Mary Schenck Woolman

“ The apparently unnecessary suspicion with which the laboring class regards the organization of trade instruction would have foundation if no thought were given to the trade conditions as the working girl sees them. A trade school for fourteen-year-old girls need not make a point of their immediate entrance into unions, but it should consider the subject simply and wisely in all its bearings, that the students may know the full aims and advantages of coöperation as well as the point of view and many difficulties of the employers. ”

“ In the language of the department, time may be spent wisely or foolishly, and, while studying at the Manhattan Trade School, seven hours out of every day of the girl's life is given over to productive work and should be accounted for. The department has developed its own plan of time payments, which is much like the piece-work system employed in trade. Through its rewards for time well spent it makes the fact real to the pupils, as no form of punishment could do, that wasted time is gone forever. ”

“ An unskilled worker is perhaps desired in some business house, but the applicant finds that hundreds of other girls are flocking to obtain the same position, and her chance is too remote for hope. Or perhaps, after weary days of wandering about from place to place, she is recommended to the boss of some shop, and finds herself in the midst of machines which rush forward at 4,000 or more stitches a minute. She assists a busy worker on men's shirts, her duty being to pin parts together, to finish off, or to run errands. ”

“ It is not possible for a worker who has skill with the hand and no education to back it up to rise far in her trade. There is many a tragedy in the market of the woman whose poor early education prevented her from getting ahead. Accurate expression, whether oral or written, the use of arithmetic in simple trade transactions or detailed accounts, the ability to grasp the important factors in any situation and then to go to work without waste of time or motion, are required for positions of trust and for supervision in any workroom. ”

“ The Manhattan Trade School has depended for its support entirely upon voluntary contributions. There have been few large donations and the donors represent all classes of the community—patrons of and workers in sociological, economic, philanthropic, and educational fields, employers of labor, and auxiliaries of many kinds of workers organized for special purposes. The most significant help, perhaps, and the largest in proportion to its income, has been that of the wage-earners themselves—not only the girl who has benefited by the instruction, but the general mass of women workers. ”

“ Nor is it sufficient that the curriculum should adapt itself merely to training girls for trade positions. It is never to be forgotten that these students are to be made into higher grade workers and citizens, and that the greater number of them will marry. In general, it can be said that woman's entrance into industry is more or less temporary in that it is apt to precede or to follow marriage, and, as a rule, is not continuous. Good citizenship for these young wage-earners should mean the better home as well as the broader views of industrial life. ”

“ The organizing of a girls' trade school in any given locality necessitates the meeting of many problems of a serious nature. Some of these appear immediately and require consideration before a satisfactory curriculum can be developed, but most of them are hydra-headed, and one phase is no sooner settled than another arises. Attention must be given to them whenever they come if any progress is to be made in solving the question of the broadest and yet most practical education for the girl who must earn her living in trade. ”

“ At the present time the teacher who can adequately prepare young workers for trade has to be taught while she is herself teaching. She may be chosen from either the industrial or the educational field, if she has certain qualities of mind and spirit, but she must now make up the points she lacks, be it experience in trade or ability to teach. Supervisors need special insight and capability, as they are called upon to investigate a new and difficult field, to select from it the subjects needed, and after that to organize education of a most practical kind. ”

“ A trade school must do its skilled handwork in the fashion of the day and on correct materials, yet the students are too poor to work for themselves. A school budget cannot supply such large quantities of valuable materials unless it can get some return for them. ”

“ In the first place a bureau so situated can, by keeping in constant touch with the departments, obtain intimate and detailed information about the character, the work, the special aptitudes, and the physique of each girl. Such data are extremely valuable in making wise placements, but are difficult of access for an outside agency. In the second place such a school bureau, open to graduates, tends to bring them occasionally to it, and thus strengthens their interest in and loyalty to the school by giving a practical reality to their connection with it. ”

“ When a pupil has been thoroughly trained in the intelligent use of her tool, when she has learned to construct complete garments, if she is then, through force of circumstances such as modern production entails, compelled to carry out one process on the machine indefinitely, or to make one part of a garment, she still holds the balance of power in being prepared to do something else when opportunity or necessity demands. ”

“ With the fundamentals of trade problems established, arithmetic is further developed along special lines of trade to meet the demands of the business world. The trained worker should not only be skilled in the manipulation of tools and materials, but she should be able to compute her own problems, such as estimates for garments, how to cut materials economically, the cost of one garment or article as related to the cost of many of the same kind, the prices, and similar trade questions. The ability to deal with these subjects adds materially to the value of a skilled worker. ”

“ Each girl receiving aid is told the reason for its bestowal in such a way that she will neither look upon it as money earned nor feel humiliated as a recipient of charity, but will understand that it should mean for her an opportunity to obtain a good education. It therefore is incumbent upon her to show a realization of its value by becoming a responsible and earnest worker. Students receiving such assistance are expected to attend regularly, unless for excellent reasons, and the reports from their departments must be satisfactory in regard to their work, attitude, and effort. ”

“ The courses of work in the Art Department are shaped according to the needs of each trade department. Various phases of work in dressmaking, electric power operating, novelty, and millinery are made "centers of interest." Each girl thus finds her art aiding her to be more valuable in her trade. Her enthusiasm is awakened and she is stimulated to self-expression directly along the line of her chosen work. The entering students lack in the technical skill which can be used in their trades. ”

“ The possibilities for offering highly specialized, skilled work are great, but the poverty of the students limits their time at the day school. To help all girls who work, and who wish to get ahead, night classes have been organized from time to time, and during the day also temporary instruction is offered to any one who has a slack time in her trade. As the school is organized into trade shops, with the same specialization as in the market, a student can enter or be placed from almost any point. ”

“ Where trade orders can be used without keeping the girls too long on the one problem, they prove a great incentive and also help them to acquire speed. Private orders give more variety in the work, and thus enable the girls to adjust themselves more easily to each season's new styles. The private orders, however, being smaller in number, do not help the students to acquire the speed that the repetition does in the large trade orders. Each kind of order work is used, as it can be of advantage to the development of the student. ”

“ The school has been able to prove, however, that girls educated there can command a fair wage in trade, but that a longer time given to this training will enable them to obtain better positions and salaries. Hence an increasing number have been willing to remain longer, giving even a year or more to preparation. It was with this latter class that the time was ripe to offer some training in lunchroom cookery which could teach them what could be procured at low prices and yet be nourishing; how to prepare food at home, and how to use the hot table often found in an up-to-date factory. ”

“ Furthermore, the pupils must be advanced as they show ability, and their different characteristics should have consideration; hence the work must be sufficiently flexible and adaptable to allow for increasing one kind of training and decreasing another, in order to develop a girl's best ability. It is not the trade courses only which should be fitted to the need, but the trade-art, trade-academic, and physical education must also shift and introduce needed material as quickly as would the market grasp at new plans for the workrooms. ”

“ Perhaps she does persist and finally can control a machine. By learning to do one thing rapidly she can obtain a better wage, but two or even more years in trade often pass before she can earn five dollars a week. After several seasons spent in doing the same process thousands of times, her desire for new work becomes deadened, and she is afraid to attempt anything different from her one set task. She usually refuses to try more advanced work, even if offered a good salary while she is learning, for she has lost her ability to push ahead. ”

“ The management must be ready at a moment's notice to change, increase, or drop work according to the demands of a fickle market. It would seem, therefore, that at present the problems of the school trade shops are of too serious and unsettled a character for adequate solution by public instruction as at present organized, for (1) it would be difficult to persuade the mass of taxpayers that added tax rates are advisable for beginning a continually altering form of education which has not yet commended itself to all employers or to all wage-earners, and which must be more or less expensive ”

“ A girl may learn to run fine tucks on cheesecloth, but this will not enable her to do satisfactory hand-tucking on chiffon. Neither is it a correct educational or economic principle to cut up quantities of good material, which the students will look upon as "rags," and then, after working on them, to throw them into a receptacle for waste or sell them simply to get rid of them. To secure the best results in any line of instruction there must be interest and enthusiasm. The aim, therefore, must be definite and the results vital. ”

“ Students are at times sent to the school for instruction with a request for aid from some charitable institution, church, hospital, school, or settlement which knows and is interested in the family; but, in general, a girl needing financial help comes without such recommendations, and consequently a more thorough investigation of the case is necessary. Inquiry is always made at first of the Charity Organization Society, in order to learn whether her family has received or is receiving other relief. ”