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CHICAGO SCHOOL OF CIVICS AND PHILANTHROPY 
 DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL INVESTIGATION 
 
 (Russell Sage Foundation) 
 
 FINDING 
 
 Employment for Children who Leave 
 the Grade Schools to go to Work 
 
 Report to the Chicago Woman's Club, The Chicago Association of Collegiate 
 Alumnae and The Woman's City Club 
 
 PRICE, TWENTY-FIVE CENTS 
 
 f 
 
CHICAGO SCHOOL OF CIVICS AND PHILANTHROPY 
 DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL INVESTIGATION 
 
 (Russell Sage Foundation) 
 
 FINDING 
 
 Employment for Children who Leave 
 the Grade Schools to go to Work 
 
 Report to the Chicago Woman's Club, The Chicago Association of Collegiate 
 Alumnae and The Woman's City Club 
 
 
 > J » » > 
 
 PRICE, TWENTY -FIVE CENTS 
 

 M*NZ ENGRAVmG COMPANY, THE H0LLI8TER PBE9S, CHICAGO 
 
 Printed December, 1911 
 
 .» • V • • • 
 
 
 « • • « 
 
 •. • • • .* • ;• • '. .* " • • 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 1. THE SCHOOL AND THE WORKING-CHILD: A PLEA FOR 
 
 EMPLOYMENT SUPERVISION IN CITY SCHOOLS 5-18 
 
 Sophonisba P. Breckinridge and Edith Abbott, Directors of 
 the Department of Social Investigation, The Chicago School 
 of Civics and Philanthropy 
 
 2. PRELIMINARY REPORT ON OPPORTUNITIES OF EM- 
 
 PLOYMENT IN CHICAGO OPEN TO GIRLS UNDER 
 SIXTEEN 19-^W 
 
 Anne S. Davis, Special Investigator for the Chicago Woman's 
 Club, the Chicago Association of Collegiate Alumnae, and the 
 Woman's City Club 
 
 3. PUBLIC CARE OF WORKING-CHILDREN IN ENGLAND 
 
 AND GERMANY: SOME NOTES ON JUVENILE LABOUR 
 EXCHANGES BY EDITH ABBOTT 41^^8 
 
 4. TRADE AND TECHNICAL CLASSES FOR GIRLS IN CHI- 
 
 CAGO 49-52 
 
 5. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY RELATING TO EMPLOY- 
 
 MENT SUPERVISION 53-56 
 
 304236 
 
1 1 1 1 > I 
 
 
 THE 
 
 School and the Working-Child 
 
 A PLEA FOR EMPLOYMENT SUPERVISION 
 IN CITY SCHOOLS 
 
 SOPHONISBA P. BRECKINRIDGE AND EDITH ABBOTT 
 
 Directors, Department of Social Investigation 
 
 While it is generally known that the Illinois law requires that all 
 children between the ages of seven and fourteen shall attend school 
 unless excused on the various grounds enumerated in the statute, many- 
 people do not know that on the fourteenth birthday the child may 
 demand an age and school certificate and go to work, subject of course 
 to the limitations of the Child Labor Law upon his hours and time of 
 work and kind of employment, and subject also to the provision of the 
 Compulsory Education Law that, until he is sixteen, he must be either 
 at work or in school. Still less, perhaps, do people know the conse- 
 quence to the child who is thus deprived of further schooling on the 
 one hand and made to assume the heavy burden of responsibility on 
 the other. For to most of these children leaving school means much 
 more than a loss of opportunity. It means being placed in the way of 
 great and varied temptations, while the will is weak and the mind not 
 yet intelligent. Work is not always easy to find, and desirable work, 
 which offers even a small amount of training and awakens ambition 
 and interest, seems hopelessly scarce. 
 
 Every year, thousands of children in Chicago take advantage of 
 the privilege which the law gives them and leave school on the very 
 day when they reach the age of fourteen and can legally obtain their 
 working-papers. On this day the child is suddenly released from the 
 discipline of the school and thrown on his own resources to find a job 
 in any way he can and to become an independent wage-earner making 
 a much-needed contribution to the family income. This sudden tran- 
 sition from school to work must necessarily be a difficult time of 
 readjustment for the child, and the question of the kind of work which 
 is undertaken is one of serious importance. The "first job" or the first 
 year of work will often have a decisive influence on his whole v/orking 
 life and may make or mar his character. 
 
 There are many important questions which shoukl be considered 
 when a child leaves school to go to work, such as the kind of occupa- 
 tion to which he is best adapted, the industry which holds the best 
 
 5 
 
6 THE SCHOOL AND THE WORKING-CHILD 
 
 promise for the future, how to find the employer who is "good to 
 boys and girls" and is willing to give them proper training, sympathetic 
 oversight, and a chance for promotion in the shop or factory, and, 
 finally, the critical question of how to find the vacant job which most 
 nearly answers all of these demands. At present the child faces this 
 problem quite alone and unaided, with no broader object in mind than 
 that of an immediate contribution to the family income. His parents 
 may be zealous for his welfare, but they are quite unable to help at this 
 crisis in his life. For the boys and girls who go to work are not the 
 children of intelligent skilled working-men. Men in skilled trades do 
 not take their children out of school at fourteen, for they know that a 
 boy of that age must wait two years before he can be apprenticed, that 
 the girl of that age is not strong enough to work and not yet able to 
 protect herself, and that the years from fourteen to sixteen are waste- 
 fully spent by the child in work. These boys and girls who go to work, 
 then, are children of parents who are either very poor and in urgent 
 need of the small wage which the child may earn, or unintelligent with 
 reference to the importance of further education and therefore not 
 willing to sacrifice their standard of immediate comfort for the child's 
 future ; in the majority of cases, they are immigrants, frequently unable 
 even to speak our language, almost uniformly ignorant of industrial 
 conditions and quite unable to advise their children wisely with refer- 
 ence to the beginning of their working-lives. 
 
 The result is that at the age when children in a well-to-do family 
 are still treated as children and are never allowed to make any import- 
 ant decision about their future careers, the boy or girl in a poor family 
 is turned loose to find work alone. It is obvious that these chil- 
 dren are not competent to distinguish the good employer from the bad 
 or the occupation with a future from the blind-alley employment that 
 leads nowhere and leaves them stranded at the age of seventeen or 
 eighteen, not merely untrained but demoralized. 
 
 At present there is no organized efifort made on the part of the 
 community to protect these boys and girls, who are leaving the schools 
 every week and starting forth alone, timid and eager, on a discouraging 
 hunt for a first job ; no serious efifort is being made to prevent the 
 wastage that comes from the child's haphazard choice of a job. The 
 theory has been that the responsibility of the school to the child comes 
 abruptly to an end when he obtains his working-papers. Picture the 
 child who is facing the problem of finding work. A boy will usually 
 trudge through the business or factory streets looking for the magic 
 card "Boy Wanted" in the window — in any window without regard to 
 the character of the work or of the employer; or he follows the more 
 demoralizing habit of loafing about the newspaper offices in a crowd 
 of idle men waiting for the most recent "Want Ads" to appear. Small 
 wonder that after he gets work he finds it hard to "settle down." 
 The young girl who goes forth alone to hunt a job may find much 
 graver perils before her. It is only necessary to recall the successful 
 prosecution in 1908 of seventeen men and three women who had built 
 up a profitable business in leading astray young girls in search of 
 work who made use of the department store waiting-rooms to read 
 advertisements in the newspapers and to rest during the intervals 
 between unsuccessful applications for "jobs." 
 
 The difficulty in finding work means of course that a child usually 
 takes the first job that is offered him without any regard to the 
 
THE SCHOOL AND THE WORKING-CHILD 7 
 
 industry, occupation or employer, without any regard to his interest 
 in the work or his htness for it. His whole future may be decided by 
 the merest chance, and he may take the most temporary kind of job 
 in a most undesirable place, when on the same street a good firm offer- 
 ing permanency and every opportunity of advancement may have been 
 looking for just such a boy or girl. It is, of course, an inevitable 
 result of this careless and accidental hunt for "any kind of jol)" that 
 temporary jobs are frequently taken and children easily get into casual 
 habits, and, in fact, become confirmed "casual laborers" before they 
 are sixteen, shifting from job to job with an interval of unemployment 
 between each. 
 
 It is now becoming generally recognized that the result of this 
 neglect of the child by the school and by the community during the^ 
 critical period between fourteen and sixteen, when the schoolboy or 
 schoolgirl suddenly becomes a working "man" or a wage-earning 
 "woman," has far-reaching social consequences — a small army of boys 
 and girls going into the street-trades, which are demoralizing, and 
 into occupations and industries which profit by boy or girl labor, but 
 have no responsibility to the boy and girl beyond the weekly wage, 
 no care for their health or training. 
 
 Attention has already been called to the fact that, although the 
 law gives the child his working-papers at fourteen and does not pro- 
 vide for any supervision or protection during the critical years which 
 follow, still the law does not entirely take its hands off. It regulates the 
 hours of labor for children under sixteen ; it at the present time ex- 
 cludes them from certain physical dangerous tracles and doubtless will 
 soon exclude them from morally dangerous trades as well. Even more 
 important, perhaps, is the provision of the Compulsory Education Law 
 that boys and girls between fourteen and sixteen shall not be abso- 
 lutely idle but that they must return to school if they are not at work. 
 
 Unfortunately, no adequate machinery for enforcing this provision 
 of the law exists, and the problem of the child between fourteen and 
 sixteen is still a serious one. The Parental School is restricted to the 
 care of boys under fourteen ; there is no similar institution for older 
 boys and no provision at all for girls who refuse to go to school. 
 The last report of the Superintendent of Compulsory Education 
 strongly emphasizes "the necessity for better provision for the cor- 
 rection and care of children between fourteen and sixteen years of age 
 who are beyond parental control and who prefer idleness to school 
 attendance or employment. The only recourse under present condi- 
 tions against a fourteen-year-old truant who has committed no other 
 offense than truancy, is to charge him with incorrigible or delinquent 
 conduct and ask his commitment to the John Worthy School or 
 St. Charles. The former is a prison school where the worst type of 
 delinquent boys is sent. St. Charles has not sufficient capacity to 
 provide for urgent delinquent cases. It is therefore a question of 
 consistency for one state law to provide for compulsory attendance 
 up to the age of sixteen while another state law — the Parental School 
 Law — provides for truants only between seven and fourteen years, and 
 bars the truant between fourteen and sixteen." ^ 
 
 Ever since the year 1905, the Department of Compulsory Educa- 
 tion has called attention in every succeeding annual report to the 
 1 Chicago Board of Education. Fifty-Seventh Annual Report: "Report of 
 Superintendent of Schools for the year ending June 30, 1911," p. 56. 
 
8 THE SCHOOL AND THE WORKING-CHILD 
 
 necessity for better means of protecting and disciplining boys between 
 fourteen and sixteen, not merely because they become demoralized 
 themselves, but because they encourage smaller boys to become 
 truant and delinquent.- As a result of a recent study of the statistics 
 of the Juvenile Court relating to delinquent children, it appeared that 
 the great majority of boys who were brought to court as delinquent 
 were boys who left school to go to work when they were fourteen. 
 [] After that time they were often out of work as well as out of school 
 and were given special opportunities to become delinquent. More than 
 half of all the delinquent boys brought into court come in at the age of 
 fourteen or in the two years immediately following their withdrawal 
 from school. If the provision in the state law which requires the 
 compulsory school attendance of boys between the ages of fourteen 
 and sixteen who are not working could be rigorously enforced, the 
 number of delinquent boys of these ages would undoubtedly decrease. 
 There is, however, a method, which might be adopted, of meeting this 
 problem which would be preventive rather than corrective, and that 
 is for the school to assist these boys in finding the right kind of work. 
 It would seem to be wiser for educational authorities to take steps 
 to help children to get the right kind of work, rather than to punish 
 them for being idle. 
 
 In this connection we should like to quote from the recent report 
 \ of the Department of Compulsory Education.^ "The social waste in 
 I a boy's life between fourteen and sixteen often determines his future 
 I career and citizenship," writes the Superintendent. "Many employers 
 do not want a juvenile employee under sixteen years of age ; they can- 
 not become apprentices. Principals do not care to have the irregular 
 attendance of the fourteen-to-sixteen-year-old pupil who alternates be- 
 tween school and work so much, seeking employment. These older 
 boys influence younger ones — and herein lies a great handicap to 
 truant officers. It accounts, in a large measure, for the increase in 
 truancy in some districts, although many of the fourteen-to-sixteen- 
 year-old boys are repeatedly taken from the streets, and some remain 
 in school. There is no central juvenile employment agency, and con- 
 ditions could be better if one were established, to expedite the em- 
 plo^anent of boys and girls as soon as possible after they secure their 
 age and school certificates." 
 
 It is evident too that if work is recognized by the law as the alter- 
 native to school, it should be on the ground that the work will give 
 the child the needed training or preparation for what is to come after. 
 That is, the implication in the law is that either in school or in work 
 will be found the preparation for that later period in the child's 
 life in which the law wholly ceases to exercise control. The problem 
 of adequately protecting children who leave school to go to work has 
 
 2 See Chicago Board of Education. Fifty-First Annual Report, 1905, in 
 which the following statement appears in the report of the Superintendent of 
 Compulsory Education: "There are many idle boys between the ages of four- 
 teen and sixteen on the streets of Chicago Many of these boys 
 
 do not go to work because employers, as a rule, prefer a boy who has attained 
 the age of sixteen years in order that they may have employes whose employ- 
 ment and hours are not regulated by the Child Labor Law. These idle street 
 boys, over compulsory education age, frequently encourage smaller boys to be- 
 come truants and delinquents." 
 
 3 Chicago Board of Education. Fifty-Seventh Annual Report: "Report of 
 the Superintendent of Schools for the year ending June 30, 1911," p. 56. 
 
THE SCHOOL AND THE WORKING-CHILD 9 
 
 then three important aspects: (1) the question of what opportunities 
 for employment that are educational and disciplinary instead of de- 
 moralizing- are open to children of fourteen and fifteen ; (2) the ques- 
 tion of devising some machinery for ascertaining good vacancies and 
 fitting the right boy or girl into the right job; (3) the development of 
 some method of supervising the boy or girl after a job has been found 
 in order to ascertain whether the job proves suitable on the one hand, 
 and to see that the child is supported against temjitation to change his 
 job frequently on the other. In the solution of this problem we have 
 at once an important duty of the school and a unique opportunity to 
 render a most difficult and delicate service to the child, to the family, 
 and, in the long run, to the community, in saving the health and char- 
 acter of the working-child. 
 
 EXPERIMENTAL WORK DURING THE YEAR 1910-1911 
 
 In the autumn of 1910, this Department of the Chicago School of 
 Civics and Philanthropy, supported by a grant from the Russell Sage 
 Foundation, undertook a study of truancy in Chicago.** As one phase 
 of this study we became interested in the problem of the children be- 
 tween fourteen and sixteen. In Chicago during a single year 7,978 
 boys and 4,560 girls under sixteen years of age were granted working- 
 certificates ; of these children 8,985 were only fourteen years of age, 
 and 1,557 had not yet reached the fifth grade. 
 
 It has already been pointed out that in Illinois these children are 
 required by the Compulsory Education Law to be either at work or 
 in school, but that there is no provision for helping children to find 
 work and no institution to which they can be sent if they refuse to re- 
 turn to school. Attention has also been called to the fact that the 
 Parental School, an admirable institution maintained by the Board of 
 Education for truant boys," cannot legally receive any boy over four- 
 teen nor retain any boy already committed to the school after he 
 reaches the legal working-age. Here, however, as in the ordinary 
 school, nothing is done to help the boy find suitable work or to make 
 the transition from school to work easy for the child. The plight of 
 the boy discharged from the institution merely because he is fourteen 
 and therefore a legal wage-earner is apparent. Boys are sent to the 
 Parental School only when they are in special need of the training and 
 of the disciplinary life which that school is so well equipped to pro- 
 vide. The boy so released when he has no "job" in sight and no one 
 at home able or interested to find him one, is in grave danger of 
 losing all that the school may have done for him. 
 
 These Parental School boys are, therefore, in much greater need 
 of supervision than the majority of children who leave school to 
 go to work. They have been uncontrollable at school and they come 
 for the most part from homes that are, to say the least, unfavorable 
 
 4 This study was undertaken as part of the Juvenile Court inquiry on which 
 the Department had been engaged for several years. The first vohime dealing 
 with the results of this inquiry, The Delinquent Child and the Home, is now in 
 press and will shortly be issued by the Charities Publication Committee for the 
 Russell Sage Foundation. 
 
 ^ It may be well to call attention here to urgent need for a similar institu- 
 tion for truant girls, or girls who are incorrigible at school. 
 
10 THE SCHOOL AND THE WORKING-CHILD 
 
 to their right development. In some cases they come from 
 homes in which the father drinks or in which the mother is shiftless 
 and incompetent ; in a few cases the mother herself is a drinking- 
 woman or worse ; when there are degraded conditions in the home 
 the degradation is accompanied by poverty ; and in still other cases 
 there is poverty alone, poverty which is honest and respectable but 
 wliich means pressing need for what the child can earn. It was found, 
 for example, in a study of truant cases last year that out of 579 boys 
 who were brought to court for the first time on a truancy charge, 
 157 belonged to families which had at some time been on the records 
 of the United Charities. It is obvious that to return to these homes 
 children released from all effective control on the part of the school 
 authorities and unaided by any sympathetic, firm and intelligent guid- 
 ance, is to run the risk of undoing all that has been gained by sending 
 them away. On the other hand, if the boy can be persuaded volun- 
 tarily to return to school, or if he can be found the right job and 
 persuaded to stick to it, if misunderstandings with the foreman can be 
 explained and adjusted, if there is some one at hand to give him 
 encouraging and sturdy advice when he wants to "chuck the job and 
 try something new" or "loaf for a bit," the succeeding months may 
 continue the discipline and right development begun in the Parental 
 School. 
 
 These children, then, who according to the statute must be re- 
 leased on their fourteenth birthday from the Parental School, have 
 again after their return home the alternative under the law of return- 
 ing to school or of finding a job. To undertake to advise these chil- 
 dren with regard to their choice of work and to assist them in finding 
 jobs if they were unwilling to return to school opened an interesting 
 opportunity to combine investigational with practical work. To at- 
 tempt to understand the problem of employment as they faced it 
 seemed to be not only germane to our truancy inquiry but likely to 
 be of some immediate practical value. We attempted to serve, in short, 
 as a sort of employment agency for these boys, believing this to be one 
 of the best methods of understanding the questions connected with 
 their finding work, the kind of positions open to them, the ease or diffi- 
 culty of finding "vacant jobs," their treatment by the employer and 
 their conduct in work after they were placed. 
 
 In other words to get directly from and with them the employ- 
 ment experience of these boys dismissed from the Parental School 
 solely because of their age seemed relevant to an inquiry into the 
 adequacy of the Compulsory Education Law, the effectiveness of the 
 court as a device for strengthening the school, and the reasonableness 
 of accepting "lawful employment" as a substitute for schooling during 
 these two important years of the child's life. 
 
 To try to assist boys or girls in finding work is a task not to be 
 lightly undertaken. It means not only a thoroughgoing investigation 
 into opportunities of employment open to children under sixteen but 
 a careful study of the particular child. On the one hand, it means 
 interviews with employers and foremen, and on the other, interviews 
 with the child before he leaves school, with his teachers and with 
 parents in the home — interviews which give as complete information 
 as can be gained of what the boy v/ants to do and thinks he can do, 
 of what his teachers believe him to be fitted for physically and men- 
 
THE SCHOOL AND THE WORKING-CHILD 11 
 
 tally, and most important of all, the judgment of his parents, their 
 hopes and fears if they will share them, and such light as his home 
 circumstances and relationships throw on the possibilities of his work- 
 ing career. This is, of course, only half the battle. There is also 
 the selection from among all of the available jobs that can be found, 
 the one to which the boy seems best adapted, and then frequently the 
 difficult task of persuading the boy to give up being a messenger boy 
 or some other wasteful occupation on which he may have set his 
 heart, convincing the parents perhaps to take a lower wage at the 
 start in a job which is going to mean learning as well as earning, and, 
 finally, constant communication with the boy after he is placed. For 
 watching the child after a job has been found is as important as finding 
 the job. The temptation to leave one employer and "try another" 
 is in the air. Boys give up their jobs on the most trivial pretexts and 
 often without telling the employer they intend to leave. One boy 
 left a good job with a good firm and became a telegraph messenger 
 because he did not like the shape of the packages he was asked to 
 carry ; a Bohemian boy left a shop where he was being taught a trade, 
 and went into a large factory which offered only unskilled work for 
 either men or boys because he resented having a Polish boy in the 
 shop, and said it was nicer when he was "the only boy." Other boys 
 leave because they like a change and can usually "pick up some kind of 
 work." In such cases it is often possible to persuade the employer to 
 give the boy another trial, to show the boy how much he may gain 
 by working steadily for the same firm, and to explain to the parents the 
 dangers of casual habits. The task is not a simple task. It involves 
 often many interviews, much firm but gentle dealing with boy and 
 parents and close co-operation with employer; but it also means a 
 knowledge of the chaos by which fourteen-year-old children are 
 allowed to enter the wage-earning market unguarded and unguided, 
 which is worth all it costs. The effort to find good places for boys or 
 girls w^ho leave school to go to work shows as nothing but direct 
 practical experience can show, the great dearth of educati onal ojidisci- 
 plinary work for children under sixteem It shows m the most unmis- 
 takable terms that the serious study of this question is the duty of 
 the schools unless they are willing to sit by and take no notice as the 
 child goes forth to unlearn what the school has taught. 
 
 It was realized, of course, that the same problem presented itself 
 to the fourteen-year-old girls who are leaving school to go to work 
 and that the same method would be of even greater value in the case 
 of girls than of boys; because, few as are the opportunities of an 
 industrially promising kind for boys, they are fewer for girls, since 
 most employments for women today are in fact "blind-alley" or "dead 
 end" employments. Moreover the problem of school attendance for 
 girls is one to which much less attention has been given. The number 
 of girls whose attendance is so irregular or whose conduct so bad as to 
 call for action on the part of the Compulsory Education Department 
 is almost negligible ; and these are not brought into the Juvenile Court. 
 There is no Parental School for girls. We therefore had no opportun- 
 ity to undertake in connection with our Juvenile Court inquiry the 
 same investigational experiment for girls which we undertook for 
 the Parental School boys. But by the intelligent co-operation of 
 three women's organizations, the Chicago Woman's Club, the Chi- 
 
12 THE SCHOOL AND THE WORKING-CHILD 
 
 cago Association of Collegiate Alumnge, and the Woman's City Club, 
 this work was made possible. Through their joint gift we were 
 enabled to obtain for four months the service of a special investigator 
 who was peculiarly fitted for the work. Miss Davis had been engaged 
 with the Department in an earlier study of the delinquent wards of the 
 court, and had been especially skillful and successful in obtaining data 
 concerning delinquent girls and in understanding the needs and diffi- 
 culties of those girls. She had more recently been for two years in the 
 Illinois Children's Home and Aid Society, in charge of the work for 
 homeless girls, and she came directly from that position to this 
 undertaking. She seemed to have the training, sympathy, experi- 
 ence, and resourcefulness needed in this work ; and the results of her 
 brief inquiry will, we believe, justify the confidence placed in the 
 Department by the three co-operating organizations and in turn the 
 confidence of the Department in her. 
 
 Toward the end of the school year, as the knowledge of trade con- 
 ditions accumulated and the connection with good employers became 
 gradually established, we were able to take care of a very considerable 
 number of children sent to us by the settlements who knew of our 
 experimental work, and by the United Charities and some other organ- 
 izations. In particular, especially handicapped children were sent to 
 us, a one-armed girl, a lame boy, a deaf and dumb girl, and undersized 
 or delicate children who were in work that was too hard for them 
 or unsuitable for other reasons. 
 
 A few illustrations will perhaps be of interest in showing that 
 the "better job" did not always mean lower wages, though whenever 
 possible it meant a chance to learn and a chance of promotion as a 
 result of steady, faithful work : 
 
 Emma C , a girl of fifteen, who had finished the seventh grade, had 
 
 been employed in a department store as "inspector" earning $2.50 a week. She 
 was a capable, promising girl; and employment was found for her in a braiding 
 and embroidery shop where she is learning hand and machine embroidering, 
 and where she earns $5 a week. Her sister, a bright girl of sixteen and an 
 eighth-grade graduate, who had been working in a department store for nine 
 months as "wrapper" and earning $4.50 a week, was placed in an office position 
 where she is earning $6 a week. 
 
 Lena S , a little girl of fourteen, who had finished the sixth grade and 
 
 who knew how to sew, had found a job for herself in a tailor shop "finishing 
 pants" at $2.50 a week. She was placed in a Michigan Avenue shop where good 
 needlewomen are in demand, at an initial wage of $4 a week. 
 
 Elizabeth B , a bright little girl of fourteen, had "done well" in the 
 
 seventh grade and should have gone on to the eighth, but her father was an 
 epileptic and she was the eldest of eight children. On the day she was fourteen 
 therefore she became the "sole support of the family." She was sent to us by 
 the United Charities from a place where she had been earning $3.50 a week fold- 
 ing circulars and she was placed in the filing department of a large commercial 
 agency where she was paid in the beginning $4 a week. In six months shewas 
 earning $5 a week, and the forewoman reports that she is learning typewriting 
 in her "spare time" and is going to make a good office assistant. 
 
 Steve H , who was sent by the United Charities, was an eighth-grade 
 
 graduate and another "sole support" of a family of eight, in this case deserted by 
 the father. The boy was sixteen years old, extremely small for his age and was 
 "carrying boards" in a box factory, earning $6 a week. He was a very eager, 
 ambitious boy and as he was sixteen years old it was not difficult to find a 
 chance for him as a compositor's apprentice with a good printing firm. His 
 initial wages in this case were only $4, but it was not difficult to raise a small 
 fund to pay the fainily the difference between his apprenticeship wage and his 
 box factory wage until he had been "raised." He has been in the shop nearly a 
 
THE SCHOOL AND THE WORKING-CHILD 13 
 
 year now, his wages have been raised three times, he enjoys his work and his 
 foreman speaks well of him. 
 
 Albert Z , who is fifteen and had finished sixth grade, worked for a year 
 
 in a box factory "carrying boards," and earned $4 a week. Fortunately he was 
 laid off when the work became slack. Employment was found for him in a 
 priiiting shop where he has an opportunity to learn the trade and where his 
 initial wage was $4.50 a week. 
 
 James R -, a bright Bohemian boy of fifteen, who had finished the seventh 
 
 grade, worked in a department store nearly two years as messenger boy. He 
 had begun at $4 a week, and his wages had not been raised during that time. 
 He left because he "wanted to learn something." He was placed in a printing 
 shop where he is learning the trade, and where his initial wage was $4.50 
 a week. 
 
 Salvatcre, an Italian boy of fourteen, the "sole support" of a fatherless 
 fainily of six, was sent to us because he was "working too hard" and often "fell 
 asleep at his work." He was working in a department store as a "cash boy" 
 earning $2.50 a week and earning an extra $2 by working on a milk wagon from 
 .three to six in the morning. It was possible to place him with an engraving 
 company where the prospects to learn the trade were good and where his 
 wages were $4.50 a week at the start. 
 
 In the month of Jnne v/e undertook to interview and to place all 
 of the children who were planning to go to work at the end of the 
 school year in the Washburne School, one of the largest schools on 
 the West Side. Office hours were kept in a neighboring settlement, 
 the Henry Booth House, w^hich generously offered space, and the prin- 
 cipal, Air. Thompson, was glad to co-operate by sending the children 
 to us and by giving his personal advice. Besides interviewing the 
 children, the homes were all visited, and when the parents seemed able 
 to keep the child in school longer, they were strongly urged to do so. 
 
 By way of summary a few brief tables are presented to show the 
 practical results of this very humble attempt of the Department to 
 serve as an informal employment agency for these boys and girls. 
 During the year 254 children, 80 girls and 174 boys were inter\newed.^ 
 Of the boys 50 were still in the Parental School but about to be dis- 
 charged wdien interview-ed. The following tables summarize "the 
 actual work done. 
 
 WORK FOR BOYS WHO WERE INTERVIEWED 
 OCT. 1,1910, TO OCT. 1, 1911 
 
 Number of boys placed 59 
 
 Number who secured work themselves or through parents 
 
 or friends 29 
 
 Number returned to school 43 
 
 Number for whom nothing could be done 6 
 
 Number who moved away and were lost 3 
 
 Number now waiting for positions 34 
 
 Total number of boys interviewed 174 
 
 The ages of these boys were as follows: 
 
 Age Number of boys 
 
 14 3'ears 105 
 
 15 years 31 
 
 16 years 18 
 
 over 16 years 20 
 
 Total 174 
 
 ^ Miss Davis was assisted in this work by Miss Edith Foster. Further 
 assistance in the preparation of the report has been given by Miss Grace P. 
 Norton and Miss Maud E. Lavery. 
 
14 THE SCHOOL AND THE WORKING-CHILD 
 
 LIST OF INDUSTRIES OR OCCUPATIONS IN WHICH 
 59 BOYS WERE PLACED 
 
 Commercial engraving 14 
 
 Printing 13 
 
 Bookbinding 6 
 
 Metal trades 9 
 
 Electrical work 3 
 
 Commercial lithography 2 
 
 Jewelry work or manufacturing 1 
 
 Box factory. 2 
 
 Wood-working 1 
 
 Farm work 4 
 
 Office-work 3 
 
 Clipping bureau 1 
 
 Total 59 
 
 WORK FOR GIRLS WHO WERE INTERVIEWED 
 OCT. 1, 1910, TO OCT. 1, 1911 
 
 Number of girls placed 49 
 
 Number who secured work themselves or through parents 
 
 or friends 4 
 
 Number returned to school 7 
 
 Number for whom nothing could be done 5 
 
 Number now waiting for positions 15 
 
 Total number of girls interviewed 80 
 
 The ages of these girls were as follows: 
 
 Age Number of Girls 
 
 14 years 23 
 
 15 years 21 
 
 16 years 23 
 
 over 16 years 13 
 
 Total 80 
 
 LIST OF INDUSTRIES OR OCCUPATIONS IN WHICH 
 49 GIRLS WERE PLACED 
 
 Sewing trades 5 
 
 Engraving 9 
 
 Bookbinding 18 
 
 Office-work 10 
 
 Millinery 2 
 
 Weaving 3 
 
 Sample-work 2 
 
 Total 49 
 
 It should, perhaps, be pointed out that we have never been willing 
 to assume the responsibility of placing girls in offices where only one 
 or two girls were employed. We have used large commercial houses 
 where there were a large number of girls where the dangers of iso- 
 lated employment were avoided and where there was at the same time 
 greater opportunity for a bright girl to "work up." 
 
 In connection with the problem of girl employment which has 
 been of special interest to the members of the organizations which 
 provided for the appointment of Miss Davis and the special investiga- 
 tion into girls' trades, it may be pointed out that in addition to the 
 information obtained and the experience gained there have been 
 
THE SCHOOL AND THE WORKING-CHILD IS 
 
 results of a definitely practical kind; first, the data gathered by Miss 
 Davis were placed at the service of Miss Wells, principal of the new 
 Lucy L. Flower Technical High School, so that various questions 
 connected with the curriculum of that school could be determined 
 with reference to trade opportunities for girls ; and second, at the 
 request of Mrs. Young, the superintendent of schools, Miss Davis 
 has been authorized by the School Management Committee of the 
 Board of Education to hold office hours in the school building in 
 order to advise the girls, who have entered upon a course of technical 
 training there, with reference to their more intelligent and deliberate 
 selection of a trade and their more advantageous placing at the end 
 of their course. 
 
 The results of the investigation which Miss Davis has carried on 
 are presented here in a separate report. It is hoped that the informa- 
 tion which is published will be valuable in many practical ways. 
 Details given regarding wages, hours, possibilities of training and 
 prospects of advancement should prove useful not only to teachers but 
 to the directors of girls' clubs in settlements, to district visitors in the 
 offices of the United Charities, and to other persons who come in close 
 contact with girls whose home conditions force them to leave school 
 early and go to work. Information is also given as to shop conditions, 
 the kind of girls who go into the trade, their nationality and age and 
 such practical details as could be obtained. 
 
 Some word should perhaps be said with regard to the limited scope 
 of Miss Davis's report. It is in every respect very incomplete ; it covers 
 only a small number of trades, and in most cases the reports for these 
 trades are based on a relatively small number of interviews. A com- 
 plete report on the opportunities of employment open to girls would 
 mean an investigation into all trades in which women are employed. 
 The report which Miss Davis submits represents the work of a single 
 investigator for four months only. If it is possible to continue her 
 work, we look forward to the publication of a more complete report 
 at a later date. It seemed worth while however to publish a prelim- 
 inary report in order that such information as had been gained might 
 be of immediate service. It should be pointed out too that further 
 investigation will make possible not only an increase in the number 
 of trades for which information is available but more complete and 
 detailed reports of the trades which have already been covered in this 
 preliminary investigation. 
 
 A word should perhaps be said with regard to the basis on which 
 the trades included in this report were selected. It will be remembered 
 that this investigation went hand in hand with a search for actual 
 places for girls who wanted work. Since we could not cover the 
 entire field, we started with trades which seemed to promise fairly 
 good openings, trades which we had reason to believe offered some 
 skilled work and opportunities of advancement. In general, we omitted 
 the large factory industries, such as box or candy making, where girls 
 easily found work for themselves and where the work for girls seemed 
 to be largely unskilled. Some trades were selected because of a 
 definite application from a girl who wanted that special kind of work. 
 For example, when a girl who wanted to learn hairdressing was sent 
 to us, we found it necessary in trying to find a shop where we could 
 place her, to visit thirty-eight different hairdressing establishments. 
 
 We have, as the report shows, interviewed 80 girls, 44 of whom 
 
16 THE SCHOOL AND THE WORKING-CHILD 
 
 were under sixteen years of age. The question that we had to face 
 was what v/as the best that could be done for the girl, considering her 
 school grade, her health, and her general ability. In many cases — 
 one might almost say the majority of cases — the girls under sixteen 
 seemed hopelessly unfitted for any good place. They needed to be 
 taught and trained, and yet we were asking employers to pay for their 
 labor. At the time this investigation was made, there were no day trade 
 classes in Chicago for girls of this sort. In order to find out what 
 the possible value of a day trade school might be, the question was 
 definitely put to each employer or employer's representative who was 
 interviewed, "How far would a trade school be of value in the industry 
 you represent?" We have published the answers to this question in 
 some detail because there is sure to be in the near future a larger pro- 
 vision in the way of day trade classes for girls, and any information 
 relating to the subject will be useful. The opening of the new Lucy 
 L. Flower Technical High School will undoubtedly serve as a pioneer 
 and guide to those interested in industrial training for girls. Hull 
 House is about to ofifer a day class in trade dressmaking which will 
 be open to girls who are too ill equipped to enter the Technical High 
 School. It is for girls of this sort that a special appeal must be made — 
 girls who have left school from the lower grades, who are not fit to 
 go to work, but whose parents need to utilize their slight wage-earning 
 capacity at the earliest possible moment. While the parents of such 
 girls are unwilling to let them go back to school unless they are given 
 some definite preparation for work, permission could often be obtained 
 for them to attend a day trade class which would give in six months 
 a definitely better chance of entering a trade and of earning more 
 money than they would otherwise have. In large settlements where 
 the girls would also have the benefit of day classes in cooking, gym- 
 nastics or dancing, which would give them discipline and training of 
 another sort, the girl would undoubtedly have a much better chance 
 in the industrial world. 
 
 A study of Miss Davis's report shows that even in the best trades 
 there is very little educational work for girls under sixteen. Employers 
 do not like to be bothered with an arrangement which means having 
 part of the force on a different time-shift. The thorough study of this 
 \ question will, we believe, demonstrate the fact that machinery is 
 taking the place of the unskilled work of children in modern indus- 
 trial and business organization, and that it will be much better for 
 ^ industry in the long run if children spend the years between fourteen 
 I and sixteen in definite preparation for their industrial life. If there 
 is so little work that is good for them to do, is it not the duty of the 
 community to face the fact and make some provision for these two 
 years that are being wasted in the lives of thousands of children 
 v/ho are every year going into unprofitable work? This is not the 
 place to discuss the questions connected with trade or industrial 
 training for girls. It m.ay be worth while, however, since it is so 
 closely connected with questions before us here in Chicago to quote 
 from a very remarkable report of the Education Committee of the 
 London County Council submitting some reports on Women's Trades 
 compiled by the late Mrs. Oakeshott when she was inspector of 
 Vv^omen's trade and technical classes for the London County Council. 
 In considering opportunities which a girl had of learning a trade in 
 
\ 
 
 THE SCHOOL AND THE WORKING-CHILD 17 
 
 the workroom, the need of trade classes for girls became apparent. 
 Entirely apart from the fact that it was difficult to find suitable appren- 
 ticeships for girls, it was pointed out that the trade school had certain 
 definite advantages. 
 
 "The Trade School," Mrs. Oakeshott explained, "aims at making 
 a worker of a kind such as the workroom rarely if ever can make. By 
 means of its carefully selected trade teacher and Advisory Committee 
 of Experts, it gives the child a thorough all-round rudimentary knov.d- 
 edge of the industry she is to enter. That is the basis of the Trade 
 School. And if this were all, a carefully arranged apprenticeship 
 might be as good. The Trade School has other objects in viev/. The 
 girl who enters such a school spends two years more in all the whole- 
 some influences of school life. The child of 14 is not at once placed 
 in a workroom wdiere hours of work are from 8:30 a. m. to 7:30 p. m. 
 She spends these two years gaining strength morally and physically 
 while her industrial training is secured. The whole spirit of the school 
 is intended to encourage the esprit de corps which is lacking in women 
 eng-aQcd in industrial work. General education is continued and the 
 subjects chosen are those which are calculated to quicken the intelli- 
 gence and interest of the girl in the active life she is to enter. Artistic 
 training in relation to each trade is given, and the young worker has 
 an opportunity of experimenting, planning and trying to produce orig- 
 inal work. In the Trade School it does not matter if the material is 
 spoiled provided a lesson has been learned. Lastly, it gives a hint 
 that when the drudgery has been mastered there is responsible work 
 to come. And this is where workroom training often deadens keenness 
 and interest. It does not exist to teach, it exists to get work turned 
 out as quickly and as cheaply as possible. Therefore the worker is 
 often kept to the one process that she can perform quickly and well, 
 thereby originality and interest are frequently killed.'' 
 
 Other countries are considering this problem with greater seri- 
 ousness ; and trade and technical schools, continuation schools, juvenile 
 labor exchanges, juvenile advisory committees, apprenticeship and 
 skilled employment committees have been successfully organized. In 
 order that the opportunity before us in Chicago may be more evident, 
 a report upon the experiments now under way in Germany and Eng- 
 land is included in this report. 
 
 In conclusion we may perhaps repeat that the fourteen- or fifteen- 
 year-old child is very helpless and ill equipped to enter alone and 
 unguarded upon her wage-earning life ; the parent is unable to advise ; 
 or guide; the private employment ofifice is a wholly unsuitable 
 agency; and up to the p'resent the school has been inactive. This 
 rneans that there is a rich opportunity for constructive work and 
 a clear field of service. We feel ourselves most fortunate in having 
 been allowed to suggest, through this investigation, the great need of 
 undertaking the delicate task of employment supervision ; the fact that 
 it is a proper function of the school ; and the method which we believe 
 to be the right method, involving as it does close co-operation with the 
 parents, the employers and the other agencies which have been con-, I 
 cerned in the problems of the individual family, and based on accurate 
 knowledge of the wage-earning opportunities and industrial possi- 
 bilities for children of this group. 
 
PRELIMINARY REPORT 
 
 ON THE 
 
 OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT IN CHICAGO 
 OPEN TO GIRLS UNDER SIXTEEN 
 
 ANNE S. DAVIS 
 
 LIST OF TRADES 
 
 Sewing Trades: Dressmaking; Millinery; Lingerie, Women's Waists and 
 Dresses; Braiding and Embroidering; Corset-making; Tie-making; Cap- 
 making; Suspender-making; Glove-making. 
 
 Boot and Shoe Industry. 
 
 Artificial Flower-making. 
 
 Bookbinding. 
 
 Engraving. 
 
 Photography. 
 
 Stenography, Typewriting and General Office-work. 
 
 Telephone Operating. 
 
 Laundries. 
 
 Dyeing and Cleaning. 
 
 Hairdressing and Hairmaking. 
 
 19 
 
OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 21 
 
 THE SEWING TRADES 
 
 I. DRESSMAKING 
 
 Dressmaking is perhaps the largest industry open to women. 
 Managers of twenty-five workrooms in the business district were 
 interviewed. In most of these shops a high grade of work was done, 
 and a high order of needle-work was required. The girls employed 
 were usually of a good class and evidently from good homes. The shop 
 conditions were generally good. 
 
 The employers require that a girl entering these shops shall be 
 neat above all things. She must like to sew and have a real aptitude 
 for it if she wishes to succeed. There is no definite educational require- 
 ment, but a grammar-school education at least will be greatly to a 
 girl's advantage. Swedish and Norwegian girls usually do well; and 
 girls of these nationalities are preferred by some establishments. 
 Others have found Bohemian and Polish girls very successful, and in 
 two shops colored girls were employed. 
 
 METHODS OF TRAINING 
 
 There is little opportunity for a girl of fourteen or fifteen years to 
 enter a shop as a learner; for although dressmakers will occasionally 
 take a sixteen-year-old girl to learn the trade, most of them demand 
 trained helpers. They complain that they are too busy to take the 
 time to teach girls who have no knowledge of sewing, and that, more- 
 over, few young girls are willing to serve an apprenticeship. 
 
 In case an untrained girl does enter an establishment, she is given 
 a good deal of errand-work at first and but little sewing. She is gradu- 
 ally taught to bind seams, to run seams, to sew on buttons and hooks 
 and eyes, and to make button-holes. In dressmaking as in most other 
 trades, the work has become specialized, so that there is little chance 
 for a girl to learn to make an entire garment. She finally becomes 
 a sleeve-maker, a skirt-maker, a waist-draper, or a waist-finisher. 
 Several managers stated that a girl has the privilege of learning all the 
 branches if she wishes, but usually, when she has learned to make a 
 sleeve or a skirt well, she is content to go no farther. Cutting and 
 fitting are never taught. The result of these methods is that a girl 
 rarely receives in a shop, training sufficiently thorough to enable her to 
 work independently. 
 
 REQUIREMENTS, WAGES, HOURS AND SEASONS 
 
 Wages. — A learner receives anywhere from carfare to $3 or $4 a 
 week. Usually she is paid $1.50 a week for the first two or three 
 months. At the end of a year, if she has shown any aptitude, she is 
 paid $5 or $6 ; at the end of two years, from $6 to $8. The wage usually 
 paid to so-called "skilled workers" is $10 or $12. In a few high grade 
 shops, waist-drapers earn as much as $35 a week. 
 
 Hours. — The hours in most establishments are from 8 a. m. to 5 :30 
 p. m., with half an hour at noon. The work is continuous for six days 
 of the week ; in a few cases, however, the shops are closed an hour or 
 
22 OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 
 
 two earlier on Saturdays. During the busiest seasons the girls are 
 sometimes required to work overtime, for which they are paid a cer- 
 tain per cent of their weekly wage or allowed to go home early another 
 time to compensate. 
 
 Seasons. — Dressmaking is one of the seasonal trades. There are 
 during the year about nine months of work. Most firms are busy from 
 September to January and from March to July. At the end of each of 
 these periods the inefficient workers are laid off. Many of the shops 
 are fairly busy except for a month or six weeks in the summer when 
 they are closed. From the latter part of March to the first of May 
 the season is at its height, and skilled workers are in great demand. 
 
 DEMAND FOR SKILLED WORKERS 
 
 The general opinion seems to be that there is a growing demand 
 for skilled and intelligent workers and that it is quite difficult to get 
 efficient help. The manager of a shop where twenty-five girls were 
 employed said she could use sixty girls but that she could not get them. 
 Other dressmakers stated : 
 
 "Girls are very scarce in this trade; we could use experienced 
 girls now." 
 
 'T have fewer applications each year for dressmakers and I can 
 get fewer skilled workers." 
 
 "It is very hard to get girls who can sew well." 
 
 "I can't get efficient girls. They are careless and take no interest 
 in their work." 
 
 "I had an 'ad' in the paper four weeks for an expert sleeve-maker 
 and did not receive an answer. I can use thirty-five girls usually but 
 I can't get them." 
 
 The heads of some establishments complained that fewer girls are 
 entering the trade. They thought it was due to the fact that the Amer- 
 ican girl craves excitement, and that dressmaking is too confining for 
 the average girl. The girls of today are not taught sewing in their 
 homes, and without some knowledge of sewing a girl will not turn to 
 dressmaking. One manager said that the teaching of sewing in the 
 public schools seemed to be helping a little. 
 
 NEED FOR TECHNICAL TRAINING 
 
 The great demand for skilled workers points to the need of a trade 
 school, but the opinions of employers as to the practicability of a trade 
 school vary. Nearly all the dressmakers believe that more girls should 
 be taught so-called "sewing" and that a trade school might be a great 
 help in some respects, but that no school could give the training which 
 is given in a workroom. The following opinions are given : 
 
 "A trade school would be a great help if it could interest more 
 girls in dressmaking." 
 
 "If a trade school would teach just the rudiments, a girl would 
 have no trouble finding work." 
 
 "A trade school would be a great help, as few dressmakers are 
 willing to take apprentices — moreover only a very few girls are 
 willing to serve an apprenticeship. The sewing in the public schools 
 has helped a little, and a trade school ought to be a great advance." 
 
 "A school would be a great help to a girl who wants to go into 
 dressmaking. She could learn so mvich more than she could in any 
 
OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 23 
 
 dressmaking establishment, where the work is so specialized. But 
 unless it were specialized, we should never accomplish anything." 
 
 "A trade school would be quite an advance if it were run on an 
 extremely practical basis." 
 
 "Technical training would be of little value without the work- 
 room experience." 
 
 "If a teacher who had had workroom experience were employed, a 
 trade school might be of some value." 
 
 No very definite suggestions for teaching dressmaking in a tech- 
 nical school were given. Most of the dressmakers interviewed did not 
 favor the teaching of cutting and fitting. It was suggested that design- 
 ing might be taught. One dressmaker thought that draping could be 
 taught in perhaps two years in such a school. But the majority seemed 
 to think that button-holing, seaming, binding, tucking, and the more 
 elementary parts of dressmaking would be sufficient for the girl who 
 expects to enter a workroom. It was thought that a woman who had 
 had workroom experience would be more successful in teaching dress- 
 making in such a school. 
 
 THE SEWING TRADES 
 
 II. MILLINERY 
 
 Eighteen shops were visited in this inquiry ; seven wholesale shops 
 employing from one hundred to three hundred and fifty girls ; nine 
 small shops employing from three to thirty girls ; two employing about 
 thirty men and girls. In these last two establishments wire hat-frames 
 were manufactured ; this is not a desirable trade, for the work is 
 unskilled and very seasonal, and a number of rather low-grade men 
 are employed, who are gradually displacing the girls in the trade ; and 
 as the wire and clipper cut and callous the hands, few girls who are 
 employed remain long at the job. 
 
 In some of the wholesale houses a rather cheap grade of work was 
 done. The work of the small shops on the other hand was superior in 
 quality, and in them the general conditions were good. 
 
 The girls who enter millinery are perhaps of a more select class 
 of girls than those in any other industry. This industry is still so 
 exclusively a woman's trade that the best positions are open to women. 
 
 METHODS OF TRAINING 
 
 In the small shops girls at the age of fourteen or fifteen are 
 engaged as learners. As the short hours disorganize the work, the 
 wholesale shops will only occasionally employ girls under sixteen, and 
 there are shops which employ only experienced girls. In a wholesale 
 house which takes apprentices, an apprentice at first prepares trimming 
 and is "helper" to a "maker." If she is observing she may learn a little 
 by watching. In some of the large shops, a designer will have a group 
 of twelve girls working with her; two or three out of the group will 
 be apprentices, who learn by watching their more or less skilled neigh- 
 bors. In many of the wholesale houses the work is very specialized, 
 and a girl may do such routine work as sewing in lining for months at 
 a time. So the prospects for a girl to learn the trade in these shops arc 
 
24 OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 
 
 very slight. Several managers stated that girls who wished to learn 
 the trade should enter the small shops and come to them later as trim- 
 mers or designers. The period of apprenticeship in small shops is two 
 seasons. Some firms pay no wages during the first six months, others 
 pay one or two dollars for two seasons, and at the end of that time, 
 if the girl has shown any aptitude she may earn from $6 to $8 a week. 
 The wholesale houses usually pay apprentices from $1.50 to $3. 
 
 Wages. — The wages vary greatly in different shops and in different 
 occupations. Designers are the best paid and receive from $25 to $50 
 a week, the usual wage being about $35. Trimmers receive from $15 to 
 $35 ; makers, from $10 to $20. Girls who assist and prepare trimming 
 earn from $5 to $10. Much of the work in the wholesale shops is paid 
 on a piece basis, and the slow worker cannot earn much more than $6 
 or $8. In fact, only girls of artistic ability and unusual creative power 
 can hope to command the higher salaries, and the usual wage for the 
 trade as a whole is about $12. 
 
 Hours. — The hours are usually from 8 a. m. to 6 p. m., varying half 
 an hour in some cases. In a few wholesale houses where piecework is 
 done and in the smaller shops in outlying districts, girls are required 
 to work overtime when the season is at its height. 
 
 Seasons. — The great disadvantage of millinery is its extremely 
 seasonal character. The wholesale houses are usually busy during 
 September, October, and November, and in March, April, and May. 
 In some houses the season may begin earlier and last a little longer, 
 but practically the busy season does not last longer than seven months. 
 From June through part of August the agents are getting orders for 
 fall and winter hats ; and from December to February, for the spring 
 and summer hats. Then the force of workers is greatly decreased. 
 One house which employs one hundred girls during the busy season 
 decreases the force to twenty when the work becomes slack. Only 
 the most competent — the skilled designers and trimmers — are 
 employed throughout the year. 
 
 In the retail trade the busy season begins in March and is over by 
 June, and again September, October, and November are busy months. 
 
 No milliner can expect more than six or eight months of work 
 during the year. 
 
 Employers generally seem to have no trouble in securing girls in 
 spite of the seasonal character of the work, but they complain of their 
 lack of artistic appreciation and creative ability. They thought that if 
 a technical school could give training in color and form and teach the 
 sewing required in millinery, it might be helpful ; otherwise as there 
 is no principle to follow in millinery and as the styles are changing 
 every season, there would be no advantage in technical training. More- 
 over the technical training must be supplemented by workroom experi- 
 ence, as the workroom only can give certain kinds of training which 
 are necessary to a successful milliner. 
 
OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 25 
 
 THE SEWING TRADES 
 
 III. LINGERIE, WOMEN'S WAISTS AND DRESSES 
 
 This report covers three branches of the ready-made clothing 
 industry which includes, in Chicago, not only lingerie and women's 
 waists and dresses but women's coats and skirts, men's ready-made 
 clothing, and children's dresses and coats. We hope during the coming 
 winter to extend the report to all branches of the trade and to the 
 cheaper as well as to the better-grade firms. 
 
 Up to the present time fifteen firms in the three branches desig- 
 nated, employing about three hundred girls, have been visited. Condi- 
 tions in these establishments varied. Two or three firms had small 
 workrooms. In factories where the lighting was poor, the ventilation 
 bad, and the space not ample, the wages were usually low, and a lower 
 type of girl was employed. The conditions in the large workrooms 
 were generally good. 
 
 The following groups of workers are found : 
 
 Cutters. — Patterns are cut in large quantities by a machine. Men 
 cutters are always employed, but there is no reason why a woman 
 could not do the cutting. 
 
 Designers. — In this particular line of work women are employed 
 more often than men. A designer must be able to draw so that she 
 may make her plan of the garment clear to the cutter. She must have 
 some creative power. 
 
 Sample-hands. — These workers put together the first sample gar- 
 ment, after it has been designed and cut, and plan the work in sections 
 for the machinists. 
 
 Machinists. — The greater number of girls employed in the ready- 
 made clothing trade are machinists. The machines are run by power 
 and are started and regulated by the pressure of the girl's foot on a 
 lever, while her hands guide the work. 
 
 METHODS OF TRAINING 
 
 As a girl cannot legally run a power machine until she is sixteen, 
 and there is little handwork to be done, few factories employ girls 
 under sixteen years. Some shops employ girls of fourteen and fifteen 
 as finishers — cutting threads, sewing on buttons, cutting the goods 
 under the lace, and preparing the trimming. After they are sixteen, 
 they may be put at machines. The necessary qualities for a good 
 machinist are speed and intelligence. A girl usually learns machine- 
 operating by sitting next to an experienced machinist and receiving a 
 little help from the forewoman. The work is highly specialized and 
 for the beginner it is rather discouraging. She is usually the one who 
 is first discharged when the work becomes a little slack; and if she 
 has learned only one simple stitch and has no idea how to put together 
 any garment, or if she is accustomed to one particular machine, she 
 may find it difficult to secure another place. One employer said that 
 he preferred girls who could make an entire waist or dress so that he 
 could change them from one machine to another; but the girls are 
 
26 OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 
 
 usually satisfied if they know only one process. Several employers 
 stated that they had urged girls to change their machines ; but they 
 will leave rather than learn another branch. In several shops girls 
 have an opportunity to learn machine embroidery on waists and 
 dresses. In some instances machine-operators have risen to positions 
 of designers and sample-hands. 
 
 WAGES, HOURS AND SEASONS 
 
 Wages. — A girl under sixteen years may earn from $3.50 to $4.50 
 a week. A machine-operator usually starts at $4.50 or $5 a week and 
 works for that amount until she learns or until her piecework exceeds 
 her weekly wage. Then she is paid on a piece basis. The average 
 wage for a machinist is $10; though in some factories girls are earning 
 from $15 to $20. In two factories where a high grade of work was 
 done, the machinists were paid by the week. The more skilled ones 
 received $10 to $15 in one factory, and in the other some were paid 
 as much as $20. 
 
 Hours.— The hours are generally from 8 a. m. to 5 :30 p. m. for 
 girls over sixteen years, varying a quarter- or a half-hour in some 
 cases — with half an hour at noon and Saturday afternoon off, except- 
 ing in two shops where they were closed only during the summer 
 months. 
 
 Seasons. — The majority of these firms were busy through the 
 year with the exception of two months during the summer v/hen they 
 were compelled to decrease their force of workers somewhat. One 
 large factory where dresses were manufactured was planning to intro- 
 duce the manufacture of negligee wear during the slack season in 
 order to retain the workers. 
 
 NEED FOR TECHNICAL TRAINING 
 
 All the employers interviewed were in favor of training in this 
 line of work. The following opinions were expressed : 
 
 "A school would be a great benefit in teaching the girl to make 
 an entire garment. The girl who knows how to do everything is the 
 valuable one. It's very hard to get good machinists. Not more than 
 five out of a hundred who answer our advertisements can sew." 
 
 "There are few skilled workers. A school would bring more com- 
 petent girls into the field." 
 
 "If a girl were taught all the processes of machinery she would 
 have no trouble getting a position." 
 
 "If girls were given technical training they could do their work 
 more intelligently, and there would be a greater opportunity for them 
 to become designers and sample-hands." 
 
 One employer had proposed to the manufacturers' association to 
 which he belonged the establishment of a trade school where the girls 
 might be taught seaming and how to put together a garment ; but many 
 of the firms thought it was cheaper to employ inexperienced girls at 
 lower wages even if it did take longer to teach them in their shops. 
 
 It was suggested: (1) That an all-round knowledge of machine- 
 operating be given ; (2) that drawing and designing of garments be 
 taught ; (3) that a course in drafting and cutting of patterns be offered, 
 though men are generally employed as cutters; (4) that teachers who 
 have had factory experience should be employed. 
 
OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 27 
 
 • THE SEWING TRADES 
 
 IV. BRAIDING AND EMBROIDERING 
 
 The establishments visited were those in which exclusive work is 
 done in braiding and embroidering waists and dresses. Some of these 
 are small shops employing from four to fiftv girls. These embroider 
 for the private dressmakers. Larger factories employing as many as 
 two hundred and fifty girls receive their orders from the large dress- 
 making establishments. 
 
 The work in these shops consists in braiding, embroidering, bead- 
 ing, appliqueing dresses, waists and coats, and making buttons and 
 dress-trimmings. Much of the work is done by machine, but there is 
 also a little handwork. 
 
 The work is varied and interesting and offers good opportunities 
 under favorable shop conditions. 
 
 METHOD OF TRAINING 
 
 Few girls under sixteen are employed. At first they wind spools, 
 match silks, and learn the simple stitches in hand embroidery. Some- 
 times they are employed to make buttons. At sixteen they may learn 
 the machining, which requires accuracy and good eyesight. As a rule, 
 employers cannot spare the time to teach girls and consequently are 
 demanding workers already trained. Several employers prefer to 
 employ foreign girls, thinking that they make better embroiderers and 
 that they are less restless and less likely to leave than the American 
 girls usually are. 
 
 WAGES, HOURS AND SEASONS 
 
 Wages. — Girls under sixteen generally receive from $3.50 to $5 
 a week. Skilled workers can earn as much as $20. The usual wage 
 for an experienced girl is about $12. In all except two shops, the wages 
 are paid on a time basis. 
 
 Hours. — The hours are from 8 a. m. to 5 :30 p. m. 
 
 Seasons. — The seasons generally correspond to the seasons in the 
 dressmaking trade. The summer months are slack, and girls are often 
 laid off during that time. 
 
 Emplo5''ers find it dif^cult to secure girls who can do the work 
 accurately. Few are intelligent enough to detect a flaw in their work, 
 and the girls who seek employment are generally lacking in originality, 
 with little appreciation of symmetr}^ and color. Skilled embroiderers 
 either by hand or machine are scarce. One manager of a shop said 
 that she had to send some of her work to New York because she could 
 not find any expert hand embroiderers here. 
 
 All the employers except one thought that their work might be 
 taught with success in a technical school, particularly if special atten- 
 tion is given to designing. It is claimed that skilled machine embroid- 
 erers are always in demand and that they can command high wages. 
 
U OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 
 
 THE SEWING TRADES 
 
 V. CORSET-MAKING 
 
 There are two branches of corset-making, the wholesale or fac- 
 tory work and the custom-work. Two factories were visited and ten 
 small shops where corsets are "made to order." 
 
 The factory work to some extent is unskilled and mechanical. 
 The work is largely power machining and offers no inducement to the 
 girl who wishes to learn a trade. Girls under sixteen are employed to 
 cut and tie threads and to insert the bones in the casings. These 
 factories employ many immigrant girls. 
 
 The custom or "made-to-order" corset trade is interesting and 
 highly skilled. The trade is at present small but it is growing, and 
 each year there is a greater demand for intelligent corset-makers. 
 
 METHODS OF TRAINING 
 
 The custom-shops do not like to take apprentices. Managers 
 of these shops say that if they take a girl who knows nothing of the 
 trade she may work six months, and then they may find that she is 
 not adapted to the work and their time has been wasted. They are 
 compelled to take untrained girls occasionally, however, because of 
 the difficulty in getting skilled workers. The apprentice learns the dif- 
 ferent branches of putting the pieces together, button-holing, trimming, 
 fitting in the bones, binding and machining. Seaming requires the 
 greatest care and preciseness. Cutting is seldom taught, and fitting 
 is acquired only after years of experience. Only one shop visited 
 takes learners under sixteen. 
 
 WAGES, HOURS AND SEASONS 
 
 Wages and Hours. — The wages of learners run from $3 to $5 a 
 week at the start. After three years' training a girl should be earning 
 from $8 to $12. The usual wage of a skilled worker is $15. Hours are 
 usually from 8 a. m. to 5 :30 p. m. with one hour at noon. 
 
 Seasons. — The work is not seasonal. Unlike most branches of the 
 sewing trades there is no slack season in corset-making. 
 
 NEED FOR A TRADE SCHOOL 
 
 The general opinion in the custom trade was to the efifect that 
 corset-making could be well taught in a trade school. A school would 
 give an all-round training which few of the shops have time to give. 
 Some of the employers who favored a trade school expressed the fol- 
 lowing opinions: 
 
 "I class corset-making with dressmaking. People are beginning 
 to see that it is as necessary for a corset to fit well as it is for a dress. 
 The custom-work is growing, and there will be a need for more skilled 
 workers. A school would bring more workers into the field." 
 
 "It is hard to get girls in this trade ; but if they once learn corset- 
 making they like it. A trade school would be a help, for the trade is 
 
OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 29 
 
 growing, and in the next few years there is going to be a great demand 
 for skilled workers." 
 
 "It is extremely difficult to secure girls. I have fifteen girls and 
 I could use twenty-five. A trade school would be a splendid thing if it 
 set out to teach only the simplest things in corset-making. I suggest 
 that hygiene be taught in connection with corset-making." 
 
 "Corset-making requires preciseness to a greater extent than 
 dressmaking. There are few skilled girls in this trade and there is a 
 demand for them. If a school would teach binding and eyeletting there 
 would be plenty of openings for girls. Send such girls to me, and I will 
 pay them from $8 to $10 a week." 
 
 "A trade school would be a good thing. The work is very particu- 
 lar and trained girls are needed. Though there is not a great opening 
 now, there surely will be in a few years. Everything could be taught 
 in such a school except fitting, and that takes years of experience." 
 
 On the whole the prospects in the corset trade are good, though the 
 industry is as yet small. The work is steady, the shop conditions are 
 excellent, and skilled workers are well paid. 
 
 THE SEWING TRADES 
 
 VI. TIE-MAKING 
 
 As tie-making offers no inducement to the girl under sixteen, only 
 a few firms, seven in all, were visited. The trade is easy to learn, 
 and, though not complicated, the work is considerably subdivided. The 
 machinist runs together the long straight ties, which are passed on to 
 the girls who turn them and insert the lining. In some cases girls do 
 only the hemming. Other girls work on bow ties, which are put to- 
 gether by hand. 
 
 As any ordinary machinist can do the work, most establishments 
 employ only girls who have learned operating elsewhere. One em- 
 ployer, however, who preferred taking girls under sixteen and training 
 them in his own way employed seven girls of this age. All these little 
 girls are engaged to cut threads, turn ties, run errands and pack boxes, 
 and they are usually paid from $3 to $4 a week while they are doing 
 this unskilled work. 
 
 Wages. — The work is on a piece basis and the usual wage is from 
 $8 to $10 a week. Few girls are said to be able to earn as much as 
 $15 a week. 
 
 Seasons. — Tie-making is not a regularly seasonal trade ; the busy 
 seasons vary according to orders. The months of July and August are, 
 however, usually slack, and during these months the less efficient girls 
 are laid off. 
 
 Hours.— The hours are from 8 or 8 :30 a. m. to 5 :30 p. m. In some 
 shops the girls work an hour overtime during the busy season. 
 
 The shop conditions were generally fair, and in one factory the 
 conditions were excellent. The employer seemed interested in the 
 welfare of the girls, who were neater and more prosperous looking 
 than the girls in other shops. The prospects in the trade are not 
 favorable for the girl who has no knowledge of machining. 
 
30 OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 
 
 THE SEWING TRADES 
 
 VII. CAP-MAKING 
 
 Cap-making is not a large industry in Chicago, but it includes 
 the making of caps of all description. Some factories manufacture 
 only caps to go with uniforms, and in most of these shops there is 
 an embroidery department for embroidering badges and banners in 
 gold and silver and silk. The embroidering is usually done by hand; 
 the work is interesting; and a rather good class of girls is employed 
 at this particular branch, which does not, however, offer openings 
 for many girls. 
 
 The prospects in the trade are not good, and girls cannot be 
 advised to enter. There is a strong union among the men, and, as 
 most of the shops manufacture uniform caps for conductors and motor- 
 men who will buy only from strictly union shops, union men are dis- 
 placing girls in the trade. 
 
 In those shops where ordinary caps are made the work is greatly 
 subdivided. Men are employed to do the cutting and blocking and 
 machining. Girls do only the machining. No girls under sixteen are 
 employed. 
 
 Wages. — The wages are paid on a piece basis, the maximum wage 
 being $15 a week. The usual wage is probably not more than $8 or 
 $10. The beginner is paid $5. 
 
 Hours. — The hours are from 8 a. m. to 5 :30 p. m. 
 
 Seasons. — The seasons vary, but there are likely to be long slack 
 periods. 
 
 The conditions are very unfavorable in many of the shops. In 
 the shops where girls may enter, a rough class of men are employed. 
 
 THE SEWING TRADES 
 
 VIII. SUSPENDER-MAKING 
 
 Suspender-making, like tie-making, ordinarily requires girls who 
 are experienced machine-operators. In only one shop visited were 
 girls under sixteen employed. There the work was mechanical, such 
 as sewing on tags and "packing," for which they were paid $3 to 
 $3.50 a week. If they remain until they are sixteen they are taught 
 to use the power machines. But several shops will take girls o^ 
 sixteen as learners. 
 
 Wages. — Learners who are sixteen receive $5 a week. Experi- 
 enced workers can rarely earn more than $10. The usual wage is 
 probably not more than $8. 
 
 Hours. — The hours are from 8 a. m. to 5 :30 p. m. The girls 
 are required to work overtime in some shops when business increases. 
 
 Seasons. — The trade is seasonal ; the busiest time for all firms is 
 in December; during the summer months work is usually slack and 
 the force is decreased. 
 
OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 31 
 
 On the whole the suspender industry does not seem to offer many 
 inducements to a girl. The work is easy but uninteresting, and a girl 
 usually remains at one process. Wages are not as high as the wages 
 of operators in some other lines of work. The shop conditions in many 
 cases are not very favorable. 
 
 THE SEWING TRADES 
 
 IX. GLOVE-MAKING 
 
 The glove-making industry in Chicago consists largely of the 
 manufacturing of men's working-gloves. There are three or four 
 small shops where women's gloves are made. Altogether about six 
 hundred or seven hundred women are employed in the trade. 
 
 Few girls under sixteen are employed, since the work is almost 
 entirely stitching seams on power machines. The only w^ork that a 
 fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl can do is inspecting gloves or cutting 
 threads. 
 
 Girls of sixteen are taught how to use power machines. The work 
 is subdivided; and girls usually know only one process. Sewing 
 finger seams is the most skilled branch of the work and is the best 
 paid. Men are employed to do the cutting. 
 
 Wages. — Girls under sixteen receive $3.50 a week. Machine oper- 
 ators are paid $4 or $5 while learning. After a girl has learned to run 
 a machine the work is piecework and wages vary ; the average skilled 
 girl can earn from $10 to $12, while a few girls may earn as much as 
 $20 a week. 
 
 Hours. — The hours are usually from 7 :30 a. m. to 5 :30 p. m., 
 but they vary a little in some shops. 
 
 Seasons. — The work for the most part is steady and not seasonal, 
 but during the last two or three years the trade as a whole has been 
 slack. 
 
 The shop conditions vary, but the union is improving conditions 
 in the trade; and the prospects are fairly good. 
 
32 OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 
 
 THE BOOT AND SHOE INDUSTRY 
 
 Boot and shoe making- is a large industry in Chicago. For the 
 purposes of this investigation the five largest establishments in the 
 city were visited. These factories employed from four hundred to 
 one thousand men and women. 
 
 There are a large number of women in the boot and shoe indus- 
 try employed in the stitching room, where a good deal of the work 
 requires some degree of skill. Girls are also engaged in sorting 
 various pieces of lining, pasting parts of the lining and leather to- 
 gether, and turning the edges of the leather. Girls are found, too, in 
 the finishing rooms, where they "touch up" the shoes. 
 
 There are endless subdivisions in the trade. A shoe passes 
 through one hundred and six pair of hands and conforms to the re- 
 quirements of fifty-eight different machines before it becomes the 
 perfect product. 
 
 The simplest seam is stitching the tongue to a piece of lining. 
 "Vamping," or sewing on the uppers, is the most skilled process. A 
 vamper needs to be very accurate. "Skiving" or thinning down the 
 leather to a beveled edge also requires a high degree of skill. 
 
 Few girls under sixteen years are employed. About forty were 
 found in the factories visited. They tie and cut threads, do some 
 other mechanical work and they usually leave before they are placed 
 in charge of a machine. 
 
 It takes from one to two years to learn to operate one of the 
 power machines skillfully, and under the present system it is almost 
 impossible for a girl to learn the boot and shoe trade. She may stay 
 at one machine for a year or two and still not master it, because no 
 one could spare a little time to show her. Only after years in the 
 trade may a girl become a vamper or an operator of the more difficult 
 machines. Better manufacturers do not want learners ; and girls 
 must often begin in factories which make the poorer grade of shoes. 
 
 Wages. — The wages vary but do not exceed $4 a week for the 
 beginner. The unskilled work such as sorting and pasting is paid on 
 a time basis. When a girl is given a stitching machine she is paid by 
 the piece. The best workers earn from $14 to $18 a week ; and a 
 vamper sometimes earns as much as $20 to $25. The usual wage, how- 
 ever, is not more than $12. 
 
 Fines. — If there is a defect in a pair of shoes, the person who is 
 responsible has to purchase the shoes at cost. This is said to be no 
 loss to the worker, who, it is claimed, can sell the shoes at a profit. 
 
 Hours. — The hours are from 7 :30 a. m. to 5 :30 p. m. with half an 
 hour at noon and Saturday afternoons off. 
 
 Season. — The trade is not seasonal. Sometimes the factories close 
 for a week during the year, but the work is never slack enough to 
 necessitate laying off a large number of workers. 
 
 NEED FOR TRADE CLASSES 
 
 There are numerous openings for skilled workers, but employers 
 state that it is very difficult to secure competent or even intelligent girls 
 
OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT a 
 
 for the trade. The employers were heartily in favor of a technical 
 school. They thought that, if girls received some knowledge of the 
 boot and shoe industry in a school, more of them would enter the 
 trade and that they would remain longer. They would have an 
 opportunity to become masters of their craft and would look at their 
 work from a different standpoint from that of the girl who punches 
 eyelets or sews a tongue to a shapeless piece of lining month after 
 month and knows nothing else. One employer thought that a trade 
 school would solve the problem for the girl who must go to work 
 immediately after leaving school. Few workrooms now ofter facilities 
 for teaching beginners, and, even if opportunities were offered, few 
 girls would enter regular apprenticeships. 
 
 The manufacturers were of the opinion that a school would have 
 to be well equipped and that, in addition to teaching the various parts 
 of the trade, arrangements would have to be made for practical work 
 in some factory. 
 
 ARTIFICIAL FLOVn^ER-MAKING 
 
 Artificial flower-making is a poor trade in Chicago. The finer 
 grades of flowers are all imported or made in the East. There are 
 only three or four places in the city where any manufacturing is done, 
 and in these the shop conditions are unfavorable. 
 
 Girls under sixteen are frequently employed as apprentices, but 
 they have no prospect of advancement or steady work. After a girl 
 has served her apprenticeship of a few weeks and has learned the 
 trade, she may be discharged and a new apprentice taken on in her 
 place. The work is really not skilled, and a girl can learn "branching," 
 which is about the only process that is done here, in a few days. 
 
 The wages are very low, a beginner receiving $2 or $3, and wages 
 rarely exceed $8 even for skilled workers. 
 
 The work is very seasonal. There are not more than seven 
 months of work during the year. 
 
 BOOKBINDING 
 
 This report is based on interviews with employers, foremen and 
 forewomen, in twelve different shops, ten of the establishments visited 
 being large shops employing from thirty to four hundred girls. 
 
 The general conditions in the trade seem to be good. Most of 
 the large establishments have clean, well-ventilated workrooms. Two 
 or three of the large shops, and one or two of the smaller ones, were 
 too crowded, and the light was poor. The ventilation, too, was not 
 adequate. For the most part, however, the shops seemed well 
 supervised. 
 
 The trade is large in Chicago and offers fairly good opportunities 
 for girls who have not finished the elementary schools but who are 
 quick and accurate in using their hands. 
 
 The work varies a great deal in different establishments. Some 
 firms do regular bookwork, others blankbook work, while many do 
 chiefly pamphlet and circular work. Some firms that do catalogue 
 work for the large mail-order houses also do sample-book work and 
 
34 OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 
 
 the addressing- and mailing- of catalogues. The pamphlet and circular 
 work is the lightest kind of binding. 
 
 The following- processes are done by girls : 
 
 Folding. — Folding consists in folding the sheets to the size of the 
 pages. The folded sheets are known as sections. This process is 
 done by machinery in some shops. This, however, works no hardship 
 to the girls in the trade, since folding is a purely mechanical process 
 which should be paid on a time basis because the piecework schedule 
 is far too low. 
 
 Gathering. — Gathering is the process of collecting the folded sec- 
 tions and arranging them in complete book-form. 
 
 Collating, — Collating is the process of checking and correcting the 
 work and seeing that it is complete. 
 
 Stitching. — Stitching is the most skilled process and is usually 
 done by machine. It consists in sewing the sections to a tape or cord 
 and requires a knowledge of the machine and a certain amount of 
 experience in feeding. 
 
 Preparing the leather back and putting the pages into the case is 
 rather heavy work and is usually done by men. All the processes of 
 the trade represented in these shops require speed and accuracy rather 
 than skill. While there are not many opportunities for a girl under 
 sixteen years to enter a bindery, a few large union shops employ 
 enough girls to make it profitable to run an eight-hour shift for 
 apprentices under sixteen. These are said to be good places for a girl 
 to learn the trade, and at sixteen she may join the union with her 
 apprenticeship completed. But the number of girls under sixteen em- 
 ployed in binderies is small. Some forewomen seem to be more willing 
 than others to transfer girls from one process to another in order to 
 make them thoroughly skilled in all parts of the trade within one and 
 a half years. In other shops the worker may be kept for long periods 
 on one particular kind of work. But usually the term of apprentice- 
 ship is two years. 
 
 WAGES AND HOURS 
 
 A girl under sixteen years usually starts at $3.50 or $4 a week and 
 works on a time basis for several months, or until her piecework rate 
 exceeds the time rate, when she is put on piecework schedule. Wages 
 of apprentices sixteen years and over in union shops are $5 a week 
 for the first year and $6 for the second year. The unions now have a 
 forty-eight-hour week and a minimum wage of $8 after a two years' 
 apprenticeship. Employers say that the average bindery girl after 
 two years of experience earns $9 to $14 a week. Many are able to 
 earn from $20 to $25. The regular hours in union shops are eight to 
 eight and one-half hours a day and in non-union shops eight and 
 one-half or nine hours a day. 
 
 SEASONS 
 
 The trade is seasonal in some of the shops which do special work. 
 This is most marked in those which do catalogue work. Busy seasons 
 occur twice a year and last about three months. The most efficient 
 and skilled workers are given employment all the year round in these 
 shops, which usually have some sort of regular work which alternates 
 with the special work. Throughout the city the trade is not considered 
 seasonal, for an experienced bindery girl can always find employment 
 in some bindery because of the diversified character of the work done. 
 
OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 35 
 
 DEMAND FOR SKILLED WORKERS 
 
 The employers in the union shops say that they have great diffi- 
 culty in getting union help. The trade is understocked with workers 
 with any degree of skill ; and many shops are obliged to train all their 
 help. This, of course, interferes with union rules which restrict some- 
 what the number of apprentices. So many of the bindery girls are 
 leaving the trade to get married that it is impossible to fill all the places 
 with experienced girls. 
 
 It is evident from the complaints of the employers regarding the 
 scarcity of experienced bindery help that a trade school would be a 
 benefit. Employers and forewomen do not say that a trade school 
 could be easily conducted ; but if the trade school could be equipped 
 fairly well, the trade could be well taught. 
 
 ENGRAVING 
 
 FEEDING, STAMPING, EMBOSSING AND GOLD LEAF WORK 
 
 Girls are employed as feeders in copper-plate engraving. This 
 work consists in laying the card on the copper plate which is inked 
 and polished by the engraver whose hands are too soiled with ink to 
 touch the card. The work is very simple and does not tire the girl 
 since the speed required is not great. No experience is necessary, and 
 in this particular work there is no opportunity for advancement. In 
 nearly all copper-plate engraving establishments, however, the firm 
 also does the stamping and embossing of stationery and gold-leaf 
 work. These latter processes are more or less skilled and require a 
 good deal of accuracy and neatness. The places at the benches in 
 the stamping, embossing and gold-leaf rooms are usually filled by pro- 
 moting girl feeders from the engraving room. 
 
 WAGES, HOURS AND SEASON 
 
 The wages of the copper-plate feeders range from $4 to $5 a 
 week, girls under sixteen years seldom being paid more than $4.50. 
 The girls who do stamping, embossing and gold-leaf work earn from 
 $10 to $15 per week, the usual wage being about $11. The hours are 
 eight to eight and one-half. The trade is not seasonal enough to 
 necessitate laying oft" any workers. The holiday season is unusually 
 busy. 
 
 PROSPECTS 
 
 Conditions seem to be fairly good in these lines of work in com- 
 parison with other lines of industry which girls may enter, but pro- 
 motion is likely to be slow. The work makes no educational demands, 
 and for the girl who does not finish the eighth grade and has no 
 special aptitude for sewing, this offers easy work under favorable 
 shop conditions, all of the shops investigated being well lighted, well 
 ventilated and having ample space. 
 
36 OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 
 
 PHOTOGRAPHY 
 
 Photography is a trade that offers good openings for girls. The 
 general opinion is that women are adapted to all the skilled branches 
 of the trade. The different processes are : 
 
 1. Operating. — This is highly skilled work. There are few 
 women operators, but there is no reason why a woman would not 
 make as successful an operator as a man. One photographer thinks 
 women would be especially good in photographing children, and be- 
 lieves there is a future for women in children's work. 
 
 2. Developing and printing, — This is work done both by men and 
 women, but men are usually employed. 
 
 3. Retouching. — Retouching is the process of touching up the 
 negative with a pencil wherever necessary. This work requires a high 
 degree of skill, and it seems to be the general opinion that women are 
 very successful retouchers. 
 
 4. Spotting. — This consists in taking out spots and blemishes on 
 the print with a brush. This work is not skilled and it is usually 
 done by women. 
 
 5. "Working up" backgrounds. — This is done with an air brush 
 and requires a good deal of artistic ability. 
 
 6. Mounting and finishing. — This is not highly skilled work but 
 requires care and precision. 
 
 OPPORTUNITIES— PRESENT METHODS OF TRAINING 
 
 There are few of the large photographers who will bother with 
 apprentices. Sometimes girls of sixteen are employed to sort photo- 
 graphs, do reception room work, and in time they may learn "spot- 
 ting." But it takes too much time to teach them the more skilled 
 branches. The outlying studios which are small and employ only two 
 or three persons will occasionally take a learner and teach her all of 
 the processes. But such opportunities are rare. Most of the large 
 photographers, however, seem to have received their early experience 
 and training in these smaller studios. In only one studio was a girl 
 under sixteen employed. This girl ran errands and sorted photo- 
 graphs. There are very few openings in any branch of the work for 
 girls between fourteen and sixteen. 
 
 Wages and hours. — Printers and developers usually earn from $15 
 to $20 a week; spotters earn from $8 to $12; retouchers earn from $15 
 to $50 a week ; and operators may earn as much as $100 a week. 
 Mounting is of course the most poorly paid as it is the most unskilled 
 branch of the work. Hours are usually from 8:30 a. m. to 5:30 p. m. 
 
 Seasons. — The work is generally slack one or two months in the 
 summer and in January. Large studios seldom lay off their employees 
 during the slack season, for there is such a dearth of skilled workers 
 that the photographers seek to retain them at all costs. 
 
 All the employers interviewed with one exception were of the 
 opinion that there is a great opportunity for a trade school which 
 
OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 37 
 
 would give practical training to the boys and girls. Tlierc is no branch 
 of the work that cannot be taught: "photographers are not born, 
 they are made." 
 
 The plan for teaching photography as suggested by the head of 
 the largest studio in the city, was that a small studio be fitted up and 
 that every process of photography be taught by a competent photogra- 
 pher; that practical work be given and along with it perhaps a little 
 chemistry. He suggested that platinum prints be used if possible, as 
 the work on platinum prints is done by hand. He also said that 
 photography could be taught to grammar-school children with good 
 results, but that girls and boys of high-school age could take it up 
 more intelligently. 
 
 STENOGRAPHY, TYPEWRITING, AND GENERAL 
 
 OFFICE-WORK 
 
 Anyone who has to do with finding work for girls is likely to be 
 somewhat dismayed at what seems to be an almost universal longing 
 for "office-work." This is, of course, due to the fact that the work is 
 usually light, the workrooms pleasant, the hours short. To many 
 girls, too, it seems "more ladylike." 
 
 Office-work for girls under sixteen may be considered under several 
 dififerent heads: 
 
 1. Office stenography and typewriting. — Girls who have not had 
 some high-school work should not be encouraged to take business 
 "college" courses in stenography and typewriting. An exception 
 might possibly be made in favor of an unusually bright eighth-grade 
 graduate, but in general there seems to be little hope for the grammar- 
 school girl who has gone to "college." After a weary and most dis- 
 couraging search for a position, the best that is open to her is an 
 undesirable place at a low wage from which she cannot advance. 
 Good stenographers are always in demand, but the girl who has not 
 had the proper educational background can never become a good 
 stenographer and she should not be encouraged to waste time or 
 money on a "business course." The market is flooded with inefficient 
 girls, who are too incompetent to be recommended for good positions 
 and who are lowering standards of work and wages. 
 
 2. General office-work. — General office-work consists of such 
 work as filing, entry-work, compiling and typewriting. The prospects 
 for a girl who has not had a good education are fairly good in such 
 w^ork as this, especially if she enters a large commercial or mercantile 
 establishment wdiere a large number of girls are employed. In these 
 large offices typists are usually in demand, and the girls at the files 
 often have an opportunity to practice on the machines during their 
 spare time, and many go to the public evening schools to learn type- 
 writing. As soon as a girl can operate a machine sufficiently well to 
 copy a letter she is promoted to a position as typist. As her speed 
 increases and she becomes more competent, her wages are raised. _A 
 skillful typist can earn as much as the stenographer of average skill. 
 
 3. The operation of comptometers, adding, billing and bookkeep- 
 ing machine.— There seems to be a growing demand for girls who are 
 
38 OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 
 
 able to operate comptometers, adding, billing and bookkeeping ma- 
 chines. These machines are easily learned, and the prospects seem 
 favorable. 
 
 There are two or three schools in the city where girls may learn 
 to operate these machines in seven or eight weeks for a small fee. 
 But in oiBces where these machines are installed the girls can readily 
 learn to use the simpler machines with practice. 
 
 Wages. — The wage which girls under sixteen receive at the 
 beginning is $4 a week. Those over sixteen receive $5 and $6. A 
 typist may earn as high as $15. Adding and billing machine operators 
 receive from $6 to $15, and operators of bookkeeping machines receive 
 as high as $18. 
 
 Hours. — The hours are generally from 8 a. m. to 5 or 5 :30 p. m. 
 
 The ofifice managers seem to think that the greatest service a 
 school would render would be in teaching more English and more 
 arithmetic to the girls who wish to enter offices. Some firms thought 
 that it would not be practical to teach any branch of office-work. It 
 was stated that bookkeeping as taught in most schools is useless. 
 Some employers thought that typewriting and the card filing systems 
 might be taught. 
 
 Intelligent and capable girls seem to be scarce. The majority 
 have not a thorough enough knowledge of the elementary subjects 
 to be come efficient workers. 
 
 TELEPHONE OPERATING 
 
 In the Chicago Telephone Company 4,900 girls are employed. 
 Operators must be sixteen years of age and girls older than this are 
 preferred. All applicants for positions are given a physical examina- 
 tion by a medical nurse. 
 
 The company has a school where beginners receive a four-weeks' 
 course of training, and are paid $5 a week while learning. No girl 
 at the end of her training is skillful enough to handle a day board; 
 and all new girls are put on a five-hour evening shift. Girls on the 
 evening shifts are paid at the rate of eleven cents an hour for eight 
 hours' work. 
 
 The eight hours daily include a luncheon period of forty minutes, 
 two relief periods of fifteen minutes each, and a twenty minute period 
 for gymnastics on the roof. 
 
 Wages. — The average girl rarely earns more than $8 a week, but 
 it is said that expert operators are paid $95 a month. 
 
 If one is considering the work from the point of view of advising 
 young girls to enter it, there seems to be a great many disadvantages 
 connected with it. All the beginners are compelled to work at night 
 until they become expert enough to handle a day board, and some- 
 times they are never transferred to a day board. Work at night is 
 always bad for young girls, and in the case of work in telephone 
 exchanges located, as many of them must be, in undesirable parts of 
 the city, the temptations confronting the girls are very great. More- 
 over, the work involves a continual nervous strain and the wages 
 are not high. 
 
OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 39 
 
 LAUNDRIES 
 
 Five of the largest laundries in Chicago were visited, and, while 
 this is a very small number in proportion to the total, it seemed to 
 be unprofitable to continue the investigation, since it appeared to be 
 quite clear that girls under sixteen are almost never employed. In 
 rare instances they may be used for sewing on buttons and shaking 
 out clothes, but the trade is really one for older women. When 
 girls under sixteen are employed they are paid $4 a week. 
 
 There are great disadvantages in the trade. The long hours of 
 standing, the heat, and the inadequate ventilation in many laundries 
 are without doubt injurious to the health of the girls who work in 
 them. Although employers say that there is no overtime work, it 
 seems to be clear that the girls must be capable of doubling the out- 
 put of work if occasion demands ; the girl who ordinarily irons 650 
 shirt bosoms a day must be able to run as many as 1,000 through her 
 machine if business increases. The trade is not well organized, and 
 the employers claim that the work is not uniform enough to justify 
 the establishment of a uniform wage. 
 
 Nearly all of the work is done by machinery and is subdivided 
 into many branches. One shirt may go through ten or twelve proc- 
 esses before it is ready for packing. 
 
 The most skilled branch of laundry work is "sorting" which re- 
 quires quite a little intelligence. This is the process of sorting the 
 clothes according to texture and color. 
 
 WAGES, HOURS, SEASONS 
 
 Wages. — The usual wage for a good sorter is $15 a week. After 
 sorting, the hand ironing on fine dresses is the most skilled branch 
 of the trade. Hand ironers usually receive from $12 to $15 a week. 
 The most skilled and highest paid machine work is on shirt bosoms, 
 which pays $11 a week. The girls at the mangle earn $7 and $8. In 
 this process one girl "feeds" and one "receives." The girls on the 
 collar and cuff machine receive $5 and $6. 
 
 The work is usually paid on a time basis. 
 
 Hours. — The hours are from 7 :30 a. m. to 6 p. m. At 10 o'clock 
 a recess of fifteen minutes is given for lunch, and half an hour at noon. 
 There is no work Monday morning or Saturday afternoons when the 
 laundry is being collected and delivered, so that there are only five 
 working days. 
 
 The trade is not seasonal, but the summer months are, of course, 
 the busiest. 
 
 Though the conditions in some laundries are good, it does not 
 seem to be advisable for a young girl to enter this trade. She should 
 certainly be discouraged from going into work of this sort until she 
 has grown stronger and is better able to endure the standing and the 
 long hours. 
 
 DYEING AND CLEANING 
 
 Dyeing and cleaning, like laundry work, requires very strong girls, 
 but it has certain advantages over the laundry. The hours are very 
 much shorter, wages are higher, and the general conditions are better. 
 
 Men are employed in the cleaning rooms, as the fumes from the 
 chemicals are too strong for the girls. Men also press the heavier 
 
40 OPPORTUNITIES OF EMPLOYMENT 
 
 garments. Women are employed in ironing and finishing the more 
 delicate garments and lace and in sorting and marking the fabrics. 
 The pressing is very careful work, and a good deal of skill is needed 
 to know just the amount of steam and pressure required for diiiferent 
 kinds of fabrics. 
 
 Girls under eighteen are rarely employed and there is no chance 
 in this trade for girls under sixteen. A girl must have some knowl- 
 edge of ironing to enter this trade, for learners are never employed. 
 
 Wages. — ^^lost of the women employed earn about $10 a week 
 and probably none earn more than $15. 
 
 Hours. — The hours are from 8 a. m. to 5 p. m. 
 
 Seasons. — The trade is not considered seasonal. In mid-summer 
 and mid-winter there is likely to be less work, but girls are rarely 
 laid off. 
 
 HAIRDRESSING AND HAIRMAKING 
 
 Of the thirty-eight places visited, eleven only manufactured hair, 
 wigs, puffs, etc. ; seven rendered personal services only, such as 
 shampooing, hairdressing, and manicuring; and twenty were both 
 hairmaking and hairdressing establishments. Three establishments 
 em.ployed fifty girls ; thirteen employed ten or more ; and twenty-two 
 employed less than five. The shops or factories which only make 
 hair are so different in the opportunities of employment offered from 
 those in which hairdressing is carried on that it seems best to con- 
 sider them separately. 
 
 I. HAIRMAKING AS A SEPARATE INDUSTRY 
 
 In the factories where false hair, wigs, etc., are manufactured the 
 work is rather unskilled, and each girl works at one process. The 
 girls are paid by the piece and sometimes earn as much as $10 a 
 week; but there are slack seasons which make it unprofitable a good 
 part of the year. In general there is so little opportunity of advance- 
 ment that it cannot be considered a good trade for girls to enter. 
 
 II. HAIRDRESSING AND SHAMPOOING 
 
 In many of the hairdressing "parlors" there are openings for 
 girls to learn the trade. In some shops a beginner is paid, but her 
 wages range from carfare to $2 a week ; others pay nothing for three 
 months and a few shops charge a regular stipulated sum for the first 
 six months of apprenticeship. Managers say that it takes from two 
 to three years to learn the trade thoroughly in one of these shops. 
 There are several schools in the city where hairdressing, manicuring, 
 facial massage, etc., are taught, but as a rule the tuition is rather high. 
 
 Girls should not be encouraged to go into this trade, however, 
 unless they are very neat in their dress and personal habits_ and 
 unless they can be taken into the best shops, where the work is on 
 the whole light and pleasant. A girl who is tall and strong as well 
 as neat makes the best worker. Great care should be taken to place 
 a girl in a shop where the influences are sure to be good, for condi- 
 tions in the lower-grade shops are most unfavorable. 
 
 Wages. — Girls who are more or less expert in this line of work 
 can earn from $10 to $25 a week, but very few receive more than $15. 
 
 Seasons. — The work is not seasonal. 
 
 Hours. — The hours vary in different shops. There is usually a 
 nine-hour day. 
 
PUBLIC CARE OF WORKING-CHILDREN 
 IN ENGLAND AND GERMANY 
 
 SOME NOTES ON JUVENILE LABOUR EXCHANGES* 
 
 EDITH ABBOTT 
 
 In the first part of this report, we emphasized the fact that in 
 Chicago no organized work is being done at the present time to pre- 
 vent the wastage that comes from the child's walking the streets in 
 search of a job and still more from his haphazard choice of Avork. It 
 has seemed therefore appropriate to give a brief account here of some 
 important work in this direction that is being done in England and 
 Germany. Although in both of these countries the work is now 
 carried on chiefly by national, state, or municipal authorities, very 
 valuable experimental work was carried on by private organizations 
 for many years before the State realized what a serious problem it was 
 facing. Several years ago, the Women's University Settlement in 
 London began to help crippled or handicapped children to find suitable 
 work; and out of this grew a so-called "skilled employment com- 
 mittee" which undertook to find work for normal children also. 
 The work done by this committee proved to be so valuable that the 
 Charity Organization Society began to form apprenticeship and skilled 
 employment committees in connection with the work of its various 
 district offices. In time these committees became organized into an 
 independent society, the Apprenticeship and Skilled Employment As- 
 sociation, an organization which has undoubtedly been largely respon- 
 sible for focusing attention on the need of public protection for the 
 child just leaving school to go to work. The establishment of a 
 national system of labour exchanges with juvenile departments has 
 meant the development of the work of advising children and finding 
 suitable vacancies on a much larger scale than was possible with any 
 private organization ; but the association still finds a large field for 
 supplementary work and still maintains some twenty-one committees. 
 in the different parts of London.^ 
 
 * These notes were made during two visits to England in successive sum- 
 mers, 1910 and 1911, and a visit to several German cities in which interesting 
 experiments were being made. (E. A.) 
 
 ^ It is not possible in a brief note to give any adequate account of these 
 committees, of the thorough and careful work done for each child, of the con- 
 stant supervision of the child who has been placed, of the admirable handbooks 
 the Central Committee has issued, and of the other intelligent and v/ell-organ- 
 ized work that is done. See, for example, Trades for London Boys and How 
 to Enter Them, and Trades for London Girls and How to Enter Them; com- 
 piled by the Apprenticeship and Skilled Employment Association. See also 
 The Work of an Apprenticeship Committee (Leaflet 8 pp.) by ]\I. K. Bradby, 
 and Suggestions to Skilled Employment Committees Newly Starting (Leaflet), 
 as well as the Annual Reports of the Association. All of these may be 
 obtained from the Headquarters of the Association, Denison House, Vauxhall 
 Bridge Road, London, S. W. 
 
 41 
 
42 JUVENILE LABOUR EXCHANGES 
 
 During the last few years, it has become customary in England to 
 trace the problem of unemployment, which has reached so acute a 
 stage in that country, directly to the neglect of boy labour. The 
 Majority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws in 1909 
 called boy labour "the most serious of the phenomena which we have 
 encountered in our study of unemployment."^ The Minority agreed 
 with the Majority on this point and pointed out that "one of the most 
 prolific sources of casual labour with its evil of chronic under- 
 employment, is the employment of boys in occupations which afford 
 them no industrial training, and which, whilst providing them with 
 relatively high wages during youth, leaves them stranded when they 
 reach manhood." ^ Both reports quote from the testimony of Mr. Sid- 
 ney Webb of the London County Council, who was called before the 
 Commission to give evidence on this point. He spoke of "the growing- 
 up of hundreds of thousands of boys without any sort of industrial 
 training, specialized or unspecialized, as a perpetual creating of a 
 future pauperism and a grave menace ;" and called attention to the fact 
 that even when parents were anxious to give their boys a good start in 
 life, they faced "the difficulty of discovering any situation in which 
 the boy can become a skilled worker of any kind, or even enter the 
 services of an employer who can offer him advancement. We have, 
 on the one hand, a great development of employment for boys of a 
 thoroughly bad type, yielding high wages and no training. We have, 
 on the other hand, a positive shrinkage — almost a disappearance — of 
 places for boys in which they are trained to become competent men." ^ 
 
 THE ENGLISH LABOUR EXCHANGES IN RELATION TO BOYS AND GIRLS 
 
 With such definite recommendations from the Commission it was 
 not possible in England to make any definite plan for dealing with 
 unemployment unless there were included as an integral part of that 
 plan some proposals for dealing on a large scale with children who 
 were going into unskilled trades and ultimately drifting into the casual 
 labour market.^ It was to be expected, therefore, that when the national 
 
 2 See the Majority Report, Part VI, Chap. I, Sec. 141. 
 
 ^Minority Report (Longman's edition), II, 269. 
 
 * Quoted from the testimony of Mr. Sidney Webb, Majority Report, Part 
 VI, Chap. I, Sec. 142. See also Minority Report (Longman's edition), II, 269. 
 
 ^ A very important contribution to this subject was also made by Mr. W. H. 
 Beveridge (the present head of the Labour Exchanges) in his very widely-read 
 book, Unemployment: A Problem of Industry. See, for example, p. 212, as 
 follows: "There can be no question but that unemployment today is swollen 
 as a consequence of some of the conditions of youthful labour. In any thorough- 
 going attack upon unemployment there must be included, on the one hand, the 
 better guidance of boys and girls in the choice of careers and, on the other 
 hand, the extension of industrial training." Mr. Beveridge also plainly pre- 
 shadowed the possible field for a national labour exchange in the solution of 
 the problem of boy and girl labour. "The guidance of boys and girls in the 
 ■ choice of careers means simply the extension of labour market organization in 
 connection with the schools. It means substituting for the haphazard entry 
 into industrial life — the taking of the first job that offers — entry informed by 
 wider knowledge of possibilities and prospects. Moreover, in order to be ef- 
 fective this guidance must be fairly general. It implies a juvenile Labour Ex- 
 change dealing with a substantial portion both of the supply and of the demand 
 for boys and not one starting out with the ideas of rigidly proscribing all but 
 / the best employments. No general effect can be produced by sending a few 
 ' selected boys to the best employers and ignoring all the other employers. The 
 latter simply get their boys in other ways; the evil is ignored not cured. So long 
 
JUVENILE LABOUR EXCHANGES 43 
 
 system of labour exchanges was organized some special provision 
 would be made for dealing with juvenile labour. Separate juvenile de- 
 partments were immediately established wherever a local exchange 
 was opened. This meant that the nation was undertaking to do on a 
 large scale what the Skilled Employment Association had been doing 
 on a much smaller scale through private funds. 
 
 The establishment of a juvenile department in a labour exchange, 
 however, will not in itself protect the children who are going to work. 
 The closest co-operation with the schools is absolutely essential. In 
 England ever since Parliament passed the Education (Choice of Em- 
 ployment) Act in November, 1910, the local education authorities have 
 had "power to make arrangements, subject to the approval of the 
 National Board of Education, for giving to boys and girls under 
 seventeen years of age assistance with respect to the choice of suitable 
 employment by means of the collection and the communication of 
 information and the furnishing of advice; and on January 3, 1911, the 
 President of the Board of Trade and the President of the Board of 
 Education issued a joint memorandum outlining a scheme which 
 provided for co-operation between local authorities exercising their 
 powers under the new Act and the Board of Trade working through 
 the Labour Exchanges." 
 
 CO-OPERATION BETWEEN THE BOARD OF TRADE (LABOUR EXCHANGES) AND 
 
 LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL 
 
 A report issued March 23, 1911, by the Education Committee of 
 the London County Council on the subject of After-Care and Juvenile 
 Employment ^ shows how much careful attention has been given to 
 this problem. In this report the purpose of the Juvenile Advisory 
 Committees which are under the joint direction of the London County 
 Council and the Board of Trade is explained as follows : 
 
 (a) "To see that the children on leaving school enter, as far as 
 possible, the trades for which they are best suited. This involves a 
 knowledge of the child's educational qualifications, physical condition, 
 and his own and his parents' wishes as to employment. 
 
 (b) "To see that children who enter "blind-alley" employment 
 qualify themselves when possible to undertake other work by attend- 
 ance at evening continuation schools and classes, clubs and similar 
 societies. 
 
 (c) "To provide for each child who is in need of advice and 
 guidance a friend, who will endeavor to keep the child in touch with 
 healthy ideals and pursuits and watch over his industrial progress." 
 
 The final sentence of the memorandum should also be quoted : "as 
 this system is perfected the parents of all children should have the 
 opportunity of obtaining expert advice as to suitable openings, while 
 
 as "blind-alley" openings for boys are not absolutely illegal — which they never 
 can be — the choice of them can only be discouraged generally by bringing them 
 into direct competition with better openings at a general Exchange. A boy 
 choosing a career now often becomes a vanboy without ever having any idea 
 that better careers are possible. If he came to an Exchange he might still be- 
 come a vanboy, but he would at least learn that other occupations existed, and 
 he might be advised — he could not be compelled — to choose them." W. H. 
 Beveridge, Unemployment: a Problem of Industry, p. 212. 
 
 « Report No. 5443. 
 
44 JUVENILE LABOUR EXCHANGES 
 
 the future of every child will be a matter of active concern to those 
 who have been interested in his education." 
 
 An American observer cannot fail to be impressed with the serious 
 and careful attention which has been given both by the Board of Trade 
 acting through the Labour Exchanges and the London County Council 
 acting through its Educational Committee to working out the details 
 of this great plan of protecting the industrial future of the children of 
 London, involving as it does the supervision, during the first three 
 years of their working lives, of the vast majority of children who leave 
 the elementary schools. The work is obviously still in an experimental 
 stage but the following outline will serve to show how thoroughly 
 the details of method are being worked out.''' 
 
 L At a convenient date before a child is expected to leave school 
 the head teacher prepares a school-leaving form which gives informa- 
 tion regardino- the child's record in school and fitness for work. Care 
 is taken not to disturb the child by inquiries which may suggest to 
 him the possibility of leaving school before it is absolutely necessary. 
 
 2. The parents of the child are either seen at the school or visited 
 by a member of the children's care committee connected with the 
 school in order to discover whether 
 
 (a) there is any need for outside advice ; 
 
 (b) any friendly oversight is likely to be necessary. 
 
 3. In all cases where the parents do not wish to make use of the 
 local juvenile advisory committee or other agency, and there is no need 
 for supervision, the form is filed at the school. 
 
 4. In the remaining cases the child is referred, and the school- 
 leaving form sent to the local juvenile advisory committee or other 
 employment agency (e. g., Metropolitan Association for Befriending 
 Young Servants, Apprenticeship and Skilled Employment Association, 
 etc.). 
 
 5. In all cases where it has been considered advisable to arrange 
 for friendly oversight, someone (e. g., from among managers of boys' 
 and girls' clubs, settlement or church workers) is found by the chil- 
 dren's care committee to undertake this duty. 
 
 6. In cases where children are not placed through the local juve- 
 nile advisory committee an extra copy of the school-leaving form is 
 kept at the school, and it can be sent to the local juvenile advisory 
 committee should the child subsequently (i. e. during the next three 
 or four years) apply for work at the labour exchange. 
 
 7. The local juvenile advisory committees have arranged sub- 
 committees of their members, which meet on several days during the 
 week (either in the morning, afternoon or evening), at which meetings 
 the children are, in suitable cases, encouraged to attend with their 
 parents immediately on leaving school. 
 
 8. The secretary of the local juvenile advisory committees makes 
 inquiries as to the reported vacancies for boys and girls. 
 
 The powers conferred on the local boards of education by the 
 Choice of Employment Act, to which reference has been made, have 
 been used not merely in London but in a large number of cities in 
 different parts of England. A recent circular issued on the 17th of 
 of last August by the'national Board of Education^ calls the attention 
 
 ■^ This outline is quoted almost verbatim from After-Care and Juvenile Em- 
 ployment, p. 5. 
 8 Circular 782. 
 
JUVENILE LABOUR EXCHANGES 45 
 
 of the Local Education Authorities "to the very great importance of 
 the field of activity open to them under this Act." The Board points 
 out that although in many places "much valuable work has been and 
 is being done by voluntary agencies and by individuals in giving 
 advice, information and assistance to boys and girls during the critical 
 period covering the end of their school career and the beginning and 
 earlier years of their employment," that such activities, "though wide- 
 spread, are as yet by no means universal ; and in the opinion of the 
 Board it is of the first importance that in urban areas, and, where 
 possible, in county areas. Local Education Authorities, should take the 
 opportunity afforded by the Act of initiating such work where it is 
 not at present carried on, of co-ordinating and organizing the existing 
 voluntary agencies in a single coherent scheme, and of linking the 
 whole with the work of the juvenile departments of Labour Exchanges 
 in such a way that the moral and educational influences, which natu- 
 rally center round Elementary Schools and Continuation Schools, 
 should play their proper part in the transition from school life to the 
 life of adult employment." The circular also suggests that the exer- 
 cise of powers under the Choice of Employment Act should be en- 
 trusted to a committee of the Local Education Authority and that 
 "in constituting the Sub-Committee provision should be made for 
 securing an adequate number of members possessing experience or 
 knowledge of educational and industrial conditions." The work of 
 these sub-committees in the various cities is also outlined in this care- 
 fully prepared document. Their duties are said to be : 
 
 (a) "To arrange for suitable information and advice with regard 
 to the choice of employment to be given to boys and girls, directly or 
 through their parents, both before and after they leave school. 
 
 (b) "To co-operate with the Local Labour Exchange Officers in 
 registering applications of boys and girls for employment, and in 
 selecting applicants for suitable vacancies. 
 
 (c) "To advise the Board of Trade with regard to the manage- 
 ment of the Labour Exchange in relation to juvenile applicants for 
 employment." 
 
 "In carrying out their duties the Sub-Committee shall 
 
 (a) "Take every opportunity of encouraging boys and girls to 
 continue their education after leaving the Elementary School. 
 
 (b) "Study the conditions of employments as these afifect the 
 prospects of boys and girls and the need and facilities for continued 
 education ; for which purpose the officers of the Labour Exchanges will 
 furnish the Sub-Committee with all the information in their power 
 with regard to the prospects and conditions of employments. 
 
 (c) "Use as far as possible the services of Apprenticeship Com- 
 mittees and other organizations for promoting the welfare of boys and 
 girls, and of individual voluntary workers ; for which purpose they 
 may, where they think fit, organize Care Committees or After-Care 
 Committees of Teachers, School Managers, and others, whose duty it 
 shall be to keep in individual touch with boys and girls both before 
 and after they leave School." 
 
 CO-OPERATION BETWEEN THE EDUCATION COMMITTEE AND THE BOARD OF 
 TRADE (LABOUR EXCHANGE) IN BIRMINGHAM 
 
 Some of the large provincial towns of England already had care- 
 fully prepared plans under way before the circular of the Board of 
 
46 JUVENILE LABOUR EXCHANGES 
 
 Education was issued. In Birmingham, a city of 570,113 inhabitants, 
 the Eckication Committee had pul^lished in the autumn of 1910, an 
 extremely interesting report on the Institution of a Juvenile Employ- 
 ment Bureau in Birmingham. This report, which was adopted by the 
 Education Committee, provided for the closest co-operation between 
 the schools and the Juvenile Department of the Labour Exchange. It 
 was pointed out on the one hand that the school authorities were in a 
 peculiarly favorable position for giving information and advice about 
 the children who wanted work, and tliat subsequent supervision "in 
 advising children to go to evening classes, properly concerns the 
 education authority which also needs the fresh knowledge so gained 
 to keep such classes and technical schools abreast the needs of the 
 times ;" on the other hand it was pointed out that the necessary inves- 
 tigation of industrial conditions and the collection of information 
 regarding vacant situations was properly the work of the Board of 
 Trade. The scheme which was adopted proposed therefore a Chil- 
 dren's Employment Bureau under the joint control of the Education 
 Committee and the Board of Trade, the work of the Bureau to be car- 
 ried on in offices provided by the Education Committee. 
 
 METHODS OF EMPLOYMENT SUPERVISION IN LEEDS, DEWSBURY AND 
 
 HALIFAX (YORKSHIRE) 
 
 In Leeds, a great industrial city in the north of England, with 
 490,985 inhabitants, a still different system exists. There no child is 
 given an employment certificate until a job has already been found 
 for him : that is, the employment certificate must be actually signed 
 by an employer who pledges himself to give employment to the child 
 before the Education Office will officially issue the certificate. The 
 Juvenile Department of the Labour Exchange has a special office op- 
 posite the Education Office, where the work certificates are issued, and 
 every child, and frequently the parents of the child as well, comes to 
 the Juvenile Exchange as a matter of course before the certificate is 
 issued. 
 
 At Dewsbury, a smaller town in Yorkshire, the Secretary of the 
 Juvenile Advisory Committee visits every elementary school once in 
 three months to register all of the children who are within three 
 months of the school-leaving age. "The great advantage of this sys- 
 tem of registration is that it brings the Secretary into touch with every 
 child about to leave school. When registering the children the Sec- 
 retary is very careful not to suggest employment but points out the 
 advantage of remaining at school." 
 
 In Halifax, a Yorkshire town near Leeds, another interesting sys- 
 tem has been worked out which follows the plan of interviewing the 
 child and the parents if possible before the child has actually left school 
 or even determined to leave, so that the advantages of a longer period 
 of school attendance may be presented. The Secretary of the Juvenile 
 Advisory Committee of the public Labour Exchange makes periodical 
 visits to the school to interview children before they actually reach 
 the school-leaving age and to advise with them, with their parents, and 
 with their teachers as to the best available vacancy for them when 
 they do leave. 
 
JUVENILE LABOUR EXCHANGES 47 
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL INFORMATION AND EMPLOYMENT BUREAU OF 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 In 1908, the school boards of Scotland were empowered by Parlia- 
 ment to make appropriations for the establishment of agencies "for 
 collecting and distributing information as to employments open to 
 children on leaving school." The Edinburgh School Board drew 
 up a scheme almost immediately which provided for an Educational 
 Information and Employment Bureau to be opened in the School 
 Board offices under the direction of a standing committee of 
 seven members of the Board and an advisory committee "consist- 
 ing of the Members of the School Board and such representatives of 
 public bodies and trade associations as the Board may from time to 
 time co-opt, due regard being had to securing representation of the 
 principal trades and of women's occupations.'"'* 
 
 The duties of the Director of the Bureau were outlined in the 
 original scheme as follows: 
 
 (a) "To interview boys and girls and their parents or guardians 
 and advise them with regard to further educational courses and most 
 suitable occupations. 
 
 (b) "To prepare leaflets and pamphlets or tabulated matter giv- 
 ing information to the scholars about continuation work. 
 
 (c) "To keep in touch with the general requirements of em- 
 ployers and revise from time to time the statistics about employment. 
 
 (d) "To prepare and revise periodically statements of the trades 
 and industries of the district, with rates of wages and conditions of 
 employment. 
 
 (e) "To keep a record of vacancies intimated by employers, and 
 to arrange for suitable candidates having an opportunity of applying 
 for such vacancies. 
 
 (f) "To report periodically on the work of the Bureau." ^"^ 
 
 JUVENILE LABOUR EXCHANGES AND CONTINUATION SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 
 
 In Germany it is "the fear of the future," rather than present dire 
 conditions of unemployment, that has led to the various efforts which 
 have been made to conserve the first working-years of the men and 
 women on whom the future of the state is to depend. A recent report 
 to the London County Council on methods of dealing with Juvenile 
 Labour in Germany explained that in different German cities, the 
 matter of boy and girl labour was "receiving attention not only for 
 the sake of the individual prosperity of the town concerned, but as 
 part of the national policy of securing the future greatness and pros- 
 perity of the Empire." 
 
 In most of the large German cities a close system of co-operation 
 has been worked out between the labour exchange, the schools and the 
 Handwerkerskammer. The survival of the apprenticeship system 
 with the supervisory control of apprentices by the Handwerkerskam- 
 mer has simplified the problem of dealing with boy labour. The most 
 important factor in the German situation, however, is the system of 
 continuation schools at which attendance has been made compulsory 
 in so many parts of the empire. A system of compulsory attendance 
 
 " Frederic Keeling, The Labour Exchange in relation to Boy and Girl 
 Labour, p. 30. 
 
 " Ibid., p. 31. 
 
48 JUVENILE LABOUR EXCHANGES 
 
 upon such schools means that the schools automatically retain con- 
 trol over the children after they go to work, they know whether the 
 children are employed or not, and, if employed, where they are work- 
 ing and what kind of work they are doing, j^ Where, as in many cities, 
 the continuation schools are fast developing into trade schools, the 
 school is also making a positive contribution to the child's industrial 
 development. The London County Council Report on Juvenile Labour 
 in Germany, to which reference has been made, declares that "the 
 imperial law for compulsory continuation schools is by far the most 
 important contribution that has been made to the problem of boy; 
 labour in Germany." The report also calls attention to a memorandum 
 issued in 1908 by the Minister of Commerce and Industry which "lays 
 special stress on the importance of after-care work among youths and 
 girls who have left school, and says that, much as can be achieved by 
 compulsory attendance at a continuation school, the work cannot be 
 successful without voluntary friendly aid. He urges the formation of 
 after-care committees, in which educational authorities and teachers 
 as well as other volunteers should be associated in social friendly work 
 with the youth, and encourages the establishing of reading rooms, 
 free libraries, boys' clubs and recreative evening classes." 
 
 This statement regarding the work of the public authorities in 
 England and Germany in behalf of children leaving school to go to 
 work has been necessarily made in very brief compass for this report. 
 It is hoped, however, that the account has been sufficiently detailed to 
 show that, although a great variety of methods are being worked out, 
 the important fact is that, whatever the method, the care and super- 
 vision of juvenile labour both in England and Germany is looked upon 
 as a national responsibility; and however that responsibility be divided 
 among labour exchanges, school authorities, private philanthropies, 
 societies or industrial organizations like the German Handwerkers- 
 kammer, and no matter whether exercised by local or national authori- 
 ties, it is universally recognized that the care of the working-child 
 must be under the supervision of the State. 
 
TRADE AND TECHNICAL CLASSES FOR 
 GIRLS IN CHICAGO 
 
 The opening of the Lucy L. Flower Technical High School in 
 September of this year is an event of such importance to those inter- 
 ested in the better training of girls for wage-earning that we feel sure 
 the somewhat detailed account of the work of the school, which has 
 been kindly furnished by the principal, Miss Dora Wells, will be of 
 interest and value. Attention should, however, be called to the fact 
 that this school is almost exclusively for grammar-school graduates 
 and leaves the little girl from the lower grades — the girl with whom 
 this report is chiefly concerned — still largely unprovided for. 
 
 LUCY L. FLOWER TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL 
 
 The courses of study which are offered in the Lucy L. Flower 
 Technical High School are designed to give girls a technical training 
 in the fundamental employments of women which shall parallel the 
 training given in the technical high schools open only to boys. The 
 curriculum contains a four-year course of study which will meet the 
 entrance requirements for the course in Household Arts and Science 
 at the Chicago Teachers' College, and prepare students for the scien- 
 tific courses of non-professional colleges. 
 
 There is also a two-year course arranged so as to give such prepara- 
 tion as is possible in that length of time to girls who must become 
 self-supporting" at an early age. 
 
 The more advanced and specialized work in the Departments of 
 Household Science and Household Arts will prepare young women 
 for managing institutional kitchens and lunch rooms, for dressmaking 
 and millinery, and in general for applying their knowledge and train- 
 ing in activities that will be financially remunerative. 
 
 For those whose tastes do not lie in the field of household activi- 
 ties, the school authorities intend to supply training in other occu- 
 pations, so that girls who need or desire to become wage-earners out- 
 side the home may have a marketable skill in some healthful employ- 
 ment suitable for women. At the present time, photography, type- 
 setting, bookbinding, and other crafts which require both artistic and 
 manual dexterity are under consideration for this end. It is the 
 intention of the school management to extend the course of study 
 to two years of graduate work which shall be of college rank and 
 quality. 
 
 At present the school contains a limited number of girls who 
 have been admitted by examination from the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th 
 grades of the public elementary schools of Chicago. These girls are 
 for the most part those who for one reason or another are behind 
 the average girl of their age in acquirement. To these girls a large 
 amount of motor work is given, in the hope that they will respond 
 to such stimulus more readily than they have responded to the more 
 generally academic instruction of the regular elementary schools. The 
 pleasure and interest which these girls take in the more active em- 
 ployments offered to them is evident, and a resulting quickening along 
 academic lines is beginning to be apparent. 
 
 The classes in dressmaking and millinery listed below are chiefly 
 domestic and not trade classes, that is, they are classes which teach 
 girls how to make their own blouses and trim their own hats but do 
 not train them for work in a shop. 
 
 49 
 
so LIST OF TRADE CLASSES 
 
 EVENING TECHNICAL CLASSES IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 
 
 The schools are open two hours an evening from 7:30 to 9:30 
 on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of each week. 
 
 SEWING. — This course includes hand sewing, use and care of 
 the sewing-machine, exercises in making patterns, fitting and design- 
 ing, and talks on the elements of good taste in dressing, selection of 
 suitable material, calculation of amount necessary, and the proper 
 laundering of the garments. 
 
 Bowen, 89th Street and Manistee Avenue; Burley, Barry Avenue near 
 Ashland; Burns, 25th Street and IVabansia Avenue; Burr, Ashland and 
 Wabansia Avenues; Dante, DesPlaines and Forquer Streets; Foster, Union 
 and O'Brien Streets; Froebel, 21st and Robey Streets; Garfield, Johnson 
 Street and 11th Place; Goethe, Rockwell Street between Fullerton and Mil- 
 waukee Avenues; Hamline, 48th and Bishop Streets; Jackson, Sholto and 
 Better Streets; Lake, 47th Place and Union Avenue; Lane, Division and 
 Sedgwick Streets; McAllister, 36th. and Gage Streets; Medill, 14th Place 
 near Throop; Nash, 49th Avenue and Erie Street; Phillips, 39th Street 
 and Prairie Avenue; Pullman, Morse Avenue and 113th Street; Walsh, 
 20th and Johnson Streets; Washington, Morgan Street and Grand Avenue. 
 
 MILLINERY. — Trade millinery is taught. Practical milliners 
 have charge of these classes. 
 
 Crane Technical High School, Oakley Avenue and Vanburen Street; 
 Englewood High School, 62d Street and Stewart Avenue; Lake High 
 School, 47th Place and Union Avenue; Lane Technical High School, 
 Division and Sedgwick Streets; Phillips, 39th Street and Prairie Avenue. 
 
 STENOGRAPHY.— The progress of the pupils in this course 
 depends largely on their previous preparation. 
 
 Bowen, 89th Street and Manistee Avenue; Crane, Oakley Avenue and 
 Vanburen Street; Burr, Ashland and Wabansia Avenue; Englewood, 
 Stewart Avenue and 62d Street; Foster, Union and O'Brien Streets; 
 Goethe, Rockwell Street between Fullerton and Milwaukee Avenues; Lake, 
 47th Place and Union Avenue; Lane, Division and Sedgwick Streets; Medill, 
 14th Place near Throop Street; Phillips, 39th Street and Prairie Avenue; 
 Pullman, 113th Street and Morse Avenue; Tuley, Potomac and N. Clare- 
 mont Avenues; Waller, Orchard and Center Streets; Washington, Morgan 
 Street and Grand Avenue. 
 
 TYPEWRITING. — Special emphasis is laid on the course in 
 typewriting, in recognition of the fact that there is a growing demand 
 for typewriter operators, irrespective of whether or not they are also 
 stenographers. Instruction will be given in the proper use of the 
 machine, spacing, capitalizing, fingering the keys, words and exer- 
 cises, gradually introducing the use of the entire keyboard. 
 
 Bowen, 89th Street and Manistee Avenue; Crane, Oakley Avenue and 
 Vanburen Street; Burr, Ashland and Wabansia Avenues; Englewood, 
 Stewart Avenue and 62d Street; Foster, Union and O'Brien Streets; Goethe, 
 Rockwell Street betiveen Fullerton and Mihvaukee Avenues; Lake, 47th 
 Place and Union Avenue; Lane, Division and Sedgwick Streets; McAllister, 
 36th and Gage Streets; Medill, 14th Place near Throop Street; Phillips, 
 39th. Street and Prairie Avenue; Pullman, Morse Avenue and 113th Street; 
 
LIST OF TRADE CLASSES 51 
 
 Scammon, Morgan and Monroe Streets; Tuley, Potomac and N. Clare- 
 mont Avenues; Waller, Orchard ^ and Center Streets; Washington, Mor- 
 gan Street and Grand J venue. 
 
 BOOKKEEPING. — In the elementary department a simple but 
 thorough course is given. In the high school department a more 
 advanced course is given, including the handling of a complete set of 
 books of entry and business forms of all kinds, and the carrying on of 
 actual transactions in various departments of business. 
 
 Bowen, 89th Street and Manistee Avenue; Burley, Barry Avenue near 
 Ashland Avenue; Burns, 25th Street and Wabansia Avenue; Burr, Ash- 
 land and IVabansia Avenues; Crane, Oakley Avenue and Vanburen Street; 
 Englewood^ 62d Street and Steiuart Avenue; Foster, Union and O'Brien 
 Streets; Garfield, Johnson Street and 14th Place; Goethe, Rockwell Street 
 betiveen Fullcrton and Mihvaukee Avenues; Hamline, iSth and Bishop 
 Streets; Hammond, 21st Place near California Avenue; Harrison, 23d Place 
 near Wentworth Avenue; Jackson, Sholto and Better Streets; Lake, 47th 
 Place and Union Avenue; Lane, Division and Sedgivick Streets; McAllister, 
 36th and Gage Streets; Medill, 14th Place near Throop Street; Phillips, 
 39th Street and Prairie Avenue; Pullman, Morse Avenue and 113th Street; 
 Scammon, Morgan and Monroe Streets; Tuley, Potomac and N. Claremont 
 Avenues; Waller, Orchard and Center Streets; Washington, Morgan Street 
 and Grand Avenue. 
 
 LEWIS INSTITUTE EVENING CLASSES 
 
 Sew^ing and millinery. — Cutting and making plain garments, shirt- 
 waists, thin gowns and dressing jackets ; practical millinery. 
 
 Co„,-^^._Three terms, Tuesday and Thursday, 7:00 to 9:00. 
 Tuition. — Term of ten weeks, $5. 
 
 TRADE CLASSES IN SETTLEMENTS 
 
 Chicago Commons 
 
 Shirt-waist class. Tuesday evening, 7 :30. 
 
 Eli Bates House 
 
 Sewing; practical work. Three evenings a week. 
 
 Emerson House 
 
 Trade dressmaking. One evening a week. 
 
 Henry Booth House 
 
 Sewing; practical. Thursday afternoons. Girls eight to fourteen. 
 Embroidery class. 
 
 Hull-House 
 
 Dressmaking for beginners. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, 
 Thursday, Friday, 7 :30 P. M. Wednesday, 2 :30 to 4 :30 P. M. 
 $1 ten lessons. 
 
 Graded dressmaking, shop: 
 
 Beginning classes. Monday, 1 :30 to 4 and 7 to 9 P. M. 
 
 Intermediate classes. Thursday, 1 :30 to 4 and 7 to 9 P. M. 
 
 Advanced classes. Friday, 1 :30 to 4 and 7 to 9 P. M. 
 
 $2 ten lessons. 
 Plain sewing, shop. Wednesday, 1 :30 to 4 and 7 to 9 P. M. 
 Millinery. Thursday, 7 :30 P. M. 
 
52 LIST OF TRADE CLASSES 
 
 Neighborhood House 
 
 Sewing and dressmaking. Saturday, 9:30 to 11:30 A. M. Girls 
 nine to sixteen. This class gives practical training in hand 
 sewing only. Each girl is required to make a dress entirely 
 by hand before she receives a diploma. After four or five 
 years' training girls are prepared to enter dressmaking 
 establishments and high-grade tailor-shops. 
 
 Northwestern Settlement 
 
 Sewing. Wednesday, 7 :30 P. M. Girls over fourteen. 
 Dressmaking. Monday and Wednesday, 7 :30 P. M. 
 Millinery. Monday, 7:30 P. M. 
 
 University of Chicago Settlement 
 
 Dressmaking. Monday afternoon. 
 Shirt-waist making. Monday afternoon. 
 Weaving and basketr3^ Monday afternoon. 
 Millinery. Thursday. 
 
 Other settlements have numerous classes in sewing but they cannot 
 be called trade classes. 
 
 DRESSMAKING SCHOOLS 
 
 Fashion School of Dressmaking, 4715 Lake Avenue. 
 
 A general course in cutting, fitting and sewing; training girls for 
 tailor shops. Classes meet three days a week from 9 A. M. 
 to 1 P. M. Tuition $1 for a four-hour lesson; 20 lessons in a 
 course. 
 
 Valentine Dresscutting School, 116 N. State Street. 
 
 Instruction given in designing, cutting and sewing. Tuition, 22 
 lessons, $8. 
 
 McDowell's Dressmaking School, 209 S. State Street. 
 
 Course oiTered in dresscutting, dressmaking and ladies tailoring. 
 Tuition, $20. 
 
 The School of Domestic Arts and Science, 177 N. State Street. 
 
 Courses offered in plain sewing and dressmaking for home use, 
 including draughting, cutting and fitting, making fancy waists 
 and dresses. Terms of 20 lessons, $7.50 and upward. 
 
 MILLINERY SCHOOLS 
 
 The School of Domestic Arts and Science, 177 N. State Street. 
 
 Courses in home and trade millinery. Terms of 20 lessons, $12. 
 
 Madam Hunt's Millinery School, 159 N. State Street. 
 
 Practical course in millinery. Term six to eight weeks. Tuition $25. 
 
 Patterson School of Millinery Design, 81 E. Madison Street. 
 
 Technical courses in designing, making and trimming hats. 
 Tuition, ten weeks' course, $40; eight weeks' course, $25. 
 
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY RELATING TO 
 EMPLOYMENT SUPERVISION 
 
 Wherever an asterisk is placed before the title, the reference may be found in the Library 
 of the Chicago School of Civics; where a call number is given, the reference may be found 
 
 in th*^ Tnhn Crerar T.ihrnrv 
 
 in the John Crerar Library. 
 
 BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS 
 
 *American Academy of Political and Social Science, Philadelphia. Industrial 
 education. Philadelphia, 1909. 224 p. (Annals of the American Academy, 
 33, No. 1.) $1. Crerar 306.103 1 v. 33 
 
 *Blocmfield, Meyer. The vocational guidance of youth. Bost.: Houghton, Mif- 
 flin, 1911. vii. 123 p. (Riverside educational monographs.) 60c. 
 
 Bibliography: p. 117-120. 
 
 *Bray, Reginald A. Boy labour and apprenticeship. Lond.: Constable, 1911. 
 xi. 244 p. 5s. 
 
 List of authorities: p. 241-244. 
 
 Davenport, Eugene. Education for efficiency. Host.: Heath, 1909. 184 p. $1. 
 Crercr 371.42 Q 901 
 
 *Davies, Maud F. School care committees; a guide to their work. Lond.: T. 
 Burleigh. 1909. 94 p. 6d. Crerar 362.76 Q 901 
 
 *Frere, Margaret. Children's care committees; how to work them in elementary 
 schools. Lond.: P. S. King, 1909. 86 p. Is. Crerar 362.76 O 900 
 
 Gillete, John M. Vocational education. N. Y. : American Book Company, 
 1910. viii. 303 p. $1. Crerar 373 R 00! 
 
 Gordon, Mrs. Ogilvie. Handbook of employments; specially prepared for the 
 use of boys and girls on entering the trades, industries and professions. 
 Aberdeen: Rosemount Press, 1908. 444 p. Is. Crerar 609. .',2 Q SOO 
 
 *Greenwood, Arthur. Juvenile labour exchange and after-care. Lond.: P. S. 
 King, 1911. xi. 112 p. Is. 
 Bibliography: p. 101-112. 
 
 Hanus, Paul H. Beginnings in industrial education. Bost.: Houghton, Mifflin, 
 1908. 199 p. $1. Crerar 370.4 H 192 
 
 *Keeling, Frederic. The labour exchange in relation to boy and girl labour. 
 Lond.: P. S. King, 1910. 76 p. 6d. Crerar 331.3 R 001 
 Bibliography: p. 73-76. 
 
 *Kerschensteiner, Georg. Three lectures on vocational training. Chicago: 
 Commercial Club of Chicago, 1911. 52 p. 
 
 ^Knowles, G. W. Junior labour exchanges: plea for closer co-operation be- 
 tween labour exchanges and education authorities. Lond.: Sherratt, 
 1910. 32 p. 6d. 
 
 Parsons, Frank. Choosing a vocation. Bost.: Houghton, Mifflin, 1909. 165 p. 
 $1. Crerar 374 P ^5 
 
 Sadler, M. E. Continuation schools in England and elsewhere; their place in 
 educational system of industrial and commercial state. Ed. 2. Lond.: 
 Sherratt, 1908. 779 p. 8s. 6d. Crerar 379.175 Q 800 
 
 53 
 
54 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 *Snedden, David. The problem of vocational education. Bost. : Houghton, 
 Mifflin, 1910. vii. 85 p. (Riverside educational monographs.) 3Sc. 
 
 *Woolman, Mrs, Mary Schenck. The making of a trade school. (The Man- 
 hattan trade school for girls.) Bost.: Whitcomb & Barrows, 1910. 101 p. 
 50c. Crerar 607 Q 900 
 
 ARTICLES 
 
 *Adler, Nettie. Trade schools for girls. Women's Industrial News (new 
 series) No. 53 : 31-39. January, 1911. 
 
 Chamberlain N. Labour exchange and boy labour. Economic Review 19 : 400- 
 409. October, 1909. Crerar 330.52 E 19 v. 19 
 
 *Flexner, Mary. Plea for vocational training. Survey 22 : 650-55. August 7, 
 1909. Crerar L 360.51 S 96 v. 22 
 
 ^Gibbon, I. G. Skilled employment and apprenticeship committees in England. 
 Progress, Civic, Social. Industrial. 3 : 165-175. July, 1908. Crerar 305.2 
 P 94 v. 3 
 
 ^Greenwood, A. The organization of the juvenile labour market. Progress, 
 Civic, Social, Industrial 6:97-105. April, 1911. Crerar 305.2 P 9ff 'v. 6 
 
 *Harvey, L. D. Need, scope, and character of industrial education in the public- 
 school system. National Education Association, Proceedings, 1909, p. 
 49-70. Crerar 310.6161 2 1909 
 
 Jevons, H. W. Industrial prospects for boys and girls. Charity Organization 
 Review (new series) 20 : 125-139. September, 1906. Crerar 360.52 1 
 N. S. <v. 20 
 
 Longman, Mary. Children's care committees. Contemporary Review 98:733-42. 
 December, 1910. Crerar L 052 C 16 i: 98 
 
 Mundella, A. J. Labour exchanges and education. School Government Chroni- 
 cle, December 3 and 10, 1910. 
 
 Parsons, J. Skilled employment committees. Charity Organization Review 
 (new series) 22:19-40. July, 1907. Crerar 360.52 1 N. S. v. 22 
 
 *Tawney, R. H. Blind-alley occupations. Women's Industrial News (new 
 series) No. 52:1-10. October, 1910. 
 
 Tawney, R. H. Economics of boy labour. Economic Journal 19:517-537. 
 December, 1909. Crerar L 330.52 E 11 v. 19 
 
 OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS, REPORTS, ETC. 
 
 *Birmingham. Education Committee. Report of the special sub-committee on 
 the institution of a juvenile employment bureau and care committee in 
 Birmingham. Adopted by the Education Committee, December 16, 1910. 
 Birmingham: Percival Jones, 1910. 36 p. 
 
 ♦Edinburgh School Board. Co-operation between the educational information 
 and employment bureau and the labour exchange. 4 p. 
 
 Edinburgh School Board. Scheme for the establishment of an educational in- 
 formation and emploj'ment bureau. (Adopted by the Board, July 20th, 
 1908.) 
 
 *Great Britain. Board of Education. Report of the consultative committee on 
 attendance, compulsory or otherwise, at continuation schools. Lond. : 
 Wyman, 1909. 2 vols. (Cd. 4757-8.) Is. 6d. each. Crerar L 354.1,2 2 
 Cd. 4151-8 1909 
 
I I « * • 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY SS 
 
 Great Britain. General Post-Office. First report of Standing Committee on 
 boy labour in the post-office. Lond.: Wyman, 1911. 18 p. (Cd. 5504) 3d 
 Crerar L S5J,.J,2 2 Cd. 550 J, 1910 ' 
 
 * . Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress 
 
 Report. Lond.: Wyman, 1909, 1238 p. (Cd. 4499) 5s. 6d. Crerar L 35/,. i2 2 
 Cd. U99 1909 
 
 See p. 325-326, Boy labour; p. 1166-67 (Minority Report), Misuse of boy labour. 
 
 * . Appendix vol. 20. Report by Mr. Cyril Jackson on boy labour 
 
 together with a memorandum from the General Post-Office on the con- 
 ditions of employment of telegraph messengers. Lond.: Wyman, 1909 
 230 p. (Cd. 4632.) 9d. Crerar L 35Jt.J,2 2 Cd. J,632 1909 
 
 *London County Council. Education Committee. After-care and juvenile 
 employment. Lond.: P. S. King, 1911. 7 p. (No. 5443.) 
 
 . Handbook containing general information with reference to 
 
 the work in connection with the Children's Care (Central) Sub-com- 
 mittee. Lond.: P. S. King, 1910. 80 p. (No. 1332.) 6d. 
 
 . Report by education officers submitting a report by Miss Dur- 
 ham on juvenile labour in Germany and how it is being dealt with. Lond.: 
 P. S. King, 1910. 14 p. (No. 1358.) 3d. 
 
 * . Women's trades. Report of the Education Committee sub- 
 mitting report by the chief inspector presenting reports on women's trades 
 compiled by the late inspector of women's technical classes (Mrs. G. M. 
 Oakeshott). Lond.: Southwood, Smith, 1908. 41 p. (No. 1142.) lid. 
 Crerar L 331.1, Q 801 
 
 ^Massachusetts. Commission on Industrial and Technical Education. Report. 
 Bost.: Wright & Potter, 1906. 196 p. Crerar 607 Q 603 
 
 *— — . Commission on Industrial Education. Report. Bost.: Wright & 
 
 Potter, 1907. 71 p. (Public doc, No. 76.) Crerar 601 Q 701 
 
 A report on the organization and methods of the several textile 
 
 schools in the commonwealth. Bost.: 1908. 106 p. (House No. 1320.) 
 
 *United Ctstes. Bureau of Education. Bulletin, whole No. 389. The appren- 
 ticeship system in its relation to industrial education; by Carroll D. 
 Wright. Wash., D. C: Government Printing Office, 1908. 116 p. 
 Crerar 370.51 1,2 1908 
 
 — . Report, 1910, vol. 1, p. 301-343. Prussian system of voca- 
 tional schools from 1884 to 19()9. Wash., D. C: Government Printing 
 Office, 1910. Crerar L 370.973 NOOl 1910 v. 1 
 
 — . Bureau of Labor. Investigation of telephone companies. Wash., D. C. : 
 Government Printing Office, 1910. 340 p. (S. doc. 380, 61st Cong., 2d 
 sess.) Crerar 654.6 R 001 
 
 — . Report on condition of woman and child wage-earners 
 
 in the United States, in 19 volumes. Wash., D. C. : Government 
 
 Printing Office, 1910. (S. doc. 645, 61st Cong., 2d. sess.) Crerar 
 331.0973 R 001 
 
 Contents: v. 1, Cotton textile industry, 1044 p., 75c; v. 2, Men's ready-made clothing, 873 
 p., 75c; V. 3, Glass industry, 970 p.," 75c; v. 4, Silk industry, 592 p., 45c; v. 5, Wage- 
 earning women in stores and factories, 384 p., 30 c ; v. 6, Beginnings of child labor 
 legislation in certain States, comparative study, by Elizabeth L. Otey, 225 p., 20c; 
 V. 7, Conditions under which children leave school to go to work, 309 p., 25c ; v. 8, 
 Juvenile delinquency and its relation to employment, 77 p., 15c; v. 11, Employment of 
 women in metal trades, by L. W. Chaney. 107 p., 10c. 
 
 . Twenty-fifth annual report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1910. 
 
 Industrial Education in the United States. Wash., D. C. : Government 
 Printing Office, 1911. 822 p. 
 
 Bibliography: p. 521-539. 
 
56 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 REPORTS OF VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS, ETC. 
 
 "•'Apprenticeship and Skilled Employment Association, London. Annual re- 
 ports. No. 1, 1906-7. Lend., 1907 to date. Crerar 360.620/f 1 1908 
 
 . Suggestions to committees newly starting. Lond., 1908. 7 p. Crerar 
 
 Pam. 331.86 
 
 * . Trades for London boys and how to enter them. Lond.: Longmans, 
 
 Green, 1908. 170 p. 9d. Crerar 607.2 Q 800 
 
 * , Trades for London girls and how to enter them. Lond.: Longmans, 
 
 Green, 1909. xxi. 145 p. 9d. Crerar 331. Jt Q 902 
 
 The work of an apprenticeship committee; by M. K. Bradby. Lond., 
 
 1909. 7 p. Crerar Pam. 331.86 
 
 *Lads' Employment Committee. London. Annual Reports. No. 1, 1907. 
 Lond.. 1907 to date. 
 
 ^National Education Association of the United States. Report of the Com- 
 mittee on the place of industries in public education to the National 
 Council of Education. July, 1910. iv. 123 p. Crerar 375.6 R 001 
 
 ^National Society for the Prom.oticn of Industrial Education, Office of the 
 Secretary, 20 West 44th St., New York City. Bulletins, No. 1-14, 1907 to 
 1911. Crerar 607.06161 1 'V. 1-U 
 
 Conlents : No. 1, Proceedings of the organization meetings; 2, Sclecled bililiography on 
 industrial education, prepared Ly C. R. Richards ; 3, A symposium on industrial educa- 
 tion, collated by J. P. ITaney ; 4, Industrial training for women, by Florence M. Mar- 
 shall ; 5-6, Proceedings of 1st annual meeting, Chicago; 7, Circular of inforrnation, con- 
 stitution, state branches, officers and members ; 7, Education of workers in the shoe 
 industry, by A. D. Dean; 9, Proceedings, 2d annua! meeting, Atlanta; 10, Proceedings, 
 3d annual meeting, Milwaukee, Wis.; 11, A descriptive list of trade and industrial 
 schools in the United Slates, prepared by E. II. Reisner; 12, Legislation upon indus- 
 trial education in the United States, prepared by E. C. Elliott and C. A. Prosser ; 13, 
 Proceedings 4th annual meeting, Boston: pt. I, Trade education for girls; pt. II, Ap- 
 prenticeship and corporation schools; pt. Ill, Part time and evening schools; pt. IV, 
 The social significance of industrial education ; 14, The trade continuation schools of 
 Munich, by Georg Kerschensteiner. 
 
 ♦Vocation Bureau of Boston. Vocations for Boston boys. Bulletins, No. 1-8. 
 Bost.: Vocation Bureau, 1911. 10c each. 
 
 ♦Vocation Office for Girls. Vocations for Boston Girls. Bulletins, No. 1-10. 
 Bost.: Girls' Trade Education League, 1911. 10c each. 
 
 ♦Women's Industrial Council, London. Boy and girl labour; by Nettie Adler 
 and R. H. Tawney. Lond., 1909. 17 p. Id. Crerar Pam. 331.86 
 
 . Report of the conference on industrial training for girls. Lond.: 
 
 Women's Industrial Council. 6d. 
 
 . Technical education for women and girls at home and abroad. Lond., 
 
 1905. 64 p. Crerar 396.5 Q 501 
 
DAY AND TO «ir.«^^®°N THE FOURTH 
 OVERDUE. *'°° °'^ THE SEVENTH dIy