R. R. Lutz

“ First of all, it must be recognized that such work is a big job in itself and cannot be successfully conducted as an appendix of the day school. It is worth doing well, or it is not worth doing. It needs an organization sufficiently elastic and adaptable to quickly make adjustments to unusual and unexpected conditions. It needs the supervision of a competent director who can devote to it all his time and energy, and a corps of teachers who not only know how and what to teach, but who possess a firm conviction of the value and utility of this kind of instruction. ”

“ The years between 15 and 18 are among the most important in the life of the young worker. If left to his own devices during this period, he is very likely to lose much of vocational value of his earlier education, because he does not grasp the relation which the knowledge he acquired in school bears to his daily work. As a result the problem of supplementary instruction at a later age, when he wakes up to his need for it, becomes much more difficult than if trade-extension training had been taken up at once when he entered employment. ”

“ A consideration of the occupational future of boys and girls shows at once how widely their problems differ. The typical boy in Cleveland attends school until he reaches the age of 15 or 16. About this period he becomes a wage-earner and for the next 30 or 40 years devotes most of his time and energy to making a living. The typical girl leaves school about the same time, becomes a wage-earner for a few years, then marries and spends the rest of her life keeping house and rearing children. To the man wage-earning is the real business of life. ”

“ In the hands of teachers who bring to it only the margin of interest and energy remaining after a hard day's work in the high school, or who are unable to comprehend the radical difference between teaching a boy in the day school 35 hours a week and teaching a boy four hours a week in the continuation school or evening class, the full measure of success cannot be expected. ”

“ The ideals of success usually held up before school children seem to have been drawn from a mixture of Sunday school literature and the prospectuses of efficiency bureaus. Boiled down the rules prescribed for their attainment are two: first, "Be good;" and second, "Get ahead." The pupils are told about well-known men who became famous or rich, usually rich, by practicing these rules. Occasionally there is some prattle about the "dignity of labor," as a rule meaningless in the light of our current ideas of success. We do not think of a well-paid artisan as "successful." ”

“ The purpose of the general industrial course is to afford to boys who wish to enter industrial occupations the opportunity to secure knowledge and training that will be of direct or indirect value to them in industrial employment. It is not expected that by this means they can be given much practical training in hand work for any particular trade. The most the school can do for the boy at this period is to bridge over for him the gap that exists between the knowledge he obtains from books and the rôle which this knowledge plays in the working world. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the decline of apprentice training in the shops is due partly to the fact that employers find that much of the time and money it costs goes toward providing a skilled labor force for competitors who make no effort to train young workers. The cooperation of employers on a comprehensive scale will be secured only when the burden is equally shared. ”

“ To put it in another way, drawing to the average workman is like an additional language of which he needs a reading but not a writing knowledge. No doubt it would be well to teach him to write and read with equal skill, but in the two or three years most of these boys will remain in school there is not time enough to do both. ”

“ They drift into some job aimlessly and ignorantly, following the line of least resistance, driven or led by the accidents and exigencies of gaining a livelihood. They possess no accurate or comprehensive knowledge of the advantages and disadvantages of different types of wage earning occupations, and frequently take up work for which they are entirely unfitted or which holds little future beyond a bare livelihood. ”

“ What an occupation means in terms of income is more significant than what it means in terms of materials. The most important facts about the cabinet making trade, for example, are that it offers very few opportunities for employment to public school boys, and that it is one of the lowest paid skilled trades. The primary considerations in the intelligent selection of a vocation relate to wages, steadiness of employment, health risks, opportunities for advancement, apprenticeship conditions, union regulations, and the number of chances there are for getting into it. ”

“ The trouble with much of the shop work given in the schools is that it runs to hand craftmanship in which the object is to "make something" by methods long ago discarded in the industrial world, rather than to give the pupil exercise in the sort of thinking he will need to do after he goes to work. Successful teaching does not depend so much on the use of tools and materials as on the teacher's knowledge of the conditions surrounding industrial work and his ability to originate methods for vitalizing the instruction in its relation to industrial needs. ”

“ Employment is much more regular in clerical work than it is in salesmanship or industrial work. For men clerical workers the wage opportunity is better in manufacturing and trade than in some kinds of transportation business. For women it is better in manufacturing and transportation than it is in trade. Men's wages tend to be higher than women's in all branches of clerical work.
Among the clerical positions, bookkeeping shows the highest wage average for men; clerks' positions show the lowest. Stenography shows the highest for women; machine work the lowest. ”

“ It is the opinion of the Survey Staff that the only practicable solution of this problem lies in the day continuation school, backed by a compulsory law which will bring every boy and girl at work under the age of 18 into school for a certain number of hours per week. Only through a comprehensive plan that will reach large numbers of young workers can the difficulties inherent in the administration of small classes be overcome. The night schools have never been successful in holding boys long enough to make more than a beginning in trade-extension training. ”

“ All the native born labor now employed in manufacturing and mechanical industries constitutes only 44 per cent of the total number of native born workers in the city. Moreover, nearly half of the industrial workers are employed in unskilled and semi-skilled occupations for which no training is required beyond a few days' or weeks' practice on the job. Such training calls for a mechanical equipment far more extensive than the resources of the school system can provide, and can be given by the factory more effectively and much more cheaply than by the schools. ”

“ Girls receive salary advancement for increasingly responsible work, but any change in work is likely to be so gradual as to be almost imperceptible if they remain in the same place of employment. If they change to another place, those who are stenographers have a slight readjustment to make in getting accustomed to new terms and to the peculiarities of the new persons who dictate to them. Bookkeeping assistants may encounter different systems, but their part of the work will be so directed and planned that it cannot be said to necessitate difficult adaptation on their part. ”

“ The findings and recommendations as to training emphasize the fact that the vast majority of boys who become workers in the metal trades leave school by the time they are 15 with at most a common school education, so that any vocational training before they go to work must be given between the ages of 12 and 15 and before the end of the eighth grade. The report points out the impossibility of effective vocational instruction in elementary schools on account of the prohibitive cost per pupil for both equipment and teaching, and endorses the recently adopted junior high school plan. ”

“ Not much training is needed and it can be given quickly and effectively in the factories.
About one-ninth of the girls in the school will enter paid domestic or personal service of some kind. The household arts courses probably meet the needs of girls who may be employed in such occupations as far as they can be met under present conditions. The woman domestic servant occupies about the same social level as the male common laborer, and a course which openly sets out to train girls to be servants is not likely to prosper. The load of social stigma such work carries is too heavy. ”

“ Most boys are intensely interested in getting at the "insides" of a machine, and the processes of assembling, with their attendant problems of adjustment and co-ordination of mechanical movements, afford opportunities for the best kind of practical instruction. One of the great advantages of this type of shop work lies in the fact that it consumes little or no material and is therefore inexpensive; another is that a fairly extensive equipment can be easily obtained, as any machine, old or new, will serve the purpose and may be used over and over again. ”

“ For successful work in machine operating the class must be large enough to warrant the purchase and operation of sufficient equipment to give the pupils an opportunity for intensive practice. The only way this condition can be secured is by concentrating in large groups the girls who need such training. Little will be accomplished in training for the sewing trades without specialization, and specialization in small administrative units is impossible. The teaching and operating cost in a school enrolling, say 200 girls, who want the same kind of work, can be brought within reasonable bounds. ”

“ If the data were for retail stores only and did not include wholesale stores, then office work, which now stands at the head of the list, would probably not make so good a showing, although the superiority over the selling positions is, from the wage-earning standpoint, so marked that there seems to be no escape from the conclusion that on the whole women office workers are better paid than women in the sales force. ”

“ In a junior high school of 1,000 pupils, boys and girls, the number of boys who are likely to become compositors is about five. But to teach this trade printing equipment occupying considerable space is necessary, together with a teacher who has had some experience or training as a printer. The expense per pupil for equipment, for the space it occupies, and for instruction renders special training for such small classes impracticable. All of the skilled occupations, with the exception perhaps of the machinist's trade, are in the same case. ”

“ Compared with other occupations that require about the same amount of experience and training, in textile, tobacco, and confectionery manufacturing establishments, the wages of women employed in the printing industry are relatively high.
Wage earners in printing establishments lose less time through irregularity of employment than do those in most other factory industries. The kind of work done by women is more seasonal than that done by men, although less so than in other manufacturing industries which employ large numbers of women. ”

“ It is not necessary for him to be the most skilled mechanic in the force. Employers and superintendents say that in selecting foremen they lay about equal weight on skill and on ability to handle men.
As a rule, foremanship carries with it higher wages, although in some cases the pay is the same as that of the regular journeymen. The reward for the added responsibility comes in the form of steadier employment. It is not uncommon for a foreman to be hired on a salary basis and carried on the payroll throughout the entire year. ”

“ Apprenticeship in dressmaking comprehends a trying-out period of from six months to a year. Most shops take apprentices, the proportion in the trade being one to every 12 workers; and an effort is made to keep these new workers if they are at all satisfactory. There is no standardized apprenticeship wage. Girls may serve without pay for six months, or may start at from 50 cents to $4 a week. At the end of six months they may be earning from $1.50 to $6. The lack of any wage standard in apprenticeship probably accounts for the fact that it is difficult to get girls to enter this trade. ”

“ Practically all the foremen in the shops visited had received an all-round training as machinists, and there are few opportunities for promotion open to men who have not a general knowledge of the trade. On the other hand, such general knowledge is only one of the requisites for advancement. Others are initiative, resourcefulness, tact, self-control, ability to get along with men, and a disposition to subordinate personal interests to the interests of the business. ”

“ The machinist's trade employs more men than any other occupation in the city, yet the number of seventh and eighth grade boys in the average elementary school who will probably become machinists does not exceed five or six. Not over two boys are likely to enter employment in the printing industry. The smaller trades, such as pattern making, cabinet making, molding, and blacksmithing are represented by not more than one boy each. ”

“ If a vote were taken among employers who can offer boys the opportunity to learn a trade it would be found that a large majority favor raising the working age to 16. Employment before this time usually leads nowhere, and the pittance the boy earns cannot be compared with the economic advantage he could derive from an additional year in a good vocational school. The average boy who leaves school at 15 spends a year or two loafing or working at odd jobs before he can obtain employment that offers any promise of future advancement. ”

“ When they leave school these boys will scatter into many different kinds of work. With respect to the future vocations of the pupils, the average school represents in a sense a cross section of the occupational activities of the city. It contains a certain number of recruits for each of the principal types of wage-earning pursuits. A few of the boys will later enter professional life; many will take up some sort of clerical work; a still larger number will be employed in commercial occupations; and the largest group of all will become wage-earners in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits. ”

“ The distribution of men and women in the industry is most interesting. The making of men's garments has been more fully standardized and is subject to fewer changes than the making of women's garments. In this standardized and systematized branch of the industry the women now outnumber the men. In the manufacture of women's garments, where the styles change more frequently and the work is of a more varied character, more men than women are employed. ”

“ In a drawing course for future industrial workers the emphasis should be placed on giving the pupil an understanding of the uses of drawing for industrial purposes, rather than on fine workmanship in making drawings. Seventh grade boys can't be made into draftsmen in three years and if they leave school at 15 they are not likely to become draftsmen. The ordinary skilled workman seldom has any need to make drawings or designs, beyond an occasional rough sketch, but he often has to work from drawings. ”

“ Throughout the survey the objective held constantly in mind was the formulation of a constructive program of vocational training in the public schools. In outlining the field of inquiry a clear distinction was drawn between those kinds of general education which have a more or less indirect vocational significance, and vocational training for specific occupations in which the controlling purpose is direct preparation for wage-earning. ”