out of the chaos. All through the ranks of business runs the fatal weakness of unpreparedness to meet new conditions. The managers have been trained by rule of thumb, the subordinates have been educated in so-called "business colleges" where the machine grinds out finished products in three months to a year. No ra- tional study of business needs or of workers has ever been made and hence the education of business men and their subordinates has failed to meet the needs of the workers in the commercial life of the present or to build up a solid foundation for busi- ness. Not to multiply examples on this head but to show the universal need of an education for more efficient adjustment in all phases of life, mention must be THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION 15 made of the new demands upon the more skilled trades, vocations and professions. The lawyer needs a far wider range of matters than his prede- cessor if he is to serve humanity or to win and hold clients; a physician has infinitely more to learn; a minister of the gospel can not rely upon dogmatic sermons if he is to lead his fellow men; broader and more practical education to adjust them to their whole job should be had by the engineer, teacher, pharmacist, architect and all the other professional vocations, and a clear grasp of social and industrial facts and conditions must be given to all men, what- ever their calling, if men are to be adjusted fully to the environment of the present day and tb be capable of playing their full part in society. But every person is a consumer without regard to his status in the vocations as a producer. Men must eat, be clothed, and housed and have the privilege of enjoying all that they are capable of in the leisure of life. They have vocations and work at them to earn enough to live. The object of educating to produce more efficiently is clearly to provide more to consume, whether of food, clothing or enjoy- ments. Since production and consumption are so closely related, education for each serves the pur- poses of the other. If men are taught to consume food which conserves the strength and saves the pocketbook, a larger sum is left for clothing, shel- ter and enjoyments. If clothing and shelter are 16 LEARNING TO EARN wisely and expertly chosen and appropriated, the economy makes possible opportunities for a fuller life. Wise use is certainly as important as efficient production. Education as adjustment has here its most uni- versal need and clearest possibilities of application. Absolute or approximate universal education for production may be impossible because of the infinite variations of occupations, but education for con- sumption is simple, homogeneous and easily or- ganized. Thus, in the all important activities of life con- nected with making a living and living, as in that of direct self-preservation, an intenser education to bring the individual into harmony with his environ- ment, and to give him possession of the tools of economic independence, is a present and future necessity for individual and social welfare. When the individual has been trained efficiently in self-preservation and to earn a living, he has the potential capacity for good citizenship. The effi- cient man is the efficient citizen. Men need to be in a position to serve themselves before they can serve the state. The citizen to-day has upon him a vast and increasing burden. The complexities of society must be understood somewhat, because he must guide his actions in the midst of these complexities. Moreover, democracy has put the responsibility upon every citizen not only to determine his own THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION 17 course but also to help in determining society's course. To see that every man in every walk of life is a true civic unit having power as an individual, and insight as a citizen, is one of the foremost duties of our educational system. Not merely the education of the few for leadership in civic affairs, but the en- largement of the civic knowledge of each unit will solve the problems of modern life. Each individual in a democracy is entitled to receive an education which puts him in full command of himself as a worker and a citizen. Likewise, the education which Spencer advocated to enable the individual to enjoy the leisure time of life must be broadly aimed to touch all persons with its beneficent influence. Not merely that the few may learn to enjoy beauty in a picture, a statue, or a poem, but that all may find wholesome pleasures in their ordinary spheres, is the ideal of education for adjustment. All phases of life have become more complex and education must lay new foundations and adopt new methods to accomplish its ends. The apprenticeship system has broken down in industry ; home training no longer suffices for the majority who are to be home-makers in this day; workers can no longer successfully engage in agriculture or industry if armed only with crude uneducated experience; the lawyer, doctor, teacher and preacher, in fact all 18 LEARNING TO EARN artisans, workers or professional people can not fully realize the ideal unless more broadly educated than by the earlier but now obsolete methods of ap- prenticeship, office boy, helper or assistant. Out- side agencies must engage in placing broad founda- tions of knowledge under the experience gained in shop or home, farm or profession. This sort of education must be essentially pro- gressive. It must keep abreast of the times and always with an eye to future development. A sys- tem of educational adjustment established to-day and based upon present economic conditions would be out of date in some particulars within a brief space of time and almost wholly obsolete in a few generations. An example of what happens when the schools are not progressively adjusted, is drawn by Dewey from the problems in compound partnership given in arithmetic up to a short time ago. The com- pound partnership originated as far back as the sixteenth century as a system of doing business be- fore the days of the joint stock company. "Nat- urally then compound partnership was taught in the schools. The joint stock company was invented, compound partnership disappeared but the problems relating to it stayed in the arithmetic for two hun- dred years. They were kept after they had ceased to have practical utility for the sake of mental dis- cipline — they were *such hard problems you know.' ,THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION 19 A great deal of what is now in the arithmetic under the head of percentage is of the same nature. Chil- dren of twelve and thirteen years of age go through gain and loss calculations and various forms of bank discounts so complicated that bankers long ago dis- pensed with them. And when it is pointed out that business is not done that way we hear again of 'mental discipline.' And yet there are plenty of real connections between the experience of children and business conditions which need to be utilized and illuminated."* When we consider the adjustment of the individ- ual to his environment we often think that the en- vironment is static and the adjusting must be en- tirely on the part of the individual. This is not correct, for we know that man in his reactions upon his environment changes that environment and the concentrated movements of men in the mass change society into a dynamic state. The instrument which adjusts one dynamic body to another and keeps them adjusted must itself be dynamic. Education being that means of adjustment between man and his en- vironment, must continually be adjusting its content and methods to the changing conditions on which it works. Education must be progressive, therefore, if it is to be the adjusting force in society. Teach- ers, text-books, paraphernalia, materials and meth- * School and Society, pp. 91, 92. 20 LEARNING TO EARN ods must be suited to the time and place, to the in- dividual, and the state of society. If the school be in Porto Rico, it should seek to adjust the pupils to the life of Porto Rico and not to that of Boston. If the school be in a twentieth-century environment, it should draw its content from the twentieth and not from the sixteenth century. In terms then of modern application the end of education is to train the individual in self-preserva- tion in the multitude of dangers which beset his path ; to train him to earn a living and to live under modern conditions of production and distribution; to be an efficient consumer; to conserve the home and care for children; to perform essential duties as a citizen ; and to enable each to get the fullest en- joyment from the work which he does as a worker, parent or citizen and to utilize the leisure time of life wisely and happily. "The world in which most of us live,'* says John Dewey, "is a world in which everyone has a call- ing, an occupation, something to do. Some are managers and others are subordinates. But the great thing for one as for the other is that each shall have had the education which enables him to see within his daily work all there is in it of large and human significance."^ ^School and Society, p. 38. CHAPTER II PASSING EDUCATION AROUND Democracy's demand for equality of educational opportunity —Adjustment to environment must be universal — Individual and environment are variable — Education to extend through- out life — Putting knowledge to work — Training people at work — Capacity of all for training — Outline of a universal scheme — Vocational education essential — Influences which have thwarted universal education — Examples to follow — Some critics answered. Nothing short of universal education can be the ultimate goal of democracy. Equality of opportu- nity is the foundation of all society based on demo- cratic principles. We agree that education is a fun- damental requirement for equality, and if equality in educational opportunity is to be attained, all sorts of education must be provided to meet the needs of all sorts of people. A democracy must seek to realize, for all education, the ideal of Ezra Cornell for collegiate work expressed in the statement so often quoted: "I v^ould found a university where any person can find instruction in any study." ''It is evident," said Lester F. Ward, "that any system of education which falls short, even in the slightest particular, of absolute universality can not proceed 21 22 LEARNING TO EARN from any true conception of what education is for, or what it is capable of accompHshing." The truth of these observations will go unchal- lenged if we agree upon the proposition set forth in the first chapter that true education consists in the adjustment of the individual to his environment. This means the adjustment of the great mass of people and not merely the fortunate few. It means that the system should not be based upon the capa- bilities and possibilities of the "exceptionally talented, the influential, the fortunately circum- stanced, the heirs of plenty and of leisure," but should be based primarily upon average normal human beings. They constitute the great mass which is yet largely untouched by real education. Education for adjustment must take account of two variables, the individual and the environment. No two people are exactly alike in physical form or adaptability. The variations in the race are infinite. No two people are alike in mentality. Again the variations in the race are infinite. It follows that education which takes account of mental power and physical adaptability must be extremely varied if the real needs of all the people are to be met. Likewise the variations in environment are no less infinite and changes take place with a rapidity that is disturbing to any rigid scheme. Education must therefore, in practical fashion, group the individuals for teaching purposes and lay hold of the more permanent prac- PASSING EDUCATION AROUND 23 tises and principles in the environing world of each group and bring the two into as nearly harmonious relations as the variations of both will permit. Plans for universal education will take account of the fact also that education is not confined to the few years in school, but extends throughout life. Such plans will recognize that "commencement day" is not the end — as most young folks think — but the beginning of education and there will be worked out such a coordination of the school work with the life of the youth, that education will naturally slip over from his school days into his every-day life when he leaves the school. Graduation will mean that the gap between school and work has been bridged and that the youth has joined his mental assets, accumulated through his school studies, with his practical work in profession, trade, or business. There has been too wide a separation between education and practise. Men have gone on accumu- lating knowledge ; scientists and thinkers have been producing new knowledge; and yet the workers on the other side have done their work without the ap- plication of this knowledge which would have meant so much to them. Knowledge and work have each been kept in sealed packages to the hurt of the latter and the uselessness of the former. ''So learn that you may do, and so do that you may learn," should be the ideal of universal education in the process of adjusting man to his environment. Universal 24 LEARNING TO EARN education recognizes that education is as much for men who are doing things as for those who are thinking about things. Enough knowledge is already stored up to revolu- tionize the practical world if it could only be brought into action. Enough scientific knowledge of agri- culture is in printed form to make two blades of grass grow where one grows now if it were effect- ively put to work; enough of industrial science has been accumulated to bring a new era of efficiency if a channel could be opened to conduct it to the right workers in the office and shop ; enough science and art stand ready to improve the millions of homes in the land if the home-makers were given the opportunity to get, and were taught to practise, that part which is useful to them; and enough prin- ciples and facts of business are available for the business man to give business a broader, more per- manent and more efficient character if they can only be wrought in the right proportions, into the minds and actions of business men. The task of doing these things rests upon the edu- cational system. The public is deeply concerned that all of these ends be accomplished and the only public instrument available is the educational system already set up for that very purpose, but which has been perverted from this end by lack of insight, true guidance and constant adaptation. The lead- ers of education on the one hand and of industry, PASSING EDUCATION AROUND 25 business, home and farm on the other, have been working independently, resulting in a system of education unarticulated with environment and an environment which fails to get the forming and transforming knowledge of the school. It can not be too often repeated that education of the sort here outlined must be progressive; con- stantly adapting itself to new conditions; taking ad- vantage of new knowledge; and bringing about a responsive interaction between knowledge and the vocational work of the persons within its influence. The intent of education rightly understood and applied, is not merely to instruct the youth, to give them vocational help, and to form their character. It is not merely to make lawyers, doctors, bankers, carpenters, machinists, engineers, farmers or home- makers. It should do those things in thorough fash- ion, but it should be no less solicitous of the equally large and significant task of educating men and women already engaged in vocational work to be more efficient as workers, home-makers and citi- zens and more broadly sympathetic with life. To take an apprentice in any line and supply by educa- tion the deficiencies of his practical training and make him an all-around man of trade or profession; to make a tradesman a better skilled and more effi- cient worker ; to educate a bank clerk to be a banker ; a salesman to be a buyer, a department head or man- ager; a farmer to utilize the expert knowledge of 26 LEARNING TO EARN his business, or the home manager to conserve the home and its resources ; to put within reach of every one the means of bettering himself if he is ambitious and able to profit by the instruction given, is a pro- gram to fire the imagination of any person who be- lieves in the power of education to promote for the individual a better and fuller life, and for the nation a sounder and more permanent eflficiency. The argument for universal education is predi- cated upon the fact that the mass of people are capable of utilizing properly selected data of educa- tion which is presented in the right way. Far- seeing German educators and statesmen have realized this fact and have acted upon it to the ex- tent of planning a system of education which rec- ognizes the possibilities of utilizing education in all walks of life. They recognize the differences in capacity of people and they likewise recognize the differences in information possessed by each. Lester F. Ward has put the case for the average man in these words : "The large fund of good sense which is always found among the lower uneducated classes is an obtrusive fact to every observing mind. The ability with which ignorant people employ their small fund of knowledge has surprised many learned men. While there may doubtless be found all grades of intellect from the highest philosopher to the lowest idiot, the number who fall below a cer- tain average standard is insignificant, and so, too, is PASSING EDUCATION AROUND 27 the number who rise above it. The great bulk of humanity are fully witted, and amply capable of taking care of themselves if afforded an opportu- nity." While recognizing the capacity of the bulk of hu- manity for training, he also recognized the possi- bilities of applying education to the widest range of activities. To quote him, "All the activities of life are controlled by laws, all successful enterprises are prosecuted according to certain distinct and unvary- ing principles. These are empirically, though as a rule not scientifically, known. To co-ordinate them, though perhaps a laborious, is by no means a diffi- cult task. To make them the subject of systematic instruction is not only possible and practicable but in the highest degree desirable — the most general knowledge attainable would have a direct and im- portant bearing upon the most special vocations of life, so that without descending to technical instruc- tion, the greater part of all the most necessary and important practical knowledge of human life might find place in a universal curriculum." There are several directions in which the educa- tional system must expand if universal education is to be approximated. First, there should be a broader and richer cur- riculum in the elementary schools so as to appeal to a wider range of tastes and capabilities and to give to each student more of the elements of the 2^ LEARNING TO EARN things which come within the range of his ordinary experience. Second, education should not stop at the school door. Everything inside should coordinate with the environment of the pupils. The school and the en- vironment ought to act and react upon each other. And this should continue after the pupil has left the school and gone to work. Until the youth is at least eighteen years of age, whether he is at work or not, there should be sustained a direct relation with the school. Third, many-sided opportunities for vocational education must be given when the youth reaches that age when individualism asserts itself and educa- tion in the mass begins to fail. Fourth, the occupations into which youth enter should be studied and the educational possibilities utilized, for it must be recognized that the principal education which a worker gets is through the work he is doing. So the school must point out what there is in each person's work of educational significance and then use it to interest the workers in the possi- bilities of continued education. Fifth, education being a continuing process, sci- entific care should be taken to encourage the utiliza- tion of every means of promoting study correlated with daily experiences in trade, shop, profession, home, farm, or in the civic life of the community. By evening courses, correspondence courses, public PASSING EDUCATION AROUND 29 libraries and reading rooms, the chance should be afforded to every one to continue his education all through life. Under an ideal system of universal education, the youth will receive an education in the elementary school which will give him the tools of knowledge and some power to appreciate the best in the intellec- tual and civic life; he will receive a broad knowl- edge of social and industrial affairs and thereby a better insight into the way in which men live and labor, and thereby of the forces which move the world. At the age of fourteen the schools will offer him many-sided opportunities for training in lines suited to his tastes and capacities. He may*take further general training preparatory to the higher education or the learned professions; he may begin to prepare for a business career; he may take gen- eral industrial courses leading up to the study of a trade ; or he may go to work, returning to the school a part of the time for supplementary instruction. At sixteen he is free and the lines of study open to him become more specialized. His previous train- ing, if it has been broad and properly adapted, will have begun at least the process of adjusting him to his environment and will therefore have given him a broader basis upon which to build his choice of a vocation. At this age the youth who is going into a trade has as good a right to the means of educa- tion as has the boy who has decided upon a profes- 30 LEARNING TO EARN sion. It is wrong to pave the road to the profes- sions and to leave "the right of way" to the trades and to business and other useful occupations unsur- veyed. To do so, sets a false standard. The stamp of approval is put on professional work and the other is negatively disapproved as an object of worthy ambition. As a result, the professions be- come overcrowded with mediocre men and the skilled trades and occupations with poorly trained men, and great armies of unskilled workers fill the ranks of the unemployed and, unfortunately often, unemployable. Under these conditions, standards are lowered, industry and business languish, gov- ernments are corrupted, social unrest is everywhere found and a vicious form of class education is the direct result. It is one of the anomalies of democracy that that which concerns ninety per cent, of the people should be sacrificed to that which concerns ten per cent. The greatest good to the greatest number is not thus attained. Yet colleges preceded primary schools in this country and received legislative sanction and liberal aid from the state long before free public schools were provided. Thomas Jefferson outlined a system of universal education including free com- mon schools, secondary schools and a college, but the only part of the plan which was adopted was the latter — the University of Virginia. In fact, it was rather late in the last century before our states be- PASSING EDUCATION AROUND 31 gan to establish free public schools. But free schools came and eventually compulsory educa- tion in most of the states. It looked like the dawn of universal education. But conditions changed so rapidly and the traditional course of study was so rigid that the result was uni- versal education in name but not in substance. A new industrial and social environment demanded a corresponding expansion in education. New needs grew up in the complex condition. Old methods of training for trades, business, farm and home were abandoned or rendered almost obsolete. The apprenticeship system broke down and no agency was left but the school to perform the huge task of adjusting the race to its environment. That which looked like universal education in an earlier time became by social and industrial progression, a par- tial and inadequate education, for the demands of the new day. Indeed it is doubtful if the schools, viewed from the standpoint of universal education, come as near to fillrng their true functions in these times as the much less efficient schools did for their times a few generations ago. The influences which have thwarted the develop- ment of universal education are many and subtle. Chief among these are : a wrong idea of the purpose of education; a pedagogy based upon a worn-out philosophy; an educational "standpatism" which re- fuses to seek the truth; and an aristocracy of educa- 32 LEARNING TO EARN tion which successfully has kept a firm grip on the direction of educational effort. All of these com- bined have formed a wall of ignorance, cupidity and selfishness which it is very difiicult to break through. Movements have been started for vocational train- ing as a step in universal education. Forthwith we have heard raised the "hue and cry" that culture, without any proffer to define the term, is the only worthy end of education. The idealist comes for- ward and prates about the development of classes, as if no education would preserve a happy state of social equality while a useful education would de- stroy it. The standpatter declares against doing anything which will require him to think, and lastly the aristocrat, whether of profession, trade, or call- ing, sees to it that the education given in his par- ticular line shall be not too common. In such conditions, we have the spectacle of the elementary and high schools, the colleges and universities, driving out the youth who can not jump over the educational hurdles at the right pace. We find many of the professional schools and even trade schools setting up requirements for entrance and in the courses, which have no relation to the study or practise of the professions or trades they teach, but which serve to eliminate some more "unfits." We find the trade school too often catering to the few "learned trades" and aspiring to become a technical PASSING EDUCATION AROUND 33 college. And we find agricultural schools and col- leges devoting their attention largely to the high- brow farmer and to the turning out of gentlemen farmers and scientific experts, instead of meeting the needs of the man on the farm who can not go to the university but must get what he can within walking distance of home. In a democracy, the problem of universal educa- tion is twofold. While preparing all people to make a living and to live, the educational system must also keep open the way for the humblest to attain the very highest plane which he is capable of reach- ing. It must prepare not merely for leadership but for the discovery of potential leadership in the mass. All grades of schools should therefore be provided at public expense. It is a mistake to as- sume that universal education as expressed in voca- tional education is antagonistic to high schools and colleges. It may change their methods and point of view and make them more efficient, but the purpose is not to destroy but to supplement. The demand is simply that we do for all youth what the high schools and colleges are doing for some by finding out the needs of youth and striving to meet them in practical fashion. Democracy needs efficient educa- tion for the rank and file as well as for the leaders. Observation and common knowledge show that the kind of education by which the mass of people may profit has to do with their occupation or their 34 LEARNING TO EARN life career. Ninety per cent, of the people earn their living with their hands and their chief interest after maturity is in their occupation, their home and the social and civic life of the community. Not many perhaps have heretofore learned a voca- tion. Desirable as it may be to do so, not all youth will study a vocation even when the facilities are provided to train them for it. In fact, the number in school who will actually pick an industrial voca- tion at sixteen will not seriously burden the facili- ties which the schools may readily provide. It takes foresight and steadiness of purpose to choose a vo- cation and prepare for it. There is to the boy what seems an easier way. Too often, he takes the path of least resistance and drifts into "blind alley" and "no thoroughfare" jobs. There comes a time in his life, however, when sobered by work and experi- ence, he realizes his handicap and is ready to turn seriously to the means of training himself for bet- ter things. This new purpose may come early or it may be delayed, but if the ordained agencies of education are alive to their responsibilities, they will be constantly on the alert to open the way for each individual and provide the means to make the "way out" a reality. The opportunity must be provided for all, for "equality of opportunity is the essence of democracy." The plan for universal education must frankly recognize, therefore, that practically all education PASSING EDUCATION AROUND 35 for youth over fourteen or sixteen years of age who are out of school must be connected with their occu- pational interests. If their occupation has been chosen wisely, the youth and the adult will find the life-career motive impelling him to perfect himself in the work he is doing, or has been driven to do. If the occupation has not been chosen wisely, there will be a constant effort at readjustment on the part of progressive men and women. Encouragement should be given and the means of education pro- vided both for those who have found a permanent vocation and those who have not, to continue their education in order to seek greater efficiency^or a satisfactory adjustment to a better life career. With- out such encouragement men and women find their work dreary monotony; hope for the future is dimmed; aimless drifting from job to job results, and social unrest is fomented. The results are dis- astrous to individual progress and to social welfare. Universal education seeks to make progress pos- sible for all people, through an articulation of knowledge with the vocational work in which they engage. The knowledge imparted will be simple or complex to fit the needs of the unskilled workers, the skilled artisan, or the trained business or pro- fessional man. To realize the ideal of universality, the agencies of education must make a close analysis of the occupations of men without prejudice to the humblest job in which the crudest intellects and most 36 LEARNING TO EARN unskilled hands labor. Even there knowledge and training may be estabHshed which will protect life, preserve strength, and make for a more "comforta- ble subsistence." From the data of occupations a program for a complete system of education may be readily worked out, the guiding purpose of which shall be to give equal, if not identical, opportunity to all "to grow in power and appreciation." But, it is objected, how can education be made directly applicable to the hundreds of vocations and possible lines of work? Is not the system founded upon a theory of perfection not to be attained? Granted that the problem is a vast one and almost untouched, that is no excuse for delay in undertak- ing it. The importance of it to the public welfare is so great that no time should be lost on critics who point out its difficulties. "The way to resume is to resume" was a famous phrase and its applicability to our situation is striking. Happily there are examples in our midst for guidance. Experience has been accumulating until a respectable body of reliable facts and practise may be utilized for our purposes. More than a hundred separate trades are being taught in different public and private schools in this country, not to draw upon the experience of foreign countries where in one city alone — Munich — more than fifty trades are taught. Add to all of these the education which is given as a foundation for several vocations and we PASSING EDUCATION AROUND Z7 find examples of a practical and complete vocational education given in a large part of the most impor- tant vocations in which men earn their daily bread. But, persists the critic, what are you going to do in the communities which can not provide a means of education in more than two or three vocations at the most? Are you going to educate every boy as a carpenter or a blacksmith? There is a danger here to be sure, but it is more or less imaginary and at most only temporary. The school in decid- ing what it can teach in a vocational way with its limited means, must consider local conditions and advantages. If there is some preponderating voca- tion in the community which most of the youth will eventually enter, the problem is somewhat simple. The natural and effective thing to do is to teach that vocation in such a way as to make men effi- cient and to broaden their powers as workers in it. For the vocations in which only a few are employed, the school can not maintain distinct trade courses but it can group the fundamentals of several voca- tions in such a way as to give a solid foundation supplementing the practical training of the vocation received in actual practise. For example, a sys- tematic education in blue-print reading will be of fundamental educational value to many trades. In smaller places the workers may have to go to neighboring cities for special trades. In some cases in the more thickly settled communities two or more 38 LEARNING TO EARN communities may join together for the maintenance of vocational schools as contemplated in the laws of Massachusetts and Indiana. In all schools whether in cities, towns or rural districts there can be such an industrializing of the regular school work as will lay the foundations for vocational work and at the same time give a better industrial understanding and social sympathy. CHAPTER III WHEREIN THE PRESENT SYSTEM FAILS Statistics of school attendance — Why children leave school — Neglect of life-career motive — What does education do for those who quit school early — Schools fail to train for self- preservation — Little vocational training — Rural education un- suited to needs — The weaknesses of agricultural colleges — Development of agricultural science — Science of commerce and industry still dormant — Important education obtainable only in nooks and corners — Schools train for higher grades — No stopping place — Education stops at the school door — Re- sults of education obtainable only by a few — The raw materi- als to work upon. % How far are the schools meeting the needs of the people of this country in supplying education which adjusts the individual to his environment, and how nearly does our system provide that universal educa- tion required if the schools are really and truly to become the "hope of this democracy" ? The Report of the United States Commissioner of Education for 1913 states that seventy-eight per cent, of the persons between five and eighteen years of age were enrolled in schools, and that the average daily attendance in all schools was fifty-eight per cent, of the total enrolled, while the average daily attendance was for less than ninety days. But these figures in the aggregate are not so impressive as 39 40 LEARNING TO EARN those which indicate the time when children leave school. The best estimates available — most schools do not keep statistics on this important phase — indi- cate that fully ten per cent, have left the school at thirteen; forty at fourteen; seventy at fifteen, and eighty-five at sixteen years of age.^ Statistics of their advancement are even more impressive since we have set up the standard of graduation from the elementary schools as the mini- mum of schooling for the youth of the land. It may be stated according to Ayres that the gen- eral tendency of city school systems is to carry all of the children through the fifth grade. About half of the total reach the final elementary grade and about ten per cent, reach the final year in high school. These percentages vary in different cities. Typical examples of high percentages retained to the final year in high school are : Newton, Mass 38 per cent. Worcester, Mass 29 per cent. Aurora, 111 25 per cent. Newark, Ohio 25 per cent. Decatur, 111 24 per cent. Haverhill, Mass 24 per cent. Fitchburg, Mass 23 per cent. Kansas City, Mo 22 per cent. Somerville, Mass 22 per cent. ^ Ayres' Laggards in Our Schools, p. 31. THE PRESENT SYSTEM 41 At the other extreme are, Chicago, Cincinnati, Paterson (N. J.) and Reading (Pa.), where five per cent, reach the final high-school grade; Ho- boken, where four per cent, reach the final high- school grade, and Camden, Jersey City, Newark, New York, Philadelphia and Wheeling, where only three per cent, reach the final high-school grade. The point at which pupils leave school varies, although on the average one-half have left before the completion of the elementary grades. Some cities begin to lose pupils in large numbers as early as the fourth and fifth grades. While in one city — Quincy, Massachusetts — eighty-two per cent, of all who enter go through the elementary grades. * It is evident from these figures that the ideal of universal education is not being realized by the schools. Millions of the youth of the land have left the schools with no further preparation than that given by the first four, five or six grades, and practically no facilities have been provided for any further training at public expense. Universal education is not a reality for the coun- try as a whole, nor for any single community, since for different parts of the country thirty to fifty per cent, do not reach the final elementary grade, and in the city having the most favorable record sixteen per cent, do not receive a complete elementary schooling, nor do they get any after-training through the public schools. 42 LEARNING TO EARN Commenting upon the record of school attend- ance for 1913, the commissioner of education said: "An average of ninety days in school and two hun- dred and seventy-five out of school gives a danger- ously small amount of schooling for the future citizens of our democratic republic. ... At this rate the total average schooling for each child to prepare it for life and for making a living, for society and the duties of citizenship, is only one thousand one hundred and seventy days."^ An analysis shows several reasons for the abnor- mal defection from school, chief of which are: inability to forego wage-earning ; failure to respond to the formal teaching of the book; unsuitability of subject-matter to the needs and capacities of the pupil; and, lastly, the fact which is plain to all parents and pupils, that at the end of each successive grade the students are in no better position to enter upon a life career than before. All of these reasons why children leave school center around the failure to connect the school with the life-career motive of the learner. The life- career motive is the principal impelling force keep- ing children in school after the compulsory period, and the schools in failing to give broad vocational training neglect the means of utilizing this motive. What is it that inspires men and women to apply themselves to the tasks of study with earnestness? Report 1913, p. xvi. THE PRESENT SYSTEM 43 Primarily, it is the motive of personal advancement. Show a man how he can better his economic condi- tion by acquiring further knowledge and he will assiduously seek to acquire it if his ambition has not atrophied; show a youth how the knowledge which the school gives couples up with a life-work or even a temporary employment, and he seeks the knowl- edge eagerly; and show an ambitious worker how he can overcome the difficulties of his trade by evening courses or correspondence work and he applies himself to study with vigor. It is the life-career motive that makes students of professional, normal, industrial and trade schools more diligent in their work, and the results more fruitful. Decry as we may the practical in educa- tion, we are confronted by the fact that young and old alike respond to the stimulus of applying knowl- edge practically, and are languid and purposeless in the pursuit of knowledge the utility of which they can not see. But this motive so essential for effective educa- tion is quite generally neglected in the schools. In- deed, it is often discouraged. President Eliot de- clares that the schools fail to perform the animating and selective task of arousing and maintaining the interests of pupils, especially from twelve to sixteen years of age. "Multitudes of American children," he says, "taking no interest in their school work, or seeing 44 LEARNING TO EARN no connection between their studies and the means of later earning a good liveHhood, drop out of school far too early of their own accord, or at least offer no effective resistance to the desire of unwise parents that they stop study and go to work. More- over, from lack of interest, they acquire while in school a listless way of working. "Again, interest in their studies is not universal among that small proportion of American children who go into a secondary school ; and in every college a perceptible proportion of the students exhibit a languid interest, or no interest, in their studies, and therefore bring little to pass during the very pre- cious years of college life."^ What does education do for the fifty per cent, of the nation's children who leave the schools before completing the elementary courses ? Has education performed its functions of adjusting these millions to the conditions in which they are placed and im- planting in them the inspiration to grow in power and appreciation? These are questions to which a militant democ- racy is beginning to seek an answer. Having an- swered these questions, it might be in order to con- sider the case of the forty per cent, who go through the elementary school and partly through the high school ; and, lastly, the case of the ten per cent, who graduate from high school, some of whom get into college, to see how nearly the schools come to the ideal of education for them. ^ Address, National Educational Association, Boston, 1910. THE PRESENT SYSTEM 45 It will be taken for granted that education must give as a minimum the possession of the tools of knowledge and of fundamental facts, and should establish "habits, attitudes and ideals." All after- education, general or vocational, can be built only upon such a foundation. Doubtless, the essential tools, reading, writing and arithmetic, are taught with a keener appreciation of their fundamental importance than ever before, but it would be a bold person who would assume that any considerable portion of the children in the group who leave school at fourteen, or before, are equipped with power to read interpretatively, to express clearly, or to do the ordinary every-day computations. Yet these arft all essential to their freedom and their protection. What else is given to these millions of our youth by the school? Practically nothing. Not one in a thousand derive other benefits. It gives little knowl- edge conducive to self-preservation or that will facilitate gaining a livelihood, leaving such knowl- edge to be picked up at random in after life ; it gives slight knowledge of the duties of home or of parent- hood, and little power or insight into the duties of citizenship. These great masses of children, un- equipped for life, are cast into the industrial strug- gle. Lack of knowledge makes their experience blind. The way of progress is barred because they do not have the necessary tools to weld experience and knowledge into power for success. Practically 46 LEARNING TO EARN all are doomed to hard monotonous toil, without hope or outlook to relieve it. To take up the matter more specifically, there is little teaching of value in the schools of this country relating to the first problem of man's existence, that of self-preservation. Aside from attempts at teach- ing physiology and hygiene, and the effects of alco- hol and narcotics, which many states now require, there is no attempt to guard man through knowledge from the dangers which beset his path. Even the teaching of physiology, hygiene and the effects of alcohol and narcotics is so inefficiently done in many cases as to raise the question of the utility, if not the morality, of their teaching. A minute search of educational institutions, col- legiate as well as elementary, would disclose no im- portant teaching intended to guard the worker through knowledge from the dangers of industrial accidents and diseases. "Safety first" campaigns for industrial safety are planned and conducted out- side the school and with no particular sympathy shown by the schools. It is as though the school considered its function to be wholly unrelated to the ordinary daily life of the individual, and that all things relating to his physical welfare contaminate the holy precincts of education. Plenty of examples may be found where food values for hogs and cattle are taught, but the diet of human beings is a matter which drags educational THE PRESENT SYSTEM 47 ideals in the mire. Diseases of plants and animals are intelligently studied, but outside the medical col- leges the diseases of human beings are scarcely alluded to. Yet, the new day demands a study of all these things relating to man's physical welfare. Conditions of living have changed. The complex- ities of man's dependence are such that organized instruction for self-protection is now an absolute necessity, and the school is the only public agency in a position to give it. Education was formerly almost exclusively voca- tional. The few that were educated in the schools were educated for some calling. The education of the prince, when education was confined to princes, was vocational. When learning was confined largely to the clergy, men were trained for the church. The Athenian ideal of education was for the perform- ance of the duties of citizenship, and citizens were trained. The Romans added law and trained for that vocation. The Middle Ages saw great univer- sities of law, medicine and theology. These pro- fessions were the ends of education and remained so for many centuries, almost down to our own times. All that men needed to know about the other vocations was gained by other means than formal education. The need for education in other prac- tical callings was not great, and the means were at hand in the apprenticeship system. We still train men in the vocations of the church, 48 LEARNING TO EARN the law and medicine, and to these have been added many other vocations for which some preparation is given. But we find that vastly wider training is needed to meet the complexities of our progressive civilized life. The democratic ideal, too, has em- phasized that every man must have equal opportu- nity not merely to get a particular kind of education, but to get that kind of education best suited to his need and capacity. The old scheme of education for practical arts has broken down and men are adrift in the mazes of industrial life. Where voca- tional education a few decades ago met the condi- tions by educating for the few learned professions, it must now educate for the many practical arts as well as the learned vocations. The obligation is specially emphasized by the fact that the education of to-day is principally at public expense, and there can be no proper discrimination. The schools have not met the new conditions. They have not kept pace with the changing life. They have undoubtedly taught well the things which they have taught, but the question now before the public concerns the usefulness of teaching much that is taught. Certain it is that as far as fitting youth to meet his most urgent problem — that of earning a living — very little has been accomplished. The Federal Commission on Vocational Educa- tion declared that not more than one person in a hundred had been trained properly for the work THE PRESENT SYSTEM 49 they were doing. "There are more workers being trained at public expense," the report declares, "in the city of Munich, Germany, than in all the great cities of the United States representing a population of more than 12,000,000." Agricultural colleges are found in every state, but until very recent times, and largely yet, these insti- tutions were colleges for the preparation of scien- tists — not for farmers who work on the soil. No serious attempt has been made until recently to know what kind of knowledge the farmer, as a farmer, needed, and instead of giving courses suited to his needs, there grew up the scientific agricultural college with absurd academic entrance requirements and courses which barred the very people it should reach. The development in this way had, however, one compensation. It created a body of literature relat- ing to the scientific process of agriculture and thus gave the materials to be translated into terms under- standable by the farmer. It has opened the way for the development of real vocational education in agri- culture. The next step is to put the knowledge of agriculture now existing into the hands of every person who tills the soil. "It is obviously less impor- tant," said Lester F. Ward, "that a great amount of intelligence shall exist than that the data of intelli- gence shall be in the possession of all," and the application of the thought to agriculture is striking. 50 LEARNING TO EARN This has not been done, and after forty years of agricultural education, such as it has been, we are confronted with worse conditions than when knowl- edge of agriculture first began to get serious atten- tion. Average yields of farm crops have been either practically at a dead level or are decreasing, the soil is being exhausted at an alarming rate, tenantry is increasing, the rural population is shifting to the city, and the cost of living rises at a rate far in excess of increased capacity to pay. The facts are simply that the data of agricultural science have not been put into possession of the men who till the soil. The state colleges and schools of agriculture, the state experiment stations, the extension departments and the county agents of agriculture are doing a great work in diffusing the knowledge fundamental to a farmer's work. But the results so much needed can only be permanently achieved by educating the boy in a vocational school of agriculture within his reach, to be a farmer capable of applying knowledge to his soil, and the girl who is happy in the country to be a home-maker in the farm home. Much has been done in many parts of the country due to the vision and initiative of individuals. The rural schools as a whole have, however, been sleep- ing on their opportunity. They have been following a regimen of studies utterly unfitted to their environ- ment. The teaching of reading, writing, arithmetic, THE PRESENT SYSTEM 51 geography, spelling, grammar, history and other elementary studies has been formal to a degree that is shocking to common sense. Instead of relating these studies to the life motives of the young, and teaching them in such a way as to connect them with life; instead of taking advantage of the opportu- nities which in the country are unequaled for apply- ing knowledge to things, the schools have been allowing the children to live off the dry husks of knowledge. Teachers for these schools have been trained in the village or city high schools and have perhaps gone through formal training in normals or colleges. They have little sympathy with rural life and their knowledge of the country is limited. •It is ridiculous to see a teacher of this sort, who may not know barley from beans, attempting to teach agri- culture in a flower-pot in the winter time to red- blooded rural youth. Such has been the teaching in a great part of our rural schools. False standards are set up, boys and girls are made to dislike edu- cational work, and such influence as the school exercises is in favor of the trend away from the country. But inadequate as it has been, progress has been greater in agricultural education, including the farm home, than in the education for industry or com- merce. At least the scientific data for such educa- tion have been partly discovered and formulated. 52 LEARNING TO EARN Beginnings in the discovery and formulation of the scientific data for industry and commerce have scarcely been made. Agricultural experiment stations have supplied the raw materials to work out the pattern of educa- tion for the farm and the home. Industrial and commercial experiment stations have yet to be organized in the same large way to supply the raw material to solve the problem of education for in- dustry and commerce. No adequate knowledge of the processes of indus- try and commerce, the needs of workers or the con- ditions of efficiency and success are available upon which to base a sound industrial or commercial edu- cation. So far as these callings are concerned, the schools must begin at the very beginning and build up the scientific data and make its application to the needs of industry and commerce and the workers engaged in them. Herbert Spencer, speaking of the English schools of fifty years ago, foretold the weaknesses of our own schools in this respect when he said that that which most concerns the business of life is almost entirely left out of our schools. "All of our industries would cease," he said, "were it not for that information which men begin to acquire as they best may after their education is said to be finished, and were it not for this informa- tion which has been from age to age accumulated THE PRESENT SYSTEM 53 and spread by unofficial means, these industries would never have existed. That increasing ac- quaintance with the laws of phenomena which has through successive ages enabled us to subjugate nature to our needs, and in these days gives the common laborer comforts which a few centuries ago kings could not purchase, is scarcely in any degree owed to the appointed means of instructing our youth. The vital knowledge — that by which we have grown as a nation to what we are, and which now underlies our whole existence — is a knowledge that has gotten itself taught in nooks and corners, while the ordained agencies for teaching have been mumbling dead formulas." One of the most pointed criticisms of the scjiools is that they devote their energies to preparing pupils to enter the next higher grade. The elementary school prepares for the high school, the high school prepares for the college, and the college prepares for the university. Those who fail to be promoted are ignorantly dubbed ''laggards." One regimen of studies is set out for the children of all the people with little regard to the sympathies and capacities of each. If they can profit by the instruction offered they are advanced regularly from grade to grade and graduate amid the praises of friends, but if their particular powers do not re- spond to the uniform course and the formal methods of teaching, they are rapidly made to feel that their place IS not in school. 54 LEARNING TO EARN The justification of this system — if it can be justi- fied at all — must be found in the par excellence of the education which is given in the various grades, from the kindergarten to the university. Our com- pulsory education laws are justified only on the premise that the education offered is the best that ! can be devised for the children who are compelled to take it. One fact is patent to all educational observers, namely, that the colleges dominate the high schools and the high schools in turn dominate the elementary schools by holding up the bogy of entrance requirements. The courses are, therefore, generally shaped for the few who are headed for the college, and the needs of the many are ignored. The impressive fact that ninety per cent, leave the school along the way seems to be overlooked in organizing school courses. At no place is there any adequate terminal facil- ities for the youth who goes to work short of the university professional school. Even the colleges do not offer any particular connection with the life career except for an insignificant percentage. No objection can be raised to the open way which offers the chance to attain the highest educational plane. It is a fundamental strength of our democ- racy that opportunity is open to the humblest to rise to noble heights through learning, but it should be no less fundamental that the rights of all to the THE PRESENT SYSTEM 55 equal enjoyment of all that they are capable of attaining should be promoted. The formality is such in our schools that educa- tion is looked upon as an end to be attained in the period of attendance. It nowhere seems to be looked upon as the beginning of education which should continue throughout life. School education and after-education are thought to be entirely differ- ent species. Instead of making the two harmonize, the whole emphasis is put upon "finishing" the edu- cation of our boys and girls in the schools. In consequence, the day the youth leaves school his education, except by experience, stops. How many boys and girls turn back to their books after\^ard? That they do not is conclusive proof that education is not a continuing process. The fortunately circum- stanced go on to college, where, to a large extent, the same formal methods produce like results. Some take hold of courses offered by private or correspondence schools and get a new hold on the educational ladder, but the great mass of youth cut themselves off from all educational work forever. Do the schools accomplish the prime purpose of adjusting the individual to his environment, and do they provide such adjustment for all the individuals in society? If further evidence were needed, it can readily be supplied by authoritative contemporary criticism. 56 LEARNING TO EARN "We are confronted everywhere in the world by this fact," said President Nicholas Murray Butler, ''that while mankind is endeavoring to adapt the individual to the environment by education and training, we have thus far been successful only in providing a means of adaptation for the compara- tively few select survivors of a long, arduous and expensive educational process. A boy, for instance, beginning in the elementary school can go on through the high school, the college and the univer- sity and can prepare himself for a career as an engineer, whether civil, mining, metallurgical, me- chanical, chemical or electric. The same boy can, if he prefers, begin in the elementary school, go through high school, college and university and pre- pare himself for the practise of medicine and sur- gery, or for the practise of law, or for the duties of the teacher, or as an architect. The select few who can survive this process, and can meet the cost of it, are able to adapt themselves to their environment in a most admirable fashion anywhere in the world, whether in America or in Europe. They are trained to take hold of life with a firm grip at some partic- ular point, and then the problem of success or failure rests with their own several characters and abilities. Society has done its part in offering them an organ- ized and effective opportunity for preparation. "But to the great mass of human beings this op- portunity is not open. All over the world we have now brought these young people, by various types of compulsory legislation, under the influence of the elementary school for, let us say, the years from six or seven to thirteen or fourteen. This great mass of boys and girls get the very admirable and very effective training of the elementary school, but for THE PRESENT SYSTEM 57 well-known economic reasons they can not take advantage of what society has to offer beyond that. They are compelled to go out and take hold of life as best they can at that tender age, unadapted, un- fitted, with no specific tentacle ready to grip any particular hanging rope on which to climb to eco- nomic independence or security."* Doctor Andrew S. Draper saw clearly the defects of the schools and boldly expressed his views in these words : "When but one-third of the children remain to the end of the elementary course, there is something the matter with the schools. When half of the men who are responsible for the business activities, and who are guiding the political life of the country, tell us that children from the elementary schools are not able to do definite things required in the world's real affairs, there is something the matter with the schools. When work seeks workers and young men and women are indifferent to it, or do not know how to do it, there is something the matter with the schools."^ And again he said: "Our elementary schools train for no industrial employment — they lead to nothing but the secondary school, which in turn leads to the college, the uni- versity and the professional school, and so very exclusively to professional and managing occupa- * Vocational Education^ an address before the Commercial Club of Chicago, 1913. ^ Draper : American Education, p. 275. 58 LEARNING TO EARN tions. One who goes out of the school system be- fore the end or at the end of the elementary course is not only unprepared for any vocation which will be open to him, but too commonly he is without that intellectual training which should make him eager for opportunity and incite him to the utmost effort to do just as well as he can whatever may be open to him. He goes without respect for the manual industries where he might find work if he could do it. He is without the simple preparation necessary to do definite work in an office or a store. He is neither clear about his English nor certain about his figures."^ Since the ideal of universal education for adjust- ment has not been attained and can be attained only through the occupations in which men engage, the first duty of the schools should be to analyze the vocations of life. There are in this country ten million persons en- gaged in trades and industries who have not been properly trained for the work they are doing and who are not in a position to grow in vocational power; there are thirteen million farmers without adequate scientific and practical knowledge to suc- ceed under modern conditions ; there are seven mil- lion persons engaged in commercial pursuits, includ- ing transportation, most of whom have had scarcely any broad training for their responsibilities, and there are twenty million home-makers, a large part ® Draper: American Education, p. 27B. THE PRESENT SYSTEM 59 of whom are incapable through lack of knowledge and training to realize the ideal of the home and to make its business side a success. Only a small num- ber of these workers have been specially trained by the educational system. While the former means of training have been breaking down under social changes, no adequate substitutes have been as yet provided. It is to these masses of our population that the schools must first address their efforts and to the millions who each year are recruited from the schools for the ranks of trade, industry, commerce and the home. We shall now proceed to analyze these great occupational interests to determine their demands and the needs of the workers in them. CHAPTER IV INDUSTRY AND ITS EDUCATIONAL NEEDS The economic and social basis of industrial progress — Lack of skilled workers — Exploitation of our natural resources — Collapse of trade union apprenticeship — Opposition to the corporation trade school — Chaos in industry — Waste caused by industrial unrest — Cooperation is the ultimate goal — The problem of monotony in employment — Training for accident prevention — Our industrial history is ignored in the schools — The importance of a thoroughgoing survey of industry. Developments in our national life which have come about with growth of the population have transformed us suddenly from an agrarian into an industrial society, whence have arisen economic problems of vast import to the comfort of our peo- ple. Adjustments in industry have not kept pace with our need of improved processes and greater human skill. Competition has laid bare the shams of our affected excellence, the hollo wness of our conceit in manufacture and industrial production. Two chief causes may be assigned for the Amer- ican effort to grasp the problem of industry and with scientific insight search out and analyze its ramifications. They are the widening conviction that industrial production has failed to generate wholesome influences for civic betterment among the men and women engaged in industry and the 60 INDUSTRY AND ITS NEEDS 61 complementary condition that the products of our factories and workshops are inferior and hence our opportunity for growing world trade restricted. "As the ability of a nation to hold its own against other nations depends on the skilled activity of its units," says Herbert Spencer/ "we see that on such knowledge may turn the national fate." Still another explanation of the origin of voca- tional, or, in this particular connection, industrial education, closely related to the other two, is the wide-spread belief that the public schools in failing to train young men and women for ability to earn an abundance of good white bread, were failing to perform their most natural mission. Time and again in this country reformers have failed to make any headway with a new program until they were able somehow to connect it with leaks in revenue or loss of profit. Once they were able to show the connection between an obsolete order and growing deficits, little effort was neces- sary to move the most stupid of reactionaries. Just as soon as the proponents of industrial education were able to show the manufacturer he was losing trade in world markets because of poorly-trained workmen, the manufacturer was willing to listen to what was urged in behalf of industrial education. It did not require the pronouncement of a German ^ What Knowledge Is of Most Worth in Education, D. Ap- pleton & Co., 1866, p. 47. 62 LEARNING TO EARN commission that America was not to be feared as a world competitor so long as its workmen were trained by empirical methods; the secret of German ascendency in world markets properly was attrib- uted to its elaborate scheme of industrial education sustained by the German state. Thus was the man- ufacturer arrayed on the side of industrial education in this country. Thus did the consciousness of his own shortsightedness break through the crust of prejudice and ignorance. Since the beginning of the present war the world has learned to its very great surprise how very far scientific concern for industry has emancipated Germany from any de- pendence economically upon the rest of the world. '^ The present needs of industry, viewed in their economic aspects, and from that point of view only, may be thus summarized : I. A greater investment of labor or skill in the finished product of industry. II. Right relationship between employers and employees, which involves a cooperative effort by employer and employee. III. Relief of the workers from monotonous employment as far as relief is possible. IV. Reduction of the hazard of industrial em- ployment by several methods, chief of which is the education of employers and employees in accident prevention and to the point of view that industrial accidents are wasteful. INDUSTRY AND ITS NEEDS 63 V. An educational system that will develop gumption, initiative, independence, patience, imag- ination, invention and self-reliance and eliminate awkwardness among workers. VI. A thorough survey of our whole industrial system that will determine the social value of each industry and fix the recognition to be accorded it a.s a social factor. "We are twenty-five years behind most of the nations that we recognize as competitors," says the report of the committee of the National Association of Manufacturers on Industrial Education, made in 1912.^ "We must come nearer to the level of inter- national competition. As every manufacttiring establishment must have a first-class mechanical equipment and management, so also it must have in its workmen skill equal to that of competitors, do- mestic or foreign. The native ability, the intuitive insight, courage and resourcefulness of American workmen is quite unsurpassed. They are the broth- ers of the *men behind the guns.' It is their mis- fortune that they have not been given by their coun- try that measure of technical instruction that is their due, and are by no means equal in technical skill to the workers of continental Europe. . . . "Providence has been kind to us, but Providence is likely now to leave us a little more to our own intelligence. We must henceforth sell more brains and less raw material. We must, to the utmost ^ Report of Committee on Industrial Education, at Seven- teenth Annual Convention, New York City, May 21, 1912; iH. E. Miles, Chairman of the Committee. 64 LEARNING TO EARN degree, develop our human efficiencies. In them is a natural resource, and the only one that increases with use and will increase forever and immeasur- ably. Other nations, lacking our raw materials, make the cultivation of their human resources the substantial basis of their prosperity and happiness." So long as our natural resources appeared inex- haustible — and they did so appear until compara- tively recent years — our industrial development, such as it was, quite reasonably centered about the exploitation of these resources. Moreover, railroad building on a gigantic scale facilitated the exploita- tion of bulky crude products of the earth. Ameri- cans might make handsome profits from the sale of crude pig iron, which Germany bought of us and to which Germany added the patient experimentation of its chemists and the skill of its artisans. So long as crude iron ore appeared inexhaustible we were willing to accept our profits from mining, and per- haps the simple processes of reduction, and to pay back to Germany fifty or one hundred times the value of the original raw product, which represented Germany's investment of intelligence and skill in the finished product. Recently we have been taking an inventory of our natural resources. We have found a stock we had believed inexhaustible to be sadly depleted. It is not, therefore, surprising that we have agreed upon a policy of conservation — a strange word with INDUSTRY AND ITS NEEDS 65 new meaning each season. We have determined to pursue the policy of our most successful competitor, and we likewise are generally agreed that the same end must be attained by the same means ; that is, by industrial education. Perhaps our industrial atmosphere has been ob- scured by a few epochal inventions — the steamboat, electric telegraph and telephone, the reaper and the sewing-machine. Perhaps our self-complacency, our national conceit, was founded upon the admitted transformation wrought by these inventions. Yet these inventions were no more useful to us in the exploitation of our resources than to Germany and England in getting our raw products cheaply for manufacture into finished articles. We are still accredited with the manufacture of superior agri- cultural implements and superior sewing-machines, but here the story ends. The fact still remains that the value added in the manufacture of raw products in this country is only two-thirds of the value of raw products used; that is, for every three dollars' value of raw products we add two dollars' value by manufacture. By in- telligence and skill Germany adds to the value of the raw product another value which is two and two- thirds times the original value. In other words, for every three dollars of original value in raw products Germany adds eight additional dollars' value in the process of manufacture. 66 LEARNING TO EARN Our mistaken notion that our raw products were inexhaustible, and the further fact that a satisfac- tory profit could be obtained from the production of raw material, are partially responsible for the pres- ent chaotic state of industry. Another fact is also painfully apparent. We have not possessed the skilled labor with which to perform the finer proc- esses of industrial art. Not only do we suffer great loss from incomplete production, due to want of skill, but our processes are inefficient and wasteful. Until quite recently we paid little or no attention to the human methods in industry and there was little experimentation for correct standards. Men were assigned to this ma- chine or that machine, this process or that process, and left to toil without any well-determined notion of how the volume of their output would balance with the output of other men operating other ma- chines or engaged in other processes. Accurate data for fair standards were not available. There was little information at hand to indicate whether indi- vidual workmen were efficient; whether they were performing their tasks by the shortest cuts possible. Germany has won many trade battles in her in- dustrial laboratories. Everything possible is done to eliminate waste in manufacturing processes. An institute for coal-mining research, designed to work out processes for saving all the by-products, such as ammonia and coal tar, and thereby reducing the INDUSTRY AND ITS NEEDS 67 cost of fuel, has just been opened in that country. It is only one of the many similar institutes for scientific research which give expert advice to every department of industry. Training for industry, if it realizes the purposes of its proponents, will make of every worker, grounded in the science of industrial production, an experimenter for improved methods and new ways. It offers an opportunity to widen the sources of industrial research by making every man a research student instead of a devitalized and de-energized automaton. It will democratize the industrial lab- oratory and open the door, heretofore to be entered by a mere handful of men, to the many. The Na- tional Cash Register is the product not of a single genius, but of hundreds of men employed in the factory, who have for the promise of substantial reward devoted themselves to the improvement of each and every part. Industrial education will uni- versalize the methods by which one company has produced a cash register that has no equal on the market. — . Until recent years the trade union system of ap- prenticeship was our sole source of skilled mechan- ics. But apprenticeship had its origin and served its purpose in an industrial order altogether different from that now prevailing. Apprenticeship does not meet the present needs of industry. As a scheme of education it is altogether inadequate. Conditions of 68 LEARNING TO EARN society have changed greatly. Formerly, the master was responsible for the conduct of the apprentice, who lived with him, ate at his table and perhaps subsequently married his daughter. The master felt a personal responsibility for the character of the apprentice's training, the perfection of his skill. But the master no longer works with his men and exercises no personal supervision over his appren- tice, who is merely a hired boy and who must de- pend for his training upon what he may gain by observation. No one is present to direct the inquir- ing energies of his youthful mind. The boss or foreman is likely to be interested solely in volume of production and does not have time to look after the training of the young man seeking to learn a trade. Moreover, the system of apprenticeship has operated to reduce the available supply of skilled workmen of whatever degree, since entrance into a trade is almost as difficult as opportunities are meager. But trade union leaders were prone to de- fend the apprenticeship system as long as no satis- factory substitute was offered. Many large corporations maintain private trade schools where young men are received for study and training for a trade or for some department of the company's business. Their work has not been altogether satisfactory, but they have done some- thing to bridge the gap between inefficiency and skill. Their failure consists fundamentally in the INDUSTRY AND ITS NEEDS 69 limitations of the scheme. Corporation trade schools educate only for the specific concerns which maintain them and not for industrial processes gen- erally. Young men trained in the narrow ways of a particular organization are apt to become wholly dependent upon that organization and to believe in the permanence and infallibility of its processes. Corporation trade schools can hardly develop the maximum of imagination and initiative — the two very important attributes of efficiency in industry. Naturally, the trade unions opposed the corpora- tion trade school. A special committee of the American Federation of Labor/ which made a report on industrial education at the Toronto meet- ing in 1909, opposed corporation trade schools on the grounds that, since their selection of pupils is private and not public, they are undemocratic and un-American; that they offer an opportunity to teach and foster anti-unionism with school-appren- ticed boys ; that they are wholly removed from the salutary supervision of the whole people and leave unsolved "the fundamental democratic problem of giving the boys of the country an equal opportunity and the citizens the power to criticize and reform their educational machinery" ; that they merely pre- tend to teach trades "in periods ranging from four * Proceedings of Twenty-ninth Annual Convention, A. F. L., p. 101. 70 LEARNING TO EARN months to four years, and turn out graduates in times of industrial peace who are able to earn only fifty per cent, of the established wage in a given trade, and in times of industrial dispute are ex- ploited in the interests of unfair employers." But this committee also admitted the shortcom- ings of the apprentice system. "Formerly, the ap- prenticeship system offered the boy an opportunity to learn a trade and become a thoroughly trained mechanic," it found, **but of late years the scheme of specialization has supplanted the old apprentice- ship system, even to extreme specialization. . . . The one trouble in America to-day is that too many of our youths who have graduated from the gram- mar or high school are misfits industrially. If we are to secure industrial supremacy, or even maintain our present standards in the industrial world, we must in some way in our educational system acquire an equivalent to the old apprenticeship system." Thus the influence of trade unionism in the United States was marshaled on the side of indus- trial education, if provided for by public agency. This victory was attained, not without serious ob- stacles, by a few far-seeing men who possessed the confidence of organized labor. The latter element took the position that education for industry must be thorough, and to be thorough must be under- taken at public expense. It must be made a part of the public school system. On this basis alone was INDUSTRY AND ITS NEEDS 71 organized labor willing to indorse industrial educa- tion as supplemental to the apprenticeship system. There are, in this country, several types of trade schools — those supported by public funds, those supported by private foundations and those sup- ported in various other ways. The International Typographical Union established a school of print- ing in 1908. A number of technical schools are maintained by public funds and an even larger num- ber by private endowment. Boston and Lowell have maintained evening industrial and trade schools for many years. Many such schools are maintained privately. Some practical shop courses are publicly maintained and others are privately endowed. There are trade schools for the colored race and numerous private correspondence schools offering instruction at long range for industry. One correspondence school claims that during a single year five thousand of its students received wage increases, averaging four hundred dollars for each student, due to train- ing received by correspondence. Finally, there are numerous intermediate industrial, preparatory trade or vocational schools, among which are those at New Bedford, Lawrence and Newton, Massa- chusetts, conducted in accordance with a Massachu- setts statute of 1906, and several in New York, conducted under a New York act of 1908. Many other states have made substantial progress toward establishing and maintaining industrial schools. 72 LEARNING TO EARN Some means must be devised by which, for the wide-spread unrest now prevailing in industry, a spirit of cooperation and mutuality will be substi- tuted. Industrial managers are agreed that this unrest is wasteful; that, whatever its causes, unrest operates to reduce efficiency, not only in the produc- ing department, but in the departments of sales and distribution. Furthermore, industrial unrest tends to restrict the consumption of all classes. There is a fundamental cause of industrial unrest v/hich may be defined as the uneven division between capital and labor, employer and employee, of the products or fruits of industry. This fundamental difference is expressed in divers ways, chief of which are the desire of the workers for a voice in determining the conditions under which they are to vv^ork, revolt against arbitrary dealings with indi- vidual working men and the spread of industrial and trade unionism as a sequel to disastrous and wasting strikes. Infamous conditions patent to certain industries must be removed. These conditions not only are drawing the fire of the social crusader but they are wasting the energies of the industrial manager. They evidence a very serious breach of harmony be- tween industry and the workers and call for an im- mediate readjustment. It should be unnecessary for social workers to strive against child labor, un- sanitary factories, occupational diseases, long hours INDUSTRY AND ITS NEEDS IZ of service, the toll of human flesh taken by industrial accidents, irregular employment and wages which fall below a living minimum. Fundamentally, these conditions are social evils but they have a profound economic significance to industry and they ought to be eradicated. Industry largely must set its own house aright. "Herein must the patient minister unto himself." No one manufacturer can accom- plish the revolution but all, working together, can do so and they should act with earnestness, even despatch. It may be said that these conditions are irremedi- able; that no satisfactory panacea has been or will be devised. This contention is untrue. Of all the ills to which industry is heir, that of irregular un- employment undoubtedly is least susceptible to a thoroughgoing remedy. Yet unemployment is not at all hopeless. When men and women are more satisfactorily trained for industry, when industrial surveys have set forth the facts regarding the op- portunity for steady employment in each trade, there will no longer be the same blind choice — seasonal or intermittent trades and unemployment will be avoided by men who must consider the permanency of employment. It is characteristic of our Industrial order that we have over-emphasized the difference in impor- tance of various works. Although we have very much to say about the "dignity of honest labor," 74 LEARNING TO EARN we do not accord to manual labor the social value to which it is entitled. That is because we are still thinking in terms of an individualistic philosophy and because we still act from that motif. Actually, we do not consider the value of manual labor as comparable with the mental efforts of the the- ologian, the lawyer or the merchant. We harp much about the want of efficiency of the man who keeps our streets clean and consider with hypocritical seriousness whether we are getting a full day's work for a dollar and a half, yet we concede to the corporation attorney, who is paid to inform his client of all the sharp practises by which the state may be frustrated in its endeavor to enforce useful laws, the right to have for his services fifty or per- haps one hundred thousand dollars a year. And this corporation attorney who receives his fee for knowing how to evade our laws and for so instruct- ing his client is the same man to whom perhaps the state has given a professional education — a voca- tional education — in our state universities, at great expense to all the people. We can not escape the consequences of our ideal- ism or lack of it. As long as the dollar is the de- termining standard of successful careers, the toiler who labors for meager wages will remain at the foot of the social ladder. He can not rise above it. Perhaps there is no panacea for this condition. Per- haps industry is not to be held accountable for the INDUSTRY AND ITS NEEDS 75 cataclysmic peril of individualism run riot, but in- dustrial education will free the workers from the enticements of "blind alley" jobs, facilitate the realization of an economic democracy and in the end raze the bulwarks of class exploitation, an ideal from which industry certainly is not to emerge a loser. Cooperation between employer and employee, as the ultimate goal of industry, can not be attained by temporizing devices conceived by ultra-enthusi- astic philanthropists or fomented by irresponsible agitators. Cooperation is a scientific fact and its approach likewise is scientific. It must be realized by and through the efforts of the student. Indus- trial education, therefore, must include the prob- lems of cooperation as one of its chief concerns. Industry needs to find some form of relief from the exactions of monotonous employment. There are in this country upward of twenty million people over ten years of age — men, women and children — engaged in unskilled or partially-skilled occupations. The number doing this unskilled or highly special- ized work remains fairly constant, and increases in about the same ratio as the increase in popula- tion. The service is menial, monotonous, automatic. Little training is required for such work and not more than a few months' experience. The school seems totally unable to contribute anything to the betterment of such workers as long as they remain 7(i LEARNING TO EARN in these unskilled or partially-skilled occupations. Tacitly, we recognize in this country the necessity for the industrial worker to proceed out of hand toil, by promotion, to positions as foremen, man- ager, director and owner, if he is to enjoy the greater social luxuries. He can obtain few luxuries as long as he remains an industrial worker because custom has fixed a limit to what he may receive. We are beset, therefore, with the alternative either of considering monotonous employment in special- ized industries or the hand trades as the beginning of a man's promotion to a managing position where he may earn enough to support himself and family in comfort and save against old age and diminished earning capacity, or, of admitting that this class of labor is underpaid. If the man who yesterday performed the auto- matic tasks of industry to-day has been raised to the position of foreman or superintendent or sales manager, some one takes his place. That one man has been promoted does not reduce the number of men required for the commoner kind of labor, which the promoted man performed a little while ago. Only one out of ten boys entering the textile mill, it is said, can expect to rise out of the wearisome niche of automatic effort into more highly skilled work and, as for girls, the percentage is much smaller. Only one in two hundred girls employed in the simple automatic processes of the textile miU r INDUSTRY AND ITS NEEDS 77 may expect a permanent and lucrative position, of- fering constant opportunity for individual effort at greater efficiency and promxotion, higher wages and better working conditions. Of course, boys and girls must be educated av/ay from these "blind alley" occupations. Girls are em- ployed on an average of seven years in these trades, after which they marry or leave for other causes. But boys must continue to be wage-earners all their lives, and the pressure of their permanent welfare makes the problem more acute. Charles A. Prosser suggests the machine shops, repair shops, electrical shops, wheelwrighting and power shops which clus- ter about the textile center as desirable openings for boys fitted for advancement and as well situated for their part-time training while they are working actively in the textile industry. Mining practically is devoid of opportunities for promotion. It offers little inspiration for more than average effort and scarcely any chance for individ- ual skill. Yet there are many hand trades necessary to mining operations and open to young men work- ing in a mine through which they may find, if they choose, a "place in the sun." Girls who perform monotonous tasks may take up household science as a wholesome diversion and in it may find many opportunities to increase their earnings or prepare for the business of home-mak- ing, which eventually is their chief interest. 7S LEARNING TO EARN Large-scale production, with its finely-spun divi- sion of labor, depending upon specialized machines run at high speed, where increased profits are closely related to greater mental and physical fatigue of the workers, is a problem which industry must attack for its own sake. Monotonous employment tends to restrict the activity of motor centers to a few grooves and in that much, during leisure hours, calls for a variety of experiences that may become more and more physically and morally harmful. Shorter hours will tend to relieve the strain, but some means ought to be provided by which the worker will find a wholesome avenue of expression in his leisure hours. Industry should take the initiative and, in a large measure, direct the course which public agencies are to take in providing healthful and diverting systems of recreation for men and women, boys and girls, engaged in monotonous employments. Here is an opportunity for trained social workers, but every agency, public and private, must cooperate to re- lieve the tension of toil where "efficiency" concerns itself merely with speeding up the physical efforts of the worker. Perhaps industrial education will fail to contrib- ute materially to the relief of the workers from automatic industry. Perhaps automatic industry is not susceptible to thoroughgoing relief. Yet the problem is certain to be attacked as a consequence INDUSTRY AND ITS NEEDS 79 of the somewhat universal interest in industrial edu- cation, and may we not expect that a scientific con- sideration of its troublesome features will yield a satisfactory return for the effort? An almost crucial need of industry is the training for accident prevention. Employers should be made to see that accidents are wasteful; that they affect the credit side of the ledger ; that loss of life, perma- nent or even temporary illness or injury of em- ployees cost dollars, not only in the pay-roll, but in the net outlay for production. Frederick L. Hoffman* estimated the number of fatal accidents in industry in 1906 at 32,004, while Doctor Josiah Strong, in his Safety and Securiff of American Life and Lab or, ^ asserts that "our peace- ful vocations cost more lives every two days than all we lost in battle during our war with Spain." Doctor Tolman gives even more startling figures in his volume. Safety, issued in 1913. "It is the general opinion of the engineering profession," he says,^ "that one-half of the accidents in the United States are preventable and that a conservative esti- mate of the annual number of accidents which result fatally or in partial or total incapacity on the part of the worker may be placed at 500,000. Reckon- ing the earning capacity of the average worker at * Bliss, Encyclopedia of Social Reform, p. 4. " Quoted in Bliss, Encyclopedia of Social Reform, p. 6. ' Ibid., p. 2. 80 LEARNING TO EARN $500 per annum, we have to consider a social and economic loss of $250,000,000 a year. And these figures, of course, take no account of the many high- salaried men and industrialists killed every year in mining, building, transportation and other fields of industry. "Every year," he continues,^ "we spend enormous sums 'conserving the national resources.' We are taking care of our trees, we are taking care of our game, we are taking care of our fish, but also every year we lose many times over what we conserve in this way simply because an army of wage-earners are allowed to become a charge on charity for no other reason than that we do not seem to consider it worth while to take care of the very foundation of the nation — ^the workingman and his family. . . . In this last and most vital question of all — ^the wasted lives of our people — we have been making ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of world powers." As a contrast with the reckless extravagance that prevails in this country, Tolman cites^ the statement of Doctor Zacher, director of the German Imperial Bureau of Statistics : "One billion marks in wage-earning efficiency an- nually we conserve for Germany through our sana- toria, museums of safety, convalescent homes and other forms of social insurance, by which we safe- ^ Bliss, Encyclopedia of Social Reform, p. 4. ^ Ibid., p. 4. INDUSTRY AND ITS NEEDS 81 guard the lives and limbs of our workmen and pre- vent the causes and effects of diseases which would lessen their economic efficiency." "One of the most important phases of our future development," says Doctor Tolman,^ "is the work of creating an inexpensive efficient handrail at the top of our industrial precipice to take the place of the unreliable and expensive ambulance at the bot- tom." It is not sufficient either to install every available device for the safety of industry or to say simply that workmen must be careful. It will hardly suffice to do both. Workmen need to be trained oveik an extended period to be cautious. Industrial educa- tion offers an adequate means of developing those reflex centers which, after all, are the surest personal safeguards and guarantees against industrial peril, while the mind is plastic. Surely there can be no question that accident pre- vention should be undertaken with systematic pre- cision when the United States Steel Corporation in seven years has been able to reduce industrial acci- dents forty-six per cent, and save nine thousand em- ployees from serious injury or death as a result of its "safety first" movement and when many large concerns have been able to reduce accidents from thirty to eighty-five per cent, without any loss of •/&tU, p. 8. 82 LEARNING TO EARN production. Industrial education should emphasize the economy of industrial safety. Industry, it has been said, is in need of an educa- tional system that will develop imagination, initia- tive, independence and self-reliance among the men who are to pursue its ramifications. As now con- stituted, our educational system is wholly unequal to the program fixed for it. It is quite lacking in impetus for individual expression. It contributes little to promote our industrial growth because it does not concern itself specifically with industrial problems. Industrial education aims to grasp the intricate and inexplicable phases of secondary production and to give to each, in turn, the careful attention of an army of trained workers. Production, it insists, must be complete and final. Skill of the highest order should attach to every commodity offered for sale. Production seeks the minimum cost, and this necessitates, first, that employer and employee be on friendly terms, and, second, that there be no sweating and no unnecessary monotony in industrial operation. Our present system neglects almost altogether the teaching of those things which have an economic object. Industry is no exception. Even our indus- trial history, which might well be taught under the present scheme of education, is slighted or wholly omitted. The information of the average boy out INDUSTRY AND ITS NEEDS 83 of high school concerning our industrial develop- ment is confined almost altogether to vague recollec- tions of who invented the steamboat, the cotton-gin, the electric telephone and telegraph. There it ends. He knows almost nothing about the history of machine production, of the labor movement, about science as applied to industrial development, about trade and transportation, selling and marketing. Lawyers, soldiers, politicians and authors occupy the center of the stage in the schoolroom panorama of American history. Boys and girls naturally seek to imitate the figures constantty held before their immature minds. Yet what does it profit the young man or young woman who must be self-suppofting at sixteen or eighteen years of age to emulate such as these ? Would it not be far better for the young man who must go to work very early in life that the industrial genius of Robert Owen, James Parton, Cyrus McCormick or Edison were emphasized somewhat to the exclusion of political and military heroes? Would it not be far better for industry if such were the case? "Both the educational methods and the economic demand have been crystallized," says Howell Cheney,^*^ "and a solution of the problem satisfac- tory to all parties depends upon keeping a proper balance between a broad training for life and imme- ^° The School and the Shop from an Employer's Point of View, p. 4, by Howell Cheney of Cheney Brothers, South Manchester, Conn. 84 LEARNING TO EARN I diate efBciency, i. e., between the social and educa- tional necessities and the cultivation of a mere dexterity which will produce the greatest number of an article at a minimum price." But American employers, before they should re- ceive the aid of public education for the thorough training of young men and women for industry must, as Howell Cheney^ ^ says, "demonstrate, first, the existence of educational opportunities in our factories and the reality of their influence, and then to indicate how they may be directed toward the promotion of higher intelligence, as their important aim. Their economic value is of secondary impor- tance and ought to be considered only in so far as it contributed toward the main purpose." Cheney contends that, after eliminating industries which require a high grade of skill developed through hard work and which are plainly educa- tional, there are many others which offer proper opportunities for industrial training for boys as a legitimate part of their education. Among these he names the metal and machine trades, from making watches to building locomotives ; the building trades and allied vocations; the craft of the bookbinder, printer, decorator, designer, engraver or draftsman; the higher processes of shoe and textile manufactur- ing; electrical working, agriculture, dairy farming, stock raising and the commercial pursuits. And for "Howell Cheney, The School and The Shop, INDUSTRY AND ITS NEEDS 85 girls, Cheney names typewriting and stenography, millinery and dressmaking, decorating, designing and printing and certain machine operations. But these occupations are only typical. Every one needs to be subjected to rigid examination and investigation before it is dignified by such education and training as the public schools may offer. The schools must institute and carry forward to comple- tion the proposed survey of industry. So far little has been done. "Our schools," says President Eg- gleston, of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, "are the only manufacturing plants in the world that make practically no survey of their communities before the erection of plants." Nearly ten thousand occupations are listed in the United States census reports, and the vast work necessary for an adequate survey of industry is apparent. Many occupations which are not now ac- ceptable, as offering a wholesome minimum of edu- cational opportunity, are nevertheless susceptible to changes which will make them acceptable. Before any occupation is made a part of the industrial edu- cational curriculum, it must be lifted to a plane where mental development is assured as the normal result of pursuing its processes. There must be no "blind alleys" into which young men and women are to be lured by the peculiar enticements that attach to a vocation because training for it may be had in pub- lic schools. 86 LEARNING TO £aRN As expressed by Charles H. Winslow/%n indus-A trial survey should determine four things : First, the exact nature of the employment in detail, includ- ing the character of work performed; second, the extent to which training for the occupation is given in the shop, that school instruction may supplement and not duplicate practical apprenticeship ; ^third, a statement of the common deficiencies and needs of the worker, and, fourth, the nature of instruction, expected of the public schools J Roughly speaking, the determination of these things would constitute a fairly satisfactory survey of industry. In the industrial survey of Richmond detailed schedules of fifty inquiries were prepared, one for the industrial managers and one for the workmen. In the printing, building and metal trades, for instance, more than five hundred indi- vidual schedules were taken, each representing a personal conference with workmen. One hundred and fifty individual schedules were taken among the workmen in the tobacco industry and three or four hundred in the department stores. Analyses for each of fifty-six occupations in the printing, build- ing and metal trades were prepared. Necessarily, a survey must be a permanent insti- tution in order to carry investigations into industries not covered by the initial survey; to collect and "Address on Richmond Survey. INDUSTRY AND ITS NEEDS 87 compile data regarding new processes and new occupations in industries already covered; to collect data concerning the development of new industries in a community, and to maintain intimate relation- ship between shop and school. For the success of industrial education the last is most important. Not only should the relationship between shop and school be permanent, but it likewise should be of the most intimate and friendly sort. For this purpose, ex- perts, teachers and industrial managers should be joined together permanently to effect and maintain the cooperation and coordination of shop and school. The coordination should be characterized by daily contact between shop and school through some professional intermediary agent that is able to measure and report progress. No other means can get equally efficient results, and if, as Mr. Winslow says, "industrial education should not be content to follow, it should direct industrial development;" no less direct means of coordination will insure the fulfillment of the aims of industrial education. Industry demands the cooperation of the manu- facturer, the workmen and the teacher to deter- mine the boundaries of industrial education and guide its course aright. Training for industry is going to yield readily to a measuring stick, and that measuring stick is shop efficiency. But if industrial education arouses the thought centers and creates 88 LEARNING TO EARN new grooves and paths in the brains of working men, efficiency in shop and factory, under the proper guidance of skilled managers and executives, will take care of itself. Industry will thus enter a new era of reformation and expansion. CHAPTER V AGRICULTURE AND ITS EDUCATIONAL NEEDS Food production has failed to keep pace with the increase in population — Our farm yields are far below those of European countries — Farm is unattractive as a business opportunity — Distribution facilities are inadequate — Greater production in the aggregate means lower prices — Cooperative marketing is a scientific undertaking and a problem for trained minds — Why rural education is uninteresting — Agricultural colleges and practical farming — Keeping the boy on the farm — The problems of tenantry, transient laborers and mature workers — Agricultural credit — Farm accounting — Diversified farming — Expenditures for roads — Conservation in agriculture — Vi- sion and inspiration count — Careful training essential The farm is the granary for the office, the store and the shop. It is the farm which must feed and clothe that section of the population which produces no food and no raw material for clothing. Prices of food and clothing have experienced an upward trend for several years and are becoming next to prohibitive for great sections of the population. The conclusion is obvious that production must be in- creased if the non-producers of food are to be fed. It is very generally agreed that there is not enough food to "go around" ; that a shortage of supply has enhanced prices for all classes. It is not difficult to understand why the volume of farm production has become a serious social 89 90 LEARNING TO EARN problem in the United States. The urban popula- tion has been gaining on the rural population for thirty years. The active producers have been leav- ing the farm for the city. While the urban popula- tion increased from 29.5 per cent, of the whole in 1880 to 46.3 per cent, in 1910, the rural population decreased from 70.5 to 53.7. The effect of this shifting of population upon production is more clearly evidenced from the decrease in rural popula- tion in the great agricultural states of the Middle West between 1880 and 1910. The table herewith presented shows the percentage of rural population for two periods in twelve states : Table Showing the Rural Population by Percentages for Twelve States at Two Periods State 1880 1910 State 1880 1910 Indiana ... 80.5 57.6 Iowa . 84.8 69.4 Ohio ... 67.8 44.1 Missouri . 74.8 57.5 Illinois ... 69.0 38.3 North Dakota. . 92.7 89.0 Michigan . . . ... 75.2 52.8 South Dakota.. . 92.7 86.9 Wisconsin . . ... 76.1 57.0 Nebraska . 86.6 73.9 Minnesota .. ... 81.1 59.0 Kansas . 89.5 70.8 The decrease in the number of persons engaged in agriculture — ^the number of food-producers — is striking. Since 1880 there has been a steady decline from 44.4 per cent, to 32.9 in 1910. The percentage of professional people has shown a slight gain and the percentage of persons in domestic and personal service a considerable falling off — 5.2 per cent. — in the last decade. On the contrary, the percentage of AGRICULTURE AND ITS NEEDS 91 persons engaged in mechanical and manufacturing pursuits, who are non-producers of the raw material for food, increased from 21.8 in 1880 to 28.3 in 1910. More striking still is the deduction from these figures that, whereas in 1880 there was 44.4 per cent, of the population to feed a remainder of 55.6, in 1910 there was only 32.9 per cent, of the working population to feed a remainder of 67.1 per cent. Our production per acre is still far behind that of the great European agricultural countries where the pressure of population has become serious. We produced 14.1 bushels of wheat per acre in the ten- year period, 1900-09, while Germany produced 28.9 bushels, France 20.5 and the United Kingdom 33. We produced 29.3 bushels of oats, while Germany raised 50.7 and the United Kingdom 44.3 ; 92 bush- els of potatoes, while Germany produced 200, Aus- tria 151.1, France 133.8 and the United King- dom 193.8.=^ ^The following table shows the ten-year yield of leading crops in seven countries : Wheat Oats Barley Rye Potatoes Country 60 lbs. 32 lbs. 48 lbs. 56 lbs. 60 lbs. United States 14.1 29.3 25.8 16.0 92.0 European Russia 9.7 20.0 14.3 11.5 99.0 Germany 28.9 50.7 35.3 25.6 200.0 Austria 18.0 29.8 26.3 19.0 151.1 Hungary 17.5 30.7 23.4 17.6 118.7 France 20.5b 2\.6b 23.6b 17.1 & 113.8& United Kingdom 33.1 & 44.3 b 35.0 b 27.5 b 193.8 b b — Winchester bushels. 92 LEARNING JO EARN By improving the seed and by proper methods of farming, the yield of wheat and corn could be doubled in this country and the yield of oats and barley increased to fifty bushels. Agriculture, dur- ing the last three decades, has very little for which to congratulate itself if crop yields only are con- sidered. That the farm has not been attractive as a busi- ness opportunity, accounts partially for the move- ment from country to city. The movement is world-wide. In 1897, says Mulhall, when forty per cent, of the world's population was engaged in agri- culture and thirty-one per cent, of the world's capital was employed in this industry, its share of the world's profits was only twenty per cent. The sig- nificance of this disparity is more marked in the United States from the fact that land values in this country and cost of farm equipment have increased enormously in the last decade. The value of farm property in the United States doubled between 1900 and 1910, and more than three- fourths of the increased value was for land. While the man who owned a farm in 1910 could sell it practically for twice what he would have received in 1900, if he chose to keep the farm the increased value was reflected only in such advances as attached to prices of farm products. It is growing increas- ingly difficult for the young man starting out in life AGRICULTURE AND ITS NEEDS 93 with no money to obtain a farm of his own because of the increased initial cost of the land. Farmers can hardly be expected to wax enthusi- astic over increased production if this means merely that they shall receive a proportionately smaller unit price for a greater number of bushels; or, a like number of coins for a greater number of pounds. After all, the farmer's economic interest is centered in increased profits, whether production recedes, re- miains constant or is enhanced. If only the eco- nomic interest of the so-called non-producers — the consumers of food and clothing — were to be con- sidered, it could be said truly that greater produc- tion would solve the whole problem of the high cost of living. Increased production would amount to a greater supply, and under normal conditions, at least, this factor would tend to reduce prices to a proper level. Unfortunately, the farmer's economic interest in increased profits can not be ignored. Involved in this interest, patent to the farmer's prosperity, is the problem of distribution, which, fortunately, is not altogether hopeless. The problem of distribution is no other than that of markets. So that, if produc- tion is increased, improved market facilities to safe- guard the farmer's economic interest *in greater profits must eliminate to some extent the present waste in distribution. Present and future efforts to 94 LEARNING TO EARN avoid this waste must compensate the farmer for producing larger crops, which, otherwise, would mean nothing to him. The two most important economic problems of agriculture, from the point of view of those engaged in the industry, therefore, are greater production and improved market facilities. Improved market facilities must go hand in hand with increased production if the economic problems of the farm are to be solved. The country is quite familiar with "corners" and monopolies of food products ; familiar with the waste from our indirect system of dealing between producer and consumer, and from total loss of most of the surplus raised on the average farm, because no scheme is available to expedite barter and sale directly between producer in the country and consumer in the city; familiar with the loss from glutted markets, where the pro- ducer must take what the commission man is willing to pay. The packers have control of the meat supply, gamblers in futures get control of the available sup- ply of wheat, brokers and cold-storage men combine to limit the free trading in fruits, eggs and dairy products, while prices soar beyond all reason. Veg- etables in large quantities go to waste on the farm because there is no means by which the individual farmer can dispose of his small surplus. The farmer has come to be a disinterested spectator in make- AGRICULTURE AND ITS NEEDS 95 believe rate wars between shipper and carrier. The whole system of marketing is inefficient, extrava- gant and ruinous. The farmer suffers most of all from the havoc wrought by this inefficiency and waste. "Year after year," says John Graham Brooks,^ "southern California tried to market her fruits as if the process were an all-around free fight. From the grower to the eater there was no interest which did not suffer. The separate grower found himself with less and less influence over the railroad, over prices and over far-off commission men." But the fruit growers found a remedy for* this condition in cooperative organization, and the power formerly used by the middleman has been appropriated directly by the growers. "What or- ganization has done for large business," says Brooks, "it here does for the smaller. Grading, packing, inspection, marketing are all taken into their own group control. ... In the central exchange and the forty independent co-operative associations above eighty per cent, of the citrus fruit is thus handled. Three out of four of California's twelve thousand growers are in co-operative team- work." Apple growing is a cooperative enterprise in the Northwest. Cooperation has effected a revolution The New Republic. 96 LEARNING TO EARN in dairying. There are more than fifteen hundred mutual insurance companies, insuring farmers against losses from fire, hail and cyclones, and all but a fraction of one per cent, of these companies have been successful. Five of the thirteen million acres of irrigated land, it is said, have been irrigated by cooperative effort. There are several thousand farmers' elevators in the country that not only mar- ket the members' grain, but purchase cooperatively flour, coal, lumber, machinery and general mer- chandise. The cooperative movement has spread rapidly in the last few years and presents an effective means of checking the oppression of railroads, middlemen and other monopolists. Agricultural education is proposed as a system of training by which farm production may be in- creased. It is expected to reveal its magic in making land that costs twice as much as formerly produce at least twice as much. To this extent it is expected to make the farm attractive as a business opportu- nity and check the exodus from country to city, which, incidentally, has more than economic impor- tance. Moreover, if agricultural education accom- plishes a reasonable measure of its program, it will develop a happy and contented country life, one which for intelligence and vision will surpass even the competitive spirit of life in the great industrial and commercial metropolis. In any event, country AGRICULTURE AND ITS NEEDS 97 life will avoid the most glaring vices of the city. By emphasizing the comparative advantages of life in the open, socially and financially, agricultural edu- cation should establish a countryside that is attrac- tive to those active-minded young men now hasten- ing, at the outset of their careers, to the office in the city. Since the farmer's markets are intimately dependent upon cooperative endeavor, agricultural education is expected to emphasize the importance of cooperation in buying and selling. Young men must be trained in the scientific phases of cooper- ative endeavor, and agricultural education can and should give this training. Cooperation among»pro- ducers is quite as necessary to the consumers as to primary producers. Were it not well settled that something is wrong with rural education, we should have nothing new to-day with which to deal. But the twin problems of an imminent shortage of food supply and de- creasing profits from the business of farming have precipitated what, it seems certain, will amount to a revolution in rural education. Of course, there has been a wide-spread conviction that the rural schools somehow have not fulfilled the needs of the boys and girls who come to them. Discerning parents have been unable to establish any close relationship between what their sons and daughters learned at school and what they ought to know to be success- ful farmers and farmers' wives. 98 LEARNING TO EARN Professional educators have sought to correlate teaching with real life as a counter-irritant to this wide-spread feeling. It was admitted that peda- gogical instruction lacked concreteness, failed to hold the child's interest, and teachers therefore were urged to use the concrete material available in the school community. Not until recently was the rela- tionship between the failure of public school instruc- tion and the development of the vocational instincts in children — a development which vocational educa- tion in its many phases is to satisfy — recognized. Rural education is not adapted to the immediate and intimate interests of the children. Agricultural education should make it so. For more than a half century the agricultural colleges and, for a lesser period, the United States Department of Agriculture have labored with the declared purpose of awakening a scientific interest in the business of farming. The agricultural college and the extension work of the United States De- partment of Agriculture have pointed the way to better methods and to a scientific point of attack. This cooperative endeavor may be regarded as the forerunner of what we know to-day as the nation- wide scheme of agricultural education — a scheme that will thoroughly localize instruction. Agricultural education purposes to transform the rural schools so that they will accomplish the ends which their surroundings invite them to seek. Agri- AGRICULTURE AND ITS NEEDS 99 cultural colleges have made no little progress in demonstrating that intellectual vision and mental activity are quite as necessary to successful farming as physical energy, but the impetus for the present movement did not come from the land-grant insti- tutions. The agricultural college has failed largely to edu- cate practical farmers. Instead of educating young men for the farm, the agricultural college, as well as the public schools, actually has educated the young man away from the farm. Senator Page has made the statement that the agricultural college of Ver- mont in thirty years furnished just eight practical farmers. In twenty years the Montana Agricul- tural College furnished two. These examples are hardly typical, but the tendency of the agricultural college has been to make its students agricultural sci- entists rather than practical and successful farmers. More boys should remain on the farm and their education for the farm, therefore, should be ob- tained largely in the home community if there is to be any material profit from agricultural education, if education is to make the farm attractive. It is wrong altogether to send the boy away to the city for an agricultural education at a time when his mind is most susceptible to the influences which sur- round him. The new movement for agricultural education purposes to establish the agricultural school at the very threshold of the farm, where it 100 LEARNING TO EARN will be available to the country boy without leaving the farm at all. If the nation-wide scheme of agri- cultural education given in the public schools of each township will not succeed in keeping the boy on the farm, then nothing will succeed. The per cent, of tenancy in the United States in- creased from 25.5 in 1880 to 37 in 1910; also, the number of tenant farmers increased 130 per cent, during the thirty-year period, while the number of owned farms increased only 34 per cent. The growth of tenancy is not to be excused or condoned. It is not a healthful sign of rural life and must be checked if the American farmer is to realize the ideals of an industrial democracy; if he is to con- tribute his share toward what goes to make up an efficient citizenship. There are in the United States upward of three million transient farm laborers whose position in rural life is precarious, to say the least, and there are perhaps an additional million of young men who are just starting life on the farm. All of these are practically beyond the reach of agricultural educa- tion in the public schools, except the few who may be reached through continuation classes, extension courses, civic societies and local farmers' organiza- tions. Very little may be accomplished among the six and one-half million farmers living on their own or rented land, because their ways, their habits of do- AGRICULTURE AND ITS NEEDS 101 ing things or of failing to do them are reasonably well fixed. They do not respond to contact with new ideas. They are not susceptible to new meth- ods. In a certain Indiana village where a county agricultural agent had organized a township associa- tion of farmers, the young men only could be in- duced to attend the meetings. In one instance, twenty-two out of twenty-five present were under the age of twenty-five. Yet the subject under dis- cussion was "smut in wheat," which was responsible for heavy damage to the crop just harvested. Agri- cultural extension courses and short courses given each winter at the agricultural colleges may do something toward reaching matured men who have not lost interest in new methods, but they are wholly inadequate, even pedagogically wrong, as applied to boys in the public schools whose minds are fired with curiosity not only of knowing how the soil is to be prepared to raise better crops, but of knowing why it should be prepared in a particular way. The propaganda of agricultural education is de- signed primarily for the million boys living on the farm who have not yet left the public schools and the millions to follow them who will receive the dis- closures of scientific experimentation and investiga- tion with youthful enthusiasm and adolescent faith. Agricultural education is not to be merely a train- ing for the successful production of corn, wheat, cherries and sleek cattle. The agricultural extension 102 LEARNING TO EARN courses and the farmers' short courses are doing that because, probably, it is the best that may be done with mature men who have not the time and may lack the inclination to delve deeply into under- lying principles; who may be past the age of learn- ing why given causes produce certain effects. Per- haps fiYQ, million farmers attend institutes, receive instruction from itinerant specialists and other forms of institute activity each year. This is all very well, but the boy in the public schools who is being educated for the farm must know more than railroad specials and institutes are able to give, and the schools must be capable of developing these underlying principles. He must know enough about the chemistry of soils to understand why frequent cultivation is necessary and why certain plant food is required for given crops. This is the scientific or cultural phase of education for the farm, and the boy will do well to get this cultural foundation in the public schools. Agricultural credit is an important means by which production may be increased. The farmer's money is not available at a time when it is most needed. The farmer should have facilities for financing his crop at the beginning of the season, and, for low rates, he should be able to obtain rea- sonable amounts of money for drainage, for feeding stock, fencing and equipment. Under present con- ditions he must pay fabulous rates and, for these AGRICULTURE AND ITS NEEDS 103 purposes it is difficult to obtain at all, unless he hap- pens to have credit apart from the crop just about to be produced. Whatever surplus the farmer has left in the fall when the crops are harvested is deposited in the country banks, from which it finds its way to the city vaults to be used in financing industrial enter- prise at low rates and where the element of security is vastly less than that of farm investment. This was the finding of President Roosevelt's Country Life Commission after a thorough investigation of banking conditions. A report of the controller of the currency on the condition of national ban^s for one period in 1914 showed that out of $415,399,- 620.64 on deposit in the national banks of Indiana, Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota $198,570,605.39 was in time deposits and not sub- ject to check. A good part of this money goes to reserve cities to be loaned out at two or three per cent. The farmer should be able to maintain inti- mate business relationship with the banker, and he ought to have banking facilities equal or superior to the manager of industrial enterprise. Legislatures and congresses for a generation have been seeking an equitable system of agricultural credit — cheap interest rates for the farmer, to which he is entitled by virtue of the stability and security of his investment. Yet the sum total of investiga- tion, discussion and debate has not even determined 104 LEARNING TO EARN whether it is expedient for the federal government or the states separately to undertake the administra- tion of a credit system. If a system is ever put into operation, it must be effected through the influence of the farmers themselves, and it remains perhaps for the boys who are to be educated in agricultural schools to devise a satisfactory scheme and give it the sanction of law. Accurate bookkeeping should determine what are the profits and losses of the farm, and annual bal- ances should serve as guides for the succeeding year. Few farmers are able to tell at the end of the year how much money they have made and many are unable to tell whether their business is being run at a gain or loss. No large business could survive the want of trial balances and no business, large or small, could endure if it were run as most men man- age the financial department of the farm. Barn doors and tool chests are quite inadequate for the bookkeeping of the farm. Yet perhaps three- fourths of the farmers make their only entries in these places. Farmers ought to know how to segre- gate accounts for every department of production, and separate accountings must show the losses of raising rye as well as the profits of feeding cattle for beef. Some farmers no doubt would find, if their books were balanced at the end of the year, that they could have made more money by working for a dollar a AGRICULTURE AND ITS NEEDS 105 day for some one else. Yet it would take a careful balance to convince them of their losses. Out of the agricultural education movement may be devised a simple system of bookkeeping for the farm, with tables of depreciations on farm equipment that can be readily understood. Not until bookkeeping is accurate and scientific can the farmer tell whether he is going backward or forward. Farmers make little effort to-day to *'keep books," because they do not know how to proceed. Not only ought agricultural education to point the way toward the successful production of corn, wheat, oats, rye, potatoes, clover, alfalfa, tobacco, cotton, rice and sugar-cane, but it ought to point the way toward the most profitable selection of crops for particular soils and climates. Diversified farm- ing will have much to do with the volume of future profits. As land values increase, farmers are com- pelled to acquire the capacity of adjusting them- selves to changed values, else they will find them- selves persisting in the raising of crops that can no longer be sold at a profit. It is very doubtful whether the farmers of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio can longer raise wheat in competition with the supe- rior quality grown on the cheaper lands of the Northwest and Canada. Likewise, there is some reason to believe that oats may fall in the category of decreasingly profitable crops in the prairie states. Farmers in the three states attached to the prin- 106 LEARNING TO EARN ciple of crop rotation will not give up easily the prac- tise of a passing generation to follow corn with wheat and wheat with red clover, yet when the ar- rangement fails to show a reasonable profit, substi- tutes must be found. Not that the underlying prin- ciple of crop rotation is ever wrong or must be abandoned, but simply that farmers may find it necessary to vary the crops which constitute the rotation. For this reason every farm must be an experimental station as well as the primary source of food products and the raw material for clothing. Agricultural education in the public schools ought to make the boy an experimenter for truth. His in- vestigations should proceed with unabated zeal when his school days proper are finished and his farm ever continue to be his laboratory. It is impossible to over-emphasize this fact : Education for the farm is a continuing process. There is not to be any quitting place, nor any point at which an end is reached. Farmers, perhaps, will need no extra in- ducement to maintain intimate relationship with the schools after regular attendance ceases. But the burden lies with the schools, and they must continue to have something new to offer. They must be ready at all times to accept the practical problems presented to them and assist in their solution. By following the trend of prices and profits, the schools ought to be able to give intelligent direction in the diversification of crops. In this respect they will AGRICULTURE AND ITS NEEDS 107 continue to be the farmer's compass even after his children have begun to learn the rudiments of soil chemistry. Some farmers on farms of from eighty to one hundred and fifty acres, remote from the larger markets, have found it profitable to engage in fruit growing for local markets. Apples, pears, peaches, plums and berries, even vegetables, find a ready mar- ket in the smaller towns and villages where farmers devote a little time to the industry. It is not uncom- mon to find these smaller farms furnishing labor to half a dozen men and producing a net profit far in excess of that derived from vast tracts where 7?> ; weakness of, in indus- trial material, 252, 253 ; specialization in, to suit locality, 254 ; useful arts departments of, 255 ; industrial branches, 255, 256; Marshall Field Company _ library, 256; agricultural, 259; vocational guidance aided by, 410 INDEX Libraries — Continued. 260; books for workers, 251; and efficiency, 258; and vocational education, 249-261 ; extent of cooperation of, with vocational education, 255. Life : waste in, 175 ; average length of, 179. Life-career motive: as inspiration to seek knowledge, 42; to dominate schools, 279. i Lincoln highway, 354. i Live stock, raising, 110. * Livelihood: education for, 10, 20, 202; failure of schools to train for, 61 ; elementary vocational courses not to fit for, 191. Locality: adjustment of education to, 20; conditions in, to decide what vocations to be taught, 37; adjustment of agricultural education to. 111 ; adjustment of home edu- cation to, 148; adjustment of libraries to, 254; obliga- tions of, to vocational education, 320; unequal financial resources of, 322, 323 ; duties of, under system of na- tional aid to vocational education, 325. Losses, economic, 164-181. ^^t Lowell (Mass.), trade schools, 71. JPl McGee, W. J., 173. ! Managers, education of, 131. Manual labor, value of, underestimated, 74. Manual training: for the farm, 110; in prevocational schools, 190; reasons for introducing into schools, 329, 331. Manufacturing: education for, 120; coordination of, with distribution of goods, 128. Margolin, Louis, 170. Marketing, for the home, 149, 157, 158. Markets: 117; for farm products, 93; cooperative, 95. Marriages : rates, 146 ; unsuccessful, 146. Massachusetts, trade schools, 71. Materials: value of, 130; for clothing, 149, 152, 153, 166; for furniture, 30, 155, 170; house furnishings, 154, 165, 166; draperies, 155. Mathematics : a part of agricultural education, 12 ; problems in, offered by commerce, 19 ; examples of obsolete prob- lems in, 18; in elementary schools, 29, 187, 188. Medical education : 198 ; apprenticeship in, in early times, 198 ; private medical schools, 369. Merchandising, education for, 120, 122. Merchant ships, American lack of, 123. Middle Ages : vocational education in, 47 ; conception of edu- cation in, 329. Middlemen, 94, 157, 337. Migration of workers : 321, 322 ; argument for national aid to vocational education, 321. INDEX 411 Miles, H. E., 166. Millinery, 148, 152. Minerals : waste in, 165 ; waste in production of coal, 167. Mining: promotion in, 11 ; waste in, 165, 167, 169. Mobility : of population, 322 ; of workers, 321, 322 ; of work- ers, an argument for national aid to vocational educa- tion, 321. Modern society: increase of vocations in, 10; self-preserva- tion in, 10; complexity of, 17; labor of women, modified in, 145. Monopolies, in farm products, 94. Monotony: of employment, 62, 72, 75, 78, 82; of home labor, 161 ; of agricultural labor, 223. Monroe's Encyclopedia of Education, 312. Moore, R. A., 172. Morrill Act of 1862, 312. Motherhood, education for, 13, 20, 159. Motive, for seeking knowledge found in life-career, 43, Mulhall, M. G., 92. Munich, trade schools of, Zd. Miinsterberg, Hugo, 271, 272. % Music: education for, 149; teaching of, in schools, 162. Narcotics, inefficient teaching of effects of, in schools, 46. National aid to schools : 312 ; grants in aid, England, 314, 315. National aid to vocational education : 309-326 ; training teach- ers, 296, 324; agricultural colleges, 312; Morrill Act of 1862, 312; Smith-Lever Act of 1914, 313; local, state and national cooperation, 315, 325, 326; migration of workers an argument for, 321 ; immigration an argu- ment for, 322 ; unequal financial resources of states and local units an argument for, 322, 323 ; bill before Con- gress outlined, 324. National Association of Manufacturers, Committee on Indus- trial Education, (y7>. National cash register, 67. National Child Labor Committee, 282. National Education Association, Committee on Economy of Time in Education, 193. National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education, 206. Natural resources: exhaustibility, 18, 64, 127, 356; conserva- tion of, 80, 164-181 ; preventable waste in, 164-181. Nearing, Scott, 158. Negroes, trade schools for, 71. New York (state), trade schools, 71. Night schools: 28, 43, 211, 225, 227, 228; failure of, 218; teachers, 288; place in ideal sys-tem of education, ZTl. 412 INDEX Normal schools : Albany, N. Y., 295 ; inadequacy of, to train vocational teacliers, 296; Athens, Ga., 304; rural teach- ers, 51, 300-306. Occupational accidents : 9, 46, 62 ; prevention, 79 ; extent of, 79 ; Germany, 80 ; United States Steel Corporation, 81 ; losses from, 165, 176; failure of schools to teach pre- vention of, 46. Occupational diseases : 9, 46 ; losses from, 165, 176 ; national conference on, 177; causes, 178; failure of schools to teach prevention of, 46. Occupational poisons : 177 ; causes, 178. Occupations: increase of, in modern society, 10; basis of uni- versal education, 33 ; study of, 28 ; surveys of, 35, 63, 85, 86; number of, 85, 273; embraced in business, 120; ele- ments of business essential to all, 120, 122 ; overcrowded, 264, 283 ; distribution among, 265. Oppenheimer, Franz, 349. Opportunities: for all, the foundation of democracy, 21, 34, 366; for vocational education, 28, 56. Orchard pests : 109 ; losses from, 165, 172. Organizations interested in vocational education, 393. Organizations of business men : correspondence courses, 242 ; chambers of commerce, 243. O'Shea, M. V., 8. Paint, ingredients, 154, Panama Canal, 124. Panics, 128. Parenthood, education for, 13, 20, 159. Parsons, Frank, 269. Part-time education: 77, 211, 213-230; schools should supply, 215 ; obligation of industry to, 215 ; extent of need of, 216; plan for, 219; continuation schools, 220; similarity of apprenticeship to, 220-222 ; only beginnings yet made, 223, 224, 226 ; in domestic science, 223, 226, 229 ; in indus- trial training, 226 ; should be compulsory, 225 ; correla- tion with industry, 225 ; for adults, 226 ; seasonal courses, 227; courses should be definite, 228; scope, 229; teachers for, 288; place in ideal system of educa- tion, 373, 375-377. Pedagogy : based on worn-out philosophy, 31 ; value in voca- tional education, 294. Penitentiaries: inmates' lack of trade, 352, 356; Industrial education in, 359. Personal advancement, an inspiration to seek knowledge, 43. Pests : crop and orchard, 109 ; losses from, 165, 172. Philosophy, of education, 3. INDEX 413 "Phossy jaw," 177. Physiology, inefficient teaching of, in schools, 46. Pictures, selection, 155. Plant diseases : 47 ; losses from, 165, 172. Pleasures, leisure for, 17, 20, 78. Plumbing, in the home, 154. Poisons : industrial, 177 ; causes of, 178. Population: mobility of, 90, 322; increase of, 127. Poultry, raising, 110, 144. Practical arts: for the farm, 110; in prevocational schools, 190; correlation with formal studies, 192. Preserving, fruits, 150. Prevocational education, 182-196. Prevocational schools : 182-196 ; business education should be- gin in, 120; training for citizenship should begin in, 363, 364; place in ideal system of education, 373, 374. Primitive society : 7, 8 ; apprenticeship in, 10, 47 ; agricultural education in, 12; vocational education in, 47; labor of women in, 145. Printing : schools of, 71 ; course in, conducted by Interna- tional Typographical Union, 238. % Prisons: inmates' lack of trade, 352, 356; industrial educa- tion in, 359. Private correspondence schools, 237. Private medical schools, 369. Private trade schools, 68. Private vs. public control, of schools, 369. Production: and consumption, 15; preventable losses in, 164; unequal to possibilities, 166; agricultural, 167. Professional education: 199; apprenticeship in early times, 199; in ideal system of education, 373. Professional schools : entrance requirements of, 32 ; higher form of vocational schools, 198; extent of, in United States, 200. Professions: adjustment of education to modern needs of, 15, 18 ; overcrowded, 30, 264, 283, 350 ; education for those already engaged in, 25 ; education for, available to select few, 56, 262 ; education for, provided by state, 262 ; books for, 251 ; number engaged in, 262, 283. Progress of society, 8, 18. Progressive quality: essential to education as adjusting force, 19, 347; essential to universal education, 25. Project system, vs. course system of instruction, 238. Prolongation of life, 179. Promotion : in industries, 76, 77 ; an inspiration for seeking knowledge, 43 ; in mining, 77 ; in textile mills, 76. Prosperity, and business, 118. Prosser, Charles A., 77, 286. 414 INDEX Prostitution, 355. Psychology: child, 160; and vocational guidance, 271, 272, 284 ; testing ability by, 272. Public officials, education for, 360-362. Public provision : for all grades of schools, 33 ; for the ideal system of education, 369. Public schools, see under Schools ; Agricultural Education ; Commercial Education; Commercial High Schools; Compulsory Education ; Continuation Schools ; Cor- respondence Schools ; Elementary Schools ; Evening Schools; High Schools; Industrial Schools; Part- time Education; Prevocational Schools; Rural Schools; Teachers; Trade Schools; Vocational Schools. Public service : as a vocation, 362 ; education for, 362 ; educa- tion for, begins in school, 362, 363. Purpose of education : 1-20 ; misunderstood, 31. Pythagoras, 266. Railroads : education for, 120, 122, 133 ; federal regulation of, 132; reorganization, 132; waste in, 133; correspondence courses, 237, 238; School of Railway Signaling, Utica, N. Y., 238 ; Union Pacific Railroad Educational Bureau, 237. Rank and file, education for, 33. Raw products of United States: 65, 118, 123, 316, 356; losses from export of, 166. Reading, elementary schools, 29, 187. Reading rooms, education continued by, 29, 211, 225, 249, 261, 373. Recreation, for leisure, 78. Reformatories: inmates* lack of trade, 352, 356; industrial education in, 202, 359. Research, scientific: 66; In Germany, 66; agricultural, 244; place in Ideal system of education, 372. Richmond (Va.) industrial survey, 86. Rigidity, of education, 53, 347. Roads : farmers* interest in, 108 ; Lincoln and Dixie highways, 354. Rotation, of crops, 105, 171. Routine: of business, 117; o£ home labor, 161; of industries, 78, 82. Rugs: selection, 156; beauty of, founded on utility, 334, 335. Rural population: 90; farm-to-city movement, 50, 90, 96, 112; country life movement, 96, 112. Rural schools: weakness of, 50, 97; teachers, 51, 300-306; scope of training for citizenship in, 362, Rural surveys, 303-305. INDEX 415 Safety devices, 9, 176, Safety first campaigns, unconnected with schools, 46. Salesmanship: education for, 133; Sheldon School of Corre- spondence, 237. Salesmen, cheap, 133. San Jose scale, 109. Sanitation, house, 156. School of Railway Signaling, Utica, N. Y., 238. Schools : limited to few, 4 ; should keep In touch with youth until eighteen, 27; adjustment of, to environment of pupils, 28; adjustment to locahty, 20, Zl, 111, 148; colleges estab- lished before, 30; establishment of, 31; all grades to be provided at pubhc expense, 33 ; industrializing of regular work of, 38; average daily attendance, 39; laggards in, not always failures, 53, 184, 186 ; devoted to preparing for higher grades, 53 ; curriculum too rigid, 53, 347 ; coordi- nation with shops, 87; cooperation with shops, 87; ab- normal children in, 186; formal method of instruction in, 192 ; should supply education for those already at work, 215; state management of, 310, 311; local devel- opment, 311; local self-government, 313; grants ill aid to, England, 314, 315 ; culture in, through teaching occu- pations, 332 ; scope of training for citizenship in, Z(ii ; training for government in, 362, ZGi ; socializing of, 2)^-?i1(y\ public vs. private control, 369; responsibility of, for Individual increasing, 371, 372 ; backward and exceptional children in, 374. See also under Agricul- tural Education; Commercial Education; Commer- cial High Schools ; Compulsory Education ; Con- tinuation Schools ; Correspondence Schools ; Ele- mentary Schools ; Evening Schools ; High Schools ; Industrial Schools ; Part-time Education ; Prevoca- TioNAL Schools; Rural Schools; Teachers; Trade Schools; Vocational Schools. Schools, elimination of pupils: 40, 54, 183,^ 195, 217, 274, 277; causes, 42; statistics of pupils leaving before gradua- tion, 224. Schools, failures: to meet needs of farm life, 3, 49, 345, 346; to accomplish universal education, 31 ; to meet needs of democracy, 39; to adjust individual to democracy, 55, 330, 331 ; to teach hygiene, physiology and prevention of Industrial accidents efficiently, 46 ; to train for a live- lihood, 61 ; to understand industry, 82 ; to teach histoiy of industry, 82 ; to evolve science of business, 121 ; to train for business, 129, 345, 346 ; to train for home, 146, 345, 346; to teach music in, 162; to teach thrift, 166; to train for vocations, 263, 345, 346 ; to interest pupils, 274, 329 ; to teach citizenship, 354, 355 ; to teach civics In, 362; failures summarized, 345, 346. 416 INDEX Schools, ideal system : outlined, 28, Z(^-Z76 ; adapted to needs of all, 367; no limits, 368; at public expense, 369; in- dustrial surveys in, 371 ; research work in, 372 ; elemen- tary schools in, 29, 372-374; correspondence schools in, 2)7?); evening courses in, 2)72) \ continuation schools in, Z72-277 ; part-time education in, 272, 27S-277 ; industrial schools in, 272; prevocational schools in, 272, 27 A \ voca- tional schools in, 272, 27S ; trade schools in, 272. Schools, national aid: 312; grants in aid, England, 314, 315; to vocational schools, 309-326. Schools, state aid : 312 ; to vocational schools, 319-321. Schools, text-books : revision of, necessary for elementary schools, 193; agricultural. 111. Science: a part of agricultural education, 12; not applied to practise, 24; of business, 119; of business, not evolved by schools, 121 ; general principles of business, 121. Scientific research: institutes for, 66, 67; in Germany, 66; ag- ricultural, 244; place in ideal system of education, 372. Scientists, produced by agricultural schools, 49, 99. Seasonal part-time schools, 227. Seeds, selection, 92, 109. Self-preservation: in primitive society, 7; in modern society, 8; education for, 9, 15, 20, 179; failure of schools to teach, 46. Self-reliance : industrial education to develop, 6Zy 81 ; lacking in business, 129. Sewing, education in, 148, 152, 153. Sheldon School of Correspondence, 237, Shops, give way to factories, 10. Sick, care of, 160. Sickness, losses from, 176. Silk, selection, 152. Skilled labor: undeveloped in America, 62; in Germany, 65; industrial education to promote, 82; value of, 130; sources of, 215. Skilled trades, schools for, 203. Smith-Hughes Bill, 324. Smith-Lever Law, 1914, 313. Smoke nuisance : 354 ; waste through, 168. Smut in oats, losses from, 172. Snedden, David, 297, 328. Social justice, 356. Social unrest : 67^ 72, 348 ; and vocational education, 317, 318. Social workers : 72; opportunity for, 7S>. Socializing, of the schools, 266-276. Society, progress of, 8, 18. Soda-water, waste from use of, 166. INDEX 417 Soil: exhaustibility of, 50, 164; chemistry of, 109; crops not equal to possibilities of, 166, 167; erosion of, 171; waste of, 171. South American trade: 124; Spanish language, 125. Special libraries, for industries, 255, 256. Spencer, Herbert, 6, 7, 17, 52, 61, 116, 159, 347. "Standpatism," in education, 31. State aid : to local schools, 312 ; grants in aid, England, 314, 315 ; to vocational schools, 319-321. State Normal School, Albany, N. Y., teachers for trades, 295. State Normal School, Athens, Ga., 304. States : and education, 310-312 ; and vocational education, 319- 321 ; InequaHties in financial resources, 322, 323 ; duties of, under system of national aid to vocational educa- tion, 324, 325. _ Stenography, education for, 203. Street railways, inadequacy, 354. Strikes : 11, 348 ; strike breakers, 210 ; and vocational educa- tion, 317. Strong, Josiah, 79. Structural iron workers, (3^, t^ Styles, in dress, 153. Superintendents, education of, 131. Surveys : industrial, 35, dZ^ 85, 86 ; for vocational guidance, 269, 283 ; in ideal system of education, 371. Surveys, rural, 303-305. Suzzalo, Henry, 372, System, on the farm, 113. Teachers: not fitted to teach vocational subjects, 297; number of, 302; average service, 303; rural, 51, 300-306. Teachers of vocational subjects: 212, 285-308; prevocational subjects, 287; experience in life, in teaching and in vo- cation taught necessary to, 288, 290-294 ; lack of sym- pathy with new system, 291 ; agricultural subj ects, 292 ; domestic science, 294; trades, 293, 294; national aid for training of, 296, 324 ; for girls' trade schools, 298 ; for commercial schools, 298, 299; for rural schools, 51, 301- 306; experimentation in training of, 307. Technical colleges, trade schools aspiring to become, 32. Technical journals, in libraries, 254. Technical skill : undeveloped in American, dZ ; In Germany, 65; industrial education to promote, 82; value of, 130; sources of, 215. Teeth, care of children's, 160. Temperance instruction, in schools, inefficient, 46. Tenantry, increase of, 50, 100. Tenements, 355. 418 INDEX Territorial expansion, 127. Tests of ability, by psychology, 272. Text-books: revision necessary for elementary schools, 193; agricultural, 111. Textile mills: promotion in, 76; part-time education in, 77. Theory, versus practise, 23. Thrift, failure of schools to teach, 166. Tobacco, waste from use of, 166. Tolman, W. H., 79, 80. "Tools of knowledge" : taught in elementary schools, 29, 186, 189; in ideal system of education, 373, Trade : with Europe, 123 ; foreign, 123 ; education for foreign, 125 ; with South America, 124 ; domestic, 126. Trade catalogs, in libraries, 254. Trade extension courses, 220. Trade journals, in libraries, 254. Trade schools: entrance requirements, 32; private, 68; types of, 71 ; for negroes, 71 ; corporation, 98 ; for carpentry, 71, 238, 241 ; for skilled trades, 203 ; rarity of, 203 ; for printing, 71, 238; for machine trades, 203; equipment of, 208; teachers, 285-308; teachers for girls, 298; place in ideal system of education, 373. Trade unions: attitude on apprenticeship, 69; attitude on in- dustrial education, 70; spread of, 72; organs of, in li- braries, 254; American Federation of Labor, 69, 210, 346; International Typographical Union, 71, 238. Trades : 60-88 ; education for workers, already engaged in, 25, 213-230; limited education for, 30; which, to be taught determined by local conditions, 37; number of em- ployees in, 58 ; offering opportunities for industrial edu- cation, 83; literature of, 254; failure of schools to train for, 345, 346. Transportation: education for, 120, 122, 133; federal regula- tion of, 132 ; reorganization, 132 ; waste in, 133 ; corre- spondence courses, 237, 238; School of Railway Signal- ing, Utica, N. Y., 238; Union Pacific Railroad Educa- tional Bureau, 237 ; by water, 122. Truck gardening, 107, 149, 156. Unemployment: 73; employment offices, one phase of voca- tional guidance, 269. Union Pacific Railroad Educational Bureau of Information, 237. United States Bureau of Labor, 280, 282. United States Bureau of the Census, reports, 85, 273, 282, 321, 352. United States Commission on Vocational Education, 48, 162, 295, 322. United States Commissioner of Education, 39, 42. INDEX 419 United States Congress, vocational education bill before, out- lined, 324. United States consuls, training, 125. United States Department of Agriculture: 98; bulletins of, 245. United States Department of Commerce, 282. United States Steel Corporation, industrial accidents, 81. Universal education : 21-38, 58, 341 ; progressive quality essen- tial to, 25; plan for, 27; failure of democracy to pro- vide, 30; failure of schools to provide, 31; influences thwarting development of, 31 ; vocational education a step in, 32, 342 ; occupations the basis of, 33 ; problems of, in a democracy, 33 ; vocational, 210 ; ideal system of education to furnish, at public expense, 366, 376. University extension courses : 98, 101, 211, 220, 225, 231-248; universities maintaining, 233, 235. University of Kansas : extension courses, 233 ; course in car- pentry, 240. University of Minnesota, extension courses, 233. University of Wisconsin, extension courses, 233, 235, 236, 238. Urban population: 90; farm-to-city movement, 50, 90, 9IJ, 112. Utility, basis of art, 334. Values, women as judges of, 145.^ Variability, of environment and individuals, 22, 26, 367. Vegetable gardens, 107, 149, 156. Ventilation, factories, 178. Vice, 355. Vocation Bureau and Breadwinners' Institute of Boston, 269. Vocational education : opportunities for, 28 ; a step in uni- versal education, 32 ; a part of a liberal education, 32 ; in early times, 47; Federal Commission on, 48, 162, 295, 322 ; effect of European war on, 62, 123, 325 ; causes for, 60; and conservation, 164-181, 201; to train for self- preservation, 179; prevocational studies in elementary school, 182-196; fundamental studies, 186; as a public protection, 201 ; value of, to workers, 214 ; for those already engaged in work, 213-230; and libraries, 249- 261 ; inadequate without vocational guidance, 279, 283 ; cost of, 309 ; who to bear cost, 320, 321 ; a national need, 315; social significance of, 317; and strikes, 317; and the state, 319, 320; and community, 111, 148, 320, 321, 325; and culture, 327-343; and citizenship, 344-365; in pris- ons, 359; as a preventive of crime, 359, 360; organiza- tions interested in, 393. Vocational education and national aid: 309-326; training of teachers, 296, 324 ; agricultural colleges, 312 ; Morrill Act of 1862, 312; Smith-Lever Act of 1914, 313; local. 420 INDEX Vocational education and national aid — Continued. state and national cooperation, 315, 325, 326; migration of workers an argument for, 321 ; unequal financial re- sources of states and local units, an argument for, 322, 323 ; bill before Congress outlined, 324. Vocational guidance: 111, 191, 262-284; a function of elemen- tary schools, 183; libraries to assist, 260; distribution among occupations to be regulated by, 264 ; employment offices, a minor phase of, 269, 281 ; examination of indi- vidual bent, 269; factors in, 269, 270; and experimental psychology, 271, 272, 284; and conservation, 273, 284; necessary to vocational education, 279, 283 ; not to be a forced process, 280; meaning of, 280; complexities of, 281, 282; dependence of, on private associations for data, 282 ; place in ideal system of education, 374. Vocational instincts, 279. Vocational reading, 27-29, 211, 225, 249, 250, 261, 373. Vocational schools: 197-212; joint, 38; definition of, 197, 198; types of, 198; extent of, for professions, in United States, 200; for defectives, delinquents and dependents, 202 ; development, 201, 202 ; success of, proved, 204 ; basic ideas of, 204 ; age of students in, 204, 205 ; should be adapted to trade taught, 205 ; prepare all-round workers, 206; train for definite things, 207; equipment necessary to, 208; supply deficiencies of apprenticeship, 209; to be established widely, 210; universal system of, 210; core of educational system, 211; place in ideal sys- tem of education, 373, 375. Vocational schools, teachers: 212, 285-308; prevocational sub- jects, 287; experience in life, in teaching and in voca- tion taught necessary to, 288, 290-294 ; lack of sympathy with new system, 291; agricultural subjects, 292; do- mestic science, 294; trades, 293, 294; national aid for training of, 296, 324; for girls' trade schools, 298; for commercial schools, 298, 299; for rural schools, 51, 301- 306; experimentation in training of, 307. Vocations: increase of, in modern society, 10; education for those already engaged in, 25, 213-230; which, to be taught determined by local conditions, 37; failure of schools to train for, 263, 345, 346; number trained for, at public expense, 263, 283 ; overcrowded, 264, 283 ; dis- tribution among, 265 ; unwise choice, 274. Wall paper, selection, 155. War in Europe : 62, 123 ; and vocational education, 325. Ward, Lester F., 21, 26, 49, 367, 368. Waste : of resources, 164-181 ; of energy, 180. Water power, to supersede coal, 169. Water transportation, 122. INDEX 421 Wealth, United States, 128. Webb, Sidney, 314. Weeds : 109 ; losses from, 165, 173. Wheat specials, 244. Winslow, Charles H., 86, 87. Wisconsin Report on Industrial and Agricultural Training, 235. Women and girls : average term of employment, 177 ; trades offering opportunities for, 84; business education for, 144; agricultural education for, 144; industrial educa- tion for, 144 ; domestic science for, 143-163 ; department stores, cheap clerks, 133 ; drudgery of home labor, 161 ; women's clubs, 161 ; as judges of values, 145 ; need of trained, 145 ; labor of, modified in modern society, 145 ; education for motherhood, 159; spenders of family in- come, 158. Wood: waste in, 170; preservatives, 170; waste in products, 171. Work, and culture, 327-343. Workers : education for, 25 ; schools should keep In touch with until eighteen, 27 ; and libraries, 253 ; distribution, 211, 268; distribution among occupations, 265; un- trained, 277; mobility of, 321, 322; all-round, vocational schools to turn out, 206. Workmanship : undeveloped in America, 63 ; in Germany, 65 ; industrial education to promote, 82; value of, 130; sources of, 215. Workmen, American, 63. Xenophon, 265. Young Men's Christian Association, trade schools, 71. Zacher, Dr., 80. 3477-2