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Title: Our Schools in War Time—and After

Author: Arthur D. Dean

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Arthur Davis Dean

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OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME—
AND AFTER

ARTHUR D. DEAN, Sc.D.
PROFESSOR OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION, TEACHERS COLLEGE
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, AND SUPERVISING OFFICER
BUREAU OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING, NEW YORK
STATE MILITARY TRAINING COMMISSION

GINN AND COMPANY
BOSTON · NEW YORK · CHICAGO · LONDON ATLANTA · DALLAS
· COLUMBUS · SAN FRANCISCO

COPYRIGHT, 1918 BY ARTHUR D. DEAN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
518.6

The Athenæum Press
GINN AND COMPANY · PROPRIETORS · BOSTON · U.S.A.

FOREWORD

It is not an army that we must shape and train for war; it is a nation.... The
whole nation must be a team in which each man shall play the part for
which he is best fitted.... Each man shall be classified for service in the
place to which it shall best serve the general good to call him.... The
significance of this cannot be overstated. It is a new thing in our history and
a landmark in our progress. It is a new manner of accepting and vitalizing
our duty to give ourselves with thoughtful devotion to the common purpose
of us all.—Woodrow Wilson, Proclamation, May 18, 1917

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I. Bringing the War into the Schools 1
II. War and Community Uses of our Schools 17
III. The Field for Industrial and Trade Schools 53
IV. Our Colleges and Technical Institutes 80
V. The Opportunity for Manual and Household Arts 115
VI. The Work Impulses of Youth 135
VII. Organized Boy Power vs. Military Drill 165
VIII. Red Cross and Other Community Work 192
IX. Reëducation of the Disabled 211
X. Farm Cadets 234
XI. The Organization of a Cadet Camp 272
XII. A Summarized Program of Action 304
INDEX 331

OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME—

AND AFTER

CHAPTER I

BRINGING THE WAR INTO THE SCHOOLS

The summer of 1917 found America realizing that the war which it had
entered was not going to be won by the mobilization of an army and a navy,
however strong and efficient they might be. In the proclamation of
Woodrow Wilson the whole nation was called upon to mobilize with a clear,
succinct purpose of organizing those forces of industry, of education, of
woman power, which are back of every successful struggle of a nation in
peace or in war. The ready acceptance of the slogan "Win the War in the
Air," with the public clamor for aviation, was but an indication of the
general awakening of the public to the truth that the war must be won by the
use of forces as yet undeveloped, or undirected towards national ends.

The mobilization which teaches the saving of our national resources, which
directs the thoughtful distribution and wise use of our products, which
cultivates the patriotic spirit of service in the boy and girl power of the
nation, properly belongs to the field of education, not only in war but in
peace. To the schools of America, therefore, the war has come as an
opportunity for developing a closer relation between education and life,
between life and service.

Our gradual entrance into the war and our distance from the conflict have
given us the chance of pausing and surveying the situation before acting,—
advantages which were unfortunately denied England and France. At the
beginning of the war England apparently almost wrecked her schools, and
is slowly repairing the mistakes of hurried action in suspending the
attendance laws. France is saving her schools that the nation may go on
after the war. It remains for America to use the war to make better schools.

The mobilization of our schools is not concerned with the introduction of
military drill, whether voluntary or compulsory. It is an experiment in

working out the relation of education to war. We are, all of us, empirics in
this experiment; there is no body of tradition and theory to help us. The
ancient world offers us no parallels; the modern German system throws no
light on it. America, equally with the nations of the older world, is a pioneer
in the field. This is a novel experience for us who have been originators
only of free education in the past or of administrative systems, not of types
of new education. Largely what we have to guide us is some experience of
France and England in what to avoid. This negative counsel is valuable in
restricting our experiments, but is scarcely constructive in its nature. One of
its most valuable lessons, however, is to show us that we must not take our
schools into the war, as England did, but bring the war into the schools.

The fact that the problem is a novel one and that it is experimental does not
make it futile. All education is experimental in adapting the individual to his
changing environment.

During recent years our schools have had to consider the outside forces of
the changing world. It was in 1881 that the first manual-training high school
opened its doors under the hostile gaze of incredulity and disapproval.
Since then our educational system has been bombarded with essays on the
relation of education to life, on practical aspects of education, on vocational
guidance, on trade schools, etc. We have only to look at the vastly
differentiated courses of our colleges (some of which have lost all trace of
the humanities), at the variegated courses in our high schools, at our
remodeled elementary courses, to realize that in thirty years the whole
attitude of the people towards our schools has undergone a vast change.
These changes were regarded as revolutionary at first. But it is no more
revolutionary to introduce the war into our schools than it was to introduce
the laboratory study of sciences, or agricultural studies, or courses in
millinery and home-making,—that is, if we understand the meaning of war
into the schools.

It is not to be denied that the educational emphasis is different. The student
who takes an agricultural course, and thus prepares himself to be a modern
efficient farmer, is only indirectly doing work of service to the State. His
aim is individual improvement, an advance which results in general benefit
to the State; whereas a girl who does Red Cross work in school, or a boy

who works in a war garden, benefits the individual through the larger
service of collective responsibility in serving the nation directly.

We are not unmindful of the fact that war is a temporary condition, and we
must not crowd out the fundamental studies to meet the needs of a
temporary environment, however urgent the need may be. In carrying the
war into our schools we must emphasize those permanent elements which
are as necessary in war as in peace; we must use the war as an opportunity
to develop service to the State,—service which may be vitalizing and
ennobling, full of purposeful appreciation of collective responsibility.

In our study of the introduction of the war into our schools we may properly
shut out discussions of elements which have no educational value. Many of
the proposals for the war uses of our schools have been of a haphazard
nature, called out by a well-meant desire to meet the emergency. Much of
the legislation concerning itself with the employment of school children or
of those under compulsory school age has been, and may yet be, harmful.
The suggestion of using the schools as recruiting stations has lost value
with the operation of the selective draft. Ill-considered proposals to turn
over the vocational and manual-training departments to the government for
the purpose of making munitions have shown a lack of knowledge of their
meager equipment for an industry highly specialized with standard jigs and
fixtures. A department store, a clothing factory, a library, or an office
building would be about as fit for such a purpose as a school building. The
same may be said of the use of our schools as hospitals. Our schools must
be retained as educative plants,—training munition workers, if we will, but
not making munitions; providing the government with skilled artisans and
scientists, but by no means converting their function of education into that
of industrial production.

The war work of our schools is more easily planned in those which have
technical and vocational departments than in those which contain only the
desk and office equipment. Distinctions must be made, too, between
schools in agricultural and industrial centers. The experiments made in New
York with "farm cadets" show that the country boy has certain advantages
over the city boy in all forms of rural and garden employment. We must not

expect the same kind of work from the high-school boys and girls in New
York City that we may exact from country children of the same age.

The city boy may be needed in emergency office and factory work. Instead
of contributing service as a farm cadet, he may become a "coöperator,"
giving part-time service to industry and to commerce and part time to
school, as many of our city boys are now doing.

In dealing with the institution of higher grade we find as many distinctions
in service. In the college of the cultural type—the college of individualism
—it is the individual who serves the State, how nobly may be seen in the
English universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In the public schools and
socialized institutions with vocational work, however, it is the institution
which serves. This service of the institution may be classified under two
heads. In the case of the elementary schools to some extent, and of the high
schools to a greater extent, our war work should be brought into them. In
the technical, vocational, and trade schools the institution should reach out
towards the war. In the first instance the function of the elementary and
secondary school should be to adhere to the purposes for which they were
created. The function of the higher technical, vocational, and trade schools
should be to prepare the skilled students to take the places of those who are
called to military service; to give scientific training, indispensable in war; to
assist, through courses for the blind and crippled, in the reëducation of
those disabled in war service,—that is, our technical schools may be
schools of special preparation and industrial readjustment.

We shall observe, in working out the problem, that we have offered to us by
the war an opportunity to make our schools better by bringing education
closer to life, not only materially but spiritually. If we have failed to train
our youth in coöperation and service to the State in the past, the war gives
us a new motive. For to impart skill in use of hand or brain without teaching
collective responsibility is to fail in our national duty. To our schools we
must look as the agencies which are to carry on the great work of education
in service, a noble and purposeful objective for which to work, directing the
growth of our children into an efficient and devoted citizenship.

Someone will urge: "The war will soon be over and we shall hardly get
started in war service before there will be no need for such service."

Of course those who believe, or at least seem to practice the belief, that the
schools are to lag far behind every economic, industrial, and social
movement and are to be mere looking-glasses for the workaday world,—
such people would not be expected to bring the war into the schools until
some historian had written a text setting forth the dates, drawing the battle
lines, naming the commanding generals, and picturing the final boundaries
determined by some Hague conference. It is such professional
obstructionists who make no provision for the millions of our foreign born
to learn the English language and American customs through the
establishment of up-to-date methods in teaching the adult illiterate. It is
such laissez-faire persons who allow children to slide out of school
unprepared physically, mentally, or vocationally for the life ahead. It is such
who insist upon the disciplinary-value idea of subject-worth in the face of
modern psychological thought. It is such conservatives who say that
agriculture can be taught only on the farm; that it is the business of the
factory to teach the trades; that girls may learn to cook from their mothers;
that elementary courses in woodworking and freehand drawing constitute
vocational training; that algebra, Latin, ancient history, and trigonometry
are essential features of the curriculum for training capable stenographers. It
is these people who say that "the public schools of America are bulwarks of
the nation," and consistently erect bulwarks against every agency which
actually reflects the social and economic needs of the day.

But those who believe that the school should study the past and live in the
present and strive for a better future will find that the war brings out for the
schools not only the lessons of a day, but the needs and opportunities of a
decade.

It has been stated that movements or men unresponsive to the present world
crisis and failing to meet present needs and opportunities do not deserve to
exist. Whether the statement be exactly true or not, it is evident that the up-
to-the-minute man or the live school or the progressive industrial
establishment or the efficient department of government is responding to
the national need in exact proportion to the response made to the needs and
opportunities existing before war was declared.

It is this responding power which is testing our men and women, our
institutions of government, our industries, and our schools. Nothing makes
this clearer than the daily news. We read that since the Railroads War Board
has been established, the railroads have increased their operating efficiency
26 per cent, with the result that they are now handling twice the freight and
have 75 per cent fewer idle cars; that aëroplane motors are soon to be built
as rapidly as a certain well-known automobile can be; that standardized
destroyers and merchant ships are to be turned out by the scores; that dyes
equal to those formerly imported have been evolved; that prominent men of
means have contributed their services to men in authority in Washington;
that well-known social workers are on their way to France and Belgium.

All these things and countless others show us how a military necessity has
brought out the best that is within us. And the best of it all is that there is
nothing which we are doing in the way of making standardized products or
in extending the services of useful men that cannot be permanently useful
after the war is over. Our military necessity is teaching us new and
permanently effective standards of making things. Meanwhile, are the
schools of America to fail by not rendering service to a nation in time of
need, by not establishing permanently effective standards in the making of
useful boys and girls,—"boys and girls," as Roosevelt puts it, "who realize
that they are a part of Uncle Sam's team"?

The schools and colleges that were alive before the war began are breathing
the breath of life more deeply now. Those which were asleep are waking up
and not only learning to serve, but through this service learning to live. A
little school in Vermont in a report on what it has in the way of war
equipment states that it has only ten benches, but adds that these have been
used by sixty boys who take manual training. A school system which can be
as efficient as that in time of peace may naturally be expected to state, as it
does in response to a recent inquiry: "Our instructor has been on the job all
summer, helping especially where the boys and girls are working on the
farms or have gardens. He has also organized canning and drying clubs and
is giving instruction to different groups of boys."

The university which has extension courses in time of peace naturally has
war extension courses. The prominent business man of Massachusetts who

for years interested himself in state Y.M.C.A. work would naturally be
expected to enlist, as he has, for Y.M.C.A. work in France. Now if the
college or institution or individual serves in time of need because of a habit
of serving, might it not be equally true that a somnolent individual or
school, if once stirred to service, might through such service learn always to
serve?

At this time the government of the United States is going to learn how to
become efficient. The state colleges of agriculture are testing their former
efficiency,—the test being the power to serve. Schools may now learn what
it means to be efficient by the service which they may now render. Not an
activity is proposed nor a principle of educational practice given in the
chapters which follow but should be brought into our schools in times of
peace.

We are going to sew now for the Red Cross because it is war time. Later we
shall sew for institutions in our community. Now we are going to develop
part-time schools because industry needs boys. Later we shall have
coöperative courses because boys at work need further schooling. Now we
are placing city boys on farms because the farmers need labor. Later we
shall place farms on the minds of boys because youth needs contact with
nature. Now we have current-events discussions about loans, submarines,
aëroplanes, and I. W. W.'s because the government needs support. Later we
shall teach the meaning of the same things because thoughtfully trained
people are needed by the government. Now we are to teach patriotism and
thrift because the nation needs them. Later we shall teach them because
they are essential in themselves.

Now we have extension courses in economical cooking for adult women as
a war measure. Later we shall have it as a home measure. Now we are
bringing adult women into the schools to receive instruction with their
children. Later we shall do the same thing because it is the only sensible
procedure under any and all conditions. Now we think in terms of
reëducation of disabled soldiers because of the immediate need of helping
these honored men. Later we shall turn what we have learned to do for these
men into better provisions for making self-supporting our crippled and
blinded children who are now in dependent institutions being made still

more dependent by the very nature of the poor apology for vocational
training which is given them. Now we have clearly before us the need for
industrial education because the government is crying for workers. Later we
shall see the need for industrial education because those who are to work in
the industries need it. Now we hold a child-labor law before youth tempted
by industry. Later we shall endeavor to hold before youth better
opportunities for vocational, physical, and mental training in our schools as
an inducement to stay in them.

What are the schools and colleges going to do about it all? Certainly they
will not intentionally injure the cause of education by starting ill-developed
ideas of war service. But the desire to avoid the bad should not by any
means imply inaction. This is the psychological moment for all of us to
justify our very existence as individuals or as parts of an institution or a
movement. One could only pity a school man who recently said: "Really, I
am envious of some of my colleagues. They have something to do at this
time, while the subject which I am teaching can make no contribution."

There has never been a time in our school life when taxpayers, boards of
apportionment, women's clubs, state granges, boards of trade, could be
made more interested in having the schools broaden out along lines of
continuation-school and part-time work, differentiated courses in our high
schools, physical-training courses, evening courses for adult illiterates,
thrift measures and school savings, teaching of current events, more
practical science work, teaching of agriculture, unit courses in household
arts, and a score of other things which the school men of America say they
want and which they are always saying "the public will not stand for."

Shall we let the golden opportunity for enrichment pass until after the war,
when cities will most certainly preach and practice poverty?

Now is the time to evaluate our school subjects, to bring in the new if they
are worth while, to scrap the old if they do not stand the test of national
needs. If a community will not "stand for" cooking when the H. C. L. rises
like a specter before our doors, it will never vote for household arts after the
war. If a city school favorably located near the open country will not now
extend its educational program to include community gardening when
prices of farm products are excessive, it will hardly broaden out when the

crisis of our material needs is over. If a state will not line up with the
Federal Board of Vocational Education for national aid for its vocational
schools when its industries are crying for trained youth, it will never move
forward in time of a normal demand. If we do not reorganize our schools to
bring in the best while we may, we shall in all probability be required in the
near future to discard some things which we have, without having any
opportunity to develop the new things which we have stated in our
conventions and teachers' institutes that we earnestly desire. World
conditions challenge our schools. What is their program?

CHAPTER II

WAR AND COMMUNITY USES OF OUR
SCHOOLS

An evaluating test for each of our school subjects has at last been found.
The test is the capacity of the subject to respond to a national need or a
national ideal. In many instances of the countries concerned in this great
war the schools as a whole have amply justified their existence, and many
of the subjects taught have stood through this world emergency the acid test
of meeting national needs. The scientific and efficiency spirit of Germany is
reflected in the posters spread over Berlin: "Send your cherry, peach, and
plum seeds to the schoolhouse with your children," seeds being used for
making fat and oil. The spirit of France has been reflected, as will be seen
in the following pages, in the work of the teachers and the children for the
preservation of that wonderful nationalism of France. The schools of
England are reshaping themselves—in fact, are being remade—as a result
of the shortcomings set forth by the war.

The schools of America are to go forward. Patriotism now has a new
meaning. The principal from his school platform has opportunity for
announcements and talks other than those dealing with routine matters. The
cooking teacher has opportunity to develop new recipes adapted to present
needs. The teacher of history may redraw almost every day the map of
Europe. The teacher of manual training may substitute problems in concrete
for those requiring high-priced wood materials. The school buildings near
soldiers' camps may, like the Washington (D. C.) buildings, be opened for
educational purposes for soldiers, that they may take up general or special
educational work. Teachers of English may have their pupils study
President Wilson's messages of state as models of English composition and
expressions of American democracy.

The opportunity is before the schools and the children. There are in our
school system three elements which may be of use in war: the building
itself with its equipment, the school population of boy and girl power, and
the teaching force.

In England, during the first year of the war, all three were called into
requisition. Within a few months over 1000 school buildings were in
temporary military use, and even on August 1, 1916, 180 elementary- and
20 secondary-school buildings were still occupied for war work,—for
hospitals, billeting of troops, housing of munition workers, etc.,—the
number of children displaced being 129,855. In many cases the use was
expected to be temporary, but many buildings have been retained
permanently. The children whose schooling was thus interrupted, when too
young for employment, generally drifted aimlessly into juvenile
delinquency, while those older, although below the established employment
age, went to farms and munition factories. That is, the taking away of the
school building was concomitant with the suspension of restrictions on age
of employment and hours of labor. The children of the prosperous class
were likewise affected by the departure of over 50 per cent of the teachers
for military service.

These many interruptions in the carrying on of educational work were the
result of the short-war fallacy; they were emergency measures adopted to
meet a condition which it was generally supposed would last but a few
months. When, however, it was realized by statesmen and the public that
the interference with education and the suspension of laws regulating
employment were resulting in irreparable injury to health and morals of an
employed child population under 13 years of age of 150,000, and an idle
younger population variously estimated at from 200,000 to 300,000,
corrective measures were adopted. American schools must learn from
English experience what to avoid. There are many legitimate uses of
schools which England is now employing; and the warnings of interested
English educators should keep our legislatures and municipalities from
breaking down the compulsory-education laws or converting our schools
into industrial plants. Our aim, as previously stated, should be to bring the
war to the school curriculum for educational purposes, not to take the
schools into the war, losing sight of their definite function.

In France, at the outbreak of the war, many of the school buildings were
requisitioned, and 30,000 teachers were called to the colors. The hardship to
the young resulting from this patriotic sacrifice was met as far as possible
by the generosity of private citizens who gave rooms or buildings for
classes, and by professional men, too old for service, who volunteered to
carry on the work of teaching. France was swift to realize that education
must be carried on at all costs. In districts near the fighting line schools
were of necessity transformed into hospitals, often with a staff of women
teachers temporarily acting as nurses and attendants; but it has been the
policy of the department of public instruction to regard this service as
temporary, and the teachers as conscripted for education.

The trying circumstances under which the schools have been carried on,
serving nobly during the term after hours and during vacations, make their
achievements a record of honor. In the country districts where all the local
officials were mobilized, the teacher became the sole agent of government,
making out passports, requisitions, relief lists, etc., procuring food,
operating a public kitchen, acting as postmaster, doing guard duty, and
rendering numberless other services to the community. One of the first tasks
of the primary schools was to undertake entire care of children left without
adequate protection. In country districts the teachers were, in default of
newspapers, the dispensers of official information, explaining government
loans and giving talks on the progress of the war. Thus the entire village
was brought into the schoolhouse, which became the real center of the
community.

In the United States and Canada the schools may well copy some of the
measures initiated in Europe. That we are 3000 miles from the actual
battleground ought, for the present, to keep us from considering any
lowering of educational bars or from converting our buildings into purposes
other than educational. Europe advises us that such transformation is of an
emergency nature and only to be made under stress of an invasion.

It is the purpose of this chapter to consider some general uses of our
buildings, our equipment (including the teaching force), and the activities of
our pupils, which have been made in the past two or three years, excluding
and reserving for the most part for later discussion the introduction of war

work in manual-training, domestic-arts, and domestic-science courses, and
the part-time agricultural labor.

An important use of our schools, and one which should be made more
general throughout the country, is that of a distributing center for
government pamphlets, information cards, etc. In New York City the
various welfare committees appointed by Mayor Mitchel designated the
public schools as mediums through which to circulate papers on "safety
first," fire prevention, uses of various food products, etc., and thus reach the
families of the vast foreign population through their children. The city's
pledges of national loyalty to be signed by adults were circulated by the
pupils shortly after the declaration of war. Wider publicity can be given to
federal regulations, tax measures, employment modifications, etc., by the
distribution of notices to pupils of upper grades, following the explanation
by the teacher. While our people as a whole read, though hastily, the
newspapers morning and evening, and may find in them all governmental
measures, it is nevertheless true that we shall be assured of a wider
distribution of information by using the pupil as the carrier of it to the
home. In England the schools, as well as the Boy Scouts organization, have
served as national distributing agencies for war-office notices,
Parliamentary information, and agricultural propaganda.

A portion of a letter from Sir Robert Blair, chairman of the Education
Committee of the London County Council, to Superintendent Maxwell of
New York City, in May, 1917, calls attention to the service of the schools in
this connection.

War has come upon us so unexpectedly that our people not only did
not understand the true position but on the whole knew very little
about the causes which had led to the outbreak. The public press,
bookstalls, and the public libraries were considerably augmented by
books and pamphlets on the subject, and it was a natural prompting
that gave rise to the issue to the schools of a considerable number of
documents, memoranda, and pamphlets. These circulars and pamphlets
were mostly all issued within the first year of the war. The first phase
of the pamphlets is historical, while the second became economical.
The economical phase in its first stages was concentrated on war

savings for the purpose of war loans and in anticipation, by the
provision of "nest eggs," of the dislocation that might occur at the end
of the war. In its later stages—within the last six months—the
economical phase has been directed chiefly to economy in food, owing
to the menace of the submarine campaign.

A further use of the school population in hours outside the daily session is
that of giving help in taking a census. In England school teachers and pupils
did most of the work of compiling the National Register, a card census of
inhabitants. To some extent similar work has been done in the United
States, such as the taking of the agricultural census in fifty-six counties (no
census was taken for the counties of Hamilton, Kings, Queens, Richmond,
and New York) in the state of New York in April, 1917. Under the joint
auspices of the State Food Supply Commission and the State Education
Department a survey was ordered of the agricultural resources of the state
and of the requirements for increased production, the details of which were
worked out at Ithaca at the State College of Agriculture. Through the
appointed county enumerators, instructions were transmitted to the various
school districts.

The actual work of this census was begun in most counties on April 23, the
records being practically all obtained by April 25, the teachers and pupils in
each district, assisted when necessary by other persons, procuring the
original facts from farmers and making the summaries for their school
districts. From these records the state was within ten days furnished with
the complete amount of seed and live stock wanted by farmers and for sale
by farmers; with the statements of the transportation difficulties; with the
itemized needs of labor, fertilizer, and spray materials; and with the
complete enumeration of the state,—people, land, and live stock.

Such work by pupils might well become an established yearly activity. The
practice of gathering and tabulating information has an obvious arithmetical
value; and the interest developed in investigating the resources of the
community has an educational significance which should keep us from
limiting it to emergency periods.

The comparative table on page 26 (one of thirteen developed out of the
census) not only illustrates facts which the children obtained, but also

shows the magnitude of the work they undertook.

One of the best community uses of the school is as a center for instruction
in conserving food products. With the absolute shortage of the world's food
supply, Americans must anticipate this shortage in coming seasons and
revert to the preserving methods of their grandparents,—measures fallen
into disuse in crowded cities because of lack of storage room and the ease
with which the fresh products have been obtained, whatever the season.

ACRES OF CROPS IN 56 COUNTIES IN NEW YORK WITH
COMPARISONS FOR THE SAME COUNTIES IN 1909
Acres expected
Acres (U.S. Acres grown
Crop to be grown in
Census, 1909) in 1916
1917
Corn for grain 511,339 336,543 495,469
Corn for silo 259,082 362,413 422,867
Oats 1,302,041 1,102,004 1,250,346
Barley 79,955 92,422 111,634
Buckwheat 286,128 257,911 300,090
Winter wheat 289,126 344,278 387,813
Spring wheat 289,126 12,373 32,425
Rye 130,449 114,691 120,239
Field beans 115,695 194,053 275,790
Alfalfa 35,343 160,985 181,912
Other hay 4,737,326 4,073,333 3,963,678
Cabbage 33,770 38,898 68,890
Potatoes 390,552 305,649 382,840
Canning-factory crops } 44,098 60,155
Other vegetables and } 131,686
garden } 58,340 71,833
Miscellaneous crops 21,843 35,056 40,895
Apples 281,061 346,633
Cherries 4,211 12,414
Peaches 15,340 50,149
Pears 13,378 36,802
Plums 5,742 8,569
Vineyards 52,999 52,350
Small fruit 22,388 28,171
Total 8,719,454 8,701,964

Even villages which have no gas supply may follow the example of cities
and towns in using the school kitchen, already installed as part of a
domestic-science equipment or newly supplied by popular subscription, as a
community canning center. Certainly schools are as well adapted for the
purpose as department stores and Young Women's Christian Associations,
which have been leaders in the movement.

The teaching of methods of preserving is primarily the function of a school,
and every suitable school building should be employed for it. The old-
fashioned preserving meant time, drudgery, expense, quantities of sugar,
and doubtful results. A demonstration of the newer methods and the
opportunity for community canning should be given by the school to the
neighborhood. Community canning induces a far more effective
conservation of food than is possible for the individual kitchen. Few
households can afford to buy and store the vast kettles, the perfected drying
and dehydrating ovens, which can be included in the equipment of a school
teaching the scientific preserving of food and vegetables. As this is done
almost wholly in the summer, it would not interfere with the term's work of
the pupils and, in fact, offers the high-school girls an excellent opportunity
to assist in civic service of a most practical nature. In the summer of 1917
Seattle maintained 20 centers for home-economics teaching for adult
women, the government bulletin "How to Select Food" being used as a
textbook.

There have been wholesome experiments in community canning in
Lakewood, and in Bernards Township, New Jersey. In the latter in each
school was an experienced teacher to supervise the work of preserving
performed by high-school girls of the neighborhood, the fruits and
vegetables being sold by the townspeople to the school or brought by them
to be conserved by coöperative canning for their own use in the future. This
service of the girls was on an equality with that of the boys who belonged to
the agricultural army. In Kansas City the surplus garden products canned by
schoolgirls were used for the school lunches.

England's schools now have "open days" on which parents may be admitted
to receive the instruction given to the children in the economical cooking of
the food which the food controller's instructions show is likely to be

available for general consumption; also (quoting from a letter from Sir
Robert Blair of the London County Council, May 30, 1917) the responsible
mistresses of the evening schools and the domestic-economy staff
employed in these schools are organizing traveling kitchens in 29 boroughs
within the county. These traveling kitchens form practically a demonstration
set of apparatus by which the simplest forms of cookery can be shown to
100 or 200 people. The demonstrations are well attended, and the people in
small villages thus have the opportunity of those in larger settlements to
learn from experts methods of making palatable the food products less well
understood.

It may be urged that community canning has its place outside cities of the
first class. New York City certainly cannot be held to be the center of an
agricultural district, and yet valuable experiments in food conservation are
being made there. One is concerned primarily with the prevention of waste.
Of the thousands of pounds of perishable vegetables and fruit which are
brought each day to the produce piers, much is prohibited from being sold
to retailers because of injuries received in transportation. When more than
20 per cent has been injured, it has not paid wholesalers to salvage the
uninjured portion. As a result, a ruinous quantity of produce has gone to
waste, often being dumped in the harbor for want of better disposal. The
loss as estimated by the board of health has been 225,000 pounds a week.

To save this food by making quick use of it, in July, 1917, Mayor Mitchel's
Committee of Women on National Defense opened a conservation kitchen
in a disused school building in the Williamsburg Bridge section. Here the
uncertain quantity of vegetables salvaged from the produce piers was
brought to the school, picked over, and sterilized, partly by paid labor,
partly by the volunteer labor of members of the Women's University Club
and other organizations, or city women who were willing to contribute their
labor in the cause of food saving. This work was aided by the State Food
Supply Commission and New York's board of health, one of whose
inspectors passed judgment on the food used in the canning and drying
experiments. The salvaged food was brought from the piers to the kitchens
by Boy Scouts, ubiquitously useful in any public undertaking. If it had not
been that the kitchen was opened in vacation, the school population would

have had its share of work to do. To this kitchen any woman might go to be
taught processes or actually to can produce.

While it was not possible to use all the produce brought in, even by keeping
the kitchen as full of workers as space would allow and cooking as much as
480 gallons of food at a time, the work in this old school building is
illustrative of what can be done in community centers to eliminate waste,
and is a vital example of the efficient use of a school building in vacation.
The cost in this case was met by special contributions of organizations and
individuals. But in smaller places this work might be maintained by the
town itself on a less elaborate scale. Such work should not be limited to the
war period. It is a practical and efficient plan for all time.

The continued war will undoubtedly increase not only the price but the
scarcity of cotton and woolen goods. Where it has hitherto not paid to make
over clothing repeatedly because of the cheapness and ease with which new
garments and children's wear have been procured, it is now important to
understand thrifty saving of all kinds of fabrics and apparel.

Home-economics women of Berkeley, California, aided in collecting and
making over old clothing. In Portland, Oregon, a cleaner and dyer took as
his bit of service the cleaning and disinfecting of all the clothing which was
remade by the school children.

In England's county schools there have been held exhibitions of thrift, to
show children when and how economies can be practiced. Some of the
examples shown under the heading of "Utilization of Waste Material" were
as follows: old linen collars and cuffs made into baggage labels, window
cleaners made from pieces of old gloves, house slippers made from old felt
hats, mops made of bits of rags fastened to a nail. Ways were shown of
making use of scraps of wool left over from knitting, the wasting of an inch
of wool being regarded as treasonable in the country's shortage; methods of
refooting stockings were also displayed, as well as many uses for pieces of
worn table and bed linen and old carpets.

In times of normal plenty such exhibitions would not attract attention, but
no greater evidence of the reduced state of a nation at war can be had than
the seriousness with which these exhibitions of household thrift have been

viewed by the population. A clipping from a newspaper of rural England
requests that children go into the pastures and pick from the bushes the bits
of wool which the sheep have rubbed off.

For several years, at least, there will be high prices and scarcity of
materials. Our children must be taught the necessity of preventing waste of
fabrics as well as of food. Millions of dollars worth of cotton and wool have
been destroyed in military and munition use. But it is not only because war
conditions have made material scarce and high that thrift in their use must
be insisted upon in every household; we must remember that billions of
dollars will be required to pay for this war and each household will be
required to make its contribution. Expenditures in every direction must be
curbed and the wise disposition of every dollar must be made. A year or so
ago the Bankers Association of America launched a campaign for thrift
teaching. We were then told that, as individuals, we must save for the
future. The present high cost of living shows that we are obliged to save in
the present in order to live in the present, but the future will tell us to save
in order that we, as a nation, may pay for the war.

Old-fashioned methods of preserving must again prevail. There is
educational value in community conservation. Montclair (New Jersey) boys
made community evaporators, having a capacity of from five to eight
bushels of fruit a day, at a cost of only $10.

A mowing machine is a problem in high-school mechanics, and these farm
cadets of New York State see, perhaps for the first time, a use for it.

A day's outing for a purpose. Albany and Troy (New York) orphan-asylum
boys on their way to "do their bit" in the currant fields.

A lesson in service geography. Boys from Albany and Troy (New York)
picking currants, near Hudson (New York), which were preserved in
Yonkers Trades School for shipment to France.

Many community services may be rendered during the war by the principal
of a school. He may, as has been done, organize patriotic meetings, enlisting
the aid of the churches and arousing the interest of chambers of commerce,
civic clubs, and women's clubs in the Red Cross, the Liberty Loan, and
school war gardens. His assembly exercises may be made vital through
talks to the pupils on opportunities for war service; through platform
recognition of boys and girls rendering special farm, garden, Red Cross,
and food-conservation help; by placing on a conspicuous bulletin a roll of
honor of graduates and students engaged in such work; by keeping the
school in touch with graduates who are enlisted in the army and navy by
reading their letters to the school and sending school packets to them. He
may advise economy in the use of foods and clothing, the elimination of
expenditures in soda water, ice cream, and gum, and the sacrifice of
pleasure for national ends. He may urge the use of savings in the purchase
of government bonds and war-savings certificates. Where the school has

been raising money for pictures or a phonograph, he may suggest that the
funds raised be used for the purchase of one or more government bonds, to
be held by the school as an asset until the close of the war, when the bond
may be sold and the money used for its original purpose of buying the
phonograph or pictures. In the case of some private secondary schools, and
large public schools like the Washington Irving and DeWitt Clinton high
schools, New York, the pupils and teachers have subscribed money and
given entertainments for the purchase of an ambulance, the gift of the
school to the American Expeditionary Force. In one New York City school,
through the efforts of a student organization, Liberty Loan bonds to the
amount of $479,800 were sold.

The principal in country districts should make himself fully informed of the
details of the federal farm-loan plan, the sources of available seed supply,
the posters and bulletins of nation and state regarding the mobilization of
schools and colleges, and, of course, he should be especially active in
encouraging the home-garden projects.

A correspondent in the London Times, June 14, 1917, writing of that
indispensable teaching of thrift in household affairs, of making the present
generation of young girls intelligently self-sufficient in domestic and
industrial life, cries, "This brings us to the crux of the whole situation: Who
shall teach the teachers?" The government and state bulletins on food
production and conservation, the literature sent out by state councils of
defense and public safety on improved methods of preserving, the
pronouncements by banking houses on thrift measures and means of
attaining them, the Boy Scouts, Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. leaflets on war
gardens and food economies are, in America, beginning to answer this
question.

Assuredly the war places an additional burden on the teachers and gives
them a new opportunity for educating the pupils. A teacher does not have to
belong to the department of domestic arts and science to organize Red
Cross circles nor to instruct girls in food conservation. A ten-minute talk
each morning by teacher or pupils, before the opening of school, with
discussion on such topics as "Why a man with a hundred dollars to invest
should buy a Liberty Bond," "New occupations open to women because of

the war," "The reason for the scarcity of certain products," "Home
substitutes for various manufactured necessities," and many others
suggested by new conditions should be very helpful.

An unusually significant experiment known as the "War Savings"
movement has been made in English schools. On May 5, 1916, the Board of
Education issued a circular asking for the assistance of local education
authorities in making known through public elementary schools the
facilities afforded by the issue of War Savings certificates. Then, with the
coöperation of these authorities and teachers, special lessons were given on
the subject, and copies of a leaflet explaining the purpose of the War
Savings Association were widely distributed to the parents through their
children. As a result a large number of War Savings associations were
formed in direct connection with the schools. The success of the movement
is evident from the records given in the report of the Board of Education for
1915-1916. In one populous midland county the great majority of the
schools have established associations; in another, a northern county, some
70 per cent of the schools have taken part and record nearly 10,000
subscribers. In one midland town a school of about 1400 children purchased
certificates to the value of £585 in three months. But it is not only in large
schools that the pupils have contributed generously; a remote little school in
a northern county, with only 10 children on its register, has 10 subscribers
to its credit and has saved £35, buying 43 certificates.

In view of the fact that successive issues of bonds must be made by the
United States and other governments of the world, this method of making
subscription to the war loan popular is worthy of attention. The public
schools have, as never before, the opportunity of showing the practical
value of investing, in peace as well as in war time, in government and other
bonds. Pupils should realize the difference between money invested in a
way to be beneficial not only to the investor but to his state and country,
and money invested in ordinary channels.

New York State teachers had an opportunity similar to those of England.
The Regents of the University of the state of New York gave formal
approval of a plan by which teachers throughout the public schools of the
state could aid the Liberty Loan committee of the Federal Reserve Bank in

giving instruction and information about the second Liberty Loan. A special
committee was appointed by the Board of Regents to act in a supervisory
capacity to keep the State Education Department in touch with the large
financial interests conducting the loan. The secretary to Commissioner
Finley, as the representative of the Regents and the State Education
Department, was assigned for temporary services in the office of the Loan
committee.

The program in brief was to have the teachers act as agents for
subscriptions for the Liberty Loan. They distributed blanks to pupils in the
school, who in turn took them to their parents. They were encouraged to
subscribe themselves. They did not handle any money or checks, but turned
the subscription blanks over to the local bank, which was, of course, in
direct touch with the Loan committee in New York City.

A primer of instruction for teachers was prepared in the simplest possible
terms. As published by the Publicity Bureau of the United States Treasury
Department it was called "A Source Book of the Second Liberty Loan."
This primer explained in detail the nature of the bonds, their security, and
the terms and prices; it described the nature of bond markets in general, the
sources from which interest is paid, the previous records of United States
bonds, and all other matter which was of value in elementary financial
instruction. It was all set forth in a way which was very helpful not only in
assisting in the sale of bonds but in the larger sense of furthering instruction
in bonds, interest, discounts, etc., in connection with work in arithmetic.
And in what better way could arithmetical instruction be furthered?

It is highly probable that this plan of informing the public relative to
government issues of bonds and certificates, initiated in New York, will
extend to all parts of the country in connection with the next Loan
campaign.

How the responsibility of the teacher has been met in France is in part
suggestive. The teachers have collected large funds to finance the enterprise
of caring for thousands of families of Belgian and French refugees. They
also collected from the civilian population several millions of francs, the
teachers taxing themselves according to a fixed schedule. They have been
especially successful in bringing to light for investment stores of hidden

gold in the homes of provincial savers. Surprising results have been attained
through their persistent, methodical propaganda. In one large provincial
town, after a talk to the older pupils by the mistress of the school, in four
days an amount equal to 7200 francs was brought in. In the same school the
following composition was given out to the pupils as part of an admission
examination in penmanship.

THE GOLD OF FRANCE1

France has need of its gold to defend its invaded territory. It is a sacred duty
for every French man and woman, rich or poor, to send to the coffers of the
State the hundreds of louis from their strong boxes, the few louis hidden in
the linen chest at home, even the single louis in the children's toy bank. To
keep in one's own possession, selfishly, the money which could serve our
dear France is a crime against patriotism. So, little girls, do not hesitate to
break open your banks, even if they have only a half louis inside, and gladly
take in exchange the note which the Bank of France will give you. More
than that, in your vacation in the country, set yourselves to get grandmother
to empty her stocking,—she is sometimes rather stingy with her money. But
you know well enough how to coax those who love you when you want a
toy, or ornament, or bonbons. Use your influence with your grandparents
now, so that they will bring into the public treasury the gold of France. In
this way you will have contributed to the coming victory that we are all
hoping for, you will have helped our brave soldiers to clear away the
German whose presence defiles our land. Go, then, all of you! Hunt out all
the money that is lying idle. It is for France!

Thus the schools have worked to bring to light the hoarded gold of thrifty
peasants for investment in the national loan.

Tangible as this service of the teachers has been to France, of greater
importance has been their work of making clear to the villages the cause of
France. In November, 1914, the Department of Public Instruction sent out
an appeal to the professional and volunteer teachers in the secondary
schools, saying that the schools must adapt their program to the duties and
needs created by the hostilities.

The teachers will do their best to make the schools serve in the
national defense. In the evenings the old men, the youths, and the
women will gather together, and the teachers will tell them the news,
explain things that happen, speak to them of patriotism, and read to
them from our writers whose pages are inspired with the glorious
deeds of our history past and present.

It is reported that in the girls' schools in France war has changed the whole
aspect of education. History, geography, lectures on literature, subjects for
literary composition or moral instruction,—in fact everything,—is treated
from the point of view of country and of patriotic duty. In music practically
nothing is sung but the "Marseillaise," the "Chant du Depart," and the
national songs of the Allies. Reading is confined often to official military
orders and reports, while drawings are usually of war material or characters.

It is no less the duty of our teachers to make clear to their pupils the "cause"
of America. Soon after the opening of the European war a United States
senator traveled through the belligerent countries. His articles on Europe at
war commented caustically on the ignorance of the English working people
of the cause of the war, and of the purpose for which the Allies were
fighting. An article on America at war could truthfully contain like criticism
of a considerable portion of our population.

Shortly after the United States entered the war a teacher in one of our
largest city high schools, where a large proportion of the pupils are of either
foreign birth or foreign parentage, asked 200 pupils of from 14 to 18 years
to write a brief statement of what they considered to be the cause of
America's entrance into the war. While these answers covered an incredible
range of inaccuracy, not one showed an understanding of the events which
led to the declaration of April, 1917. "Congress has declared war so that the
rich folks can get richer," "We are at war because this is a rich man's
country," predominated as replies. When asked what a citizen owed his
country in return for political and religious freedom, students replied in as
vague and cynical a way as to the first question.

To combat this ignorance of national motives the teacher distributed copies
of President Wilson's address of April 2, with the ostensible purpose of
analyzing it as an exercise in argument and exposition,—a study which

finally resulted in enabling these students to make intelligent, if
occasionally unsympathetic, answers to questions regarding the nation's
action and policy.

Now to residents of favored parts of the country where the population is
English speaking and largely American born, inheriting American ideals
and traditions, the ignorance of these high-school pupils seems exceptional,
but educators know from experiments made in colleges and secondary
institutions that the majority of students are not intelligent on modern
events of national significance, any more than is the average worker. Nearly
all high schools have in their curriculum the study of current events,
whether in history or oral English courses. It is the duty of the teacher to
use the study in such a manner as to obtain a patriotic reaction to the topics
presented and discussed, and in this manner to make clear why we are
fighting and what we are fighting for.

Out of this war we must obtain a new spirit of patriotism. Now is the time
to strike. Events depicted in the daily press show how great is the need. In
this connection the Council of Defense of Connecticut, in an effective
campaign working through the schools, states in a recent publication:

The war is bound to have a deep influence on American life and
thought, and we should be watchful to direct this into right channels.
The country is shot through and through with the one-sided philosophy
that the State is an institution to be leaned upon and filched from, but
not to be served. The schools should train the children in the
fundamental contract between citizen and State. The idea of mutuality
should be developed. The State owes duties to the citizen, but the
citizen owes reciprocal duties to the State.

In September, 1914, as soon after the declaration of war as military and
agricultural conditions would permit the schools to open, the French
Minister of Public Instruction sent an official circular to all of the schools.
He stated that the first lesson in every school should be devoted to France:
to its present danger and its heroic resistance; to the ideals of humanity and
justice for which she fought; to the memory of the valor of her soldiers; to
the justice of her cause. He desired to make certain at the earliest possible
moment that every school child in France take his part spiritually and

intellectually in the epic conflict which France was waging for right and
justice.

His decree outlining the first lesson for every child of France expresses so
clearly the French attitude and feeling that the following free rendering of
the circular letter is well worth reading.

The lycées, colleges, and public schools are about to open everywhere
except where the superior need of improvised hospitals in school
buildings caring for our glorious wounded renders this impossible.

I decree that on the opening day in every city and in every class the
first words of the teacher to the pupils shall be designed to bring the
hearts of the pupils into accord with the sacred struggle in which our
armies are engaged.

Throughout the entire country at the same hour the sons of France
shall pay respect to the spirit of their nation and shall pay tribute to the
heroism of those who are pouring out their blood for liberty, justice,
and human right.

The words of the teachers on this occasion should be simple and to the
point. They should be adapted to the age of their hearers, some of
whom are children, some youths. Each of our schools has sent its
quota of combatants to the firing line,—professors, teachers, or pupils;
the words of the teacher to the class should call forth the noble
remembrance of the dead, in order to exalt their example and engrave
it forever in the memory of the children. Moreover, in its broad lines,
calmly, clearly, they should tell the causes of the war,—the aggression
without excuse,—and how before the civilized world, France, eternal
champion of progress and right, has been compelled to prepare herself,
with her valiant allies, to repel the assault of the modern barbarians.

The furious conflict which we are carrying insistently to victory adds
each day to the glory of our soldiers a thousand deeds of heroism from
which the teacher may take the best part of this lesson. He should
prefer these supreme models of action to the vain repetition of phrases,
in order to make a fit impression on the minds of the children.

A vivid recollection of this first school hour ought to remain imprinted
forever in the spirit of the pupil, who is the citizen of to-morrow. The
teacher who has known how to make this impression will remain
worthy of the confidence of the republic.

America too will have its lesson sheets, and a most timely one on "Lessons
of the Great War in the Classroom" has been prepared for teachers of
history by the National Board for Historical Service (Washington, D.C.)
with the distinct purpose of suggesting certain aspects of history, ancient
and modern, which have gained a new interest in the light of the great war.
The following excerpts are extremely suggestive of special opportunities
and obligations for teachers in school service:

There is the duty of keeping, for teacher and for pupil, the habit of at
least trying to see things as they really were and are.... Every great war
is fought not merely by armies and navies, but by the governments at
home which direct the fighting forces.... No one can take an intelligent
part in a great conflict for the safety of democracy under an orderly
system of international law unless he is really interested in and knows
something about other nations than his own.... There is some
connection between the conditions which made the valleys of the
Tigris and Euphrates one of the great seats of ancient civilization and
those which are making Mesopotamia to-day one of the chief theaters
of the great war.... This terrible catastrophe, with its wholesale
destruction of the finest products of human civilization, its life and
death struggle between opposing nations and opposing ideals, has
seemed a reason for thinking not less but more of the great mysterious
forces which brought about the rise and decline of the ancient
empire.... Great campaigns are again carried on where Xenophon
marched with his famous Ten Thousand, where Alexander the Great
led his armies to the conquest of the East.... The opportunity must now
be seized to study the whole of Europe and its influence on and
connections with the rest of the world.... Some account should be
given of the way in which the ruling class in Prussia has been able to
use science, modern business methods, and social legislation in the
service of the military state.... War is the business not only of
governments but of the nation as a whole, and there are few kinds of

human activity which do not have some relation to its success or
failure.... We are fighting partly, indeed, to defend international law on
the high seas, but partly also to make the world, not merely America,
"safe for democracy."

Teachers are recognized as the instructing force of America. If they are not,
who is? If the country sorely needs clear, definite, authentic information on
the situation of the world and our own position as a belligerent power, who
is to give it if not the teachers? It is they who must inform and arouse. It is
they who ought to participate in a speaking campaign which should be as
deep as the danger, as wide as the country, and as high as the patriotic spirit
of the people. They should be distributing agents for printed material which
analyzes the subject, and should be able to refer to the best and most
available authorities and to put before pupils and the public the texts of the
most important speeches, diplomatic notes, and other approved material to
back up statements of fact.

Strange as it may seem, it is the children's convictions which take effect not
only when as children they carry word to their parents but also when they
come out of childhood into adult life.

Was the boy in the New York high school right when he said, "It is a Wall
Street war"? Are our enemies justified in charging us with the same motives
of self-interest and the abasement of other nations which animated
themselves? Are we really at war for conquest or seizure, or for the benefit
of commerce, or for defense against aggressions that have not yet been
made? And is it a dollar war for bankers and ammunition makers?

It is to answer these and other questions that a systematic effort to inform
and arouse the American people should be taken up and carried into effect
by public-school teachers, having in mind that the most effective and most
important work may be done in the classroom in connection with lessons in
civics and history. To wait for textbooks on the present European war is to
wait until it is over. To wait to put the study of the present war into a course
of study in its chronological sequence is to wait until the next generation of
children come upon the stage. No, now is the time for our schools to
include the teaching of the war and to discuss officially proposed peace
plans, when the street is alive with soldiers, when the newspapers display

huge headlines and the bill-boards are covered with recruiting posters, when
magazines furnish helpful material for teachers, and when the whole world
is charged with feeling.

The National Security League (New York City) has outlined a plan for
public addresses and lectures, and it has printed a little book entitled "Wake
Up, America." The following topics have been selected from an outline
furnished by this league:

Foreign military systems and international relations.

Spirit of the American people as shown in our history of liberty and
democracy.

Causes of the war between the United States and Central Powers.

First two and one-half years of the war in relation to the principles of the
foreign policy of the United States.

Universal military training and service as now provided by Congress.

Organization and work of the army and navy: selection; supplying needs.

General military preparations in the country at large: materials,
transportation, and public finance.

Duty of the citizen in relation to obligations of all citizens as an offset to
benefits of citizenship.

Service outside of military and naval; as, for example, the munition work,
transportation, building of ships and machinery, farming, etc.

Faithfulness of foreign-born citizens.

Need of efficiency and economy in local, municipal, and state governments.

Description of modern warfare as defining the immediate task of the
American people in regard to organization and action of the various

services; as, for example, men in the trenches, health protection, Red
Cross, etc.

Accessories; for instance, patriotic music and recitations, flag marches, and
parades.

Illustrative material, such as maps and charts illustrating the problems of
recruiting; slides and movies; posters in public places; exhibitions of
foreign posters.

These topics as outlined here are not sufficiently related to the actual
conflict. They are excellent from the formal point of view, but they fail to
get at the center of living interest in the vital present moment of history.
Often when it has been asked of the children in France: "What are you
studying?" "What are they teaching you?" the answer has been: "The war,
madam." "The war, monsieur." And if the question was taken up with the
teacher, the answer has been:

By means of our war map on which is marked the present position of
the French and German troops, the particular spot in the line in which
the parents of our boys and girls are fighting, we teach not only current
history, but in the most vital way geography and many related subjects.

By means of our use of great contemporary political documents, by the
speeches of Viviani, Deschanel, Ribot, and the other statesmen, by the
famous orders of Joffre, Pétain, and our military leaders, by the
interpretation of the war by our great philosophers,—we teach in the
most vital way the need of the country, the ideals of France, and much
of the history of France. By reason of the war work instituted in every
school as part of the regular curriculum, we teach commercial
geography, economics, and many branches of science as they are
actually related to human life and experience, and not in the abstract
manner in which they are treated in the textbooks.

Mr. Albert Sarraut, Minister of Public Instruction in France in 1914-1915,
said in a public address:

If there remains in the schools of France a single teacher who has not
been profoundly touched by the war and who goes about his usual
occupation of teaching in the same way that he did prior to August 2,
1914, teaching the same subjects in the same way, doing only the
ordinary, familiar school tasks, whose work has not been entirely
transformed and inspired by the war, we have yet to hear of him or her,
and we do not believe that such exists.

It is inevitable that many of our school subjects will change their emphasis
after the war. To some teachers the awakening will be cruel, to others a
blessing in the form of new opportunity.

CHAPTER III

THE FIELD FOR INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE
SCHOOLS

For ten years a group of men in America have been trying to convince
Congress that we should set up a national program of secondary vocational
education. As a precedent we have had a system of agricultural and
mechanic-arts education of collegiate grade in existence for the last fifty
years. But we have had in the past no system of national aid for promoting
and maintaining a type of vocational education in agriculture, mechanic
arts, and home-making, which would reach a much larger clientele than
could possibly be touched through any land-grant college system. It has
been an up-hill fight to get Congress to see the importance of providing
vocational education for industrial workers. Bill after bill was introduced
providing for national aid. These bills defined vocational education as
including all types of industrial, commercial, agricultural, and home-
making schools, between the upper grammar grades and the college, whose
controlling purpose is to fit for specific profitable employments and which
receive pupils 14 years of age and over.

President Wilson in his second inaugural message called the country's
attention definitely to the fact that a vocational-education bill was before
Congress and that it ought to receive favorable consideration, not only on
the grounds of educational advantages contained in the bill, but also on the
grounds that it fitted in with a national economic and industrial policy.

Perhaps the measure would have met the fate of its predecessors if war had
not been declared. Friends of the measure feared lest discussion incident to
national preparedness should overshadow the vocational-education bill, but
fortunately Congress saw that vocational education and national
preparedness were linked together, and the bill passed almost unanimously.

The full significance of the Smith-Hughes Bill, as it will always be known
by those who worked for it, can hardly be appreciated. On the surface it
merely creates a Federal Board of Vocational Education and provides that
federal grants shall be made for the purpose of coöperating with the states
in the promotion of industrial, agricultural, and home-making teaching. But
if we scratch the surface we shall see that the federal money is not paid to
local communities except after their work has been approved by a state
board of control on the basis of this federal act, and the principles and
policies which were adopted after conference between the Federal Board
and the state boards of control. It furthermore limits federal aid to definite
vocational training and eliminates all aid to any dilettante or superficial
types of practical-arts education which do not meet the idea of preparing
young persons over 14 years of age for useful and profitable employment in
agriculture, in the trades, in industries, or in home economics. It has been
stated in preceding chapters, and will be emphasized more than once in
succeeding chapters, that the schools which are able to serve most
effectively in time of war are the schools which are serving or may serve in
times of peace. It has been and will again be shown that school methods
usable in meeting a war emergency are the methods not only usable but
desirable under normal conditions.

There is absolutely nothing in the following discussion of the field for war
service for industrial and trade-school education which does not have its
direct application in promoting and administering a national system of
vocational education. Definite suggestions are given for organizing day-
industrial, trade, part-time and continuation schools, evening vocational
schools, trade classes, and off-time courses; for transferring the teaching
equipment into the factory; for transferring the technical-supervision
equipment of the factory to the school; and for making commercial
products. It will be seen that the service of our industrial and trade schools
differs from the service of the industrial and household-arts courses in the
regular schools. A comparison of what is suggested for war service with
what is required by the terms of the federal grant shows that the two are in
accord. For example, the latter requires that all-day industrial schools must
have at least half the time given over to the actual practice of a vocation on
a useful or productive basis; that agricultural schools shall arrange for
directed or supervised practice in agriculture either on a farm provided by

the school or on other farms for at least six months a year; that part-time
schools or classes must be established if the state and the community expect
to receive the full benefits of the federal grant for the salaries of teachers of
the trade, home-economics, and industrial subjects; and finally, that evening
classes for industrial workers are provided in which the instruction is
required to be supplemental to the daily employment. However, for the
duration of the war, at least, the last requirement needs modification.

War preparedness undoubtedly influenced Congress to pass the Smith-
Hughes Bill. War service of our vocational schools will undoubtedly
influence the vocational-education movement along right lines more than
anything else which could possibly have happened.

Industrial and trade schools stand ready to make their contribution for war
service. Some rather unwisely, and certainly unthinkingly, sent telegrams to
Washington, offering their equipment to the government. Others said that
they would make ammunition. Still others announced that they would wait
for the government to tell them what to do. In the early stages evidently
most of them forgot that their chief, if not only, business must be, as it has
been, that of training recruits for industry or giving trade extension work to
those already in a chosen vocation.

Of course we are all aware that new tasks of stupendous proportions are
being undertaken by the country as measures for national defense, and that
while a large army is being recruited and trained, a still larger army is being
drawn into industrial production to equip and support the army and navy
directly on the lines of defense. We know that $600,000,000 has been
appropriated for aëroplane construction; that from 50,000 to 100,000
shipbuilders are needed for our shipbuilding program; that tool-makers and
gauge-makers are needed in large numbers; that the government military
service will require large numbers of mechanics in its quartermaster's,
engineering, signal, aviation, and navy corps.

In other words, there is convincing evidence that there are bound to be not
only increased demands for labor but also changes in the relationship of
labor demand and supply. There is going to be an enormous increase in the
demand for specialist workers in metal, and considerable increase in the call
for skilled all-round workers in metal; a material increase in the demand for

woodworkers in shipyards; an increase in demand for workers in
manufactured clothing and army equipment; a great increase in demand for
electrical workers in all lines, including operators, field men, telephone and
telegraph service. We know that there will be a demand for automobile
mechanics, gas-engine operators, plumbers, horseshoers, wheelwrights,
steam engineers, bakers, cement workers, and gas and steam fitters. It is
probable that there will be a diminution in the demand for printers; for
women in dressmaking, millinery, and novelty lines; for laborers on public
works, including streets, sewers, water systems, public buildings, canals,
and bridges.

In short, we know that the war emergency will create an extraordinary
demand for some kinds of labor, attended by a probable diminution of
demand for other kinds, and there will be occasion for much shifting of
labor from one occupation to another. It is obvious, furthermore, that many
readjustments must be made by public and private industrial and trade
schools in these days of war pressure.

To determine what adjustments are most urgent, those in charge of these
schools should go directly to the industries and confer as to what service is
the most desired. It is practically useless to wait for industrial managers to
come to the schools for help. In many cases they will not appreciate the fact
that the schools can be of help. If, in times of peace, industry has hardly
recognized the full possibilities of public vocational training, it is not likely
that it would recognize it in the stress of increased production. Sir Robert
Blair of London states that unless the educational staff of England had made
it its business to satisfy the manufacturers that it could train semiskilled
workers, the vocational-training shops would have been obliged to close
soon after the war started. He states that in the earliest days of the work of
these training shops, the manufacturers were indisposed to believe that
industry had anything to learn from trade or technical schools. The
manufacturers said that these schools were "academically right and
practically wrong."

What industrial and trade schools can do for manufacturing plants will, of
course, vary in each community. Each manufacturing center has its own sets
of activities. Proper military authorities should be approached by

administrators of industrial schools to determine what can be contributed
toward providing the training which is needed. Letters to military
authorities in Washington will not bear so much fruit as a personal visit to a
local recruiting station, camp, or cantonment for definite advice as to how
schools may best serve. It is expected, however, that the National Board of
Vocational Education will be helpful with suggestive material.

At the present moment the most effective contact between the school that
may give the training and the place that needs it can be brought about
through coöperation either with cantonment authorities or with local
manufacturing plants. Industrial and technical schools in England in the
early days of the war formed connections with government arsenals and
began the manufacture of gauges for shell-making, mostly of the inspection
type. At first the technical institutes were very diffident about undertaking
the work, the standard of skill required being so high; but after a few
appeals on the ground that it was a great opportunity for trade education to
show its value, the institutions started the work, so that there are now
something like a dozen such schools working on the manufacture of these
instruments. It is to be understood that the majority of the workers thus
employed were metal workers before they took up this work. Others were
manual-training teachers in the elementary schools. They have turned out
approximately 50,000 inspection gauges, and it is the opinion in England
that the trade institutes never undertook a better work.

In general terms the shortage of help in the industries is going to be met by
training operatives selected from unskilled workers; by training foremen of
those operatives who will be selected from the skilled help; and by training
highly skilled specialists who will be selected from the workmen already
skilled. The training plan in the New England Westinghouse plant will be
interesting in this connection. In this ammunition plant 80 per cent of the
workers are listed as operators, the majority of whom are trained from
carefully selected unskilled labor. To train these operators skilled machinists
are employed as instructors. One instructor is in charge of a group
averaging about thirteen men. In other words, 71/2 per cent of the force in
the operating departments are on the instruction staff and known as
foremen, linemen (set-up men), and instructors. Instruction is given
incidentally in turning out the regular product. No equipment is set aside

primarily for instruction purposes; any equipment in the plant may be thus
used. This method of instruction is called the group-instructor plan, in
which one instructor or foreman has charge of teaching a group of operators
working on an assigned task. While under instruction the group is employed
on regular production. The instructor is not required to produce, but gives
his entire time to group teaching. In the tool-making department, men of
mechanical ability, not necessarily all-round machinists, but in some
instances from other trades, are trained in making jigs and fixtures. In these
cases the ratio of instructors to workers is less than one to thirteen, the
helper plan being used. The helper plan is that in which a skilled worker is
employed in special work, such as tool-making or gauge-making, and has
under him from one to three helpers. In this case the man who gives the
training does not confine his entire efforts to instruction, but is required to
work at his particular occupation. If satisfactory results are to be secured,
only a very limited number of helpers can be assigned to one worker.

The industrial schools will prove to be a small factor in training operatives,
in view of the fact that industry itself is able to train them quickly and
satisfactorily. It takes only a few days to make a Polish farm hand of
Connecticut into an ammunition worker in Bridgeport. Foremen and
specialists may be trained through evening and day part-time courses. Of
course it is assumed that these schools will have equipment requisite for
training in the kind of work for which help is needed. The Springfield
(Massachusetts) Vocational School expects to shift some of its pupils from
house to ship carpentry in view of the new demand for men with a
knowledge of shipbuilding,—a demand which will extend, undoubtedly,
over a term of years.

At least, one way for a trade school to be of service and yet not purchase
additional equipment is to lend its skilled instructors to a local
manufacturing plant where an organized plan for training foremen and
specialists exists. This has been done by the Quincy (Massachusetts)
Industrial School, which coöperates in furnishing part of the instruction
given in the Fore River shipbuilding plant. This company is giving
instruction to a selected group of workers under pay for a full industrial day
of ten hours. A night shift of training for eleven hours is also given to
another group of men. Instructors are training an assigned group of

operators on regular production and under usual employment conditions.
Some part-time instruction in technical subjects, and in some cases on
special operations, is also given to certain groups of selected workers while
under employment in the plant. This plan has a significance worthy of
attention after the war.

General Manager Smith of this company, at a conference of state
administrators of vocational schools held the middle of July in New York
City, made an interesting statement as to the need of trained help in the
shipyards. A summary of his remarks follows:2

For shipbuilding purposes men trained in the building trades offer little
advantage over intelligent untrained men, as the character of work in
the shipbuilding industry is so different from that in the building
trades.

However, industrial and trade schools can give preliminary and
thorough instruction to ship-fitters and loftsmen. The course for the
latter should include ship-drafting. More limited instruction can be
given in other ironworkers' trades and in the shipwright trades.

Trained instructors are needed. Instructors may be employed in the
plant and, if so, should have full power to instruct and should not be
employed on production, as the best results in instruction can only be
obtained by having the instructor concentrate his mind on his work.

Shipbuilding in the United States has been one of our smaller
industries. If the present crisis is to be adequately met, the industry
will be one of our most important ones.

Of the large amount of money to be spent in shipbuilding, practically
one half will be expended on labor in the shipyard; the remainder is for
material purchased from outside parties, but which at the works of
such subcontractors is again largely labor. Of the labor expended in the
shipyard about one third is for ironworkers, and it is in this trade that
the greatest shortage occurs, as there is only a small percentage of men
for the ironworkers' trade now to be found in this country.

In the past very little instruction in the specialized shipbuilding trades
has been given in the United States, and the number of men who have
served apprenticeship in these trades is small, a great supply of skilled
men in these trades coming from Great Britain. There is an imperative
need for a supply of men in the ironworkers' trade.

Some instruction must always be given in the shipbuilding plant, but it
is possible to give a great deal in the industrial schools, and, as the
wages are good, men should be readily attracted to the shipbuilding
trades.

While ironworkers' trades consisting of loftsmen, ship-fitters, riveters,
chippers, calkers, reamers, bolters, packers, and some others are
peculiar to shipbuilding as well as the shipwright's trade, the trades of
plumber, pipe fitter, coppersmith, etc. are very materially different in
the shipbuilding trades from what they are in the building trades.

On the other hand, it is possible to send instructors from the factories to the
school. In several instances in England the manufacturers supplied the
schools with instructors and all the necessary material in order to teach
women and boys the identical operations which they would be called upon
to carry out in the factory. In this way a number of schools combining
manufacturing with training were able to supply local factories with boys
and women trained in the special operations involved. This plan is also
significant and has an important bearing upon the administration of public
vocational training.

The question whether industrial schools should make ammunition or
equipment pertaining to war service will come up. Having substantial
amounts of available equipment, they will doubtless at times be tempted to
use their organized day and evening classes for purposes of emergency
productive work. In machine-shop schools, for example, the teachers being
skilled machinists and the pupils capable of turning out a substantial
amount of productive work, inducements to subordinate educational ends to
those of an economic nature may be expected. It is therefore suggested that
industrial-school authorities resolutely resist all attempts to subordinate
their rightful purpose of giving industrial education. It is clear that a certain
amount of production is necessary for purposes of education, but it is

important that this should never be made a primary purpose in any
industrial school. A letter from Director W. C. Smith of the Troy (New
York) Central School illustrates the productive work of one school which
retains educational value.

A Troy corporation is engaged on a large contract with the government
for uniforms. Its shops are taxed to the limit, and it has found it
necessary to utilize every available shop in town for making various
machines used in cutting cloth for this contract. It has entered into an
arrangement whereby our complete machine-shop equipment is turned
over to its use under the supervision of our own instructor. Our
graduate boys are employed in the shop and are now at work
perfecting twelve machines for use in different parts of the country on
this contract.

The public vocational schools must face, sooner or later, the question of
shop production on a commercial basis. They exist, primarily, to train
producers and not to make products. Are the two inconsistent? Perhaps the
war service of these schools will bring this debatable issue to a head.

Obviously the industries engaged in the making of automobiles, aëroplanes,
machinery, and ammunition have for some time past absorbed the available
supply of skilled help. With the emergency of war preparation upon us, we
must find ways of pressing thousands of workers into lines of work with
which they are almost altogether unfamiliar. Except with boys who are
fourteen to sixteen years old, it will be of little avail to think of giving all-
round trade training. The labor supply which we now need must be trained
immediately and intensively. From what has already been stated it is clear
that workers may be trained in three ways: first, in day industrial or
technical schools; second, in industrial plants such as have been mentioned
in the case of the Westinghouse Company; third, through part-time
employment in industry, with part-time attendance in industrial or technical
schools.

The industrial-school authorities should send into the factories capable
instructors who have had trade experience, in order to learn the needs for
trained help and to analyze the trade processes for which men need to be
trained. In this way the school may determine whether it can best meet the

situation by training the youth in its day schools to go to work in industrial
plants upon leaving school—although this is not a very immediate way of
meeting the emergency—or whether it would be better to move the classes,
so to speak, over to the plant and have the instructors teach a group of
unskilled workers on the group-instruction plan. Perhaps the school could
perform its best service by giving trade extension courses to those already
engaged in productive work. Anyhow, these alternatives must be fully
considered.

These instructors or trained experts, when visiting typical yards or plants in
a specific industry to learn of the needs for trained help, must be able to
reanalyze the trade processes in terms of training as distinct from terms of
production, and out of this analysis to draw up suitable schemes for giving
such training. The question of whether this training should be given entirely
in the school or entirely in the plant or partly in the plant and partly in the
school should be left to experts, who know best the possibilities of each of
these schemes.

This is no time for industrial schools to stand on their dignity and claim that
they can do all that is necessary in their day schools without coöperation
with those who employ. It is readily granted that, generally speaking,
directors of industrial schools know their job quite well when it comes to
giving trade-preparatory training to youth before it enters industry; but at a
time when the country needs thousands of workmen we are quite sure that
the better plan for training operators and semiskilled workers is directly in
the plant itself. In a time of great emergency this intensive, immediate
training must be given in large part by the industries themselves within their
own plants. They have the equipment, they have the men who need the
training; all they lack is the proper instructing force, as they cannot take
men away from production for instruction purposes. It follows that the
instructors of our schools must give their instruction in the plants or must
have the unskilled operatives and helpers come to the school for part-time
work.

The present all-day industrial schools, even in normal times, need this direct
contact with industry to save themselves from shop methods which savor of
manual-training schools.

It is assumed that the regular all-day industrial and trade schools will
continue. Of course they are now largely attended by comparatively young
students, and it is quite likely that the enrollment will diminish, as there is
an unusual demand for boys in every branch of industry and commerce. It
will be increasingly difficult to hold such boys in school in the face of
financial returns rather extraordinary when one considers their youth.

In the interests of conservation of youth and the training of a suitable supply
of skilled workers for the future, there should be no diminution of effort to
develop and extend day-school work, even though the young people thus
trained will be too young to contribute definitely to the present emergency,
unless, of course, it should last more than a year or two. Nevertheless, the
enrollments are likely to be less. A partial compensation for this situation is
that groups of more mature workers coming from the industry itself on a
part-time basis can be accommodated for special instruction, or groups of
young men who are now elevator boys, messenger boys, clerks in stores,
office boys, can be induced, perhaps, to come to the all-day school, and
through short, intensive courses be put into the way of earning, in some
factory making war supplies, a sum equal to from two to three times what
they are now earning. No attempt should be made to hold such youths in the
school beyond the period necessary to give them immediate and intensive
training.

After the war it will be an open question whether intensive courses should
not be more generally adopted in our day industrial schools.

Obviously the largest immediate service that can be rendered by industrial
and trade schools will be through the readjustment and extension of evening
and other off-time courses. As usual, the especially important function will
be the training of men already in the trades for more skilled tasks or for
directive work. Ways must be found for extending the evening-school
facilities. One way is to operate the evening courses throughout the entire
year. Most of our industrial schools operate only from October to April, but
in this time of pressure they should be open continuously. The other way
would be to carry on trade extension work not only in the evening but also
early in the morning or late in the afternoon. These are technically known as

off-time courses and came into existence originally in some cities which
made provision for training workers from plants operating night shifts.

Fundamentally, even in times of peace, there is no sound reason for ever
completely closing a day industrial school. It might run during the summer
as well as the winter; in the late afternoon and early morning as well as in
the evening. In the middle of June, 1917, President Wilson addressed a
letter to Secretary Redfield making the suggestion that the vocational-
training schools of the country should be open during the summer, when it
would be possible to train a large number of young men under military age,
either to fill the places in our industries left by men who enlist or are
withdrawn for military service, or to carry on special occupations called for
by the war, such as inspectors of material and apparatus. In this connection,
where the President speaks of "inspectors of material," it may be said that
one of the prominent industrial-education experts of the East has been asked
to train a group of men selected for special government inspection work.
These men will then be responsible for organizing a force of assistant
inspectors in the plant to which they are assigned, and of supervising the
work of the assistant inspector under their personal direction.

The course of inspectorship training is made up of two units: one
dealing with the business and accounting side of inspection and the
other with the technical instruction which is given through
participation in the actual work of inspection at the arsenal,
observation of the manufacturing processes, and direct group
instruction.

The first unit is given at Washington and usually requires from four or
five days to a week for its completion. The second unit is given at the
Rock Island arsenal and covers eleven days as a minimum. Only the
most experienced men, however, complete it in this length of time. The
men enter the school at irregular intervals in groups of four or five at a
time. The number in training at any one time varies from thirty-five to
fifty.

The men are moved from department to department on a fixed
schedule. When a man completes his training he is assigned to a plant
in accordance with his qualifications as indicated by his previous

experience and his record at the school. Further plans for training the
inspector after he has been assigned to the field have been proposed
but have not yet been put into effect. Many of the candidates for this
training are instructors in vocational training.3

The opportunity for promotion of skilled workers was never so great as at
present, and the opportunity for schools to train them will never be greater
than at present. The schools may well organize intensive short courses in
practical training, as well as other courses designed to advance qualified
workers to positions of directive work in the factories.

While the part-time plan offers excellent opportunities for advancing
selected workers in order that they may acquire certain technical
knowledge, it is doubtful whether much of this work during this emergency
period can be done in the public or private industrial and trade schools. We
all know that certain industrial concerns have established part-time schools
in their plants. These classes in the works are especially adapted, in the
present emergency, for training selected workers to become specialists and
foremen. If the school is near the plant, so that industrial workers can attend
for part-time day instruction for a period of six or eight hours a week
without loss of time or without interfering with production, it may be
possible to develop some part-time courses in the schools, but, generally
speaking, it would be better for the instructors in these schools to go
directly to the plants themselves and give this part-time instruction there. In
another chapter mention will be made of a feasible part-time system and the
necessity for some such system, but it refers only to boys and girls between
fourteen and sixteen years old who belong primarily in school and not
primarily at work. It is assumed that the group of which we have been
thinking is the older group of workmen who wish to become foremen.

War needs open new fields for schools. After the war, stereotyped courses
in trade schools and technical institutes will have lost their hold. Dunwoody
Institute (Minneapolis, Minnesota) is one of the few schools having a
training course for bakers.

An example of an effective adaptation to a national need. Dunwoody
Institute meeting a shortage of army bakers.

Educational efficiency as measured by its response to a national need.
Dunwoody Institute is one of the several institutes teaching radiography and
power testing to navy men.

Sir Robert Blair, in his report already referred to, speaks of the manner in
which technical and trade schools in and about London train semiskilled
workers for munition work.

At first we gathered together all the metal-working apparatus of our
elementary schools and placed it in two of our technical institutes.
Shafting was put up, power was installed and the lathes started, and
they have been running ever since July, 1915, for twelve hours a day in
three periods of four hours each. At first the period of training was for
one period a day for six days a week for six weeks, or a total of 144
hours, but later, to meet the demands, the manufacturers took upon
themselves the training of more highly skilled turners, of machine
erectors, of milling-machine hands, and so on. We began to train
women for tracing in drawing offices and subsequently for mechanical

drawing. We trained lead-burners for employment in factories making
explosives. We trained gauge-makers for employment in tool rooms of
our shell factories (many of these men have been drawn from the
jewelry and silversmithing trades). The more skill we gave the
training, the longer it took to train these people, and so the number
produced weekly has diminished, but in two years we have trained,
certified, and placed 6000 workers.

And again he speaks of other training apart from furnishing additional
munition workers.

One institution has done a great deal of work in training in cold
shoeing over 1000 men belonging to the Royal Field Artillery, Royal
Engineers, and the Army Service Corps. The same institution has also
been used for the reception, inspection, and dispatch of many of the
horse-shoes required by the army. At another institution over 3500
students have been trained for Red Cross duties, and a great work has
been done in recruiting men for the skilled sections of the Royal
Flying Corps. Besides we have trained men for tinsmithing, copper
work, and wireless telegraphy. A third institution took on the general
direction of the preparation of synthetic drugs in the chemical
departments of the technical institutes, and the medical organization of
the army was largely indebted to these chemical departments for the
production of the much-needed drugs.

Assuming that administrators of industrial education are interested in the
welfare of factory workers,—something often apart from instilling technical
skill and knowledge,—it will be necessary for them to provide courses for
men and especially for women workers, giving instruction in the laws of
health with which every employee in factory life should be familiar. In
England the memoranda of the British Health of Munition Workers
Committee have demonstrated conclusively the great necessity of this
teaching of hygiene: that the causes of ill health of workers in munitions
factories were not alone the result of fatigue from long hours, but quite as
much the result of insufficient or ill-prepared food, inadequate sleep and ill-
ventilated sleeping quarters, and failure to appreciate the consequences of
disregarding safety devices.

It may not be amiss in this chapter to say a word about our government
naval schools, for some may not be aware that the government has for a
number of years been maintaining a very efficient system of trade
education. The purpose of the naval trade schools is to train young men for
various trades or occupations required on shipboard. In going over the list it
is likely that administrators of industrial education will see an opportunity
to connect the work of their schools with the work of the naval schools. In
addition to the practical instruction given at the training stations where
these schools are located, a course of academic instruction is conducted
throughout the naval service. This instruction does not stop at the training
station, but continues on shipboard, and every encouragement is given for
advancement. Electrical schools are located at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and
at Mare Island, California. The course of instruction comprises machine-
shop work, reciprocating steam engines, steam-turbine engines, internal-
combustion engines, magnetism and electricity, dynamos, motors, motor
generators, alternating-current batteries, etc. Members of the radio class are
trained in the duties of a radio operator and are given constant practice in
the use of the mechanism employed in recovering and sending messages.

The artificer school is located at the Norfolk Navy Yard, and is composed of
classes for shipwrights, ship-fitters, blacksmiths, and painters.

The machinist and coppersmith schools are located at Charleston, South
Carolina, and are open only to reënlisted men who have certain experience.

The aëronautics school is located at Pensacola, Florida, and is divided into
two courses: mechanics of aëronautics, and flying.

Gasoline-engine instruction is given at Charlestown Navy Yard in
connection with the machinist's school, preference being given to reënlisted
men.

Commissary schools for ships' cooks, bakers, and stewards are located at
San Francisco and Newport.

Musicians' schools are maintained at Norfolk, at Great Lake, Illinois, and at
San Francisco.

Seaman-gunner schools are located at the Washington Navy Yard and at the
torpedo station at Newport.

All of these schools give short, intensive courses ranging from three to
eighteen months in length. The students are paid wages, and all expenses
are met the same as with other enlisted men.

Seven free marine-engineering schools and thirty free navigation schools
are being started on the Atlantic, Gulf, Pacific, and Great Lakes coasts to
train men already having some experience for better places at advanced pay
as engineers and deck officers in the new merchant fleet. The graduates are
being placed as fast as they are graduated. The need for their services is
expected to last for many years after peace is restored.

For several years our industrial continuation schools have had as their motto
"Earn and Learn." But the naval technical schools have shown a way
whereby young men may both serve and learn.

CHAPTER IV

OUR COLLEGES AND TECHNICAL
INSTITUTES

It is to be hoped that if we can realize, as England did not, that education, to
quote Arnold Bennett, "is the very last thing that we ought to economize
in," we shall spare ourselves some of the unnecessary calamities of war.
England, France, Italy, and the Central Powers have thrown into battle a
very large percentage of their educated and trained men, including most of
the young professors and instructors in their universities and colleges,
gymnasiums, and lycées. Their colleges and universities are almost empty.
The young men who would under normal conditions be receiving the
education and training necessary to prepare them for leadership in the future
development of these countries are fighting and dying in the trenches.

In view of the fact that all of these countries must needs go through a long
period of reconstruction, industrial and otherwise, it is a pity that the
sacrifice of its best youth had needlessly to be made. As a matter of fact, we
see now that no university, college, or technical school that can possibly
avoid it should permit its faculty or student body to be scattered or its
energies dissipated. All concerned should redouble their energies and
concentrate them upon those things which will be of the most service in the
progress of the war and will prepare the students for the most effective
service when the war is over.

President Wilson, three months after the severing of relations with
Germany, in response to a request for an opinion on the continuance of a
college or a technical-school education during the war, wrote this letter:

The question which you have brought to my attention is of the very
greatest moment. It would, as you suggest, seriously impair American

prospects of success in this war if the supply of highly trained men
were unnecessarily diminished. There will be need for a larger number
of persons expert in the various fields of applied science than ever
before. Such persons will be needed both during the war and after its
close.

I have therefore no hesitation in urging colleges and technical schools
to endeavor to maintain their courses as far as possible on the usual
basis. There will be many young men from these institutions who will
serve in the armed forces of the country. Those who fall below the age
of selective conscription and who do not enlist may feel that by
pursuing their courses with earnestness and diligence they also are
preparing themselves for valuable service to the nation.

I would particularly urge upon the young people who are leaving our
high schools that as many of them as can do so avail themselves this
year of the opportunities offered by the colleges and technical schools,
to the end that the country may not lack an adequate supply of trained
men and women.

It must be said that while students were restless and anxious to perform a
service, the college authorities themselves adopted a very hopeless and
helpless attitude toward the war in so far as it reacted on the internal
economy of these institutions. Commencement exercises were abbreviated
and shorn of their customary festivities. College presidents and executive
committees of alumni associations began to "talk poor" and to wax
lugubrious over the small senior class of 1918. These men even wanted to
drop athletics, which, to the facetious layman outside, constitutes the main
reason for a college's existence. The general action of the colleges in this
matter of abandoning so many athletic and other activities drew from
President Wilson a letter deprecating such action and advising that the
colleges maintain all their usual sports if they did not detract in any way
from the military purpose of the nation. In an address at Princeton
University, Major General Wood deplored hasty action of students in
enlisting for service in the army and navy, urging them to complete their
school work for the year, and that they mark time pending the carrying out
of provisions of the selective-draft law.

It is clear, on one hand, that many college authorities, especially those of
the older type, passed through a state of academic institutional hysteria,
while, on the other hand, their student bodies translated the emotions of the
moment into a deep conviction by enlisting.

At the same time the spirit of mobilization was present in many a
university, college, and technical school. In the cultural college it was the
individual who enlisted, as the institution was not of the type whose work
directly and definitely counted for important war service. In the universities
where courses are given in agriculture, in medicine, in technology, and in
practical arts, the institution itself enlisted, in that it offered war-emergency
courses.

It is perhaps interesting at this point to see how response came from these
two types of institutions. In the first instance it came from individuals in the
college, which was no more than could be expected of classical colleges,
which have for years laid emphasis on the benefits of individualistic
training. In the second instance the vocational colleges, as they are
sometimes disparagingly called, responded from the viewpoint of
collectivism; that is, the college as a whole, because of its service
departments, was able to offer to the state and to the nation a course of
training of immediate military value to the country.

But thoughtful people can never again speak disparagingly of any
university or technical school. While the movies have been filled with the
citizens of our democracy, and the cafés crowded with people to whom war
was something apart from existence, and the white-light gayety of the
streets has been apparently undimmed, the youth of our colleges—the best
youth in the world—have enlisted in Plattsburgs, joined the Naval Reserves,
taken up signal-corps work, entered the research laboratory, followed their
instructors into the medical corps, joined a school of aëronautics, or donned
overalls in the shipyards.

Doctor Finley, Commissioner of Education of the state of New York, in an
address delivered before the Illinois chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa, speaks
of his visit to Oxford just before the war and of a visit to Cambridge,
England, a few weeks after it had begun. At Oxford he found the calm of
the cloister, with its memorials of poets, scholars, statesmen, princes, and

soldiers, where there were ancient academic conventions that paid no heed
to the passing customs of the world outside. Only six weeks later at
Cambridge—a Cambridge which had a month or six weeks before been as
Oxford—the town was filled with men in khaki. In this charming address
Doctor Finley speaks of a portrait of Samuel Butler which he saw at
Cambridge,—a portrait of the man who described in his book "Erewhon" a
land where criminals were treated as sick, and the sick as criminals; where
there were "Colleges of Unreason," colleges in which students were
promoted for excellence in vagueness and were plucked for insufficient
trust in printed matter, colleges where the principal courses were those in
hypothetics, colleges in which mediocrity was fostered, colleges whose
graduates almost invariably suffered from atrophy of individual opinions.
And Doctor Finley says that as he stood before this portrait, in a hall almost
deserted, he thought of those students of courses which Butler had called
"hypothetical" and "atrophying," who had gone forth to prove the valor of
their cloistered and unpractical learning.

The university which apparently had paid no heed to the passing customs of
the world outside had now mobilized herself; and this has been true of the
colleges and technical schools of our own country,—truly a mobilization of
the spirit of sudden forgetting of self-concerns for a selfless service.

The college of individualism, as has already been suggested, mobilized
through its individuals, while the college of service mobilized itself. In the
spring of 1917 I happened to be in a Western university. The campus was
practically deserted. Instructors in foreign languages had joined the
government interpreters' service; some of the professors of science had
gone to government research laboratories, while a chosen few were off in
some secret place working under government direction in scientific research
concerning submarine warfare. The older students had enlisted, and the
younger ones were marching in squads on the athletic field. Truly a
mobilization, but largely individualistic.

I came East to another college where more than 2000 students were
devoting their time to a series of special short courses dealing with the
various problems of an educational, social, and practical nature which the
war had thrust upon the country. In this way the institution—Teachers

College, Columbia University—had mobilized itself. Special arrangements
had been made by the college authorities whereby all but a very few
students could participate in these emergency courses without seriously
deranging their regular courses.

In general, the aim of these emergency courses was not merely to meet
those conditions which exist at or near the battle line but to help in the
solution of the hundred and one urgent problems which must be solved by
that great majority of teachers and social workers whose service will of
necessity be given in home communities. Accordingly, courses on social
relief were offered, and among others the following topics were considered:
"Administration of relief in time of war and emergency," "Care of orphaned
and neglected children." Under the organization of rural communities were
discussed "Conserving the food supply," "The health problem of the rural
community," and "The organization of school pupils for agricultural
service." The matter of social service in military camps was thoroughly
gone into and reports and lectures were given by men who had actually
worked with the soldiers themselves. The Boy Scout and Camp Fire Girl
movements were also discussed in special courses, and the practical
questions of the amateur gardener were carefully considered.

In the School of Practical Arts special attention was given to the making of
children's garments, the sewing of Red Cross material, and the renovating
of millinery and clothing. In addition to lectures on thrift in food the
department of cookery gave a course on emergency cookery for men, which
was especially designed for army cooks and Boy Scout leaders. There was
also a series of lectures and demonstrations by a government expert on the
preservation of food, including canning and drying. Other courses
considered the essentials of diet planning and of how to buy in large
quantities for camps and hospitals. The departments of chemistry and
biology gave special instruction in the analysis of water and of milk, and in
the technique of diagnostic bacteriology. The fine-arts department made
some rather unique contributions, including a study of protective coloring
with reference to camouflage for military purposes, the designing of
posters, and topographical sketching. There was a course on tin-can work
for home and camp, in which, from discarded tomato cans and powder
boxes, were produced all sorts of useful things—coffee pots, camp stoves,

hot-water bottles, lanterns, and candlesticks. A special course in
photography for hospital and field work was offered. In the modeling class
the manipulation of plaster of Paris was demonstrated for nurses and Red
Cross students, to be used in connection with occupational work for
convalescent soldiers. An extremely interesting series of projects in plastic
material was worked up, particularly some clay models of trenches and
dugouts.

Another course which attracted some hundred and fifty students was the
emergency instruction given by the physics department in automobile
mechanics. The object of the instruction was to equip the average student
with a stock of general information that would enable him to operate a car,
to make minor repairs, and to diagnose trouble intelligently. Some of the
matters discussed were the four-cycle engine, carburetion, transmission and
differential, and the storage battery. For experiment and demonstration
purposes the laboratory was supplied, among other apparatus, with a
detachable boat motor and two automobiles. The latter were thoroughly
dissected and then reassembled from spark plug to tires, and in every
possible way the mechanism was examined and experimented with.

The departments of nursing and health and of physical education offered
some ten courses in all, including home nursing and emergencies, surgical
dressings, care of children, public-health problems, first aid, medical
gymnastics, and invalid occupations.

The department of music offered three courses designed especially to
prepare students to lead music appropriate to patriotic meetings and to
present selections at hospitals and camps.

Two courses were offered by the department of speech: one planned for
those intending to do emergency speaking and lecturing, and the other
arranged to meet the demand for entertainment for little children, the sick,
and soldiers during the war.

In addition to these technical courses there was a series of lectures on
economic problems contributed by various Columbia experts, and another
series of special lectures by such speakers as Mr. Joseph McCabe, the noted
English author, and Mr. Frederick C. Wolcott, director of the Polish War

Relief Commission. Finally, there was a wonderful and never-to-be-
forgotten address by Ignace Paderewski, in which he reviewed the long and
troubled story of his native land and in impassioned words pleaded for the
restoration of Poland's ancient liberties.

It may be said without exaggeration that in all some millions of people
throughout the United States will, directly and indirectly, profit by this
emergency instruction at Teachers College, for the students who attended
are for the most part experienced teachers, who, in their turn, will organize
and instruct their home communities in similar preparedness courses.

At the same time another university, unique in its way,—the University of
the State of New York,—was holding, through its Board of Regents, a
meeting to determine academic standards of the schools and colleges of the
state in a war crisis. This university was modeled upon the University of
France, the constituent units of which have proved themselves wonderful
instruments in the waging of war. The universities represented have
organized themselves into a civil army, preventing the wastes of
duplication, misdirected endeavor, and isolation so common everywhere.

In the building where the Board of Regents met, two conferences were
being held, one representing the schools and colleges of the state, the other
representing the agricultural and industrial interests. In one place men were
discussing how the academic status of professional schools and colleges
might be maintained, and in another room men and women were
participating in a discussion of public markets, food conservation, services
of agricultural teachers, the taking of an agricultural census, the releasing of
boys from school, the organizing of canning clubs, and all those affairs of
the state and its schools which might contribute to the nation's welfare.
These two meetings offered a picture of two lines of work which must
always go together in time of war.

As Commissioner Claxton has said:

Students should be made to understand that it is their duty to give to
their country and to the world the best and fullest possible measure of
service, for both country and world will need more than they will get
of that high type of service which only men and women of the best

education and training can give. Patriotism and desire to serve
humanity may require of these young men and women the exercise of
that very high type of self-restraint which will keep them to their tasks
of preparation until the time comes when they can render service
which cannot be rendered by others.

On the other hand, these same colleges and schools must contribute out of
themselves that important vocational service so necessary in time of war,
and the gathering at this meeting of agricultural and household-arts
teachers, of farm-bureau men and county agents, of representatives from
granges and women's clubs, of bankers, and of publicists was after all
typical of the other half of the university or school contribution.

At this meeting of the Regents the following resolutions were adopted on
the recommendation of the administrators of schools and colleges who were
in conference with the Regents. These resolutions are given in full because
they express significantly the point of view of the 36 colleges and 964
secondary schools in New York State.

1. Realizing that one of the most urgent needs of the country in the
present crisis will be the training of officers for military service, and
that it is the peculiar duty of colleges and universities to contribute in
supplying this need, we recommend that the several colleges and
universities in the state establish one or more units of the Reserve
Officers Training Corps, as provided in general order No. 49, including
courses leading at the same time to a commission and to a college
degree.

2. In order that the extraordinary burdens and sacrifices of war may be
shared in just proportion by all the nation, and that the calamitous
experiences of the past under the voluntary system may be avoided, it
is our judgment that in the raising of the necessary military forces the
principle of universal obligation to service be applied by a process of
selective conscription.

3. That members in good standing of the graduating classes of the
professional schools of the state who shall have been accepted for

military service by the government be granted their degrees without
special examination.

4. That members in good standing of the graduating classes in the
undergraduate departments of the colleges and universities of the state
who would normally be graduated in June, 1917, and who shall be
accepted for military service by the government should be granted
their degrees without special examination.

5. That members of the graduating classes in the high schools of the
state who would normally be graduated in June, 1917, and who have
been accepted for military service shall be granted their diplomas, and
that the colleges of the state be requested to honor these diplomas for
purposes of admission.

6. That college students in good standing pursuing medical preparatory
courses who enlist or are called into military service before the
completion of the college year be granted certificates of completion of
their year without examination.

7. That absence from college or high school by reason of enlistment in
military service shall not prejudice the award or the retention of
university scholarships.

8. That while the immediate service which women may perform in
connection with the war will be in medicine or nursing and other work
for general public welfare, and that while the greatest service for
which they may eventually be called will be the supplying of positions
vacated by the enlisted men, we recommend to the United States
government the appointment by the Council for National Defense of a
commission which shall outline an appropriate policy for women
students in our colleges, with respect both to their college studies and
to their enlistment for national service.

9. That this board approve the plans of the National Research Council
and proffer our hearty coöperation.

10. That students in colleges and universities of the state who are liable
for military training under the military-training law be exempt from
the training prescribed by the Military Training Commission if they
pursue courses in military training under approved instruction at their
respective institutions.

Further, that as there are numerous resources in both the elementary
and the secondary schools of the state which can be used to advantage
at this time,—among the most important of which resources are the
use of high-school pupils for the farms and for necessary clerical and
other work that can be done by pupils who remain in school, the use of
teachers for summer work, the services possible through industrial and
household-arts departments, and the enlistment of upper-grade children
for home gardens,—the board adopts the following resolutions:

1. That the State Agricultural Department in conjunction with the State
Education Department formulate a plan for enlisting and placing high-
school boys upon the farms, for directing and supervising the work of
such boys, for determining qualifications as to age and fitness, for
determining compensation and school credit, and for the adjustment of
any other problems connected with the safeguarding of these boys who
enlist for farm service.

2. That the State Education Department secure through the necessary
sources a statement of the needs that might be met through the
industrial and household-arts departments and other resources of the
schools herein stated, and transmit such a statement to the schools of
the state, to the end that these resources may be used intelligently and
through regularly constituted channels.

3. That the State Education Department consider the practicability of
securing some provision by which during the summer vacation and at
other times of the year boys 12 years of age or over may be employed
if a certificate of proper working conditions can be furnished.

It is impracticable to outline even briefly all that the various colleges and
institutes have contributed to war service. The Massachusetts Institute of
Technology is hardly mentioned in what follows, and yet it is conducting a

score of activities of immediate emergency value. Drexel Institute has
contributed not only courses but also its president, Doctor Godfrey, who is
serving as a member of the National Council of Defense in special charge
of war needs as met by education and science.

To name all the institutions which are serving in one way or another is to
call the roll of nearly every college and technical institution in the country.
To give here a brief account of what a few are doing will show the range of
the activities and the nature of the service.

Early in May Columbia University inaugurated a series of emergency
courses of a military, naval, and general nature arranged for the purpose of
training students who desire to serve the national government in time of
war. They were classified as intensive courses and were opened without
restriction to all those who desired to be trained in any of the various
subjects offered. These courses included military map making, field-service
regulations, general telegraphy, radio telegraphy, camp sanitation, map
reading and map interpretation, practical navigation, and electrical devices
of the navy.

Harvard University has many achievements to her credit, for example:
advanced training for selected officers under the leadership of six French
officers; a cadet school for ensigns; a naval school for wireless operators; a
course in orthopedic surgery; the furnishing of the medical personnel for
four base hospital units; and war service by departments of dentistry,
medicine, psychology, and foreign languages.

Iowa State College gave a six weeks' course in special military and
military-engineering work. Regular two-year noncollegiate courses were
offered electrical workers and stationary engineers, mechanical draftsmen
and mechanics, structural draftsmen and building superintendents,
surveyors and road makers.

At Cornell University all professors and instructors in the marine-
engineering department and all the senior students of marine engineering
were in either private or public shipyards on or before graduation day.

The University of Wisconsin, anticipating that a large number of persons
who had been trained in the administration of stores would soon be needed
in the civil section of the Quartermaster's Department, in the Ordnance
Bureau of the War Department, and in the Quartermaster's Officers' Reserve
Corps, decided to aid in training for these services by offering special
courses in the classification and handling of stores for those departments.

This university also planned a summer session with courses in wireless
telegraphy, first aid to the injured, Boy Scout movement in theory and
practice, and gave a course of war lectures especially designed for teachers,
and a course for Red Cross volunteers who wished to take part in civilian
relief work. This last course was in coöperation with the Red Cross
organization, which, as explained in another chapter, will have much to do
with relieving families deprived of their natural heads. The men and women
in this course studied the basis of family life, psychological and economic
principles underlying bodily health, the resources of the state to preserve
the family group, and methods of social service and friendly visiting.

Aviation schools for training candidates for the aviation corps were
established at the University of California, Cornell University, Georgia
Institute of Technology, University of Illinois, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Ohio State University, Princeton, and the University of Texas.
The first navy aëronautic school has also been established recently at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The College of the City of New York offered an emergency war course in
bookkeeping and office practice to help fit men and women to fill the
positions made necessary by the increased work of the national government,
and to train people to take the places of those who responded to the call to
arms. It also offered its regular winter courses during the summer in order
to speed up the graduation of young men already enrolled in the college
who might be drafted.

This college also placed in every armory and military headquarters in
Greater New York a teacher of conversational French. This work was very
popular and highly successful.

The University of Kentucky offered to women and civilians two special
courses in its College of Electrical Engineering: a course in automobile
engineering especially designed to teach women how to drive and take care
of motor ambulances, and a course in wireless telegraphy.

The Pennsylvania State College offered a six weeks' course in storekeeping
under the direction of the Quartermaster's Department.

In Massachusetts, through the extension department of the State Board of
Education, lessons were given in conversational French in the armories and
encampments. In one armory as many as five instructors were engaged in
this service. The vocabulary of the soldier being quite unlike the French
dictionary, the military terms and expressions actually used were
emphasized. Necessary French slang and words used commonly for
distances, rations, arms and equipment, money, measures, and military
orders were dwelt upon. Spoken French for doctors and nurses who are
going to the front has been given in coöperation with the Metropolitan
Chapter of the American Red Cross.

A six months' course in wireless telegraphy for women was offered at
Hunter College, New York City, the course of training being in three
divisions: laboratory work, technical work, and the use of code. This course
was given with the expectation not that women wireless operators will be
placed on ships of war or on transports, but rather that they will be placed in
land stations and on coastwise steamers, thus releasing men for more active
service. It is understood that on the mechanical side the work is harder for
the women, but that on the code work they are much quicker than men.

The field for service of a college is not necessarily limited to extending the
usefulness of its vocational departments to meet the war-emergency
demands. As has already been noted, the department of French may give
courses in conversational French in armories and in cantonments. Sir
Robert Blair writes:

We had this plan in England, and as volunteering grew to very
considerable dimensions towards the close of 1914 and there were tens
of thousands of soldiers grouped within the near neighborhood of

London, an arrangement was made with the war-office authorities for
the teaching of French.

Courses in mathematics applicable to war needs may be given. The college
may send tutors to cantonments to give instruction to undergraduates who
have not completed their college work and who would like to receive a
college diploma. Colleges can coöperate with the Y.M.C.A., to which has
been given the privilege of looking after the recreational features in
cantonments. American college boys and others will not be satisfied with
formal military training. They will want health talks, entertaining and
educational lectures, and instruction as to many things helpful in civil as
well as in military life.

There is a large opportunity, in a field as yet hardly touched, for
departments of psychology in universities to help in selecting men for
different branches of war service and to give vocational guidance to men
who leave the service unfitted by war work to reënter their former
occupations and perhaps untrained to enter a new service. A staff of
psychologists is now at work in each of our cantonments applying
intelligence ratings.

There are two distinct uses for the ratings which are given the men as a
result of the psychological examinations. One of these uses is military and
consists in furnishing a commanding officer with the rating of each man in
his command, by which he may, if he chooses, be guided in selecting men
for promotion, or for special duties requiring more than average intelligence
and mental quickness. The other use is medical and is the thing specifically
sought—to find men who are so markedly below the average in intelligence
as to demand consideration for discharge or for assignment to simple
manual work under careful supervision.

The general method of the test is as follows: The men of each company are
divided into 4 groups of 75 to 80 each. Each group is first given a simple
literacy test which takes about five minutes and shows only which of the
men can read and write. The illiterates are withdrawn at this point to be
given examinations for manual skill. All those who can read are then given
the "group-intelligence examination."

Those who do not get good ratings are now re-examined in a group to
discover whether they are merely slow or are of low-grade intelligence. If
any fail to make a satisfactory showing, they are grouped with the illiterates
who were separated from the rest of the group after the preliminary
examination.

All these—illiterates, and literates who have not done well in the group
examination—are given tests for manual skill and ingenuity. These tests are
such as putting together dissembled mechanisms, etc. After further
individual examination those who receive the poorest rating are likely to be
considered for discharge or as suited only for manual work under
supervision.

Those who display special mental or manual ability are brought to the
notice of their company commanders as men who may be given
assignments for superior intelligence or skill.

The aims of the entire psychological examination are to measure native
intelligence and ability, not schooling; to disclose what a man can do with
his head and hands, not what he has learned from books; and to help the
medical officers quickly to discover and sift out the extremely incompetent,
and thus prevent the inefficiency and injustice resulting from putting men in
places which they are not qualified to fill.

Of course there is a tremendous opportunity for the college to help people
understand the causes of war. This has already been referred to in the
chapter on "War and Community Uses of our Schools."

Colleges having teacher-training departments will have the opportunity of
giving short courses to men and women who will take the places of those
who have gone to war. There is also a field for great service in discovering
ways and means of improving our public-school systems through lessons
drawn from the war.

Every college and university has a large library, and this should be
examined with a view to discovering its possible contribution to national
defense in war time. Aside from their functions of supplying fresh news and
judgments of current events, libraries surely have a vital part in that work of

organized research which is behind Germany's scientific and industrial
efficiency. Successful research rests as much upon adequate and well-
organized book resources as upon laboratories and trained men. The plain
and immediate duty of a college situated near a cantonment, or having a
portion of its student body enlisted in a camp, would seem to be to build up
a military library adequate as a center of military information for those who
are studying new methods and instruments of attack and defense. Such a
library would be a technical library assisting the large number of
specialized schools and fields of training for officers and men in every
branch of the service and even in different duties in the same branch.
Medical libraries of colleges should be available, with new and important
material on military hygiene, medicine, sanitation, and surgery, and this
material should be given the widest publicity with reference to its
usefulness for the military, medical, and hospital corps.

The college library might well lend to a cantonment a member of its library
staff for the development of not only a technical library but also a general
reading library for those soldiers who desire only general reading.

The geological department of a college can help in deciding on foundation
conditions for army-work constructions, on the location of camp sites with
reference to topography, drainage, and water supply, and on the location of
trenches with reference to dryness, underdrainage, and rock deposits. Such
a department can participate in the study of earth vibrations in connection
with heavy artillery discharges for the accurate determination of the
distances of enemy batteries. It can also help the government in giving more
exact training to young men in the interpretation of geological and
topographical maps.

It is obvious that the technical college and the technical institute may render
the greatest government service through its faculty and student body.
Armour Institute of Chicago has a large number of its graduates and older
students in concerns which are producing munition supplies and war-ships.
Many have entered the signal service, and a large class in marine
engineering has been specifically organized to prepare men for service with
the government.

Wentworth Institute in Boston, under the direction of Principal Arthur L.
Williston, has been giving instruction in various branches of military
engineering to the First Regiment of Engineers of the Fifth District, U. S. A.
This regiment was originally an infantry regiment, but the men voluntarily
elected to train themselves to become an engineering regiment. The
commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers and all the enlisted
men gave three nights a week to the work for several months. In addition
some sixty of the men in the regiment voluntarily resigned from business
positions in order to devote eight to ten hours a day, six days in the week, to
the work. This institute instilled what Mr. Williston calls "mechanical
gumption" into the enlisted men through short unit courses in mapping and
surveying, topographical sketching, and map reading; gasoline-engine
operation, repairing, and maintenance; portable steam-power plant
construction and operation; electrical-power plant operation; field
telephony; electric-line construction and maintenance; timber construction,
including pontoons, timber trusses, timber suspension-bridge construction,
machine-gun shelters, dugouts, and dugout tunneling and framing; strength
of materials; concrete construction, including culverts, bridge abutments,
gun-carriage and engine foundations; acetylene welding and demolition
work; thermite welding and emergency repair; machinery erection and
alignment; forging, hardening, and tempering; hydraulics and drainage,
especially trench drainage; and rigging. The time was too short to give any
elaborate theoretical training. The instruction was given through brief and
intensive courses in a very practical way. In many instances it showed men
who had practical experience and ability how to adapt their particular kind
of skill to the special needs of the given service. Many of these men already
had skill, but they needed to have it adapted to military ends.

Technical colleges and institutes believe that education is the very last thing
in which they ought to economize. Illustrations of class work in national-
emergency courses for the army and navy given by Pratt Institute,
Brooklyn, New York.

A poster which accomplished its purpose. War time, even more than normal
times, requires an educational appeal to the work impulses of youth.

Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, has been conducting 8 evening classes
in machine-shop practice, 6 classes in machine-drafting design, 1 evening
class in elementary ship drafting, and day courses for a large body of
enlisted men from the navy electrical school and from the signal reserve
corps. Those who come from the signal reserve corps are being trained for
active service in telegraphy, the institute furnishing the technical instruction

in elementary and applied electricity, and army officers furnishing the
military and field-service instruction. A mess for the men of this corps is
conducted at the school of household science connected with the institute,
and here details of men are trained for this work through a course in army
cooking. The men from the electrical school are quartered at the navy yard,
and spend five and one-half hours a day at the institute taking courses in
machine-shop operation, steam-engine practice, elementary electricity,
armature- and field-coil repair work on electrical machines, elementary
chemistry, and batteries. It is interesting to note that Pratt Institute made a
special effort to hold intact its student body of the regular courses, on the
theory that the thoroughly trained mechanic or technician in service is many
times more valuable to the nation than a private in the ranks. As a result of
this effort, very few of the students of the day school dropped from the
regular courses.

The William Hood Dunwoody Institute of Minneapolis began immediately
on the severance of relations with Germany to serve as a recruiting station
for the United States Engineers' Enlisted Reserve Corps, the United States
Signal Enlisted Reserve Corps, the United States Quartermaster's Enlisted
Reserve Corps, the United States Civil Service Commission, and the United
States Navy.

It also outlined a scheme for taking a census of mechanics and technicians
for the state of Minnesota, which is now being carried out, and on the basis
of which recruiting will go forward for every branch of the government
service.

It made arrangements for bringing to Minneapolis, on the first of August,
425 recruits from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station at Chicago, and
distributed them among the following classes in training at the institute:
general electricians, radio electricians, carpenter's mates, machine-shop
operators, gas-engine operators, blacksmiths, coppersmiths, cooks, and
bakers.

The institute is training more than 200 novices in day and evening classes in
telegraphy. Of these about 60 per cent are girls and women, this course
being offered in response to a direct request from railroad and telegraph
lines in the vicinity of Minneapolis. It is also giving some instruction in

operating-foremanship work for a prominent local steel and machinery
company, as this company has renewed the manufacture of munitions and
needs operation foremen. The institute was called upon to select the most
promising men and to train them in one process of which they are later to
have charge in the shop. Director Charles A. Prosser in making a report to
the secretary of the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial
Education said:

We have 154 people taking radio work in day and evening classes.
This group is made up of a number of different types. First, there are
the amateurs with licenses who have enlisted in our first radio
company of the United States Signal Service and have gone into that
class to improve their speed. Second, there are other young men who
have gone in to learn the work so as to be recruited into another radio
company of the United States Signal Corps or into the naval service,
and there are, in the third place, young men who have gone in with the
idea of offering their services to the Marconi Company, either for land
work or for duty on board the merchant ships which are being built.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 mechanics and technicians
have been sent into different branches of the government service by
Dunwoody Institute. This number is made up in part of our own
students from our school—particularly from the evening classes,
although some of our day boys have gone—and in part of mechanics
and technicians throughout Minnesota who have gone into the service
through Dunwoody Institute, where we conduct a recruiting station
and where we are recruiting into the service every Wednesday,
applications being taken in the interim.

We have sent into the service 1 motor-truck company; 2 others are in
process of organization. We are sending out 1 radio company, which is
ready to go, and are about to organize another. We are also organizing
1 wire company, 1 baking company, and 1 company of cooks. In
addition we have sent men to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and are sending
men to the Puget Sound Navy Yard. We have also put men in touch
with the Civil Service Commission and sent them into the service in
this way.

The response of these and other colleges and technical institutes justifies as
nothing else could their past claims that they train not only for the spirit of
service but for the life of service.

The effect of the war on the college curriculum cannot be hastily measured.
Institutions of collegiate grade are slow to make radical changes in the
requirements for the bachelor's degree. Some have already shortened the
college course to three years. Others have decided as a war measure that
students ought to be through college by the time they reach conscription
age. Some are offering opportunity for all-the-year-round work. Others are
allowing war service to count toward a college degree. The English
universities are already thinking of strengthening their courses in science
and laboratory research, of giving more attention to modern languages, and
of developing vocational courses.

Certainly in America there will be an immediate and greater demand for so-
called "practical" subjects. It may be that one of the effects of the war will
be the sharpening of the differentiation and an increase of competition
between the idealistic and the practical groups of studies. This will be
unfortunate. There should be no sharpening of differences of opinion. They
had much better be dulled. There is no real necessity for antagonism
between the cultural and the vocational subjects. People only think there is a
need for constant justification of the one against the other. Such thinking
has become a habit of mind.

The French have a way of saying that the cultural subjects are merely the
moral conditions, the ethical history, and a judgment as to the ethical value
of the world complex of vocational and economic life; for this reason any
conflict between cultural and vocational subjects is impossible, and the
more vocational education is developed, the more will the cultural aspects
be needed and the more highly developed will they become. The French
point out that what we term cultural subjects developed in two civilizations
which were very highly practical, vocational, and militaristic; namely,
Greece and Rome. They speak of the humanities as being essentially the
abiding lessons of those civilizations which in vocational and military
efficiency stood much higher above their fellows than Germany stands in
those respects above contemporary civilization to-day.

Vocational subjects are direct-service subjects always. By their very nature
they respond immediately to an emergency. The cultural subjects are more
indirect in their effect. They could not be otherwise. I often wish we could
get into the habit of speaking of liberal subjects in the sense in which this
term was used in the older days of our colleges, when the term "liberal"
implied that the subjects classed under this head were liberalizing; that is,
they liberated, or set free, the minds, spirits, and bodies of men and women
from prejudice, selfishness, tradition, passion, cruelty, and so on. I have
never seen how one could elect culture, for it is always a by-product
coming out of thinking and living. To study the language of an ancient
people and to learn nothing of their government or ideals is useless. To
study this government and these ideals of an older civilization and to see no
lessons for the world of to-day is almost valueless. To study the past in
terms of problems of human society is liberalizing.

New meanings of the realities of war are before us. New concepts of two
great ideals of government confront us. New methods of making war more
horrible strike our eyes with every news issue. New schemes for patching
up human life that it may go forth again to battle or return to industrial
warfares of peace are heralded every week. New societies for the relief of
human suffering due to the war are chartered constantly. New alignments of
political groups committed to reform are in the making. New groupings of
nations not formerly allied stand before our eyes. New methods of
combining activities of great corporate interests for government needs are
published daily. New trade possibilities now latent are prophesied as being
inevitable. New ideals and new ideas gathered in the trenches are appearing
over battle lines for new governmental practices. New advances in the field
of government control of prices startle us continually.

Out of it all there looms up a new science of chemistry, improved methods
of transportation in the air, a still greater standardization of making
industrial products, a new conception of government control of trade and
industry, a system of government insurance for individuals and
corporations, new concepts of legislative authority and action, and a score
of other things all heading up into a new sense of nationalism,—and who
knows but even a sense of internationalism!

Is it credible that education alone will remain unaffected by these world
changes?

CHAPTER V

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR MANUAL AND
HOUSEHOLD ARTS

A new spirit of teaching practical arts is upon us. The aims, materials, and
methods of instruction in manual training, cooking, sewing, agriculture, and
commercial branches are changing. They have been influenced by the
vocational-education movement, and because of it practical arts in general
education must justify themselves or else be put into the scrap heap.

The development and organization of differentiated courses in industrial,
agricultural, and household and commercial arts adapted to junior and
senior high schools—more particularly in connection with the education of
children from 12 to 16 years of age—offers a new field of service to
teachers of these subjects who, up to now, have been following methods
unsuited either to the needs of vocational training or to the needs of general
education. Already the set of wood and iron models taken from the Russian
system of the early seventies has disappeared, and the sampler book in
sewing has passed away. The era of the coat hanger and sleeve board in
manual training and of the set of doll's clothes and models of
undergarments is doomed, and the cooking outline which starts out with
making cocoa in September and in the thirteenth lesson takes up the making
of an angel cake will soon meet the fate of flowerpot holders, doll's aprons,
and book agriculture.

But there is a great field for the practical arts in general education,—a field
which no scheme of vocational training can possibly occupy. Each has its
place. Vocational training is fitting young persons for profitable
employment in chosen vocations. Practical arts in general education
consists of varied lines of activity taken from the fields of agriculture,
commerce, industry, and the household and taught in the school for the

purpose of developing capacity to deal with concrete things and of arousing
social and industrial interests in the workaday world.

In the early years of the child's life practical-arts work has a strong motor
and social value. In the middle years, say from 12 to 16, it has a social and
vocational-guidance value. The chapter entitled "The Field for Industrial
and Trade Schools" gives a number of suggestions as to the work which
boys and, to some extent, girls may offer as their service contribution in
time of war. However there are fewer than 100 industrial and trade schools
in the country. The majority of our youth are taking some practical-arts
work as a part of general education in either the elementary or the
secondary school, and surely these young people will want to do something
in this emergency. And certainly the teachers of sewing, manual training,
cooking, and agriculture will desire to do their part, not only because they
can be of service at this time but also for the reason that through war-
service work they will be able to improve upon the practical-arts work and
make it conform to the new spirit. The whole spirit of the new methods is
based upon getting away from individual models created out of the mind of
a teacher and imposed upon an unsuspecting student body which follows a
"course in models" in about the same way that it takes a course in
arithmetic.

The present scheme of teaching practical arts is based upon the project plan
and not upon the model or exercise plan. It no longer depends upon the
teacher's course of study founded on tool exercises or logical sequence of
processes. It now comes out of a need which is as clear to the student as it
should be to the teacher. The progressive teacher of manual training starts
out with such a project, for example, as a garage. This involves making a
sketch, working up a bill of materials, finding out the cost of lumber,
cement, and so on. It involves work in concrete, laying the floor timbers,
putting up the sides, laying out the roof, setting in the window and door
frames, putting on the tarred paper or shingles or galvanized iron, and
painting and staining.

The progressive teacher of domestic arts no longer thinks of catering merely
to the personal decorative sense of young girls. She no longer has the girls
spend the entire year making graduation dresses, or dish towels, caps, and

aprons. She thinks in terms of quantity and in terms of social service which
the domestic-arts work may render. She discovers that a hospital needs
towels, aprons, caps, and bed linen, or that the orphan asylum near the
school is sorely in need of children's garments, and then she tells of this
need to the girls in her charge and the latter take up the problem in the same
way that the boys take up the problem of building a garage. Each girl works
in conjunction with others for a common purpose which all recognize as
being worth while.

Progressive teachers of cooking are realizing that the idea of 20 cooking
units in a schoolroom, where little batches of 20 model biscuits are made
and where at the close of the lesson each girl has one of these small
eatables, is far behind the practice of those manual-training teachers who
are making drawing tables, benches, and looms, or laying concrete walks,
building outdoor gymnasium apparatus, and so on. Some of the teachers
have insisted on having a flat or tenement or entire house near the school,
where girls taking domestic science can go to learn to make real beds that
are really slept upon, to clean bathroom bowls that are really used, to cook
meals that are really eaten by people who pay for what they eat, to shake
real rugs that become really dirty, and to shop at stores where they come in
contact with actual commercial conditions and at the end of a week
discover that it really costs money to run a real home. A few teachers, and
in time there will be many, desire to go still further. They believe that home-
making cannot be taught without having some babies around, and so they
have established day nurseries in connection with the home-making classes.

It is because of these things which have been mentioned in some detail that
I was glad, as director of the Division of Agricultural and Industrial
Education of the New York State Education Department, to send out a
circular letter early in April, 1917, to our manual-training and household-
arts teachers, in which I stated that every teacher of manual training,
sewing, or cooking should be thinking in terms of mobilization service, and
that any teacher of manual training who was conducting his course of
models, instead of thinking and working in terms of food production or
industrial war service, was absolutely out of touch with the needs of the
day. I advised him to turn his shop work over to home and community
gardens, to increase the time allowance given to manual work, and help fill

the cellar and pantry. I advised him to give his Saturdays and afternoons
after school and even his vacation period to supervising garden work in the
community. I said, furthermore, that any teacher of sewing who was not
thinking in terms of Red Cross, and of mending, darning, and repairing, was
as far away from the service idea as she possibly could be. I told her that
with the increase in price of materials and with the scarcity of dress goods
there would be necessary repairing and making over which would give her
an opportunity to do some real things. I even told her that she might drop
some of her sewing and help the cooking teacher in organizing classes in
preserving. I told the teachers of cooking that if they were running through
their outlines with no reference to the food shortage of next winter and the
year after, they showed a lack of comprehension of the meaning of their
jobs. I stated that the early summer and fall suggested lessons in preserving,
while the winter season conveyed the idea of conserving. I asked whether
they were planning to stop their work in June, before the canning season
really began, and leave everything idle until school should open, when the
canning season would be nearly over. I wondered what provision had been
made in the community for using the summer service which they either had
offered or, I hoped, were about to offer.

A few weeks later word came from England of how the manual-training
teachers had been urged by those in authority to do garden work. A portion
of these directions follows:

Surely wood and metal work have not the monopoly of the educative
value in manual operations. The harvesting of an orchard of fruit or a
field of potatoes by a class of school children, accompanied by an
enthusiastic teacher imbued with the right ideal of his work, can be
made to serve other purposes than merely that of simple mechanical
utility. A discussion started at first hand between child and teacher on
such matters as variety and quality of produce, the destructive fruit
pests and diseases encountered, the crating, packing, and distribution
of produce, the weighing and measuring actually performed, the
calculating of the value of produce and of labor, and a knowledge that
the coöperative effort is in response to a call of England's need, would
provide open-air lessons in nature study, geography, arithmetic, and

civics quite as educative as any obtained in the elaborately equipped
manual-training centers.

This is true, especially the phrase "a knowledge that the coöperative effort
is in response to a call of England's need," which embraces the socializing
value of the manual-arts principles,—a value which we often talk about and
as often fail to attain.

Teachers of cooking, in this food crisis now upon us and the greater one
which may come, ought to suspend temporarily some of their work in
teaching children and turn their attention to teaching adults. To be sure the
girl of to-day will be the mother of to-morrow, but the mother of the
immediate to-morrow is also the mother of to-day, and the food crisis will
be over, it is to be hoped, by the time the girls in our present cooking
classes have grown into motherhood. These courses to adults should be
intensive and in short units. The printing schools should print leaflets giving
practical and helpful recipes to be distributed to the adults. If the women
will not come to the school, then the schools should go to the women. By
this it is meant that classes can be organized in churches, vacant stores, and
settlements. In this connection it may be of interest to quote from the
Leicester (England) education committee:

Arrangements have been made in connection with the local food
campaign whereby the ordinary schemes of work at the domestic-
science centers have been temporarily suspended and special short
courses in cookery instruction provided instead. These courses have
been designed primarily as a means of instructing as many women and
older girls as possible in the method of preparing and cooking suitable
substitutes for bread and potatoes. In addition to the rooms equipped
for cookery instruction, those normally devoted to the teaching of
laundering and housewifery are being used for this special work. The
course is arranged to cover 4 lessons given on consecutive half days to
each group of attendants, and at the conclusion of each course the
women and girls attend one evening for a review lesson including a
practical demonstration to which outsiders are invited. Leaflets have
been prepared and sent to the schools for distribution. The children
themselves write out the scale of rations as applied to individual

families and take their copies home, thus becoming the active agents in
the food campaign.

In Albany, New York, the regular work in cooking was discontinued early in
June for the school year of 1917, and a special course of 10 lessons in food
conservation was given at 4 domestic-science centers. The course consisted
of 1 lesson in the preservation of eggs, 3 lessons on canning, 1 on making
soap, 1 on butter substitutes, 2 on jellies and marmalades, and 1 on the
drying of a number of agricultural products.

Not only may the domestic-science teacher go to adults by the way of
churches or settlements, but she may go directly,—in the rural districts, at
least,—with demonstration kitchens mounted on automobiles. In Lindsay
County, England, for example, a domestic-science lecturer arranged an
experimental course of lectures and demonstrations on economical cookery,
and equipped with necessary utensils a traveling kitchen at a cost of $100.
She covered each of the larger villages in the area selected, spending one
day in each place, the morning being given over to traveling. In the
afternoon, exhibitions of wheat-flour substitutes were arranged and
demonstrations given that were based upon left-overs from her preceding
evening's lesson. She also gave short talks on beekeeping, horticulture, fruit
bottling, and so on. In the evening she gave a cooking demonstration.

The "van" used by the women of Long Island, New York State, consisted of
a train of cars behind a steam locomotive, from which demonstrations were
given in fruit and vegetable preserving. The County of Nottingham,
England, gave similar demonstrations and in addition gave lectures to
mothers on the necessity of taking unusual precautions with reference to the
health of babies at this period. It was customary in much of the work in
England to have an agriculturist go with the teacher and give talks on
spraying, elimination of pests, and conservation of garden products.

One of the greatest services that the domestic-science teacher can render,
whether she labors in rural or in urban fields, is the organization of canning
clubs. The canning club enlists the services of women, girls, and even boys.
It can be made as much of a social institution as corn husking and barn
raising were formerly. But the teacher must, in most instances, move out of
her domestic-science kitchen with its little gas stoves and quart sauce-pans.

In the country district the equipment will be the stove in the village church,
with a wash boiler, galvanized vat, washtub, or other vessel with a well-
fitting top, which can easily be transformed into a home canner by making a
false bottom with lifting handles. In a village or small city it may be
necessary to beg, borrow, or buy the necessary cooking utensils, and to
obtain free use of a vacant store, asking the local gas company to install,
free of charge, some gas ranges. The boys will prepare the fruit; the women
and girls will can it or dry it, as the case may be. To dispose of the product
is a simple matter. It may be sold and the proceeds divided. It may be taken
to the homes and the expense of producing shared.

In the city the domestic-science teacher serving as a leader of the canning
club must watch closely the market and buy when the price is right,
particularly when there is a surplus that may otherwise be wasted. It will be
a new experience for many domestic-science teachers. It is a rather different
proposition from canning a few baskets of strawberries, cherries, or currants
in a classroom.

Naturally other containers than glass jars or tumblers will have to be used.
In fact, the canning club after one season of experimentation is likely to
resemble, with its larger and more efficient equipment, a miniature canning
factory.

In Berkeley, California, the children of the entire city had a Jar Day, when
they went out and collected every discarded and undesired jar. These were
cleaned and sold and the money was turned into a "service fund." Many
jars, also, were filled with surplus vegetable products to be used for the
poor in the winter.

Of course the old drying methods of grandmother's days must be
rejuvenated. Mr. Fred P. Reagle, supervisor of manual training in Montclair,
discovered one of the old-fashioned evaporators and had a large number
made up by the boys in his school and passed out to neighboring
communities. Here is an old home industry which may be revived in the
home or the community.

Mr. Reagle, in describing his evaporator, writes:

I was obliged to build something which could be used anywhere
regardless of the availability of steam heat, electric fans, or coal.
Furthermore, it was necessary to construct from common stock
material and to use some stock stove. I hit upon the idea of using a
common laundry stove which could burn either wood or coal. I made
20 frames, covered with galvanized wire, to hold the fruit. The control
of the air circulation was obtained by means of an adjustable sliding
door beneath the stove. The heated air passes around and over the
stove and through the fresh food products, taking out the moisture and
going out through the adjustable ventilator at the top. The evaporator
has a capacity of from 5 to 8 bushels of fruit and vegetables a day.

Another activity for domestic-science teachers of more experience will be
in the training of cooks for the army, or, as the director of the School of
Practical Arts (Teachers College) believes, "in the training of people to train
cooks."

The following quotation from a letter written by Sir Robert Blair of London
to Superintendent Maxwell of New York City shows what was done in
London:

In the summer recess, 1915, 264 of our domestic-science teachers
volunteered part of their holidays in order to help in the work of
training 2500 soldiers to cook and to meet the ordinary requirements in
this line of the private in the field. The War Office drew men from
different units from all over England and brought them to London in
two great groups and paid 1/9 a day for the up-keep of the men. The
soldiers were billeted in the school buildings and the preparation of
their food formed the basis of the cookery instruction. Each group was
taken for a period of ten days. The War Office was most appreciative
of the work done by these domestic-economy instructresses. The War
Office did not ask us to repeat this the following summer, although it
was repeated to some extent in other parts of England. The War Office,
however, did ask us to lend them 30 carefully selected teachers of
cooking for the purpose of visiting army canteens and giving advice
both on cooking and (what I believe is more important) on quantities
used.

Still another service can be rendered by the cooking teachers, especially in
our large cities and in our industrial villages. This service consists in giving
meals to children who are in want. Of course at the present moment we see
little need for this work, but the pinch of poverty has come upon England,
France, and Germany, and our own land may not always be one of plenty.
When the need arises, teachers should be prepared to furnish lunches to the
children and possibly even breakfasts, to say nothing about suppers. The
dislocation of many ordinary trades and lines of business, the taking from
the home of the family's means of support, the increased cost of food and
provisions, and the prevalence of sickness due to neglect may necessitate
the feeding of children in school. In London the list of children to whom
meals were given daily increased rapidly from something like 32,000 in
July, 1914, up to 75,000 about the middle of September, 1914. Fortunately,
however, as trade and industry became better adjusted there was a steady
decline in the number of children that were fed, so that in May, 1917, there
were only about 12,000—the children then on the list being mainly the
children of widows who were forced to go out to work. The number of
meals provided per week in the schools of England in July, 1915, was
200,000. In a year this number had dropped to 120,000.

Good posters have a great influence on civic life at any time. Now they are
invaluable. War-service posters designed by Manual Training High School
boys of Brooklyn, New York.

Girls at work; mothers watching. Why should not both work in a
community kitchen equipped with evaporators, large containers, proper
stoves, and utensils for doing a real piece of work?.

The drawing departments might well have their students design posters.
Those designed by American illustrators for the first Liberty Loan were
surprisingly ineffective. Only one stood out—that with the reproduction of
the Statue of Liberty with the accompanying symbol and direct wording.
Our enlistment posters have been crude, lacking in psychological appeal as
well as in design. It is questionable whether recruiting is aided by a picture
showing a naval officer lounging under a palm tree while in the distance a
marine is seen standing amid bursting shells on a battleship. There has been
and will be an opportunity for students to design posters for Red Cross
work; for enlistment as farm cadets; for enrollment in a home-service unit
for girls, in community canning clubs, in Boy Scout work, in school, home,
and community gardening; for patriotic meetings and a score of other
occasions. Good posters have an almost incalculable influence on civic life
at any time. Within the last year there have been held in many cities various
competitions in poster work of pupils with such subjects as "Red Cross,"
"Thrift," "Safety First," "Fire Prevention," "Pure Milk," and "Liberty Loan."

There is plenty of work for the manual-training teacher. Mention has
already been made of garden work, not so much in school gardens,
however, as in community gardens, for, like the canning-club work, here is
a splendid opportunity to bring adults and children together. In a number of
small cities in the country where tillable land could be obtained, the
manual-training teachers directed a community-garden project. The boys
built the tool house; the Boy Scouts took turns in acting as watchmen; plots
were laid out on a family or individual basis; seed was purchased in bulk
and distributed at cost; experts, hired by the day, plowed and harrowed the
ground; stakes marking the plots were made in the school; and the manual-
training instructors, or, as they were termed, the garden directors, spent their
summer vacation in a useful service.

The manual-training teacher may help the Red Cross chapter in packing
supplies into the boxes which his boys have made. He can be planning the
hospital furniture which he may be called upon to make, as in France,
where the boys built furniture for improvised hospitals and installed electric
lights. He can be thinking how he shall, if required, make hospital-bed
racks, cots, tables, and simple reclining chairs. Perhaps he may have to
supervise, as have the manual-training teachers in England, the making of
hand-grenade bags, chaff bags, dummy cartridges for the training of troops,
or sand bags. In a single secondary school in Bradford, England, more than
1200 articles—including splints, crutches, bed-boards and rests, screens,
rollers, trays, etc.—have been made in the manual-training department in
one year. Perhaps in the early spring latrines can be designed and built for
the farm cadets, as was done in the Newton (Massachusetts) school, or
shacks for troops, as was done at Plattsburg, New York, by the boys from
the Stuyvesant High School, New York City. The teacher may have his part
to play in giving vocational training to maimed soldiers (see chapter on
"Reëducation of the Disabled"), as all of the instructors in manual-training
schools of the Dominion of Canada are now doing.

A manual-training teacher in Nashville, Tennessee, Mr. John M. Foster, has
his boys make jigsaw puzzles, checkerboards, and bandage winders for the
use of our soldiers in France. During the summer of 1917 he organized a
boys' auxiliary of the Red Cross, and the group made packing cases
according to official specifications. The organization included a shop

foreman, a timekeeper, and a stock man. Lumber and other materials were
contributed by local dealers.

Perhaps the manual-training instructor will coöperate with the teacher of
domestic science, as male strength is needed, in providing comforts for the
soldiers, such as socks and mufflers made on knitting machines, and in
helping with the packing and crating. In this connection there is another
quotation on the work of London children:

At the end of the first year of the war we began to organize efforts to
provide clothing and other necessities for Belgian and Serbian
children. In a few months the schools were able to furnish 10,000
complete kits made to the pattern and color and size supplied by the
two embassies. It is reported that the making of these kits was one of
the best exercises in planning, cutting, and sewing which the schools
ever undertook, and probably nothing has done more to foster the
school esprit de corps in the history of municipal schools since their
origin, in 1870.

In France a number of schools, when the buildings were turned into
hospitals, equipped either the entire hospital or a considerable number of
beds at their own expense and by their own work. Hospital service was
largely organized by these schools. One school would be responsible for the
linen, another for mending, another for table service, another for cooking,
and another for sending and receiving packages. A workroom established by
the school girls in one of these hospitals had sent to the front in a year and a
half 25,330 packages. One little village school of only 30 pupils in a short
period collected 2542 eggs for the wounded soldiers and made socks and
mufflers in addition. In another small district each of the schools specialized
in some kind of work, one making up parcels for war prisoners, another
knitting sailors' gloves, another making clothing for refugees, and still
another providing candles for troops in trenches.

A small country school in the Midlands of England, in addition to weekly
contributions of vegetables to the local hospital for wounded soldiers, has
made 26 bed cradles and a dozen crutches, while the youngest boys have
made splints.

A report from a northeast-coast district of England mentions manual-
training centers where bed tables, toilet tables, bed rests, and clinical-chart
carriers are made for the local hospital. Even the girls have made splints
and bed tables. Of course hundreds of sand bags have been made in the
schools.

The report closes with these significant words: "The effect of all this work
has been most remarkable. Even districts where formerly little interest was
taken by the children seem suddenly to realize the value of it all." This is
what might have been expected, and what we in America may expect when
we make our practical-arts work socializing, useful, and contributory to
some great cause that the children see is worth while.

CHAPTER VI

THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH

Since August, 1914, there have been presented to us new aspects of the
relation of children to industry. Up to that time the only consideration for
those who had the welfare of children at heart was the child himself; but
with the war, the welfare of the child became tied up with the problem of
the welfare of the country and its demands for service on the whole
population. The endeavor to adjust these two in nice balance has resulted in
experimental legislation or in action without legislation, both of which have
often been of no genuine or lasting benefit to either interest concerned.

In America, in the first half of 1917, many of our states appeared to be
following the lead of England in abrogating the compulsory-attendance law,
urging the same reason for permitting children within school age to work in
fields and factories. Everyone is familiar with the facts presented by farmer
and industrial employer. In sections whose activity has been stimulated by
the production of war products, such as Bridgeport, Connecticut, other
industries and mercantile establishments have found it impossible to run as
usual owing to the presence of munition plants, which attract an abnormal
number of workers.

Not only is neighborhood business affected by the presence of war
industries, but the farm shortage is aggravated; for the supply of
intermittent labor, the kind demanded for berry picking, harvesting, and
canning, is not forthcoming when the workers are offered steady
employment in munition and textile plants. In 1917 many small canneries
were threatened with the prospect of closing and letting the adjacent crops
spoil in the fields; hence their call for schoolboys to assist them in
cultivating and harvesting. This resulted in an unprecedented rush of
children between 14 and 16 to obtain employment certificates, and a clamor
from those below 14 to be allowed to leave school and go to work.

With the nation and the state urging farmers and food producers to make
every exertion to increase the food supply, legislatures must render
assistance in solving the labor-shortage problem. It need hardly be pointed
out that the farmer cannot be expected to plant additional acres unless he is
reasonably sure that it will be possible for him to have his acres cultivated
and harvested.

England as early as September 1, 1914, was feeling the shortage created by
the numbers of men enlisting, and every Local Education Authority was
being besought by farmers and manufacturers to obtain modifications of the
law which, generally speaking, held children in school up to 14 years. An
order of the Board of Education to the Local Education Authority in
Northamptonshire, answering such a plea, stated:

While the Board of Education have no power to give any general
directions overriding the ordinary law with regard to school attendance
and the employment of children,...a Local Education Authority is
under no obligation to take proceedings in respect of nonattendance of
a child at school if they are satisfied that there is a reasonable excuse
for nonattendance.

The "reasonable excuse" was found in the overpowering clamor of farmers
and munition makers who were suffering from lack of workers, as in
Staffordshire, where the petition sent to the Education Authority by the bolt-
and-nut manufacturers at Darlaston stated that owing to the enlistment of
men in various branches of his Majesty's forces and because of the fact that
the firms concerned were largely engaged on work of great urgency for the
naval and military services, "it was desirable, in order to prevent delay in
the execution of this work, that the school-attendance by-laws should be
relaxed for the duration of the war so as to permit of the employment of
boys over the age of 13 years."4

It cannot be stated too strongly that England has realized too late the
practical impossibility of recovery for school of the children thus released,
and the dangers to the nation of allowing the junior population to go into
industry without supervision. There will be introduced into our legislatures
in 1918 and later many bills which will parallel English action, and the
various states must watch carefully to see that in their zealous attempts to

increase food or necessary manufactured supplies they do not create and
sanction disastrous conditions for the health and morals of the young.

Now action in regard to our schools may be of several types. First, there
may be passed laws which abrogate the existing compulsory-attendance
law; such legislation would be that permitting children below compulsory
school age to leave school. Second, it is possible to have the existing laws
interpreted so as to excuse absence from school, as in North Dakota, where
the attorney-general in an open letter to school officers, April, 1917,
interprets the section of the school law exempting children from school
attendance in cases of necessity to apply to children of school age actually
engaged in tilling the soil. A third type of action is that which suspends the
compulsory-attendance law under certain conditions; such a law is the so-
called "Brown Bill," chapter 689 of the Laws of 1917, New York
legislature, to which reference will be made later. Action may also be taken
in regard to shortening or lengthening the established school year, shifting
vacations, and changing hours of session. For instance, the Bureau of
Education at Washington has suggested keeping school open twelve
months, and this advice may be taken in some localities; it is possible, also,
that a continuation of the demand for agricultural labor of students may
result in a different allotment of vacations in the apple- and peach-growing
sections, so that students employed in harvesting may lose a minimum of
school attendance.

Events moved very rapidly in the spring of 1917. We were called upon by
national and state governments, by chambers of commerce and boards of
trade, by bankers and railroads, to raise crops. We were told that America
must be the pantry for all Europe and that, do the best that we might, we
should not do overmuch. Obviously, with such authority back of a
movement for increased agricultural production, it did not take very long
for state boards of agriculture and state departments of education to
respond, to say nothing about the propaganda set forth by settlements,
women's clubs, the Y.M.C.A., the Boy Scouts, the National Security
League, the Women's Patriotic Service League, and a score of other
organizations, that put a psychological persuasion into the situation which
was hard for school authorities and school children to resist.

The following data relative to the action of a number of the states were
compiled by the National Child Labor Committee. In general the data
showed no provision made for supervision, for physical examination, for
wages, or for definition of "passing grade." In some instances there were
even no age limitations.

California. During continuance of state of war, state board of
education with approval of governor may reduce school term to six
months when necessary "for the planting or harvesting of crops or for
other agricultural or horticultural purposes."

Indiana. Letter from state superintendent of public instruction to
county superintendents, April 10, 1917, saying in part: "It is my wish
and order that you permit such high-school girls and boys, and also
such eighth-grade girls and boys as may care to engage in Home
Projects work looking toward the increase of our agricultural output, to
engage in such work and to receive therefor full credit on the school
records, provided this work is done to the satisfaction of the county
agent and the county superintendent."

Plan formulated later by principals and state superintendents for
supervising, certifying, and accrediting such work did something to
stop a general exodus, but came too late to do much good.

Illinois. State superintendent wrote to local superintendents, April 10,
advising that all boys eligible for working certificates be excused from
school May 1 and receive a working certificate upon assurance that
they have employment on a farm or in a garden, credit to be given for
work upon guarantee that summer months have been spent in farming
or gardening.

Kansas. State board of education advised local school officials, April
17, that it would "approve granting a full year's credit to pupils who
have passing grade and who find it necessary to withdraw from school
before the end of the school year either to enlist in the military service
or actually to engage directly in food production."

Maine. Boys 16 and over excused from school attendance, June 1 to
October 31, for work on farms under supervision of Y.M.C.A. official.
(See chapter on "Farm Cadets.")

Maryland. Superintendent of schools, Baltimore County, in open letter
to school officials, May 11, authorizes the employment on farms of
"boys and girls who are old enough to be of real productive value." On
days when not so employed they are required to attend school.
Children over 13 who have attended school one hundred days during
the year may be employed without permits; those who have not
attended one hundred days must have permits. Children under 13 must
have a permit, "which should not be issued to a child who is too
immature to do work for which the permit is asked." Permits issued for
twenty days or less may be renewed upon application of parent.

Similar plan was discussed by state board of education but not
approved on ground that it might lead to abrogation of the laws on
child-labor and school-attendance.

Missouri. State superintendent of public schools wrote to local officials
April 13, suggesting that they "excuse at once from high school all
boys over 14 years of age who will go to farms and work. Give them
full credit for their year's work at the end of the school year, with the
standing they have at present. Have the boy who gets the credit give
evidence satisfactory to you as to his work on the farm. Include boys
who live in the country and boys who will go to the farm to work.
Extend the same privilege to girls where you deem it advisable."

New York. (Referred to later in this chapter.)

North Dakota. Attorney-general in open letter to school officers, April,
1917, interprets section of school law exempting children from school
attendance in cases of necessity to apply to children of school age
actually engaged in tilling the soil.

State superintendent of schools in open letter to school officials, April,
1917, recommends that schools should not open earlier than October 1,
with a spring vacation of four or five weeks, and that the school be

kept open through June and July when there is less and cheaper farm
work to do. "This would make available, and with a minimum loss of
school time, some 5000 of the older boys at a time when labor is
scarce and wages are high."

Pennsylvania. State board of education, April 19, issued circular letter
stating that farm and garden work should be considered valid excuse
for absence from school, and for children 12 and over in good standing
such work should be credited in lieu of school attendance.

New Jersey. State board of education sent out a circular letter to
superintendents and principals in which it was stated that credit
towards graduation might be given in place of school work during the
time a pupil was actually engaged in farm work as a member of the
Junior Industrial Army, or while called out in the service of the state or
of the nation as a member of its organized military forces. (Boys and
girls over fourteen years of age are allowed to enroll in the Industrial
Army in the agricultural or home-garden or the girls' service division.)

Possibly no great harm was done by the action of these state officials and
state boards. Yet the action affords food for thought; and perhaps the best
way to bring about reflection is to pass immediately, without comment, to a
quotation taken from the London Times of July 19, 1917,—a quotation
which gives a picture of the end of the road on which some of us in this
country started in the spring of 1917.

The reply, last week, of Herbert A. L. Fisher, Minister of Education, to
a deputation of the Committee on Wage-earning Children was
sympathetic and not merely a common-form shelving of the issue. The
deputation asked for legislation restricting the labor of school children
out of school hours. The extent of the evil was indicated by the
deputation, but it is doubtful if even the educational public know how
widespread and deleterious it is. On October 5, 1915, we pointed out
that nearly half a million children between the ages of 12 and 14 years
were receiving no education, or no education worth having, and that all
of these were at work which led nowhither at the very age when their
moral and physical development was at stake. Since then the
conditions which we condemned have passed from bad to worse.

Many thousands of children under the age of 12, under the ages of
even 10 and 11, are at work, and willingly at work, since the younger
the child, the more readily it responds to the demand for helpfulness.
Mr. Fisher cannot but realize the evil of this exploitation of young
children by parents and tradesmen. It is an evil affecting not only the
efficiency of school life but our whole economic system. There never
was an economic need for this child labor, and the Board of Education
admitted in their circular to local authorities last week that there is no
economic need in rural districts for such labor even now. This circular
was a letter from the National Service Department and dealt with the
pressure on education authorities in rural areas to release boys and
girls under 12 for service on the land. The letter definitely states that,
in view of the labor released from the army and the number of women
now available, "it would appear that there should be no necessity for
such a serious interruption as is contemplated of the education of the
nation's children."

This should suffice to determine the policy of the rural-education
authorities. But the position in towns is even more urgent, and Mr.
Fisher and the government might give additional powers to local
authorities to deal with the labor of children in full-time school
attendance. It was certainly a mistake in the legislation of 1913 to
make it possible for the street trading of such children to receive
official recognition. But street trading is not the chief cause of anxiety.
Another is the employment of little children by shopkeepers and
distributing agencies before school, in the dinner interval, and after
school. The local authorities should be empowered to forbid all
employment for wages of children under 12 and to restrict within very
narrow limits the employment of children at school under 14.

Naturally Mr. Fisher must not overburden or imperil his bill, or
interfere with the labor necessary for the war. He cannot be expected to
change the face of England in a moment. But he can strike deep
without disturbing the organization of society. He can transform from
below by ameliorating the conditions of very young children. The
country is ready now for changes that seemed Utopian two years ago.
By means of nursery schools the nation is dealing at last with the raw

material that is to be the England of to-morrow. The same principle
should be followed in the case of children between the ages of 6 and
12 years. The physical welfare of these children is of the first
importance. Yet between these ages thousands, through the carrying of
heavy weights and other means of over-strain, are receiving life-long
physical injury. All efforts for educational reform are being balked by
their employment. The elaborate scheme of the Half-Time Council,
which was reported in our last issue, depends, as indeed practically all
of the reform schemes and Mr. Fisher's own proposals depend, on the
physical efficiency of the children. The deputation asked that provision
should be made for the education of children abnormally employed
during the war.

Out of all the literature which has been put forth on the relationship of
children to industry in war time it would appear that Dr. Claxton, United
States Commissioner of Education, most adequately states the fundamental
principles, in his circular letter to the educational authorities of the country
issued in June, 1917. Portions of his letter bear directly upon employment
of children in time of war. Other portions are closely related to statements
in other chapters. It is well worth quoting in full:

It is of the utmost importance that there shall be no lowering in the
efficiency of our systems of education. Schools and other agencies of
education must be maintained at whatever necessary cost and against
all hurtful interference with their regular work except as may be
necessary for the national defense, which is, of course, our immediate
task and must be kept constantly in mind and have right of way
everywhere and at all times. From the beginning of our participation in
the war we should avoid the mistakes which some other countries have
made to their hurt and which they are now trying to correct.

If the war should be long and severe, there will be great need in its
later days for many young men and women of scientific knowledge,
training, and skill; and it may then be much more difficult than it is
now to support our schools, to spare our children and youth from other
service, and to permit them to attend school. Therefore no school
should close its doors now or shorten its term unnecessarily. All young

men and women in college should remain and use their time to the
very best advantage, except such as may find it necessary to leave for
immediate profitable employment in some productive occupation or
for the acceptance of some position in some branch of the military
service, which position cannot be so well filled by anyone else. All
children in the elementary schools and as nearly as possible all high-
school pupils should remain in school through the entire session.

When the war is over, whether within a few months or after many
years, there will be such demands upon this country for men and
women of scientific knowledge, technical skill, and general culture as
have never before come to any country. The world must be rebuilt.
This country must play a far more important part than it has in the past
in agriculture, manufacturing, and commerce, and also in the things of
cultural life—art, literature, music, scientific discovery.

Russia and China are awakening to new life and are on the eve of great
industrial development. They will ask of us steel, engines, and cars for
railroads, agricultural implements, and machinery for industrial plants.
They will also ask for men to install these and to direct much of their
development in every line. England, France, Italy, and the central
empires have thrown into battle a very large per cent of their educated
and trained men, including most of the young professors and
instructors in their universities, colleges, and gymnasia, lycées, and
public schools. Their colleges and universities are almost empty. The
young men who would under normal conditions be receiving the
education and training necessary to prepare them for leadership in the
future development of these countries are fighting and dying in the
trenches. All these countries must needs go through a long period of
reconstruction, industrially and in many other respects. Our own
trained men and women should be able and ready to render every
possible assistance. It should be remembered that the number of
students in our universities, colleges, normal schools, and technical
schools is very small as compared with the total number of persons of
producing age—little more than one half of 1 per cent. The majority of
these students are young men and women who are becoming more
mature and fit for service. The older of the 60,000,000 men and

women of producing age are growing more unfit and are passing
beyond the age of service. It should also be remembered that the more
mature the young men who volunteer for service in the army, the more
valuable their services will be.

Therefore a right conception of patriotism should induce all students
who cannot render some immediate service of great value to remain in
college, concentrate their energies on their college work, and thus be
all the more ready and fit when their services may be needed either for
war or for the important work of reconstruction and development in
our own and other countries when the war shall have ended.

All schools, of whatever grade, should remain open with their full
quota of officers and teachers. The salaries of teachers should not be
lowered in this time of unusual high cost of living. When possible,
salaries should be increased in proportion to the services rendered.
Since the people will be taxed heavily by the federal government for
the payment of the expenses of the war, teachers should be willing to
continue to do their work, and do it as well as they can, as a patriotic
service, even if their salaries cannot now be increased. All equipment
necessary for the best use of the time of teachers and students should
be provided, as should all necessary increase of room, but costly
building should not be undertaken now while the prices of building
material are excessively high and while there are urgent and unfilled
demands for labor in industries pertaining directly and immediately to
the national defense. Schools should be continued in full efficiency,
but in most instances costly building may well be postponed.

During school hours and out of school, on mornings, afternoons,
Saturdays, and during vacation all older children and youth should be
encouraged and directed to do as much useful productive work as they
can without interfering with their more important school duties. This
productive work should be so directed as to give it the highest possible
value, both economically and educationally. For children and youth in
schools of all grades there will be need of more effective moral
training, and provision should be made for this. While the war for the
safety of democracy is in progress, and when it is over, there will be

greater need for effective machinery for the promotion of intelligent
discussion of the principles of democracy and all that pertains to the
public welfare of local communities, counties, states, and the nation.
To this end every schoolhouse should be made a community center and
civic forum with frequent meetings for the discussion of matters of
public interest and for social intercourse.

One phrase in Commissioner Claxton's letter is especially significant. It is
This productive work should be so directed as to give it the highest possible
value, both economically and educationally. In this whole question of
children and industry in war time, we are brought face to face with several
facts. The first is that industry, both agricultural and manufacturing, will
demand the services of children. Second, that organizations like state and
national child-labor committees, which have fought for the welfare and
development of American children, will continue to oppose all attempts to
break down the school system through relaxation of the enforcement of
compulsory-education laws, or to break down the labor laws either by
giving young children special permits to work or by exempting certain
establishments from the laws limiting hours of labor. Third, that the
children themselves will desire to work rather than go to school. The
comparatively high wages which will exist during a war emergency will
call them as can no course of study. Fourth, that families whose earning
member or members are off to war, and who feel in addition the higher cost
of living, will look upon their children as being a possible added source of
income. And fifth, that school authorities will thus stand amidst half a
dozen fires. Some will back against the wall and say: "I don't believe in
closing the schools," "Under no conditions will the child-labor laws in this
state be relaxed," "The war hysteria makes me enforce child-labor laws
more vigorously than ever," "Children have plenty of time to garden after
school." Others will, under pressure, lose their heads, and shut their eyes to
the fact that children are working illegally. Some may seek for a
"reasonable excuse," and they can find plenty of such excuses by referring
to the action in England. Still others will go on peacefully without thought
or action one way or the other. But the rest, and it is to be hoped that their
numbers are legion, will try to discover some means of making this
emergency count in an educational way. Here are some of the factors which
enter into the situation.

In the first place, children like to work, that is, outside of school, and these
work impulses of youth ought to be organized to contribute to the educative
process. It is readily enough granted that they have not been in the past. In
fact, these work impulses have been exploited for private gain. Now, on
account of the war, they are aroused to a high pitch, and we ought to be able
to organize them in connection with the new work opportunities for higher
economic efficiency as well as for higher social efficiency.

In the second place, it is doubtful whether we can much longer continue the
policy of increasing the regular attendance of youth at school without
giving some consideration to the educative value of labor. The educative
process taken in its largest sense goes on for twenty-four hours a day. It
concerns health, character, mental capacity, citizenship, and useful work. To
most people the educative process merely centers around the schoolhouse,
and such think of education in terms of schooling. To them, to increase the
number of years that youth is obliged to go to school is to increase the
number of years given over directly to the educative process. But the child
goes to school for about five hours a day for five days in the week for about
thirty-six weeks in the year, and in this time he deals largely with books;
and many find it a reasonable excuse, because they are "going to school"
and "getting an education," to avoid any useful work. Now some kinds of
work are wholesome and educative. Most farm work comes in the class of
useful and profitable employment. When the hours are not too long and the
factories and stores are sanitary and the pay is reasonable, work in these
places may be profitable to youth. Because this is not always the case is no
reason why we should not attempt to make it so.

It would seem that educators now occupy a strategic position from which
they may exert a tremendous influence in the direction of standardizing the
work of juveniles in terms of the deepest social significance, and a good
start in this direction may be made in meeting the war emergency. The
subject is so large and the previous discussion of it so limited that we have
not very much background on which to work, and it is not advisable at this
time to do more than merely hint at some possible procedures.

First, why not have the rural schools for children up to 12 years of age open
early in September and close the first of August, and make provision for

stopping the school work of the youngest children during the winter months
in those parts of the country where it is difficult for them to reach school?
Why not organize classes in dandelion digging, berry picking, currant
picking, and even, once in a while, weeding, by having a series of field and
harvesting days under the direction of the school teacher with the
coöperation of the parents? Why not have able-bodied boys in these rural
schools released from book work in April and remain out of school until the
first of November, and then require them to attend school faithfully for six
days a week during the rest of the year? Why not have the boys between 14
and 16 drop out of school in June and July to pick small fruits and berries
and to work in vegetable gardens? Under certain conditions, in regions
where such service can be used,—which is not often,—they might stay out
in September to pick fruits and gather small crops.

Of course it is to be expected that the answer to all of these questions will
be a most emphatic No. Yet they have not been set up primarily because the
farmer tells us that he needs labor, but rather because it is felt that boys
need labor; that is, useful labor.

Second, why not devise in cities a scheme of part-time education for youths
between 14 and 18 years of age who will be needed in the war emergency
in factories and stores, as well as for youths who need useful labor as a part
of the educative process? If the war falls heavily upon us in America, we
shall find that these children will go anyway. We shall find that the male
teachers who teach them will be drafted. We may even find—although it is
hoped not—that the school buildings will be taken over for military
purposes. But I am not thinking particularly of war needs. I am thinking of
child needs. England proposes to reintroduce into the school system
children who are now abnormally employed in the war. It further proposes
to develop out of its war experience, on a large scale, the part-time and
continuation-school idea. It is reported that in France a part-time and
continuation-school bill will be introduced in 1918.

Now why not take hold of this whole matter of juvenile employment in a
constructive way? As long as war is upon us we have better opportunity
than ever of passing through the legislature part-time and continuation-
school measures. We have at the same time, out of all the experience of

England, every opportunity to formulate laws for the employment of
juveniles in a way which will not break down the educative process, but
will rather build it up; and above everything else we ought to enforce
strictly all child-labor and compulsory-education laws which we have on
the statute books. We may modify them, if we will, to meet war
emergencies, if it appears absolutely necessary, but better than that, we may
reconstruct them in the interests of the educative value of labor when
combined with proper rules and regulations relative to the employment of
children.

Furthermore, why not find some way of bringing agriculture into the
educative process of the city boy? Would it not be a good idea to establish
country branches for city schools, providing for the older boys a winter
course of study in the science of agriculture, together with the ordinary
academic branches of secondary-school education, followed in the spring
by practice in an agricultural training camp? Later on in the season they
would go out to work individually or in groups for farmers. (See chapter on
"Farm Cadets.") The older of these boys would make admirable assistant
teachers and supervisors for the younger group of 14-year-old to 15-year-
old boys who would be sent to these camps after schools had closed. We
cannot much longer avoid the question of bringing agriculture to the city
boy or, rather, taking the city boy to agriculture; and the past summer's
experience with city boys working on farms brought forcibly to our
attention the advantages of a closer relationship between city children and
country life.

Mention has been made of the modification in 1917 of the school-
attendance law of New York State. Three sections of the act by which these
modifications were made are quoted in full, as they represent legislative
action as well as discretionary powers of the state educational official.

Section 1. The provisions of Art. XXIII of the education law, relative
to the compulsory education of children, may, in the discretion of the
Commissioner of Education, be suspended for the period between the
first day of April and the first day of November of each year, or any
portion thereof, during the time that this act shall remain in effect, for
the purpose of aiding and performing labor in the cultivation,

production, and care of food products upon farms and gardens within
the state. Such suspension shall be subject to such conditions,
restrictions, and limitations as may be imposed by the Commissioner
of Education, and shall be subject to rules and regulations to be
prescribed by him. In case of such suspension, provision shall be made
for the welfare and protection of the children affected thereby, and
during the period of such suspension and while engaged in such work,
they shall be under the supervision and direction of the school
authorities of the city or district in which they reside....

Section 4. A pupil in the public schools or in any state school or
institution who is relieved from school work and is engaged
satisfactorily in agricultural service during the present school year
shall be given credit for the work of the present term without
examination, on the certificate of the person in charge of such school
or institution that his work therein up to the time of engaging in such
service is satisfactory. A pupil in such school or institution who
engages in such service during the present school year shall not incur
any loss of standing or credit on account of such service. All pupils in
public schools who are candidates for college-entrance diplomas or
other credentials to be issued to them at the close of the present school
year shall be granted such diplomas or credentials on the certificate of
the principal of the school that their work up to the time of engaging in
such service is satisfactory. The Regents of the University shall make
rules for the purpose of giving credit to pupils in the public schools
who have been in attendance at school during the present school year
and who have left the schools for the purpose of rendering agricultural
or industrial service.

Section 5. The Commissioner of Education shall cause appropriate
certificates or badges to be prepared and issued to pupils in the schools
of the state who shall perform satisfactory agricultural or industrial
service under rules and regulations of the Commissioner of Education.

It will be noted that the compulsory-attendance law was suspended only
between certain periods and at the discretion of the Commissioner of
Education, and for the sole purpose of permitting children to labor in the

cultivation, production, and care of food products upon farms and gardens
within the state.

This bill did not authorize the employment of girls in general domestic
service. No provision of the labor law was repealed, suspended, or
modified, and the provisions of the labor law relating to the employment of
children in canneries or in any factory or mercantile establishment still
remain in force. It is true that a bill suspending temporarily in whole or in
part, at the discretion of the Industrial Commission, provisions of the labor
law in relation to any employment in the state passed the two legislative
bodies, but this was wisely vetoed by Governor Whitman.

It will be further noticed that the children thus employed within the dates
mentioned are to be under the supervision and direction of the school
authorities in the city or district in which such children reside. The
Commissioner of Education thereupon issued certain regulations relating to
children who might be employed within the compulsory school ages. A
brief summary follows:

Boys only, 15 years of age and above, residing in cities.

Boys only, 14 years of age and above, residing elsewhere than in a city.

Girls, 14 years of age, and above, residing outside of cities, may work
at home in the district in which such girls reside, or at a place
sufficiently near such girls' homes as to afford supervision by their
parents.

No child shall be employed or permitted to work on farms and gardens
until such child shall obtain a farm-garden permit.

No child shall receive a farm-garden permit who does not present to
the issuing officer the written consent of his parent or guardian and
who is not found to be physically competent to perform the labor
proposed.

In the chapter on "Our Colleges and Technical Institutes" reference was
made to resolutions of the Board of Regents and to the fact that the State

Education Department formulated a plan for enlisting and placing high-
school boys on the farms, for directing and supervising the work of such
boys, and for the adjustment of school credits. With this resolution in mind
the Commissioner of Education sent out, on April 16, the following letter to
all school superintendents and school principals of the state.

To meet the present national emergency, the New York State Education
Department, after careful consideration, issues the following
regulations concerning matters that vitally affect the interests of the
pupils of the secondary schools of the state.

1. The June Regents' examinations will be given as previously
announced for all pupils who remain regularly in school and also for
pupils who may enlist for service and who wish to take the
examinations and are situated so that they can do so. For the latter
class the time requirement will be waived.

2. Announcement is made to all the schools of the state that any pupil
who enlists for military service or who enlists for and renders
satisfactory agricultural or industrial service will be credited with the
work of the present term without examination on the certificate of the
school that his work up to the time of enlistment is satisfactory.

3. Candidates for college-entrance diplomas who are in the graduating
class of 1917 will be granted the diploma on certificate of the principal
that their work up to the time of enlistment is satisfactory. The average
standing will be computed on the basis of the examinations already
passed.

4. Appropriate certificates will be prepared to be issued to those pupils
in the schools who shall enlist for agricultural or industrial service and
who shall present satisfactory evidence of such service.

5. That all other questions regarding conditions affecting the 1918
high-school class be held in abeyance to await developments.

It is believed that principals, teachers, and pupils in all secondary
schools of the state will appreciate the vital importance of prompt

action in the present crisis and that each will esteem it a privilege to
"do his bit" for the common good.

As soon as the schoolboys of the state knew of this letter, they all seemed to
hear very suddenly of jobs on farms, but some, rather unfortunately, failed
to continue to hear this call when the end of the school year came and they
could no longer receive school credit for work on the farm because, of
course, school had closed. It being likely that there would be the same
general tendency for the boys to discover work on farms about the first of
September when the schools open, it was thought well to have a clear
understanding of the conditions of release of boys for farm work in the fall.
Of course a great many boys were out of school during May and June and
continued to work all summer on individual farms or in camps with other
boys, but "slackers" wanted to stop as soon as they received their school
credit, and the same slackers might be just as slack in returning to school,
hence the following letter issued by the Commissioner of Education on
August 11, 1917:

To Superintendents, Principals, and Boards of Education:

In answer to many inquiries as to releasing boys for farm service this
fall, and in response to the appeal of the Food Supply Commission,
which states the imperative need of such labor as the youth of this state
can give in harvesting the crops, I would urge the educational
authorities of the state in those sections where the need exists to make
all possible provision for the special tuition of those pupils who may,
under the labor laws of the state and the compulsory-education laws,
legally engage in such service. Such special instruction, either after
hours or in holiday periods, may be the special patriotic contribution of
some teachers to meet the need which seems at present to demand
whatever coöperation the school authorities can give. This will be most
easily arranged by limiting the enlistments, as far as possible, to the
upper classes, and by arranging for work in relays, so that the period of
absences may not be unnecessarily long. We ought not to remit in the
slightest our educational requirements and disciplines, nor take
children or youth out of the educational processes, but we ought to do
all that we can, on the other hand, to make it possible for the boys of

proper age and strength to perform this service when it is of real public
necessity.

The department, wishing to coöperate to this end, makes the following
determination, effective until November 1, 1917:

The time of study requirements for admission to the Regents'
examinations, in January and June, 1918, may be waived in the case of
any pupil who presents evidence that

a. He was regularly registered in school at or near the beginning of the
term in September, 1917. (Boys already at work at a distance from the
school may, with the permission of the local principal, register by
mail.)

b. He was released by the principal from school for agricultural
service.

c. He was actually and satisfactorily engaged in needed agricultural
service while absent from school.

This privilege should be interpreted conservatively. School authorities
should excuse pupils from this service only where the need is urgent
and where it is possible to maintain such supervision that certificate of
the facts can be made from certain knowledge.

During the summer and fall of 1917, schoolboys from Maine to California
responded to the nation's call for increased food production. Other seasons
of scarcity of labor, with the shortage of farm and garden products and
resultant high prices, are doubtless before us. Indeed, we are told that for
five years at least we are to continue to feel the stress of labor shortage due
to war and other conditions. The United States Boys' Working Reserve,
through state councils of defense and state and national departments of
labor and agriculture, will continue to issue proclamations calling upon
youth to serve the nation. Legislatures will pass or amend laws permitting
absences from school for industrial and farm service. State educational
officials will issue edicts interpreting legislative action. Schools will devise
methods of giving school credit for useful service. Boys will again leave

school to earn and serve. Parents will continue to speak with pride of the
earning of their lads or complain about their treatment. Farmers will recall
their first experiences with city boys. Everything will center about products,
laws, rules, school credits, and dollars.

Few of us will think of the deeper significance of what is behind. We shall
hardly realize that the law-makers have thought only of a possible increase
of acreage under cultivation, or increased production in factories; that the
farmers and the manufacturers had visions merely of good labor at a low
figure; that the parents saw only an opportunity for a "change for the boy";
that the boy had in mind only a spending account and release from school.

We shall forget our unscientific experiments, the light handling and selfish
exploitation we have given to that wonderful possession of youth—the
work impulses. And the question we should ask ourselves is, What
educational justification have we for this service which the boys have
rendered?

CHAPTER VII

ORGANIZED BOY POWER VS. MILITARY
DRILL

The war has already brought about drastic economic changes in Europe.
The recall of men from the trenches to perform a more useful professional
and industrial service behind the lines has demonstrated the importance of
the supporting civilian army. From the viewpoint of the individual, nothing
can equal the supreme sacrifice of a life. "What good," wailed a Yiddish
woman on the East Side of New York City, "is a free country to me if my
Abie is killed?" But in the judgment of the nation the garment worker, Abie,
who is drafted into service in the army is of no greater value than his friend
the skilled machinist who is allowed to remain in his present occupation.
The military exemptions of men in European armies, the adoption of the
selective draft in the United States, are acknowledgments of the equality of
the military and the civilian occupations indispensable to military activity.
To include in our educational law such a recognition, adopting a measure
permitting the substitution of types of vocational training for military
training, is but to follow the lead of the national government in declaring
such exemptions a military necessity. New York State has made a beginning
in this direction.

In 1916 the legislature enacted the so-called "Welsh-Slater" bills, making
military and physical training compulsory in the secondary schools of the
state for boys above 16 and under 19 years of age. Such military training is
to aggregate not more than three hours each week between September first
of each year and June fifteenth of the next. The law further provides, within
the limits of appropriation, for the establishment of military camps with
attendance of from two to four weeks. While the operation of these camps
and, indeed, the introduction of military drill, have been imperfectly carried
out, owing to the lack of suitable state appropriation to carry on the work on

the necessary and large scale for a working-boy and schoolboy population
of 240,000, it is the intention of the Military Training Commission to insist
on the requirements of the law.

The law as passed in 1916 contained a significant clause relative to the
excusing of boys exempted by the Military Training Commission. It was
felt by the critics of the bill that, although the law requiring military and
physical training was a movement in the right direction, it left much to be
desired. The ambiguous word "exemptions" is one subject to fine
distinctions. Furthermore, it was felt that the law was essentially one of
discrimination. The schoolboy of 16 to 19 was in an exclusive military
class, set apart, in his capacity to be trained for national service, from the
employed boy of the same years.

It is not easy to justify the selection of the high-school pupils of the state as
the only young people who shall be the recipients of military training. The
report of the New Jersey commission appointed to study military training in
its relation to high schools covers this point admirably.

The duty of the common defense is one which belongs properly to all
who are physically capable, and none should be deprived of the
opportunity of qualifying himself, if such opportunity is offered to any,
to perform this duty effectively. It cannot be claimed that the boys of
the high schools are exceptional, and that they are the only ones who
can receive this instruction profitably. If there is any advantage in it,
all boys equal in age and physique to high-school boys can receive it
with equal probability of profit. If it is claimed that the reason for
providing this instruction for the high schools is that the pupils can
best afford the time for it, it must be answered that very many of these
derive an income from labor out of school hours which enables them
to attend school. These are as worthy of exemption from military
instruction as those who leave school because they lack the ambition to
continue their education, or because they are compelled to do so by
circumstances. Whether this instruction is compulsory or optional with
pupils of the high schools, if required or offered at all, it should apply
to all boys, out of school as well as in school, of prescribed ages and
strength.

Military training and service, if they are necessary, are obligations of
citizenship, not of education alone.

It is difficult to contemplate with satisfaction or even complacency the
social cleavage which is bound to result from a system of military
instruction which is applied to high-school pupils and not to other
boys. To assign or reserve the privilege, or duty, or obligation, however
it is regarded, of preparing to fight for the country to the better-
educated class is just as repugnant to democratic ideals as was the
practice in days long gone by of leaving it to the nobility. To select
high-school pupils for this training is open to the same objection as
would be a plan of selecting adults for actual military service solely on
the basis of their occupations or professions—a plan which would
receive no consideration.

Military authorities admit that the fundamental aim of every form of
military training must be to cultivate physical health and strength. As
Dr. George Fisher, secretary of the Physical Department, International
Committee, Y.M.C.A., and a member of the New York State Military
Training Commission, puts it, "In the training camps in England it
takes a full year to get the men in condition after they enlist. England's
experience in this war indicates that the big problem is not primarily
the training of the men on military tactics or drill, but conditioning the
men. Therefore the lesson to us should be to discover what methods
can best be used to put and keep men in good physical condition."

If any evidence of the accuracy of this opinion were needed, it is
necessary only to consult the records of the United States War
Department. The following table shows the number of applicants for
enlistment in the United States army, furnished by the several
recruiting districts, together with the number accepted or rejected in
said districts, fiscal years ending June 30, 1911 to June 30, 1915:
Accepted Rejected
Total
Number of Per cent Per cent
Applicants Number of total Number of total
applicants applicants
Total for five years 747,704 157,043 21 590,661 79

In order, therefore, that all citizens may be properly trained and
prepared to perform effectively all their duties, no matter what they
may be, we recommend and strongly urge that the necessary steps be
taken to provide for all the schools of the state a complete and
thorough system of physical training. This system should be
compulsory for all pupils, and should include carefully selected
exercises adapted to the different ages of pupils, and designed to
protect their health, stimulate bodily functions, and promote physical
strength. It should apply to all girls as well as boys. It should aim to
prevent bodily abnormalities or deformities, or to correct them if they
are found to exist. It should include personal and community
sanitation, first aid in emergencies, bandaging, and all forms of
instruction in personal safety. It should encourage outdoor activities. It
should provide abundant games for all pupils in which group activities
are prominent, and in which appeal may be made to the spirit of
competition. It may include those features of military drill which
properly serve the purposes of physical training, but which must be
regarded as subordinate to these purposes. It may even include practice
with the miniature or the service rifle, if such practice is regarded as
necessary to develop steadiness of nerve, bodily control, and accuracy
of sight. In the case of such exercises the educational error does not lie
in their use, but in the exaggerated military purpose which they are
made to serve. All the features and exercises of the thorough course of
physical training which we recommend should be intimately connected
and interrelated, on the one hand with the moral or character-forming
instruction of the schools and on the other with the complete
provisions for medical inspection which have already been made
compulsory by law.

Now boy service should be democratic. The exemptions, whatever they are,
must be made on a basis of the equality of the schoolboy and the boy
engaged in wage-earning. A boy should not be excused from his rightful
preparedness training because he happens to be employed as a bell boy in a
metropolitan hotel. Such work is not industrially productive, nor could any
devised system of military equivalents make it a substitution for personal
contribution to national preparedness.

In the spring of 1917 the legislature amended the law to include all boys—a
drafting of the boy power of the state in much the same way that the
European nations in conflict make provisions for the full utilization of man
power. An additional amendment, as stated in chapter 49, Laws of 1917,
reads:

Such requirement as to military training may, in the discretion of the
commission, be met in part by such vocational training or vocational
experience as will, in the opinion of the commission, specifically
prepare boys of the ages named for service useful to the state, in the
maintenance of defense, in the promotion of public safety, in the
conservation and development of the state's resources, or in the
construction and maintenance of public improvement.

The commission was given power to establish a bureau of vocational
training. This, through careful inspection of the work of boys of the ages
named in industrial, commercial, and agricultural pursuits, will determine
the types of vocational training or vocational experience which, in the
opinion of the commission, specifically prepare boys for service useful to
the state.

Such a bureau would, under normal conditions, appoint a few inspectors
and investigators to study conditions in order that carefully laid plans might
be made for carrying out the provisions of the amendment. But war
emergency in the matter of food supply gave the Military Training
Commission an opportunity to organize at short notice one branch of
military-equivalent service, that is, the farm-cadet unit, and it extended an
offer of assistance to the Food Supply Commission to organize farm-cadet
bureaus in each of the six military zones of the state. Through these the
Military Training Commission has been useful in placing boys upon farms,
and in following up such farm service with a view not only to determining
its merit as an equivalent or partial equivalent for military service but also
(with the coöperation of church and business organizations, the Y.M.C.A.,
and the Boy Scouts) to giving the task which these boys have been doing on
the farms its proper place in relation to the physical, mental, and social
ideals which lie outside the hard and often unfamiliar round of field work.

Important as this farm-cadet service has been in the matter of looking
toward increased production, a more significant work to be developed by
the Bureau of Vocational Training is that of interpreting the spirit and
purpose of the amendment already referred to, which states that provisions
for the military-training requirement may be met in part by certain types of
vocational training or vocational experience. The whole program of
physical, military, and vocational training is most significant, wholesome,
and far-reaching. It is a program of universal training which will be
serviceable for war and peace alike—a program which will require every
boy to prepare himself to offer some service in case of need, and which
stamps that service as equally patriotic with the narrower military service in
which most of the world's supreme valors have been recorded. As John
Finley, Commissioner of Education in New York State and one of the
members of its Military Training Commission, puts it:

In this amended law we have a program providing, on the one hand,
for the defensive training of the soldier and, on the other hand, for the
effective mobilization of the resources of the nation in training boys
for vocations—which training of itself exalts and identifies as patriotic
service all the effective activities of our everyday life. It is a
constructive provision for what would have to be done otherwise in
time of need through exemptions.

England has had to reach such a program through an exempting
provision in her plan of coöperative service. France has had to come to
it by taking men from the front for service behind the lines. Germany
is finding it necessary, in the midst of war, to organize her entire man
power.

It is most important that this vocational training or experience should be
conscious service. The boy who offers it must clearly understand why it is
accepted in part for the required military drill. To fail to inform him is to
take from his military equivalent the educational value given it by the law.

Dr. Finley, in his inimitable way, expresses this conscious service as it
might apply to an adult loyal citizenship:

I make this idea graphic to myself by thinking that every man has an
imaginary uniform (as every German soldier and French soldier had in
waiting his green-gray or his blue and red uniform), an imaginary
uniform of his own measurements always in readiness in home or shop
or office or in some public locker, that he may don at call of his
community, state, or nation, or perhaps at world need, when under
compulsion he goes to vote, to pay his taxes, to fight against
dishonesty, inefficiency, or waste, to inform himself upon public
questions, or upon his public duties, just as one studies tactics in order
to help in his country's defense, or goes to school as an alien to learn
the language and institutions of a new land, or joins his neighbors in
promoting the health of his community, in conserving resources, in
securing means of healthful recreation for children and youth, in
improving the highways—when, in short, he performs any one of a
hundred offices that are required of him as an efficient unit in an
organized society.

Those who oppose military training in the schools will be less critical of its
requirements when they are open to the broader interpretation suggested in
the amendment of 1917. Those to whom the thought of training the young
in the carrying of arms is repugnant may here see the educative value of
universal service. Early in the war Germany discovered that the relation of
industrial to military service is 2.7 per cent; that is, to keep one man in the
field, nearly three men must work in those occupations, industrial and
agricultural, which support the nation at war.5 It is the work of the New
York Military Training Commission to select as a partial military equivalent
such vocational training or vocational experience as will, in the present or
in the future, serve the nation.

What shall the nature of this work be? The decision is to be left to the state
Military Training Commission. It is easy to weed out those occupations
which have no national productive or defensive value, but there will be
difficulty in selecting those vocations which may or may not be military
equivalents, which under war conditions may belong to the work of an
industrial or agricultural army, when in peace they seem entirely separate
from national service. Such an occupation is that of a junior telegraph
operator, which is not of a productive nature, and yet a very necessary

factor in war equipment. The case of a printer's apprentice is less equivocal.
Only in rare cases could his work be accepted as a partial substitute for the
required service.

The problem is not to separate the useful from the useless occupations, but
to discriminate between those which may be called upon to serve the state
and those which have value only to the individual. All the productive and
useful occupations are not socialized; and in selecting those which are
partial equivalents for the required military drill, we have to make a
distinction which has not been hitherto considered in economic
classification of occupations.

To Ruskin's generation his suggestion that Oxford and Cambridge
undergraduates should serve short periods as builders of roads for the
empire seemed little short of fantastic. And yet the turn of time may even
bring about the confirmation of this anomaly.

There is a parallel between the economic substitution for military drill and
what William James in an astonishingly pertinent essay written in 1910
calls the "Moral Equivalent of War."

If there were, instead of military conscription, a conscription of the
whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years a part
of the army enlisted against Nature,... the military ideals of hardihood
and discipline would be wrought into the growing fiber of the
people.... To coal and iron mines, to freight trains, to fishing fleets in
December, to dishwashing, clothes-washing and window-washing, to
road-building and tunnel-making, to foundries and stokeholes, and to
the frames of skyscrapers, would our gilded youths be drafted off,
according to their choice, to get the childishness knocked out of them,
and to come back into society with healthier sympathies and soberer
ideas.... Such a conscription, with the state of public opinion that
would have required it, and the many moral fruits it would bear, would
preserve in the midst of a pacific civilization the manly virtues which
the military party is so afraid of seeing disappear in peace.

A farm camp is not merely a recreational camp, although it may re-create
the city youth in terms of country life. A group of Long Island Food
Reserve Battalion boys with the working impulse strong.

Even hoeing requires special training and was one activity in the pre-
vocational course in agriculture given at the concentration and training
camp for Junior Volunteers of Maine.

Instruction in mechanics, electricity, friction, heat, horsepower, etc.
nowadays centers about an automobile. This work at Wentworth Institute
(Boston, Massachusetts) has a military-equivalent value.

To learn a trade in an essential industry is to enlist in national preparedness.
A corner of a Buffalo (New York) vocational school, teaching plumbing and
steam fitting.

Liberty Hyde Bailey, author and farmer, formerly director of the New York
State College of Agriculture, in a chapter of a recent book on "Universal
Service" expresses in concrete terms a similar thought from the angle of the
open country.

Not of all persons will be required the same duty. What one is, that
shall one give. Society will learn of every man and woman what these
gifts may be. Some day it will be expected that every able person will
report himself, at determined occasions, for definite service, without
pay, in one or more of the following privileges, and other privileges,
under orderly management and recognized public authority:

1. To clean up the earth and to keep it sweet,—streets, roads, paths,
byways, vacant lots, stream banks, woods, fields, and all open, or
public, properties and public works. The clean-up days now becoming

popular are the beginnings. Of course this does not mean that the work
of street-cleaning departments and the like is to be taken over or
interfered with; but there are times for special house cleaning. If every
person felt it devolving on him to help in keeping the earth decent, he
would be likely to exercise a proper restraint in befouling it; and as
charity begins at home, so should his restraint begin on his own
premises, even extending to the parts out of sight of the public.

2. To take part in the construction of halls and premises for community
activities.

3. To aid in the making of beautiful and public places accessible and to
protect them. Every community with a rural environment, and
practically every small city, has a near-by area that could be reserved
and opened by coöperative action of the people,—days set aside when
paths should be made, bridges built, retreats discovered, trees and
streams put in shape, insects destroyed. Such reservations are not
really public until the people volunteer to help in them.

The farther places, the real backgrounds of the race, will some day be
opened as well as reserved, and made of much use to very many
people besides casual visitors and sight-seers. We shall learn how to
project whole counties and cities, and even larger units, into the
making and keeping of them in a way that is not yet visioned. This can
be accomplished as easily as armies can be sent into the field, but it
will require a type of organization at which we have not yet arrived. It
will be worth while to develop public-service armies.

4. To demand the freedom of the earth for its inhabitants, under proper
recognition of vested rights. The conception of the freedom of the sea
has had an interesting evolution,—the escape from the old sea fear, the
long years of piracy, the buccaneers, letters of marque and reprisal,
treaty ports, smuggling, and all the rest; finally has come the demand
of equal opportunities for all and the open door. We must have the
open door to fields and shores, to commanding hills that should not be
exclusive property; find trails and walks and avenues to places the
people ought to know. All this requires exploration, tramps far and

near, maps, propaganda. All scenic parts will be marked. The public
shall know all good places.

5. To protect the products of the earth; and to protect the earth itself.
The products to which I now refer are those not the property of
individuals,—the birds, the beasts, the fish, the vegetation. The bird
sanctuaries now so well accepted are good beginnings, as also the
wild-flower preservation societies, the nature-study groups, and many
others; but the individual is not yet sufficiently impressed with this
feeling in his own action.

To protect the earth is to save its fertility. This is the fundamental
conservation. Not all persons can participate here, but every citizen
can be mindful of the necessity of it and aid in creating public
sentiment. I wait for the coming together of new organizations or
societies that shall have for their purpose the conservation of fertility.
These will be much more than agricultural and rural organizations, and
their work need not be technical or occupational. They may include all
persons, and the discussions and interests may run the range of man's
relation to land.

To leave his piece of earth more productive than when he took it is the
obligation of the good farmer, for there are constantly more persons to
be supported. In the large sense every one of us is a farmer, for the
keeping of the earth is given to the human race. We begin to
understand vaguely what relation the good keeping of the land bears to
national questions.

6. To keep the public health,—to protect it by keeping one's body well,
by taking care to commit no nuisance, to contaminate no source of
public infection, and to lend one's self to participate in the correcting
of abuses.

To be physically fit and uncomplaining is a public duty. Maybe we
shall find ways to demand physical training of the people as effective
as that afforded by military training but without its sinister intentions.

Society will take over unto itself the oversight not only of physical
training and of providing that children shall be well born but also more
and more the oversight of the treatment of disease, as a public
necessity. We shall train the sound to care for the unsound.

7. To come with personal succor as well as with money and goods in
time of flood and disaster, to visit the sick and the afflicted, to relieve
the poor and unfortunate. We shall learn how to organize the vast
resources in men and women who are willing but do not know how,
who are undiscovered and untrained, yet who could be shaped into a
great army of assistance.

8. To respond promptly to the call of societies or groups that act in the
public interest; to participate in the many neighborhood coöperations.

As an illustration of the manner in which a military equivalent may be
determined, an illustration has been taken from some agricultural activities.
Before considering the military equivalent in farm work it is necessary to
give a brief description of the basis upon which the Military Training
Commission will probably work in this matter. The basis, in brief, is the
"man work unit" idea as developed by Dr. George F. Warren, Professor of
Farm Management, New York State College of Agriculture.

A man work unit is the average amount of work accomplished by a man in
ten hours. A horse work unit is the average amount of work accomplished
by a horse in ten hours. For New York conditions, an acre of the following
crops represents the man and horse units indicated below. In a majority of
cases the numbers which follow are based upon cost accounts. In some
instances, where data were limited, the results are more or less an estimate.
Man Horse
Crops
Units Units
6 6 Corn for grain husked from shock (New York method)
3 5 Corn for grain husked from standing stalks (Western method)
5 6 Corn for silage
3 5 Fodder corn
6 6 Sweet corn
10 10 Potatoes
4 5 Field beans

10 10 Cabbage
20 7 Tobacco
15 12 Roots (field beets, mangels, etc.)
2 3 Buckwheat, oats, barley, wheat, spelt, rye, field peas, and mixtures of
these
1 1 Hay for cutting, alfalfa, clover, timothy
2 3 Oat hay, millet, and other grains cured for hay
15 5 Apples, bearing, when cared for in a commercial way
3 1 Apples, bearing, when little or no care is given
15 5 Other tree fruits, bearing
2 1 Fruit not of bearing age
20 5 Berries
3 5 Peas for canning factory
1 1 Seeds (alfalfa, clover, timothy)
3 5 Sorghum
12 6 Cotton
10 to 35 2 to 10 Truck crops

For live stock listed below, the man units and horse units are as indicated.

Man Units Horse Units Crops
15 2 Cows, ordinary dairy (majority grades)
20 2 Cows, pure-bred dairy (majority pure-bred)
15 15 To be added per cow when milk is retailed
2 0.1 Heifers, calves, bulls, steers, and colts when running loose
2 0.1 Steers or other cattle, fattened or only wintered
0.5 0.05 Breeding ewes and bucks (covers work on lambs)
0.2 0.02 Other sheep or lambs, fattened or only wintered
3 0.05 Brood sows (covers work on pigs till weaned)
0.5 0.1 Boars
0.5 0.1 Other hogs raised during the year
0.15 0.02 Hens and other poultry
0.15 0.02 Pullets, etc., raised during the year (covers work on cockerels)
1.0 0.05 Bees, per hive
6 0.0 Day-old chicks per 1000

In order to interpret the man-work-unit idea in terms of the military
requirements of New York State that 16-year-, 17-year-, and 18-year-old
boys are to participate in such military training or as a partial equivalent
may offer farm experience or farm training, it is necessary to translate the
number of hours required for such military instruction into crop values or,
to use the term already understood, man work units.

Since there are 288 days or 41.1 weeks in the required military-training
period (September first to the fifteenth day of June next ensuing), a boy
must drill 123.3 hours. This represents on the average 12.33 man work
units.

For example, if a boy grows 1.2 acres of potatoes or takes entire charge of
.6 acres of berries, including cultivation, picking, marketing, etc., for a
period of one year, he has spent in productive agricultural work the number
of hours required for military drill.
Man Units Military Equivalent
6 2.05 acres corn for grain husked from shock (New York method)
5 2.46 acres corn for silage
6 2.05 acres sweet corn
10 1.233 acres potatoes
4 3.08 acres field beans
10 1.233 acres cabbage
20 .616 acres tobacco
50 .246 acres hops
15 .822 acres roots (field beets, mangels, etc.)
2 6.16 acres buckwheat, oats, barley, wheat, spelt, rye (field peas and mixtures of these)
1 12.33 acres hay per cutting (alfalfa, clover, timothy)
2 6.16 acres oat hay, millet, and other grains cured for hay
15 .822 acres apples, bearing, when cared for in commercial way
3 4.11 acres apples, bearing, when little or no care is given
15 .822 acres other tree fruits, bearing
2 6.16 acres fruit not of bearing age
20 .616 acres berries
3 4.11 acres peas for canning factory
1 12.33 acres seed (alfalfa, clover, timothy)
3 4.11 acres sorghum
10 to 35 1.233 aces truck crops

In the case of live stock a boy can do all the man work necessary in caring
for 6 heifers or 82 hens or approximately one ordinary cow in the time
which another boy may be giving to military training.

The exact military equivalents are shown in the second column.
Man Units Military Equivalent
15 .82 cows, ordinary dairy (majority grades)

20 .616 cows, pure-bred dairy (majority pure-bred)
2 6.16 heifer, calves, bulls, steers, and colts
2 6.16 steers or other cattle, fattened or only wintered
0.5 24.66 breeding ewes and bucks (covers work on lambs)
0.2 61.6 other sheep or lambs, fattened or only wintered
3 4.11 brood sows (covers work on pigs till weaned)
0.5 24.66 other hogs raised during year
0.5 24.66 boars
0.15 82 hens and other poultry
0.15 82 pullets, etc, raised during the year (covers work on cockerels)
0.3 41.1 hives of bees
6 2.05 thousand day-old chicks

Military equivalents as related to farm training or farm experience appear to
be much easier to develop than those concerning mechanical training and
experience, especially where the work of 16-year-old to 19-year-old boys is
concerned.

At the present writing there seems to be on the part of the public no very
clear understanding of the government's policy relative to exemption for
persons who are performing industrial and farm service. If it is difficult to
determine an exemption policy for drafted men, it is very evident that when
boys of 16, 17, and 18 years of age have become industrial drifters and have
not decided upon a vocational career, the determination of a military-
equivalent policy for them is a problem much harder of solution.

Again, a study of boys' occupations reveals the fact that only a very small
proportion of those "above the age of 16 years and not over the age of 19
years" who are at work in our cities are engaged in occupations that will
specifically prepare them for service that has productive or defensive value.
Under the auspices of the Committee on Vocational Help to Minors the
Bureau of Attendance of New York City made an extended survey, during
the summer of 1915, of 5000 children who had left school between the ages
of 14 and 16 and entered industry. Because of the vast amount of labor
involved in tabulating the data that were collected, a random sampling was
made of 150 boys and the same number of girls from each of 5 attendance
districts. The 5 districts were selected to represent as nearly as possible the
general character of the city. Each of these 1500 cases, 750 boys and 750
girls, was given a key number so that when the information was tabulated it

would be possible to identify each case and verify the information. Of the
750 boys 546 were within the ages designated by this statute, 188 were
under 16 years of age and 16 of the boys were 19 years old.

Half of the boys were either errand-messengers, clerks, or office boys.
There were 213 in the errand-messenger service, 107 clerks, and 55 office
boys. Another 100 were either stock boys, wagon boys, or packers and
wrappers. The largest trade group was made up of 14 boys who were
classed as machinists' apprentices, and the second largest trade group, that
of electricians, had but 5 boys.

The departments in which these 750 boys were working indicate the nature
of the employment. There were 265 in offices, 134 in the shop departments
of factories, 165 in shipping and delivery departments, 92 in salesrooms, 35
in stock rooms, 31 in other departments, and 28 cases where the
investigator had failed to secure this information.

A careful study of the work done by each of the 750 boys resulted in the
selection of 32 who seemed to be doing work that might give them the
specific training indicated as essential. The result of this study can be
summarized under the headings of the trades the boys were learning.

Blacksmith. The one boy apprenticed to this trade had been working in
the shop for seventeen months, was earning $13 a week, and was
perfectly satisfied with his work. So he was likely to continue until he
learned the trade.

Brass worker. Of the two boys of this group, one had served twelve
months and the other twenty-four months at the trade. They earned
respectively $5 and $6.50 a week and both intended to remain at the
trade until it was learned.

Carpenter. There were two boys serving as carpenter's helpers. With
one it was simply a temporary position. The other had been working at
the trade for a year, and although he was receiving but $4 a week, he
intended to remain at the trade.

Electrician. Three of the five boys working at this trade had been
employed for over eighteen months as electricians' helpers. The other
two had had four months and two months respectively of such
experience. The five all expressed a determination to remain long
enough to learn the trade.

Ship fitter. The one boy in this group, although out of school over a
year, had been working at the navy yard but two months.

Locksmith. With only ten days' experience this boy was ready to quit.

Machinist. The average time spent by the 14 boys classified as
machinists was less than three and one-half months, and not one of the
group had worked as long as a year. Three were running drill presses, 1
was cleaning the wheels and pipes of a feather-bone machine, 2 were
not employed. Most of these were dissatisfied and looking for other
work. A boy who had been working eleven months on a screwing
machine, 1 who had worked nine months repairing autos, and 1 who
had worked eight months as a machinist's helper—3 out of the 14—
had worked long enough at the trade to know that they liked it, and
expressed the intention of learning the trade.

Plumber. Three of the four boys classified as plumbers' helpers had
worked over a year and a half at the trade, liked the work, and
expected to follow it. The fourth boy was using it as a temporary job.

Solderer. The one boy in this line was dissatisfied with the job and
with his pay.

Sheet-metal worker. The one boy serving as a tin-roofer's helper had
worked for the firm for a year and was perfectly satisfied with all
conditions.

There seem to be 14 of the 750 boys who had been working long enough at
a trade and were sufficiently pleased with the prospects for the future to
make one safe in saying that they would probably complete their
apprenticeship—although this conclusion may not be justified. These 14
were distributed as follows:

Blacksmith 1
Brass worker 2
Carpenter 1
Electrician 3
Machinist 3
Plumber 3
Sheet-metal worker 1
——
Total 14

This study of Mr. Chatfield's shows that not only were very few of the boys
between the ages of 16 and 19 receiving vocational experience that would
train them to be useful to the state in the maintenance of defense or in the
other interests of the state as outlined in the bill, but also boys of these ages
are likely to change their work rather frequently. There were 184 of these
750 boys who had been out of school between three and four years when
this study was made. Of these 184 boys 41 were still working at the job
they first had when they left school, 47 were on the second job, 41 were on
the third job, and 13 had made eight or more changes.

I know of no study which more clearly points out the "blind alleyness" of
the employment of children. However, some of us, including Dr. David
Snedden of Columbia University, feel that a better term than "blind-alley
occupations" would be "occupations involving juvenile employment." To us
the evil of errand-messenger, clerk, or office-boy service is not that boys
wander into or are thrust into a line of work which may be a blind alley, but
rather that no provision is made in the public-school system for giving the
boys a short preparatory training helpful to them in this temporary service,
and that no training which would help them to get out of such work is given
them in the office, store, or factory. If society would frankly recognize that
there are juvenile employments and that boys might well work in them
while they are juveniles and yet be trained through such work, and apart
from such work in continuation schools, to discover themselves and to
prepare themselves for other work, we might develop a constructive
educational program.

This study certainly shows the waste of the boy power of the state and
proves conclusively that there is need for the state to grapple consciously
with the problem of conserving its youth; and when one reads this summary

of an accurate and previously unpublished report, one is led to believe that
William James, John Dewey, Liberty Hyde Bailey, and John Finley are right
in their contention that there should be a mobilization of the boy force of
the state looking toward conservation of the boy power that it may lead into
training for skilled work, into citizenship, into sturdy health, and into right
living.

CHAPTER VIII

RED CROSS AND OTHER COMMUNITY WORK

Thoughtful people are becoming disposed to criticize the present methods
employed in many of our sewing, cooking, and millinery classes. It is felt
that the girls in these classes, through the work which they do, think of
themselves first, last, and all the time. They spend time on embroidery to
cater further to decorative instincts long established by custom without
much thought as to artistic values. They spend half a year making
graduation dresses which they may wear before admiring parents. They
copy the latest fashion in hats without thought as to utility or beauty. They
knit feathery neck pieces and neglect stocking darning. They laboriously
sew by hand articles which had better be made on a machine.

Our girls must learn to think of others than themselves. Their sewing and
millinery must get away from the individual-problem idea. Of course girls
must learn to sew by hand, especially when the home in these days teaches
so little in the way of hand sewing. But after they have learned to sew by
hand, they should not continue to use hand sewing on work that should be
done on a sewing machine. Of course it is wise to train girls to make some
of their own clothing, but to make this clothing without regard to study of
textiles or adaptation to personal needs or the eternal fitness of things is not
in accord with the educational purpose of our schools, which is to train
personal character as well as to develop skill in domestic arts. When the
family hosiery needs darning, and the small children of the family need
clothes, and the schoolgirl needs a middy blouse or a school uniform, it is
unwise to spend so much energy on continuing a type of domestic art which
lacks the socialized appeal necessary to conform with modern social needs
and modern industrial methods.

The teachers of household arts are beginning to see the need for reform.
Many are bringing into the school life such problems as the mending and

darning of the family clothes; cooking school luncheons; managing day
nurseries for babies of working mothers; making table and bed linen for
hospitals; making jams and jellies for charitable societies. Such teachers
have welcomed the opportunity offered by the present war to forward the
new idea of socializing domestic-arts work. They have been impatient of
the dilettante work which they formerly did when their girls practically
wasted hours of school time in making things which could be bought for
less than the cost of materials, to say nothing about the cost of time of the
girls themselves, who are in school but a few years at best—years when
they should be receiving instruction in subjects which have real training
values. These progressive teachers have desired that their girls develop
more speed; that they receive training helpful in meeting the actual trade
conditions in dressmaking and millinery shops; that they learn to work
together on some common problem which all may see is worth while and
for a purpose which is larger than themselves. Red Cross work has given
these teachers the opportunity which they sought. They believe that the Red
Cross work during the war may easily be converted into community work
after the war is over. Hospitals, charity organizations, orphan asylums, and
homes are always with us. The great appeal now, obviously, is Red Cross
work. The permanent appeal is always the need of the home and the
community.

An activity which has been very general throughout the country, as well as
in France and England, has been the voluntary contribution of the work of
women's organizations to the Red Cross Society. The making of hospital
supplies belongs more peculiarly to women than do many forms of war
work, and it is easily incorporated into the sewing courses of our
elementary and secondary schools. A feature that makes it especially
adaptable to schools is the standardization by the present business manager,
under whose direction blue prints, photographs, and written and pictured
specifications have been prepared.

Those of us who are interested in the methods employed in vocational
schools to turn out standard products appreciate the benefit to the girl of
learning to work from well-planned directions and of turning out a product
exactly corresponding to specifications. It is believed that this manner of
doing the work holds an educational value which entitles it to a place in the

sewing course of every school. Both technique and speed elements are
necessary for the condition of need which the Red Cross is meeting. As
pupils are called upon to respond to this demand for quantities of garments
and hospital supplies, as well as for accurately made articles, they will
become trained in speed and accuracy while rendering a distinct service to
their country.

In the state of New York about 3000 girls in sewing classes began work for
the Red Cross on March 1, 1917, under the direction of Anna Hedges
Talbot, state specialist in girls' vocational work; the work being done
voluntarily by both schools and pupils. To obtain materials, arrangements
were first made with local Red Cross chapters; but in many places the lack
of a chapter or its lack of funds prevented the coöperation with the schools,
and material was supplied by liberal contributions from women's clubs,
which realized the necessity of making use of the offer of the girls' services,
thus causing more work to be turned into Red Cross channels than would
have been possible without this financial aid. In organizing the work the
various localities sent an authorized school person, generally the teacher of
household arts, to confer with the Red Cross people as to what articles were
needed and how they should be made, and to bring back to the school
written specifications, paper patterns, and models. In many places the
teachers took a course of instruction under some Red Cross nurse
specifically qualified to give sewing instruction.

In this careful way the schools proceeded, and within six weeks returned
reports to the State Education Department showing that every kind of article
which was needed, from the simplest surgical dressings to the most
carefully finished surgeon's gown, had been made by about 3000 girls
working on an average of one or two hours a week during their regular
school time. That none of this work had to be ripped or done over when it
reached the Red Cross headquarters reflects credit on both girls and
instructors.

One comparatively small sewing class in the vocational school at Mount
Vernon, New York, filled a box for the Belgian Relief, according to Red
Cross specifications, as follows:
18 hot-water-bag covers

54 sheets
36 pillow cases
27 wash cloths
27 pairs of pajamas
36 hospital-bed sheets
9 pairs slippers
9 convalescent gowns
36 pairs socks
18 pairs bed socks
18 bath towels
36 face towels

In addition this class shipped in a few months over 2000 separate articles to
Red Cross headquarters; as, for example,
75 children's dresses
149 tampon bags
224 baby bootees
219 ward shoes
76 hospital nightshirts
62 crocheted trench caps
597 slings
19 petticoats
14 chemises
403 body bandages
42 eye bandages
373 bathing suits
12 air cushions
77 pneumonia jackets
50 bath towels

All the schools of the state inquired if they might go on with this work
when the schools opened in September. Schools which were not able to do
the work in the spring were ready to begin on the first day of school in the
fall. The work, however, has hitherto been neglected except in the
curriculum of schools which have vocational courses, so that only girls
electing domestic arts have had the opportunity of doing it as a part of their
school program, but there is no reason why it should be limited to these
girls. Those who are taking academic courses in high schools—and they
greatly outnumber the vocational students—should have a chance to render
service through the schools. In this connection it is well to say that the
burden of doing productive work in war service should not be limited

entirely to students in vocational courses. It will be a mistake to throw the
burden of useful service upon a special group and in this way help develop
the notion that those who take classical courses have nothing to do but look
on, while those in vocational courses are to do the work.

Voluntary after-school clubs were organized in a great many schools, but no
voluntary work can be systematized or directed so well as courses
incorporated in the curriculum, and it is suggested to the schools of the
country that special Red Cross courses be offered and that all girls be
expected to devote a few hours a week to the work.

The following quotation from Édouard Petit's book "De l' école à la guerre"
on what the normal schools of France are doing ought to be enough to
inspire our American girls.

The girls of the normal schools of France are working very hard,
knitting, sewing, making hospital supplies, in the intervals of their
school work; also acting as laundresses, secretaries, bookkeepers, etc.
They are not old enough to be nurses. In addition to the work for the
armies, they give a part of their time to work for other students. They
are providing for the girl students of the normal schools in the invaded
districts, many of whom were obliged to make long journeys on foot,
clad in summer clothes, with no chance to carry even a change of
clothing with them. The school at Fontenay appealed to the normal
schools for aid for its students; other appeals followed, some from
schools in the districts from which the invaders were driven out. Very
soon in all the normal schools of France girls were cutting and sewing,
providing new garments, or garments from their own supply, to be sent
to the towns in the north of France. Some of these supplies are held in
reserve for the towns that are still to be liberated. One teacher writes:
"Our young girls are glad to come to the aid of their fellow students
who are not known to them but who are coming to seem nearer as I
have them learn about the schools, read the letters that are received,
etc. Anything which makes real and tangible the responsibility of this
friendly help ought to be encouraged."

As the need arises, our secondary-school girls will respond in like
manner.

The preparation needed to initiate Red Cross work in any large way in the
schools of a state is considerable. There is a good deal of organization and
consequent detail connected with it. The domestic-arts teachers of a school
district or county ought to be called together and instructed in the minutiæ
of garment-making and surgical dressings. With the blue prints,
photographs, and written specifications already issued by the Red Cross
headquarters at Washington these teachers could then work out a full set of
directions for each article which would be specific and graphic. These could
be printed by the state printer or, better, by the boys in a vocational school.
In addition, moving-picture reels of processes carried on according to the
most modern methods of workroom procedure could be shown to those who
have not been in contact with present-day modes of work.

In order to excite interest on the part of the community in rural districts
where this work has not as yet penetrated to any extent, moving pictures of
processes of making surgical dressings, pajamas, surgeons' gowns, or
children's dresses could be exhibited as illustrating what other sections of
the state are already doing. These moving pictures could be taken of girls at
work in an up-to-date New York City factory, and the reels could be either
purchased outright or rented from an educational-film company. In
Washington the Department of the Interior has a number of reels which
have been put at the disposal of the Red Cross, and will make more if the
occasion demands. Slides too could be made showing special operations,
special garments, and special methods of arranging work. When public
interest has been aroused at a public meeting in a small center, the school
will find it easy to take up the work and push it forward. The person in
charge of the work would have to keep in constant touch with the Red Cross
headquarters as to the needs for garments and hospital supplies, as well as
to the changes that from time to time have to be made in the kind and
quality of supplies. A chart could be made of the capacity as to equipment
and number of pupils, and the present grade of their working ability, for
each place where a school is located. Brief reports could be sent to a state
director from these schools as to what they could make, when they could
make it, and when specified articles could be finished. Thus there would be
a line out from a central supervisor to each school in the state where pupils
are old enough to do any work of this public-service nature. Along this line

would travel the information as to what was being done and what would be
the next thing to be done.

Knitting by hand is one of the occupations which many girls and women are
taking up. One drawback to hand-knitting is that it takes a good deal of
time, and in the case of socks, at least, the results of amateur work may be
uncomfortable to the wearer. It is suggested that schools put in knitting
machines. One school at Yonkers, New York, has such a machine. It enables
its operator to finish a sock every twenty minutes, or 12 pairs in an eight-
hour day. It is possible to knit wristlets and sleeveless sweaters on these
machines. The Vacation War Relief Committee of New York City has been
responsible for the sale of 980 of these machines, on which over 85,000
pairs of socks have been made during the past year.

A letter written to me by Mettie B. Hills, Director of Girls' Work in Troy,
New York, relative to her Red Cross work is so full of human interest and
gives in such detail the excellent methods which she employed that I quote
it in full. It will serve as suggestive material for other equally enthusiastic
and competent teachers.

My office has been turned into a cutting room. Girls are now at a large
table cutting hospital bed shirts with just as little waste as possible.
Smaller girls are snipping the few waste pieces, and one little girl at
the end of the table is filling a fracture pillow with the snips. In my
machine-sewing room the girls are making hospital bed shirts. Each
girl has a different operation. The shirts move through the cutting room
to this room and from one machine to the next just as they do in a
factory. They finally reach the inspection table, where they are
inspected as they are folded, and an inspection card is placed in the
pocket. They are then piled up for that final inspection which I give
every article before it goes to our stock room. Here we hold all articles
until we have enough to make the moving worth while, and then they
are taken to Red Cross headquarters in the city truck. The chairmen of
each Red Cross division of our local chapter are notified beforehand
that things are coming and they are at headquarters to receive our work
and sign for it. I tell you, it is a big day for all when the school work is
turned in. I hear about it for weeks afterward.

The girls do not stay at one operation. As soon as they are ready, they
are promoted to the next. [And in this connection may I call the
reader's attention to the chapter which brought out the new spirit of
teaching the household arts?]

The little jacket which is hanging in my clothespress is only the
beginning of a big piece of work which I expect to push during the
winter, a piece of work which I believe will do more to standardize the
girls' work than anything we have yet done.

Another room is given over to knitting, and the girls pass from one
type of work to another. We have a teacher from the Red Cross rooms
who is showing the older girls how to make oakum pads. The work is
really fascinating, and fortunately we no longer have to think of the
money for the materials, as the work done in the schools has been of so
much higher standard that the local chapter has voted me $500 in order
that there might be no danger of our stopping the work. I am inclosing
a list of what our schools have done in the past three months.
I. For the Red Cross Society
1. Hospital Supplies
Hospital boots 48
Hospital shoulder wraps 36
Hospital shirts 156
Pajama suits 48
Surgeons' operating gowns 6
Surgeons' operating caps 12
Surgeons' operating helmets 48
Slings 492
1-inch bandages 12
2-inch bandages 13 rolls
2. Surgical dressings 22
Oakum pads 20
Fracture pillows 20
II. For the Soldiers' Welfare League
1. "Housewives" for Second New York Regiment 48
2. "George Washington kits" for Second New York Regiment
3. Neckerchiefs for Second New York Regiment 120
4. Pajama suits 32
III. For the National Navy Comforts League
1. Knitted mufflers for the army and navy 313

2. Knitted sleeveless jackets for the army and navy 25
3. Knitted wristlets for the army and navy 40 pairs
4. Knitted caps for the army, navy, and aviators 2
5. Knitted hospital socks 7 pairs
IV. For the Surgical Dressings Committee (French)
1. Slings
2. Fracture pillows
3. Eye binders
V. For Belgian Relief Committee
1. Kits for small children (full set of clothes)
VI. For National League for Woman's Service (adults)
1. Two commissariat classes
2. Motor classes with 30 enrolled

Of course the Red Cross work need not be limited to girls and women. Boys
under 14 are able to pick over oakum and to do other work that girls of the
same age can do. The older boys can adjust and tend the knitting machines
and pack and deliver the finished product.

Men and women in many of the state institutions will be glad to contribute
a share in service. Thomas Mott Osborne, while warden at Sing Sing,
organized through the Mutual Welfare League a large class of men who
enthusiastically gave up their evening periods of recreation in order that
they might knit for soldiers in foreign fields.

A number of young boys, none over 14, from Troy and Albany orphan
asylums were taken in auto trucks 30 miles into the country to a currant-
producing section, where they picked 5000 quarts of currants which had
been donated to the county Red Cross organization. These currants were
shipped in a refrigerator car 90 miles down the river to Yonkers, New York,
where the girls made them into jelly and currant juice, the sugar being
donated by a local refinery.

Possibly the largest service that boys can render will be the making of Red
Cross splints. As has already been stated in another chapter the Canadian
schoolboys are doing a great deal of this work in connection with their
manual training. An article in a recent issue of the Manual Training
Magazine describes in detail the work of the manual-training centers of
British Columbia. These splints are made merely for first aid, and are used
where it is not necessary that they conform exactly to the contour of the

limbs or body. They are padded a little with cotton or cloth and fitted on the
injured part of the soldier.

A general conception prevails that Red Cross work is limited to battle-field
relief, but it must be remembered that this organization also carries on
civilian relief. It is very likely, as time goes on, that the schools will come
to realize that there is probably no better agency than the Red Cross with
which they can associate themselves in allaying the suffering and relieving
the distress in the community. It must be remembered that the Red Cross is
splendidly organized, with its great central headquarters at Washington, its
division headquarters in larger groups of states, and its local chapters in
every county. There is no activity of the Red Cross which a child cannot
duplicate in its own sphere of life, and the American school may well
become a center of interest in Red Cross work in time of war. One of the
departments already organized is that of Home Service, which exists to help
families maintain their standards of living. School-service work under a
Junior Red Cross has been organized in order to bring the schools into
direct touch with the work. The schools can give lessons in first aid,
elementary hygiene, and home care of the sick, in home dietetics, and in the
preparation of surgical dressings. It can make the necessary supplies for
local soldiers who are in mobilization camps. It can make supplies for the
soldiers' families, especially during the winter months. It can raise money
by means of entertainments of an educational nature, and here opportunities
are often presented to correlate the work with history and English. In short,
during the stress of war, with its rising cost of food, its industrial changes,
its uncertainties in living conditions, with the home often handicapped by
the withdrawal of the chief wage earner, there will be an excellent
opportunity for the school to come in with its aid. The diet of the family,
both in quality and variety, may be improved through the helpful advice of
the teacher of home economics; children who are in need of medical care
may be sent to the dispensary. The Home Service Department suggests that
teachers may do helpful vocational-guidance work; for in the absence of
father and older brothers many a boy and girl can be helped by a teacher's
encouragement to go into occupations where there is a future, where skill
can be acquired, and where there is a chance for advancement.

The following quotation from the London Times of some Red Cross work in
France pointedly illustrates what home and school service in the Red Cross
movement may mean in America.

The most detailed enumeration would hardly exhaust the activities of
education in the common cause—voluntary contributions to the
national funds deducted from the salaries of teachers; liberal
subscriptions from pupils; participation in the collection of gold; the
dispatch of packets to soldiers, and of books to the children of
reconquered Alsace; help given to orphans whom a school or class has
taken under its charge; manual labor on behalf of soldiers at the front,
the wounded, the lame, and prisoners; material or moral assistance to
refugees; a welcome given to all abandoned children, Belgian or
French, in the families of masters or of friends of the school;
correspondence with soldiers at the front, wounded, and prisoners;
attendance at the funeral of soldiers who have died of their wounds;
the public reception by schools, lycées, and universities of colleagues
or old pupils wounded, promoted, or quoted in dispatches; befriending
soldiers who have no family to look after them; the institution of
workrooms for men and women who are out of work; participation in
the celebration of Belgian Day, the Serbian Day, the French Day, the
Day of the 75, the Day of the Orphans, and so on,—tasks which will
have to be continued during the coming school year, because the need
for them will still be present, and doubtless, for some of them at least,
during the years immediately after the war, when the school will still
have before it a splendid opportunity for social service.

Service recognizes no school grading. Girls of the lower grades are
snipping waste pieces for fracture pillows and working with the older girls
who are cutting hospital bed shirts, Troy, New York.

The new spirit of household arts in the schools is based upon the project
plan and community service. War needs create new school practices. Troy
(New York) girls at work on Red Cross supplies.

A country school need not be idle during the summer. This one housed a
group of farm cadets.

Flying squadron leaving camp on an emergency call for berry pickers at
Highland, New York.

President Wilson has honored the school children of our country by a
proclamation dated September 18, 1917, in which he calls upon them to do
their part in the war by joining the Junior Red Cross, thus assisting in the
mercy work of the senior organization. A portion of his message is quoted:

The school is the natural center of your life. Through it you can best
work in the great cause of freedom to which we have all pledged
ourselves.

Our Junior Red Cross will bring to you opportunities of service to your
community and to other communities all over the world, and guide

your service with high and religious ideals. It will teach you how to
save in order that suffering children elsewhere may have the chance to
live. It will teach you how to prepare some of the supplies which
wounded soldiers and homeless families lack. It will send to you
through the Red Cross bulletins the thrilling stories of relief and
rescue. And, best of all, more perfectly than through any of your other
school lessons, you will learn by doing those kind things under your
teacher's direction to be the future good citizens of this great country
which we all love.

Our President is a master of good pedagogy as well as a leader of men, and
he expresses the very best in modern educational thought. He tells the
children to think of their school as the natural center of their lives; to serve
the community in which they live; to reach out through service and study to
the larger world outside; to have behind all action high ideals; to save that
others less fortunate may have; to learn how to do and through doing how
to grow; to learn directly of the world of action while it is in action; to work
with their elders for a common purpose,—the common purpose of being
useful citizens of our great country.

CHAPTER IX

REËDUCATION OF THE DISABLED

In all probability not one person in a hundred ever heard the word
"reëducation" before reading the very recent newspaper accounts of the
government's plans as announced by Surgeon-general Gorgas for
rehabilitating and reëducating the disabled soldiers. We have been in the
habit of seeing blinded and crippled men selling lead pencils at street
corners, and we have given our pity and our penny. We have seen the
wonderful rugs woven by the blind (assisted in the designing and setting up
by people who could see), and we have bought them, impelled by a
sympathetic interest in a charitable cause. We have heard some exceptional
person, who has overcome tremendous physical disabilities, describe her
methods of studying college subjects and competing successfully with those
who are unhandicapped, and we have said "How wonderful!" and stopped
thinking at that point.

As a nation we have failed in our duty to make the physically handicapped
economically self-supporting and normally strong. It is an educational
problem as great as, if not greater than, that of assisting the mental
defective.

Only within two years have the vocational schools of our country even
thought of instructing their pupils in the general principles of safety. Only
since workingmen's compensation laws and industrial insurance have come
into the foreground in legislative halls have public men considered the
appalling need for "safety-first" instruction in factories and in technical
schools.

For the duration of the war our thought of safety appliances for industrial
life in peaceful times sinks into the background, and we think only of
devices for preventing suffocation by poisonous gases, of means of

withstanding liquid fire, of deflectors for bullets and camouflage for
marching troops. But notwithstanding all these precautions, the inevitable
results of war are before us.

The multitude of men who have been injured in the present war is out of all
proportion to the number injured in any war with which history or
experience makes us acquainted, and the fitting of them to be economically
self-supporting is a task of stupendous proportions. For the problem of the
support of these men cannot be met entirely by pensions; even if this were
possible, the man would thus become a dead weight for the rest of the
country to carry, an unenviable position from all points of view. In the case
of the professional man, he may, even if handicapped, carry on his work;
but the man with a trade, when maimed or blinded, must be taught some
other vocation or be provided with some mechanical substitute for his loss
in legs or arms and often with special tools and other apparatus which will
enable him to carry on his former occupation or a new one. It will not be
possible to place all these men as ticket sellers, news vendors, gatemen, and
in other positions hitherto appropriate for the industrially disabled; and our
vocational schools, the medical profession, and the national government
must coöperate in a study of the reëducation of injured soldiers with the aim
of putting them on the pay roll.

On July 31, 1917, announcement was made through the press of the United
States that a government system for the rehabilitation and reëducation of
men disabled in the fighting abroad would be made an adjunct of the
proposed scheme for the federal insurance of soldiers and sailors, and that
the plans for the rehabilitation of these men would probably, like those in
Canada, be modeled after the systems in use in France and England. It is, of
course, part of the government's duty to provide for the future of men
crippled in its service. It is not the province of the several philanthropic
agencies which in the past have commendably endeavored to care for the
blind and the crippled by teaching them the handiworks of weaving, brush-
making, etc. The work must be done on a sound and scientific basis, and be
adjusted to economic conditions on a vast scale such as no philanthropic
society can hope to maintain; that is, it must not be relief work, it must be
governmental constructive work in reëducation which shall teach the

disabled man how to overcome the disadvantage of his infirmity in
reëntering the industrial world.

To learn the extent of what may be done in this work of rehabilitation,
England, Canada, and the United States look to France,—to the municipal
vocational-training school for soldiers at Lyons known as L'École Joffre
and the many schools patterned after it in other cities; to the Institution of
St. Maurice, at Paris, which has been established by the French government
to be a model for other institutions; to the Laboratory of Research on
Vocational Work, in Paris, directed by Dr. Jules Amar; and to the Anglo-
Belgian hospitals, especially that at Vernon. It has been announced that the
United States will pattern its training school after the Institution of St.
Maurice, which is a clearing house of experiments and research for the
continent.

There are also in France, as in England and Canada, convalescent homes for
disabled soldiers,—many of which are supported by private benevolence,—
where trades are taught. At the Institute of Les Amis des Soldats Aveugles,
in the suburbs of Paris, the blind soldiers are taught the trades of basket-
making, bootmaking, brush-making, netting, harness-making, and
bookbinding, the course taking about six months before the pupils become
proficient. The institution runs its own printing establishment for literature
in Braille (the print for the blind). The blind are peculiarly incapacitated,
and the occupations open to them are consequently limited. Private
benevolence has done much to lessen their economic misfortune, and the
government must do more. Some French doctors believe that tobacco
manufacturing and matchmaking are adapted to the blind because of their
well-known delicacy of touch; many hospitals are giving them lessons in
the art of massage, for the same reason, believing that the blind man can
qualify for this employment in a few months. The work, however, is still in
the experimental stage. But the most progressive work in France has been
done in the municipal and government training schools in equipping the
maimed and crippled for work, and it is this of which this chapter will treat.

The government institution of St. Maurice follows the lead of the now
famous L'École Joffre, which in turn learned much from a school at
Charleroi, maintained before the war for victims of industrial accidents.

L'École Joffre was the pioneer which has blazed the way for the technical
instruction of the wounded. It was founded under the direction of the city of
Lyons, with the mayor of the city, Edouard Herriot, most active in the
undertaking, and Maurice Barrès to spread its fame with winged words. To
house it, an old disused château in a populous part of the city was put in
order late in 1914, and early in 1915 the men discharged from the hospital
and pronounced suitable for training entered upon their course of
instruction. The first one hundred cases received were restricted to those
disabled but cured of wounds, the partially paralyzed, and those recovered
from amputation. To direct the technical work, Monsieur Basèque, a
professor in the industrial-accident school at Charleroi, was chosen. The
success of the school was immediate, and by September another was
opened in the outskirts of the city to accommodate 80 men.

Naturally, at first, experiments were made, and the experience of L'École
Joffre is most valuable to us. Three schemes were inaugurated: one, called
placement à domicile, where an allowance was made the man, who was to
live in his own home while he entered a workshop to learn a craft of some
sort; another, la mode de l'externat, where the man pupil lived at his home
or in lodgings while attending classes daily, receiving at the school at noon
a canteen meal in order to save the time which would otherwise be taken in
going home; and a third, le régime de l'internat, where he lived in the
institution as a pupil in a boarding school. Experience developed that this
last method was the only one which might be adopted with any assurance of
success, the others subjecting the men to possible discouragement, through
the jealousy shown by other shop workers, the necessarily slow progress,
the inequality of pay, the varying degrees of instruction, and insufficient
supervision. Canada too, after investigation, has found that the men
throughout their training must live at the school and be under supervision,
in order to avoid discouragement and the forming of bad habits of idleness
and alcoholism, and to insure continuity of interest in their work.

The condition of entrance to L'École Joffre in Lyons is that the man must be
pronounced permanently unfit for military service. Next he is examined to
ascertain his fitness for industrial work, a matter determined by his freedom
from disease, his previous work, his general education and ability, the
employment preferred, and the occupations open. Whenever possible, the

man is kept in his former employment. This principle is sound economically
and psychologically, and must be adhered to in our schools. The
employments for which training is given are bookkeeping, shorthand and
typewriting, paper-stitching, bookbinding, toymaking, shoemaking,
woodworking and drafting, tailoring, wood carving, gardening, and
machine adjusting. Office work offers special opportunity to the one-
handed and the crippled, as stenography and typewriting do to the blind.
The course with commercial subjects, it was found, had to be carefully
restricted, for many without sufficient education wished to take it up, and
there was danger of sending too many men into occupations already well
supplied with competent workers.

L'École Joffre is a municipal undertaking, a free school, the men pupils
paying no board or tuition. It is in a measure subsidized, for the school
receives from the Ministry of War a grant of 3 francs 50 centimes for each
pupil for each day's attendance. The other funds to support the school are
provided in various ways—popular subscriptions and grants by provincial
organizations and other official bodies. As for the men themselves, they do
not, while in training, receive the government pension of 1 franc 70
centimes a day, but the school makes each man an allowance of 1 franc 25
centimes a day from its own funds, so far as they permit of such liberality.

The work done by the city of Lyons has been followed in many localities,—
Bourges, Bordeaux, Marseille, Rouen, and others, in most cases endowed
by the municipalities. At Bourges additional classes are held in silver-
engraving, hair-dressing, and locksmith work.

In the similar school in Marseille, tinsmiths, foundry workers, jewelers, and
metal workers are trained. At Cluses, in 1915, seventy partially disabled
men were serving an apprenticeship in clock-making. This is sitting work,
but it demands the possession of one hand and at least two fingers on the
other, and an exceptionally good eye, so it is not so generally taught as
other trades. At Cluny a course of training has been established for the
former workmen who wish to become master workmen and designers; that
is, the school specializes in training those whose ability is above the
average.

It must be remembered that in French provinces there are many more hand
processes in use than in the United States. Joinery and carpentry, for
example, employ tools to make parts which in this country are turned out in
factories. The industrial difference is evident in some of the photographs of
the rehabilitated French workmen who are shown ingeniously at work with
artificial "hands and arms" on processes for which there is no field here.
Many French soldiers, too, find employment in toy making, a real industry
for France and Germany, but one which is unlikely to be developed here to
any extent. In America we must fit our disabled men to tend machines, and
not make the blunder of preparing men for operations which are out of date
in our standardized machine industries. In a very moving little book, "Les
jeunes filles françaises et la guerre" (Jules Combarieu, Paris, 1916), we read
of a man who was employed in a joinery establishment after suffering the
amputation of both hands. His left arm was furnished with a leather glove to
which was adapted an ingenious instrument for holding nails. His right arm
was fitted with another glove arrangement to which a hammer was attached.
With the left he took the nails; and with the right he pounded them into a
piece of wood. Marvelous as the achievement may be, in America this
workman would belong to the class for whom special relief workshops must
be maintained. Work in reëducation must naturally be adapted to the
demands of the vicinity; the French towns of Nancy, Clermont, and
Montpellier have not the industrial conditions of Pittsburgh, Worcester, or
Birmingham.

In Paris the model government institution of St. Maurice contains both a
convalescent hospital and a training school for discharged patients. It has
the advantage over L'École Joffre of uniting hospital and school, giving an
opportunity of combining physical with industrial reëducation. It is
therefore possible to have at St. Maurice, under the direction of Dr.
Bourillon, physiotherapy by massage, electricity, medical gymnastics, and
mechanotherapy, which prepare the man for his reëducation. Dr. Bourillon
affirms that this preliminary medical care reduces the effort which the
patient must make to learn and exercise a trade.

The French government also maintains at Paris the Laboratoire des
Recherches sur le Travail Professionel,—an establishment for the scientific
examination of wounded men, particularly to ascertain the percentage of

their disability in the labor market. The question of how many disabled men
are capable of reëducation is one not rigidly determined. There are, of
course, some hopeless cases which will have to be entirely dependent on the
government for their support, whether by pension or other means under
discussion. But the figures of Dr. Jules Amar, director of this laboratory of
industrial research, a man who has devised mechanical apparatus for
developing the capacities of injured limbs, show that of the maimed cases
which have come under his observation at least 80 per cent are capable of
vocational reëducation. Of this proportion 45 per cent succeed in earning
normal salaries after a training including some specializing; 20 per cent are
partially restored to normal wage earning; while the remaining 15 per cent
can only obtain work in shops maintained especially for the disabled, such
as a toymaking studio. Of the reëducation of this 80 per cent Dr. Amar says:
"It is a question of science and method; it demands the organization of
training schools.... It unites medical and technical knowledge to the end that
artificial limbs shall be adapted to satisfy physical and vocational
capabilities. The proportion of men dependent upon relief is then reduced;
and one must endeavor, without ceasing, to diminish it."6

The method in the Paris schools is scientific. "In the training schools," he
continues, "the object of the instruction is to supplement the diminished
physical capacity of the disabled man with a greater knowledge of his trade,
superior technical instruction, or better vocational adjustment."

The first responsibility falls on the medical examiner. To reëquip the
maimed physically, an indispensable prosthesis (an addition of an artificial
part to supply the missing member of the body) is made, the dynamical
prosthesis—not the kind which replaces the member, but that which
reëstablishes or repairs the functions. What the wounded man needs is not
an admirable imitation of the missing arm or leg, ingenious and often
fragile appliances, but a practical working tool,—a socket into which a
variety of tools can be fitted.

Next, in the laboratory of the school an analysis of the workman's
movements is made in relation to their regularity, direction, speed, and
according to the force they expend. The measure of the man's physical
incapacity is deduced from impressions gathered in this analysis, and from

it the method of training must be devised. Furnished with his card of
qualifications, the man passes from the hospital laboratory to the workshop,
where experts instruct him in theory and practice. The first thing to
determine is whether a man cannot perform the operations of his former
trade. In many cases a man imagines that the disability caused by
amputation of fingers, hand, or arm makes him unfit for the work he did
previous to the war. But where the school is attached to a hospital and the
man's disability can be accurately known, the union of medical skill and
technical instruction makes it possible to restore him to usefulness with the
minimum of effort and waste.

Dr. Amar recommends for special relief work for the 15 per cent who are
not capable of any great degree of reëducation, shops which will execute
orders for easily manufactured articles, involving such processes as light
cooperage, stamping, plaiting, toymaking,—work such as is offered at the
shop in Rue de la Durance, Paris.

Another institution whose methods are similar to those employed at St.
Maurice and by Dr. Amar is the Anglo-Belgian Military Institute, at Port
Villez, Vernon, under the technical director Major Haccourt. It
accommodates over 800 men, and is self-supporting, the land where it is
situated having been originally covered with forests, the sale of which
financed the undertaking at first. Forty-three trades are taught here, and a
large farm is maintained on which horses wounded in war are cared for and
made useful. The workshops provide for commercial courses, telegraphy,
wall-paper designing, the manufacture of motor vehicles and electrical
machinery of all kinds, plumbing and tinsmithing, rabbit and poultry
farming, fur curing and dyeing, etc. The shops make fuse boxes for
munitions, and various army supplies. At Vernon the men pupils are
regarded as still in the Belgian army, receiving military pay; they have no
option as to entrance, since they are under military discipline, but enter as
soon as they are discharged from the Anglo-Belgian hospital at Rouen. In
this school the services of the best professors in different trades are obtained
without trouble, for the director can requisition any man in the Belgian
army for any required purpose. Before the war Belgium had a large
proportion of highly trained workmen; and with compulsory reëducation
and military discipline the operation of this institution is much simplified.

In working out plans for reëducation in the United States we must have in
mind certain principles. There is the necessity of making our training
thorough. Our problem will be not to find employment for the period of the
war, during which there is a constant demand for workers, but to train the
disabled for an occupation in which they can hold a place after the
temporary shortage of labor created by the war conditions is over. It is
obvious that if the men are incompetent and ill-prepared for their work, they
will be weeded out as soon as skilled men are available. Their work is
barred from that demanding manual strength; nor can it hope to belong to
that highly specialized kind which would demand an arduous and elaborate
training. But there is a wide range of semiskilled occupations where a
handicapped man can earn more than if he should enter after a long course
of training the highly skilled trade where he would meet the competition of
the physically normal.

There are at least three kinds of disabilities our schools will have to deal
with. First, there is the man who has lost his right arm. This man must,
whenever possible, be taught to use his left hand in his trade, although it is
sometimes easier to learn a new process than to change right-hand to left-
hand methods in the old operation. In carpentry, turning, and machine
trades, however, the one-armed man may continue to be employed, and our
vocational schools should incorporate courses in left-hand training. Here
also we find another need: there must be built for the disabled left-hand
machines.

Next there is the case of the man who must be instructed in an allied trade
because his former one is pronounced by medical examination and the tests
of mechanotherapy to be impossible. And last there is the case of the man
whose injury makes necessary the fitting of delicately adjusted prosthesis
and a course of expert training before he can become a wage earner.

Our chief difficulty in our work of reëducation will be to secure the right
kind of teaching force, and it is clear that our government must establish
schools to train our technical instructors how to adapt their knowledge of
trade teaching to the kind of work demanded in giving instruction to the
physically disabled. The selection of the proper type of teacher is vital to
the success of any scheme of reëducation. The ideal instructor must not

only know his trade but be able to suit his methods to the individual case so
as to get the best response from each man under his direction. At present it
seems as if there would be no way of training instructors except by sending
chosen trade teachers to St. Maurice to study the French methods, that they
may return to this country properly equipped to select and instruct others,
until such time as a government school of the right type is well established
in this country.

As for the schools themselves, they must be undertaken by the government,
even if additional hospitals and laboratories for research are maintained by
private benevolence and bequest, for there should be no limit to the funds
available for carrying on this work of the economic rehabilitation of the
men injured in the service of the country, and it must keep pace with the
progressive work in France and elsewhere. Branch schools in municipalities
may be organized under government control and subsidized by federal
money. Some of our trade and vocational schools and their equipment may
be taken over by the government for this purpose. Our trade and technical
schools must also include courses in training teachers for this special work,
the course to be supplemented by a special preparation prescribed by the
government.

In Canada the Military Hospitals Commission has made a careful study of
the French and Anglo-Belgian treatment in the restoration of disabled
soldiers, and has equipped the Central Military Convalescent Hospital at
Toronto with the mechano-apparatus similar to that used in France by Dr.
Amar and Dr. Bourillon. Profiting by their observation of the foreign
hospital schools, they have determined to consider the men in training as
still in hospital and under military rule, for in Europe there is absolute
unanimity of opinion that the influence of convalescent homes and
benevolent support is bad, conducive to lax discipline and idleness. Canada
has agreed that the earning power subsequently acquired by a pensioner in
training will not lessen his pension. To pass upon the cases eligible for
reëducation, Canada has a board of three: a member of the Provincial
Advisory Committee, a vocational officer, and a medical man, thus
combining with technical and medical aid advice in the industrial choice
and placement of the man pupil.

Realizing that reëducation is a new idea to most soldiers and, indeed, to the
public generally, Canada has put forth a propaganda of making popular the
training courses. A bulletin has been posted conspicuously in public
buildings and a printed card circulated bearing the same information, "What
Every Disabled Soldier Should Know." Aside from encouragement and
directions of where to obtain help, etc., we find the following:

That his strength and earning capacity will be restored in the highest
degree possible.

That if his disability prevents him from returning to his old work, he
will receive free training for a new occupation.

That full consideration is given to his own capacity and desires when a
new occupation has to be chosen.

That neither his treatment nor his training nor his transportation will
cost him a cent.

That his maintenance and his family's will be paid for during his
training and for a month after.

That his home province has a special commission to assist him in
finding employment on discharge.

To further the publicity of the work in Canada, moving-picture films have
been prepared, systematically illustrating the treatment and reëducation of
wounded soldiers in England, France, and Canada, and showing their
progress up to the stage of final recovery. These films have been shown in
hundreds of theaters throughout the Dominion.

It is encouraging that occasionally in France and Canada the vocational
training in connection with hospitals places a man in a better position
financially than before. The following examples are given out by the
Canadian Military Hospitals Commission and are testimonials of the
possibilities of rehabilitation.

Letter received is from an ex-private in the 13th Battalion. Before
enlistment he was getting $12 a week as driver on a city milk round. "I
always had a liking for drawing," he says, "and I felt that if I ever had
the chance I would take up a course in mechanical drawing." This
opportunity came to him at one of the commission's convalescent
hospitals. After six weeks' application to the work there, he was able to
secure an appointment beginning with $75 a month, with good
prospects of advance.

A locomotive fireman had enlisted, was severely wounded, and had to
have his left arm amputated. Under the commission's scheme of
reëducation, which is offered to all men incapacitated for their former
work by service, he received special training in telegraphy and railway
routine. As a result he secured an appointment as station agent and
dispatcher at $110 a month.

In England the high sheriff of Lancashire has formulated a scheme for
listing the employments open to the disabled. First, the employer is asked,
whenever possible, to give the returned soldier his old job. Next, certain
employments are listed as being within the powers of partially disabled
men, and with the help of labor exchanges and of other agencies, these are
reserved for them.

It is for the economic interest of the State to make possible the employment
of the disabled. The amount of a pension is not the measure of the cost of
the pensioner. The nation cannot afford to let any human power go to waste
or lie idle. To reëquip the maimed is to make him partly forget his infirmity,
—an indispensable mental advantage. France is now discussing whether
reëducation of one form or another shall be compulsory, as in the Anglo-
Belgian hospital. "But obligatory or not," says A. L. Bittard,7 "the industrial
reëducation must be above all a national work. We should regard it as a debt
owed to the wounded and as an effective preparation for the future of the
nation.... The State alone is capable of giving all the mutilated the
maximum equality of treatment, where private initiative would be totally
incapable of realizing the minimum."

The war simply makes the question of reëducating and rehabilitating the
disabled a striking one. But we must not forget that the problem of the

injured is always with us. It may not be amiss to point out that 54,001 men
and women were actually killed in the United States during the year 1913.
This means one killed every ten minutes. Over 2,000,000 men and women
are injured in the industries in the United States each year. This means one
injured every sixteen seconds. The economic loss from accidental deaths
and injuries is nearly $500,000,000 annually, and the loss from preventable
accidents and diseases would more than pay the cost of maintaining all the
public schools in the United States. These are appalling figures.

At present the great fear of every boy who goes to war and of every sister
and mother of such a boy is that he may go through life maimed and
dependent. But we never think of the ever-present danger to these boys of
being handicapped physically by merely going to work; and yet there are
more persons so disabled through accidents in industrial life in normal
times than are disabled by war.

When our boys come back from the war, physically disabled, and through
the government work in rehabilitation and reëducation are made self-
supporting and self-respecting members of society, we shall begin to
appreciate that we have been extremely negligent in the past in limiting our
efforts to help the crippled and blinded to the good offices of charity and
philanthropy. It is a public matter. It is a problem of education. It is an
opportunity for service for the teachers of vocational training, for the
experts in vocational guidance and direction, for the directors of placement
and employment bureaus, and for the designers of special tools and
machines for the handicapped. It is an immediate problem in this time of
war; it is even more significant in time of peace.

CHAPTER X

FARM CADETS

We can afford only one fad in war time, and that fad is to be farming.
It will be useless for little William Corning Smith, aged 12, of
Kankakee, Illinois, to stick his little spade into his back yard before his
admiring parent. Individual, unorganized work on land not properly
prepared for agriculture may be worse than useless; it may be wasteful.
Random efforts not coördinated in a general scheme for the utilization
of school children in large units will be foolish, misdirected effort.
State, county, and even national organization are required to make
available this latent power. Purely isolated effort will be fruitless, both
as aids to the nation and education for the child. Organized work will
bring the greater moral advantages of developing the power of
concentration along with the interest in national and community
service. It will evoke an esprit de corps which may be capitalized for
national use and shift the usual interest in gangs and athletics, both
normal and natural, to work which opens the way to loyal industrial
educational training.8

This was written by John Dewey early in the spring of 1917 in a message
addressed to the principals and teachers of America on how school children
may be so organized for farm service as to

Aid the nation;

Increase the food supply of the country in war time and during a
world-wide shortage of food;

Conscript the national enthusiasm for athletics to national usefulness;

Assure a vigorous and healthy rising generation;

Reap the advantage of organized effort with its moral and educational
results;

Develop constructive patriotism.

As may be gathered, Dewey's idea was not only to organize the rural and
village children for farm work but also to send the city children into the
country in camps and tent colonies. He said further that the plan was not a
dream and that it could be done.

A friend in writing to me of his attempts in Massachusetts to make the
dream a reality said, "It is like nailing a jellyfish to a board." Referring to
the difficulty of obtaining competent boys, on the one hand, and of
convincing farmers of the value of city-boy labor, on the other, he further
stated that it was a difficult proposition to sell something we did not have to
somebody who did not want it.

Few, if any, of us knew very much of the experience, in this direction, of
England, France, and Germany. To be sure, we had heard that France had
attempted in a large way to use children at farm labor, but had given it up
and had replaced them with old men, women, and partially crippled
returned soldiers; and we knew that with the alarm of the scarcity of labor
and the diminishing number of the world's acres under cultivation England
and Germany had called upon women and boys below military age to help
meet the needs of the situation. But we in America did not realize, to quote
Dewey again, "that we could enlist the school children in this work in such
a manner that they could serve with results as beneficial to themselves as to
the nation."

Before considering in some detail the idea of using agricultural labor of
children in America (and it is a subject worthy of elaboration, for even if the
war closes to-morrow, we shall be short of farm labor for many years—
perhaps always), let us see what England and Germany have done to utilize
school children for farm work.

In England many of the boys of 14 to 16 in the public schools have
volunteered for vacation and holiday agricultural work in hoeing, planting,

and harvesting; some of this was gratuitous labor, these boys coming from
the prosperous classes and therefore being able to give their services.

In July, 1916, the Education Board published a report showing the number
of children excused from attendance at school for the purpose of
agricultural employment in England and Wales on May 31, 1916. The total
number so excused was 15,753, of which number 546 were between the
ages of 11 and 12; 8018 between 12 and 13; 5521 between 13 and 14, and
of the remaining 1668 cases the ages were between 12 and 14. Figures
quoted relate solely to agricultural employment and do not show the full
extent of withdrawals from school. They also relate to withdrawals of
children who are not qualified for total exemption under the law. The report
also states that "the board has no information as to the number of children
who have been excused from school attendance for purposes of industrial
employment or employment other than agriculture."

Early in 1917 several of the county education committees formulated plans
for using the labor of children who were to be excused only for holidays,
special periods, and part times, the general sentiment being, even in the
emergency, that no more children must be permanently excused for
agricultural or industrial employment. These schemes are worthy of
attention as endeavors to retain children in school, at the same time
modifying the arrangement of the educational requirements to allow them
to perform farm and garden work.

The Education Committee for the Lindsay division of Lincolnshire
considered, at a meeting held on April 13, 1917, the desirability of
taking steps to secure that the school holidays this year are fixed at
such times as will enable the children to be of most assistance to the
farmers, and it was resolved that the finance committee should be
requested to consider the preparation of a scheme enabling managers
to amend the school time-tables in such a way as will give the
maximum of opportunity for the older children to work on the land
during the spring and summer.... They further considered...that in view
of the present emergency and the need of additional labor, especially in
agricultural work, the board will give favorable considerations to
proposals for extended or additional holidays in rural areas under

certain conditions. Two schemes were presented, setting forth
alternative methods which managers might be authorized to adopt by
which advantage can be taken of the concessions of the board, as
follows: (1) A scheme to give a number up to eighty additional
afternoons on which the older children can be employed on the land,
managers to be informed that a school year of not less than 320
attendances will be accepted as fulfilling the requirements of the
board, instead of a minimum of 400 as heretofore. On up to eighty
days, older children, above prescribed age, may be released at noon for
employment on the land, whilst the school will be open as usual for the
younger children, and their attendance recorded, though not in the
official register. (2) A scheme to allow up to eight weeks extra during
which the older children may be employed on the land, managers to be
informed of the number of attendances required as in scheme one.
Older children, above a prescribed age, who are to be employed on the
land, need not attend school for a period up to eight weeks in addition
to the ordinary holidays. The school will be kept open as usual during
such weeks for the younger children, and those attending will have
their attendance recorded, but not in the official register. Under either
scheme it will be necessary for the managers to fix the period or
periods for the year during which the scheme would be in operation,
and in some of the larger rural schools it might be possible to release a
teacher as well as the older children.

At a meeting held on April 27 it was resolved to issue the schemes to
the managers, impressing upon them the fact that the one object is to
secure increased production of food.9

At Grimsby a committee was appointed to consider the employment of
children on gardens, allowing an acre plot to each school, and 25 children,
under a teacher, to work in cultivating it. All these children are required to
attend school in the morning, and the consent of their parents must be
obtained by them before they are permitted to begin afternoon work. Since,
as in Lincolnshire, the aim of the work is increased food production, the
crops derived from the cultivation of the land acquired by the town are to be
divided among teachers and scholars engaged in the work.

In Hull, also, the Educational Committee, besides encouraging work in
school gardens, has authorized the labor of schoolboys in cultivating spare
land in various places as a substitute for their usual manual training in the
school shops.

In Hertfordshire there are school gardens for the production of potatoes,
parsnips, beets, and onions, with school instruction in gardening given the
pupils. During the period for planting there is a schedule of half-time
attendance. In Bradford the successful vegetable gardening is correlated
with the school work in nature study, composition, arithmetic, and drawing,
and emphasis is placed on the educational value of the productive work.

It is difficult for America to see the food crisis as do the nations which are
near the exhaustion point. While everyone must deplore the wholesale
excusing of children to work without supervision, we ought to watch with
interest all schemes which will increase production and yet will keep
younger children in school for full time and will permit those older to work
part time. This part-time work should be confined to the years of 14 to 18,
except possibly in the case of work in the school garden, where younger
children may labor for short periods.

The appeal of Neville Chamberlain, the Director-general of National
Service, in the spring of 1917, for volunteers from such boys as were able
to make the sacrifice, connects the need for agricultural labor with the
necessity for providing proper supervision of the boys. His plan for utilizing
the labor of English schoolboys has many features similar to devices
employed in Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey.

It is well understood that an abundant supply of labor for the land
during the coming summer months is an urgent national necessity.
Many schemes have already been organized for the employment of
soldiers, women, and prisoners of war, but it is desirable to form a
reserve of labor so organized as to be available at short notice. For this
reserve I turn to the boys at our public and other secondary schools.
During the last two years many of them have given valuable help in
hoeing, harvesting, and timber cutting, and at the present crisis I
confidently hope that all for whom it is possible will make their
services available both in summer holidays and, if necessary, during

the coming term. I have accepted the offer of the Cavendish
Association to place at my disposal their organization, which will act
in conjunction with a committee—representative of schools and
masters—having its headquarters at St. Ermin's, and working under the
director of the agricultural section of this department. Full particulars
of the arrangements and procedure will shortly be issued by the
committee. The main points are as follows:

(1) The age of the boys permitted to volunteer should not be below 16
except in the cases where the school authorities consider boys of 15
sufficiently strong to undertake the necessary work. (2) The boys will
be organized in squads of varying sizes, each in charge of a master or
other responsible person. (3) It is proposed that during term time the
period of continuous whole-time service should not exceed two weeks.
Every effort will be made to find work for schoolboy volunteers in the
neighborhood of the school, but if the work lies at some distance from
the school, railway fares will be paid and careful provision will be
made for board and lodging. No boy will be expected to volunteer for
service during term whose school work is of immediate importance;
for example, a boy who is preparing for a scholarship examination. I
recognize that this part of the scheme may present some difficulties to
all but the large public schools, but I hope that some of the larger state-
aided secondary schools may be able to join in it. Before doing so,
however, they should communicate with the Board of Education. (4) In
the holidays they will work for not less than three or four weeks, and it
is hoped that, if necessary, they may have leave of absence from
school until the end of September. (5) The whole working hours will
be carefully proportioned to the average strength of each squad, and
the wages adjusted accordingly. If the total sum earned does not meet
the cost of living, the deficit will under special conditions be made up.

I trust that when the call for boys' help comes, parents will recognize
its urgency and will not hesitate to allow their sons to render this
service for their country.

In Germany there has been a systematic contribution from schools to
agriculture since March, 1915. Authority was given to the respective school

officials to grant the necessary leave of absence to older children for farm
and garden cultivation. With the increasing need of securing a sufficient
supply of food for the nation, excuses of pupils from school increased. An
additional service of pupils was required by an order issued on May 15,
1917, relative to combating fruit and vegetable pests.

Looking forward to future scarcity, Germany, with the help of the teaching
staff and government leaflets, next enlisted school children in the work of
collecting field and forest edible products. Children were engaged in the
work of gleaning, and in the summer of 1915 the gleanings amounted to
approximately $50,000, the greater part of which was turned over to the
Red Cross as the children's contribution. In the summer and autumn of 1915
the children aided, too, in gathering fruits. During the following winter the
schools gave instruction in the substitution of fruit products for fat and
proteid. These were pointed lessons both in frugality and in public spirit.

Additional requirement of the children's services was made when the
continued scarcity of fats made it imperative to conserve acorns, horse-
chestnuts, and seeds containing oil, the gathering of which was impossible
without the aid of school children. An order of August 21, 1916, authorized
the employment of children to take part in the extraction from trees in the
state forests of resin needed chiefly for the paper industry; and in the same
season children were called upon to engage in the collection of kernels of
cherries, plums, and apricots in enormous quantities for oil extraction.

The school administrators and teachers of America knew little, if anything,
of the farm-placement ventures of European countries. But they were told
most emphatically in the spring of 1917 that the military force was but one
factor in national organization, and that the ultimate decision as to victory
might well be with the farmer. So in American fashion we started at it; New
Jersey with its "junior industrial army," Massachusetts with its bronze-
badged boy farmers, and New York with its "farm cadets."

We all thought we were original, and perhaps we were; and yet it is
certainly not new for schoolboys to work outside the school session when
of proper age. Whether for the father or a neighborhood employer, boys 14
and over have worked in stores and gardens, in summer hotels, in offices,
garages, and manufacturing plants. Nor is it unusual, for that matter, to have

the outside work coördinated with the school and receiving due credit in the
curriculum. The coöperative high-school and vocational courses in many
cities—Fitchburg, Beverly, Providence, Hartford, Indianapolis, Chicago,
and New York—are well known to those who are familiar with the
extension and coöperative efforts of our vocational schools.

Furthermore we are familiar with the two types of camps: the adult-labor
and the recreation camp. The work camp is much the older, dating back to
the building of railroads and the opening of lumber districts. In the past
decade the recreation summer camps have become a potent factor in
secondary-school life, making a complement of the school year's work by
laying stress on the physical development of outdoor woodland and country
experiences. Some of these camps, while primarily recreational, have had
courses in manual training, college preparation, arts and crafts, and
languages, yet so clearly is their play nature of chief importance that no one
thinks of them as work camps.

Now the farm-cadet movement involves the farm labor of the schoolboy,
who is sent out and credited for his work by his school and is added to a
camp life where in a squad of his fellow schoolboys he is looked after by an
appointed leader as if in a Y.M.C.A. camp. Thus we have, out of familiar
ingredients, a new compound, bringing into relation the boy, the parent, the
supervisor, the employer, and the school.

This agricultural movement in connection with the schools had its inception
at the Philadelphia meeting of the Eastern Arts and Manual Training
Teachers' Association early in 1917. At once three Eastern states—
Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York—began to formulate plans for
its operation.10 For it was not to be the simple expedient of excusing boys
from school to work on farms, as has been the practice in many localities,
but a plan whereby the boy was to be retained in the school system,
substituting in his course during a portion of the year agricultural work for
the academic and vocational studies of the regular curriculum.

In analyzing the problem it was found that there were three types of boys to
be considered: (1) the boy in a farming district, who could be employed on
the farm of his father or a neighbor; (2) the boy in a town near an
agricultural center, who could be employed within a radius of a few miles

of his home and school; (3) the boy from a city, who would have to be sent
to distant farms and whose welfare would not be in the charge of his school
principal and parents. The case of the first boy is very simple; the second is
also easy of solution; but if the third boy is to be used, there will need to be
a carefully worked-out plan for his placement, record of work,
accommodations, and general welfare. It is for the third boy that the camp
must be established, where he will be looked after by a responsible person
who will see that he has the proper tent, board, work, and sanitary
arrangements.

The plans of the different states for utilizing boy power, while aiming
toward the one desirable end of increasing our food production, have
differed widely in detail, owing to the variation in the compulsory-
attendance laws, to the latitude exercised in some states in excusing boys
prematurely, and to the varying degrees of investigation of placement,
record of work, and supervision. All states agree in giving the boy who is
excused for farm work credit in his school work. Canada, too, excuses boys
over 14 for farm work, allowing them full school credit for three months'
labor. While it may be urged that it is not pedagogically sound to give credit
in one subject for the work in another, a way out of the difficulty might be
found in a rearrangement of the school year and vacations in districts where
there is a large percentage of excused boys; or special classes could be
devised for these boys when they return to school. In the large high schools
shorter intensive courses could be included in the program so that the boy
who was preparing for college would not lose his work in such subjects as
English, history, and mathematics. In the case of language and science there
must be a loss which it is difficult to repair. If the present conditions persist,
administrative ingenuity can solve the question of work and credits. It is not
one of the serious aspects of the problem, provided always that there is no
release of children below the compulsory-attendance age.

In Massachusetts the work of mobilizing schoolboys for farm labor was in
charge of the state's Committee on Public Safety. Their principles in acting
were as follows:

Mobilize the schoolboys; keep those under 16 at home to work on
home, school, and community gardens; enlist the high-school boys

between 16 and 18, too young for military or naval service, but old
enough to render real service; move them where farm labor is needed;
make them understand that enlistment for farm service is in all ways as
patriotic as any other service for the nation's defense.

With the appointment of a subcommittee to formulate the detailed scheme
of placement and supervision, having Frank V. Thompson, Assistant
Superintendent of the Boston schools, as chairman, the plan for the
coöperation of schools with agriculture is, for boys 16 and over, as follows:

1. (a) The farm-labor service is to be recognized by a bronze badge
containing the seal of the commonwealth and inscribed "The Nation's
Service" and "Food Production." (b) An honorable discharge, similar to a
discharge from the army, containing the signature of the governor, will be
issued to boys who successfully complete their service on farms. (c) Tufts,
Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and
Massachusetts Agricultural College have agreed to give a trial term or year
to such candidates as present an honorable discharge, without further
entrance requirements, provided their school work was satisfactory up to
the time of leaving and the principal so recommends.

2. The existing school organization is used to conduct the enterprise. For
each 25 boys enlisted a supervisor is appointed, a male teacher of strong
ability in the local school,—in towns where there are several supervisors,
either the superintendent of schools or the principal of the high school. A
general head supervisor in charge of the state work has an office in the
Statehouse. Each local head supervisor and each supervisor of 25 boys
receives the same sum ($100), the money being obtained from a local
contingent fund, from an additional appropriation, or by subscription.

3. The minimum wage of the boys is fixed thus: first week, no wages, but
allowance of $2 for expenses etc.; thereafter (a) boy living on farm, not less
than $4 a week and board, (b) boy living at home, not less than $6 a week.
Six days constitute a week.

4. The enlistment card and the issuance of honorable discharge are
controlled by the general head supervisor (Committee on Public Safety).

5. The enrollment for the period of May 1 to October 1 is made by the boy,
with the parents' consent and the school physician's endorsement. When the
boy is enlisted, a numbered badge is lent to him, for which he signs a
receipt; it is to be returned in case of unsatisfactory conduct or service. He
receives full credit for the year's school work.

6. Inspection of the physical and moral conditions of the place of
employment, the choosing of the boys from enrollment lists, and seeing that
both boys and farmers are satisfied, are part of the work of the appointed
supervisors.

7. Camps for the boys, when local conditions require, are established under
the direction of the medical expert for the State Board of Labor and
Industries. An expert on camps has supervision of the work of the executive
committee in standardizing and inspecting camps and obtaining the
equipment, layout, and food supplies.

With the coöperation of farm bureaus thousands of circulars and labor-
contract forms were sent to Massachusetts farmers. By June 16, 1917, there
were camps established at 18 points, and arrangements completed to
employ 500 to 600 boys from these camps. In addition there were at least
500 other boys released from school to work on home farms, or living in
farmers' homes.

An interesting feature of the Massachusetts scheme was the working out of
camp plans by the drafting students in the Newton Technical High School,
with detailed equipment of dining tent with wooden-horse tables; sleeping
tent with double-deck bunk; latrine; cook shack; etc.

In its system for handling the supply of boy labor, the state requires the
farmer to sign a definite application blank for the amount of boy labor
which he requires. It is understood that while the boys are enlisted for the
entire period up to October 1, the farmer may take those boys for long or
short periods of not less than a week in duration, to begin or end at any
time, as the farmer's necessity requires. This application made by the farmer
is also an agreement to pay the wages stipulated by the Committee on
Public Safety and also to employ the boy on rainy as well as fair days, using
his services on rainy days under cover if possible. Further agreement is

made, in case the boy is unsatisfactory, to give him one week's notice or one
week's pay, providing him with a statement in writing of the reason for his
discharge. Whenever, in the opinion of the local supervisor, the conditions
of living or of labor are not satisfactory, the boy may be withdrawn without
prejudice to him. These arrangements insure that there shall be a
coöperative responsibility of farmer and state in caring for the boy.

In establishing the camps in Massachusetts the money to start the work was
chiefly supplied by individuals. In the case of the New Bedford contingent
in Coonamesett camp, on an estate of 11,000 acres, the boys were housed in
militia tents, lent by the state,—two boys to a tent. For their tent furnishings
the boys supplied whatever they needed. A mess house—a rough board
building 75 feet long by 17 feet wide, providing eating quarters for the boys
and at one end a cook room—was in part erected by the New Bedford
Industrial School boys, working under the direction of an experienced
carpenter. The laying of the 2500 feet of pipe to carry water to the camp
was also the work of the same school. The catering for the boys was under
the direction of an experienced woman and two Japanese cooks. In the
morning the boys started for the various farms, those at a distance being
called for by an auto truck. In this camp, for an eight-hour day and a six-day
week each boy received a maximum wage of $4 a week and board, the
weekly payment in charge of the supervisor. The camp was fortunate in
having as its directors the city superintendent of schools and a physical
instructor, the latter living in the camp.

In New York the placing of boys on farms has been the joint work of the
Food Supply Commission, the State Education Department, and the State
Military Training Commission. While younger boys have been released for
agricultural work by other agencies, the state placement by the commission
is concerned only with the boys of military training age—16 to 19. One of
the first actions of the latter commission was to divide the state into 6
military-training zones: New York City (including Manhattan, Bronx, and
Richmond); Long Island, including Brooklyn; Hudson Valley, with center at
Albany; East Central, at Syracuse; West Central, at Rochester; and Western,
at Buffalo. Next, a description was obtained of the character of the work in
each zone. For example, the Hudson Valley Zone as far as Albany requires
labor in harvesting small fruits and general farm work, while the West

Central Zone work is that of muck farming, large-fruit farming, and general
farming. Each zone center has its individual office through which
placements are made. Meetings were held the latter part of April by zone
supervisors and farm-bureau managers, and attended by farmers' and fruit
growers' associations who stated what they needed and what they would
contribute in wages and housing for boy workers.

The inducements for enlisting offered by the state to boys released from
school work were the chevron given by the Military Training Commission,
to be awarded after thirty days' satisfactory work; the military-training-
equivalent value of the service; and the promise of proper pay and care by
the employer. As to credits, so important in the New York system, farm
cadets were permitted to take the Regents' examinations though the course
lacked a few weeks of completion, the time requirement being waived in
their case. Any pupil in the schools of the state who enlisted for military
service (this applied to the colleges) or who rendered satisfactory
agricultural service was credited with the work of the term without
examination, on the certificate of the school that his work up to the time of
enlistment was satisfactory.

New York is an agricultural state, with a great variety of kinds of farming
and many districts remote from centers of the supply of labor. The
agricultural census, to which reference was made in Chapter II, supplied
data for determining the districts where and when labor was most needed
and where schoolboys could be most useful. For example, in Orleans
County, in the Western Zone, the demand varied from 163 laborers needed
early in May to 1521 needed in October, an indication that there was really
more reason for excusing boys in October than in May for work in peach-
and apple-harvesting districts.11 Conspicuous among the types of New York
farms where labor was sought were the great fruit farms, such as the Sodus
Fruit Farm, with a house on the shore of Lake Ontario able to accommodate
100 boys, where it was planned to harvest the entire peach and apple crop
with schoolboy labor; the vast tracts owned by the canning companies, with
thousands of acres of tomatoes, beans, and corn under cultivation; and the
farms such as those in the South Lima district, where there was muck
farming and where the work included the cultivating, sorting, and packing
of onions, lettuce, celery, and spinach. Calls were sometimes made upon the

state for as many as 1500 boys to assist in harvesting. It was therefore
necessary for the state to work on a large and definitely planned scale.

Naturally the first boys to be placed were those residing in or near farming
districts. When, however, the supply of these boys was exhausted, the call
came, even from remote districts, for city boys. In these cases the problem
of transportation becomes serious, as well as the housing and care of the
boy in the new environment, where association with other help is apt to be
harmful.

The following description of a New York State camp is offered not only
because it has proved to be highly successful but also because it affords an
excellent illustration of the "farm-working, or labor-distributing, camp,"
which is defined in the chapter following.

It was called The Erasmus Hall High School (New York City) Potato
Growers' Association, and was organized by F. A. Rexford, a teacher who is
much interested in agriculture and in boys.

Working and living in the berry fields. One of twenty-five camps in the
Highlands of New York State.

Agriculture on a Western basis brings lessons in organization, coöperation,
and economy to Eastern boys. City boys working on a large farm near
Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.

Employing able-bodied boys of city high schools for farm production may
become permanent. It may lead to the development of country annexes to
our city schools. Camp near Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.

The object of the association, which was formed in the school, was
originally fourfold: (1) to teach the farmer that the alert city boy can and
will perform agricultural tasks; (2) to increase the food supply; (3) to
relieve the help situation by organizing a group of boys to work by the hour
or day, and to recruit boys to work by the month for individual farmers
under supervision; (4) to fit boys for military service if needed.

Ten boys from the school left New York on May 5, each armed with the
money necessary to pay such expenses as carfare, food, laundry, rent of an
acre of land, seed potatoes, phosphate, team hire, and spraying materials.
They went to Mr. Rexford's farm, located up-state. The New York Tribune
contributed some money, and one of the teachers in the school advanced
$60 for the boys to grow potatoes for him. Some frail boys, whose parents
wanted them to go for their health, were refused.

At first the farmers were skeptical. The boys, however, went to work on the
land which they had rented from Rexford. In a week they began to attract
attention and farmers began to hire them. Rexford knew some of these
farmers by reputation. He believed that men who cannot keep their own
boys at home cannot succeed with boys from the city. He was in the habit of
having a straight talk with the employing farmers, telling them that the boys
must be treated squarely.

A large milk-distributing corporation offered to take every one of his boys,
but he argued that it could afford to hire men and did not need boys, as did
the farmers who could not obtain other help. It is evident that large farmers
have capital and backing, while it is the individual farmer struggling with
hard conditions who must have help.

Most of the boys who are with farmers by the month come back to the main
camp every Sunday morning for physical examination, general assembly,
and to go to church. This coming back to the camp keeps before them the
idea of a camp for farm cadets. They return to their work Sunday night. For
those boys who go out by the week the teacher makes an arrangement
whereby the farmer brings them back to the camp on Saturday night and
comes for them the following night.

The people in the community in which the camp is located have established
a nonsectarian church in an old cheese factory which has been purchased
for $200. Occasionally a minister from a near-by town comes and speaks.

The camp has a professional cook, who was obtained from a college
fraternity, and the boys pay pro rata. The first expense was about $2.50 a
week for each boy, but prosperity has provided means for the boys to spend
more.

All vegetables which the boys raised and which they did not use on the
table were canned by the cook and Mrs. Rexford, and they will be used in
the early part of next year, before the fresh vegetables are available.

Local store men have coöperated in giving the lowest prices, feeling that
otherwise the trade of the camp would go to the city, and therefore choosing

the opportunity of large business with aggregate large receipts on small
profit.

Breakfast consists of fruit, cereal or eggs, and milk, cocoa, or postum, and
sometimes corn bread or griddle cakes. The boys carry a cold lunch with
them, consisting of a pail of cold cocoa; four good thick sandwiches of
peanut butter, meat, or jam; a piece of frosted cake; and a banana.
Sometimes they take a pot of jam, which is disposed of by the group. For
dinner they have a roast or steak; potatoes and other ordinary vegetables
(beans, peas, lettuce, carrots); shortcake or pie or pudding; cocoa, postum,
or milk.

The boys take care of their own beds, wash the dishes, and keep the place
clean.

They have a study hour every evening from eight until nine, and the same is
true of the boys placed out with farmers. One boy, going to Princeton in the
fall, kept up his studies and took the Regents' examinations at the country
school, passing them with as good a mark as he would have obtained at his
home school.

After drill on Sunday morning the boys at camp have a baseball game. They
have had entertainments for the benefit of the Red Cross. In the group at
camp are the gold-medal orator of the school, two excellent pianists, four
mandolin players, and a whistler. All the boys are good singers.

Rexford's application blank asked for the weight, age, previous experience
in farming, church preference, and habits as to smoking.

The teacher had the coöperation of the farm bureau. The farmers wrote to
the bureau for help; Mr. Rexford and the farm-bureau manager went to each
farmer, looked over the situation, and if everything was satisfactory,
furnished the workers. Mr. Rexford will not leave boys on any farm without
proper supervision. He visits the boys once every week, neither the farmer
nor the boy knowing when he is coming.

At first no wage scale was set, the arrangement being that the farmer should
pay what the boy was worth. If he was worth nothing, then it was all right,

and the boy ought to be the first one to know it. However, most of the boys
started at 20 cents an hour; soon this was raised to 25 cents, and now the
pay is 30 cents.

Most of the farmers in the vicinity had never done any spraying. They now
apply to Mr. Rexford when they want such work done and he sends out two
boys and horses and his own spraying outfit. The work is done at a cost to
the farmer of about 70 cents per acre for spraying potatoes, in addition to
the material; that is, 25 cents per acre for each boy's work and 20 cents
expense on the spraying outfit, for nozzles etc.

There was no illness among the boys during the summer, not even colds.
Sometimes the boys got wet through, but came home, took a dip in a hole in
the creek, and followed it by a good rub.

Meanwhile quite a number of New York City men teachers under the
leadership of two camp supervisors, H. W. Millspaugh and H. J. McCreary,
and acting under the authority of the Board of Education, started out "to sell
something they did not have to somebody who did not want it." But these
men had the courage of their convictions and the results of their work (over
twenty camps in two counties) give ample evidence of the success of their
venture.

Imagine the surprise of the fruit growers of the counties named when they
received the following circular letter:

It is proposed to bring a large number of boys from the high schools of
New York City to pick fruit in the fruit belt of Orange and Ulster
counties. In carrying out this plan it will be necessary to have the full
coöperation of fruit growers, school authorities, parents, health
authorities, and others. The part of the fruit grower will be roughly as
follows:

He will provide housing facilities, stove, fuel, refrigeration, either by
ice box, cellar, or spring, convenient water supply, toilet facilities
satisfactory to the board of health, straw for mattresses, cooking
utensils, working conditions that will enable the average boy to earn a

respectable wage, and a sympathetic attitude toward the comfort and
health of the boys.

Each boy will provide his carfare to and from the fruit section, provide
his own knife, fork, cup, plate, spoon, wash basin, tick for mattress,
pillow, blankets, etc., and pay for his food and cooking. Boys will
mess in groups of 12 to 25 or even more. Each group will have a
capable boy cook and in camps of over 20, two boys. The first boy will
receive $4 a week besides his meals, the second boy $2.50 a week and
may earn some more by picking fruit. A teacher supervisor will
supervise one large or two or three small camps and advise as to
preparation of food, buy supplies, and act as camp director.

Regarding cooking outfit to be supplied by the fruit grower, it may be
said that all except stove and ice box can be purchased new for about
$10. It is desirable that these be ordered by the camp director, who will
judge the size and kind and take advantage of wholesale rates. An oil
stove and oven is recommended unless a suitable stove is on hand.
Inexperienced boy cooks cannot be expected to satisfy a score or more
of hungry boys with equipment discarded by the skilled housewife.

It is further understood that these boys will not work on Sunday nor
will they be located on farms where farm help is not treated with
consideration.

An illustration of a "concentration and training camp" is that established by
the state of Maine. This state, in coöperation with the state Young Men's
Christian Association, developed a state camp for the purpose of enlisting
and training boys and young men to supply the extra demand for farm labor
made necessary through the increased-acreage propaganda. The boys were
organized under the title of "The Junior Volunteers of Maine." They were
virtually farm soldiers of the state, and were sworn to obey all rules of the
camp before and after leaving it for the farms on which they were placed.

The boys are sent out in squads to work in different sections of the state, as
opportunity may offer, under the direction of competent adult leaders. These
leaders have full charge of the boys until they return to the mobilization
camp.

When a boy comes to the camp he is examined for his moral and physical
qualifications, and then is assigned to a company and to a tent. The adjutant
general provides necessary tents, uniforms, and camp utensils. The boy is
instructed with others in the squad how to pitch a tent and pack camp
utensils, and he is also given lessons in sanitation and the elements of
military drill. He has a lecture every day given by a professor of the state
agricultural college. He also works on the Y.M.C.A. farm, which is being
used for this purpose, and is taught the use of machinery, and how to
manage and care for horses, sharpen tools, and milk cows.

It is not claimed that a week of this sort of training makes the boy a finished
farmer, but it does go a long way in that preliminary education so essential
to farm-mindedness. By the time the boy gets to the farmer he is in
excellent shape to understand the orders of his employer. In the words of
the director of the camp, "He is ready to begin actual service as a trained
novice."

Before the boy is admitted to the camp a searching examination is made
into his character and antecedents, and some responsible person must
answer certain confidential questions relative to the boy's physical, mental,
and social habits.

After the boy is admitted to the camp he takes an oath in which he states
that he will serve as a junior volunteer for farm service in Maine until the
last day of October, unless sooner released by the governor of the state of
Maine.

A charge is made on the farmer of $1 a day for each of the six working
days, and it is expected that if the boys show themselves worthy of more,
the farmer will recognize this and make a satisfactory adjustment with the
leader. In addition to the minimum charge of $1 a day the farmer is required
to furnish board. As a rule, however, the boys sleep in near-by tents with
their leaders. The farmer is not required to pay transportation or other
charges.

The farmer's agreement is with the state and not with the boy, as the scheme
works on the basis that the young men have been engaged by the state for

farm service and as employees of the state receive their pay through the
regular state channels.

On the first of July more than 450 boys had been trained and sent out to
various points in the state.

The following letter from the director-general of the camp gives in a word
his experience with these boys:

We feel that this movement can be justified from any one of a half-
dozen standpoints. We are taking city boys and in a few weeks giving
them a few carefully selected fundamental principles relating to
practical farm activities, which has enabled them to go out to the farms
under our leaders and give satisfaction. We have not had a single
complete failure yet. Only 3 boys out of 600 employed for the season
have been changed because they could not fill the requirements. The
way these city boys have taken hold of farm work has been
wonderfully gratifying. In connection with this training, we are
conducting our camp along lines similar to camps of National
Guardsmen. The whole organization is nearly identical with the regular
army camps. While the training is not so extensive, the boys are given
the fundamentals in correct form. The spirit and general training at the
camp will be of great value if any of these boys are ever called into the
service.

Another important possibility, and from my experience with city boys,
a probability, is that some of these boys will become sufficiently
interested in agriculture to choose it as a vocation, while others will
choose it later in life as an avocation, because of this experience.

Another mobilization camp of the "labor-distribution" type, with some
training features, was that of the Long Island Food Reserve Battalion. This
organization was initiated by the Nassau County Y.M.C.A. and supported
financially and morally by the Long Island Railroad, the state agricultural
school at Farmingdale, and by local residents. A detailed description is
unnecessary. There were 6 camps under this organization scattered over the
island, in each camp 48 boys under a supervisor, a military instructor, and
squad leaders (1 squad leader to approximately every 7 boys). The last

camp was developed at the state school of agriculture with a group of 96
boys working in two shifts, one beginning at 6 A.M. and stopping at 12
noon; the other beginning at 12 noon and stopping at 6 P.M. A regular
course of agricultural instruction was carried on at all the camps. Lectures
have been given in entomology, farm chemistry, and marketing. During the
first month of the first camp it was difficult to place the boys. The idea was
not well received by the farmers, who claimed that the presence of boys
would "demoralize" their regular help, and that the boys would not
recognize the different vegetables and would hoe out corn as quickly as
they would pigweed. (One boy in a New York State camp did carefully hoe
out and pull up every corn plant for a half-day, leaving weeds.)

During the height of the season these same farmers were driving to the
camps and offering from $2 to $2.50 a day for the same boys that they had
laughed at hiring for $1.25 a day at the beginning of the installation of the
camps.

The "flying-squadron" idea is unique. An auto truck, with a trailer for
tentage and supplies, is always ready to respond with its load of boys to an
emergency call to save some particular crop. The group composing this
squadron is made up of "hand-picked" boys who are qualifying for squad-
leader positions.

An example of a camp which was conducted in such a manner that the boys
lost the minimum of school work is that of the Bushwick (Brooklyn, New
York), High School "Camp Squire" near Hicksville, Long Island. The
organization of this camp is interesting, not so much because it was
established with the purpose of making it self-supporting, but rather
because it provided definite opportunities for continuing with school
studies. The initial amount of about $175 was subscribed by teachers, and
the tent and mess house, intended formerly for harvesters, was lent by the
farmer on whose grounds the camp was placed. The leader of this camp, a
teacher in the same school from which the boys were recruited, planned,
after the schools opened in September, a day of work and study, coaching
the boys in their school subjects, so that with at least three hours of study
per day the boys were enabled to keep up with their classes while at work
harvesting until the middle of October. In this, as in other successful camps,

the boys formed a unit organization before going to camp, and had the
advantage of a sympathetic instructor of academic and agricultural
experience to enforce voluntary school discipline. The boys were paid 20 to
25 cents an hour, working for neighboring farmers from 7 A.M. to 3 P.M.
The rest of the day was divided into silent study, consultation, and
recreation hours. It is expected that this camp, which will doubtless be
permanent, will become self-supporting in its second or third year and the
initial outlay will be returned.

The farm-camp idea is here to stay. Of that we are sure. The purely
recreational camp is a thing of the past. The days of the purely work camp
of ten to twelve hours a day ought to be over. Work, play, and study in the
future will be brought together in the summer time as effectively as during
the so-called "regular" season. Next year, and in the years after, we shall
organize this work around some educational ideal and not merely around a
necessity for food-production. The two are by no means incompatible.

This year we have learned "how not to do it," as one camp leader put it. In
some instances the boys went home with less money than they had at the
start. In brief they paid the farmer for the privilege of picking berries.
Particularly in berry picking there was much piece work, and such may
carry with it nearly all the evils that it does in the factory. Mr. Keller, a
thoughtful leader of a New York camp, says in this connection: "Judging the
fair wage from the earnings of the expert is manifestly unfair. It means that
the average boy must be speeded up beyond his point of endurance, or that
he must receive less than a living wage. The possibilities of speeding up are
limited, and so the alternative is longer hours."

Furthermore it is necessary for the government, state or national, to take a
hand in the distribution and the sale of farm products. It made me sick at
heart, on a trip of inspection to 25 camps, to see hundreds of boys at work
picking berries under the hot sun in a service supposedly patriotic, and then
to see the same berries, which had been sold by the growers at a price not
much above that of other years, resold to the consumer at double the price
of other years,—and always with the remark: "You know labor is scarce this
year, and the farmers cannot get help." The result of it all has been that the
consumer, for whom the work was done, has been disregarded.

From the point of view of social reconstruction, education, food production,
and conservation only the surface has been scratched. The state must take
the initiative, assuring the consumer a moderate price for the product, and
the farmer, the dealer, and the boy a fair return for their service.

The boy is not merely a labor unit in the conservation of food. He is the
essential feature of an educational program. The experience of the past
summer proves that with centralization, organization, and an educational
vision as fundamental sub-divisions of a far-sighted state policy the placing
of boy labor on farms could become a valuable and permanent by-product
of the war.

CHAPTER XI

THE ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP

In organizing camps for supplying cadet labor it is well to keep in mind that
they are to be established on the basis of a business proposition; that they
are not primarily play camps or recreational camps; that they are not to be
located on a river or lake because there happens to be a good place for boys
to swim, if there are not paying jobs near that river or lake on which the
boys may work; that they are not to be established at random without
reference to the continuity of work during the season, or without any real
knowledge of the local demand for labor.

Out of considerable experience during the past year it has been discovered
that there are three great elements: first, the boy; second, the farmer; and
third, the job. In addition there are the elements of leadership, of housing,
and of cooking. Of course there must also be considered the elements of
recreation, religious observances, and the general social life of the camp.

With reference to the boy it would seem that he ought to be one of a group
which belongs to a public-school system, or to an institution, or to some
society or organization which is ready to coöperate in placing him in a farm
camp. We are hardly prepared as yet to take individual boys, unassociated
with any organization, and bring them together in a camp where the lack of
unity will give the leader little hold. A number of boys from New York City
were picked up at random and sent out to a distant place up-state under the
direction of a leader who had never seen them before. The boys had not met
one another until they were put on a train in New York. Not coming from
any single school or organization, they felt no particular responsibility to
anyone. All they knew about the proposition was that they were to go to a
certain place, where they would be met by someone who was to conduct
them to a camp. They were undisciplined and later proved to be
unmanageable. At the very start the plan lacked that coördinating influence

which would have existed if the leader had been a teacher in a school from
which these boys had come as one group, or if a Y.M.C.A. boys' secretary
had organized a group from his association. Of course, some day a way may
be found to bring together a group of boys independent of previous
association and place them in a new environment in about the same way
that adult labor is gathered up in the streets of New York and shipped by
employment agencies to some distant point. But boys are not men. The
responsibility of sending a more or less irresponsible youth to a distant
point by the same methods that are used by employment agencies in
sending men is too great for any state or community to undertake.

It is generally understood that the best boys for farm work are those who
are over 16 years of age. This is true, of course, of boys who engage in
general farm work, such as plowing, milking, horse cultivating, haying, and
harvesting grains and potatoes. Many such boys were placed in the dairying
and general-farming regions of New York State. These boys, in most cases,
lived with the individual farmer and were paid by the month. But it has
been found from experience that the 14-year-old boy is often better adapted
to certain types of farm work than is the older boy. For example, the young
boy, with his adolescent enthusiasm, his nimbler fingers, and his general
physical alertness, is more desirable for picking small fruits, such as
strawberries, currants, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, and cherries.
The 14-year-old boy must, however, work on a different basis from the one
who is over 16.

It is necessary for the boys to pass a physical examination, because no state
authorities care to assume the responsibility of taking the physically unfit. It
is taken for granted that the boy is to fit into the organization of the camp as
a business proposition and that he is to stick to his work, pay his share of
the cost of the food and its preparation, respond to leadership, and in every
way do his part toward promoting the general efficiency of the camp.

The enlistment blank used by the New York State Military Training
Commission is shown on page 276.

The farmer is as important an element as the boy; yes, even more important,
for the boy gradually loses his individuality in the camp conscience. The
individual farmer remains an individual. He has his notions of what boys

can do; he compares the work of the inexperienced boy with the adult
foreign labor which he has previously employed. The latter has, until very
recently, been available. Women with their children came to his farm and
picked the small fruits without much regard to the length of the day's work
or to living conditions, and, of course, without any reference to the social
life of the community. This labor went out as it came in. If it did not like the
job because the pay was insufficient, it demanded higher wages and got
them or left the job and moved on to the next one.
NEW YORK STATE MILITARY TRAINING COMMISSION
BUREAU OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING
ENLISTMENT AS FARM CADET

Name_____________________________________
Residence________________________________Street
Age___yr. Height____ft.___in. Weight_____lb.
Place of enlistment________________________
(Name of institution, club, or association)

I desire to enlist for farm work and will report for service:
From mo.___day___to mo.___day___
From mo.___day___to mo.___day___

Kind of work desired; picking fruit, vegetable gardening, general farming, etc.

Can you drive a team?_____Can you milk?______
Can you drive an automobile?_______________________
State briefly any other farm experience you have had.

I have examined the applicant and do assert that he is physically fit to do farm work.
__________________________________
(Physician's signature)

I permit_________________________________to enlist for farm work as stated
above____________________________________________
(Parent or guardian)

It did not mind shacks which lodged vermin. It was not particular about
sanitary conveniences; it was not particular about anything except wages. In
shifting from adult foreign labor to boy labor, the farmer was obliged to
readjust his mental attitude. Not only that, but he often had to readjust the
physical, economic, and social conditions on his farm.

In April, at the time the New York agricultural census was taken, the farmer
said that he needed labor. He even said he would take boy labor, but when it
came actually to engaging such labor, he was inclined to ridicule the idea.
Untrained city boys were not in great demand in May, but when the foreign
labor did not appear on the scene and strawberries were ripening on the
vines, the farmer suddenly discovered that he could use the untrained city
boy. But he had expected the boys not only to work as many hours but also
to pick as carefully and as much as adults. He expected the boys to work at
the same price as had foreigners for years past, regardless of the advance in
price of food and the standards of living. Of course he was disappointed,
and this is where the leader of the camp, through his authority, represents
the interests of the boys and the newer conditions of farm labor which have
come out of the employment of boys.

An instance of what happened in Highland, New York, will illustrate the
power of leadership on the part of a camp leader and the coöperative
instinct of a group of city boys who have considerable familiarity with the
principles of strikes, lockouts, picket duty, and street-corner oratory. The
boys were being paid one and one-half cents a quart for currant picking. In
years past this had been the usual rate. They could, on the average, pick
about 40 quarts a day, which brought them $3.60 a week, assuming that
they worked for six days in the week and there was no rain or other
interruptions. Meanwhile each boy's proportion of the board at camp
amounted to about $3.50 a week. At this point a combination of training in
school debating, listening to speeches of industrial disturbers, and a
knowledge of trade-union methods came into play, for these boys gathered
together and determined to demand two cents a quart. They held a meeting
and voted to strike for two cents. They marched around the berry-storage
houses, each wearing an empty berry basket as a cap, on which was marked
"two cents" and which was decorated more or less artistically with bunches
of currants. A meeting of all farmers of the district was called by the general
camp supervisor of the district. The boys had presented their arguments to
the individual camp leaders, and in turn the supervisor presented them to
the farmers. The farmers, in turn, presented their difficulties. They said they
could not afford to pay more; talked about middlemen, commission-men,
express rates, greater cost of baskets and crates, mortgage on the farm, and
everything, in fact, except the federal income tax. But the boys won out,

and the meeting resulted in a new price never before paid for picking
currants. And the boys who, up to then, had been able to pick only 40 quarts
a day, were able to gather many more after the advance in rate, picking 60
quarts a day instead of 40 quarts. There are people who can read into this
short story an economic principle.

It is absolutely necessary to have a clear understanding between the boy-
camp group, through its leader or the organization sending the camp, and
the individual farmer or the group of farmers employing the boys, as to
fundamental points of remuneration, type of work expected, length and
permanency of service.

The boy-camp-group problem is wholly different from the problem of the
individual boy who works for an individual farmer and has no established
relations with any camp. The latter is a contract relationship between the
boy and the farmer. The farmer usually hires the boy by the month for
general farm work, and the duties incident to such a job are familiar to
everyone. The hours may be long or short, the work hard or easy, the food
good or bad, the boy's room clean or unsanitary; but there is nothing
unusual in this problem.

The one which is discussed here is that of the labor camp, where a group of
boys are projected into a strange community to work at a job unfamiliar to
the majority of them,—working for a farmer or a group of farmers who
have never before employed such a type of labor. Any single employer of
farm labor who is in a position to employ a group of boys may be assumed
either to be conducting a large farm on which there is a great diversity of
crops extending over a wide range of time of harvesting, or to be a
specializing farmer working in an intensive way on a comparatively small
area with special crops which are harvested in short periods of time.
Perhaps it may be better to think of three types of jobs, or rather, three types
of employers who have jobs to be filled by groups of boys.

First, there is the individual farmer who is a specialist. Such employers
grow berries and other small fruits. Here the boys get very little farm
experience. They do obtain an idea of country life, and they have excellent
camp experience, but in order to learn much about the fruit and berry
business they ought to be on the farm during the time of spraying, pruning,

and fertilizing. In reality these boys are but factory hands under farm
conditions. Of course this type of work is extremely well adapted to the
inexperienced boy.

Second, there is the type of employer represented by the vegetable grower.
In this case it is readily seen that crops are put into the ground as early as
April, and seeding may continue until the fifteenth of August, and with
weeding, thinning, and cultivating, the work may continue practically
throughout the season. The harvesting of certain crops may start late in June
and continue until the ground freezes. In this work the boys obtain the very
best sort of farm experience outside of that obtained from general farm
work. The work which they do is diversified, and they learn about many
farm operations.

Third, another type of employer is the business organization made up of
farmers; as, for example, the shippers' or growers' association, where a
group of farmers unite under a more or less compact organization for the
purpose of raising and moving crops. Another illustration—somewhat
different for the reason that the organization is not made up of farmers, but
rather is allied with farmers—is that of a canning company. In working for
such a type of employer the boy may or may not gain considerable
agricultural experience, depending entirely upon whether he is working on
diversified crops for long periods of time or doing specialized harvesting. It
is necessary to keep in mind these different types of work as represented by
different types of employers.

It is clear that in some sections, under certain agricultural conditions
already described, the job might be guaranteed a group of boys from the
middle of April until the first of November, with almost steady work for six
days in the week. The nature of crops and weather conditions determine
continuity of work. A heavy rain means a good deal of cultivating and
weeding immediately afterward in order to conserve the moisture. A light
rain means that the boys can work for part of the day in the fields, while in
the case of small-fruit farming even a slight rain prevents the picking of the
fruit. Again, in vegetable farming a boy may work all day if the fields are
not too hot, without any injury to his health or to the crops, because the
vegetable plants cannot be injured by handling, no matter how hot it is.

In the case of the specialized farmer, there is little or no guarantee for work
beyond a short and definite period; that is, the period is necessarily short,
but whether or not it is definite depends a great deal upon the weather and
prices of crops. It is obvious that an abundant crop might cause a low
market price,—a price too low to pay for picking,—and employers who
early in the season thought that they wanted a group of boys might decline
to accept them at the last moment. They might even contract for the boy-
labor camp and after the boys had picked for a few days desire to drop the
whole enterprise because of a fall in the market price,—a fall which would
not be evident until the crops commenced to come. Or, again, the employer
might contract for a camp of boys to pick strawberries, for example, and
complete arrangements might be made for bringing the boys to the locality,
only to have the camp project abandoned because a week of rain had
absolutely ruined the strawberry crops. Such an experience was met in New
York State the past season. A hailstorm in Chautauqua County completely
destroyed in a few minutes the prospects of a camp for the harvesting of
tomatoes. Now, it is evident that it is a difficult matter always to guarantee a
job.

The Bureau of Vocational Training of the Military Training Commission of
New York State requested the zone representatives in the farm-placement
bureaus to see to it that jobs were guaranteed to boys and that the time of
service, place of service, and pay should be clearly stated. It furthermore
recommended that the job should be guaranteed in writing by a single
farmer, by a group of farmers, or by the corporation desiring these boys;
that the employing party should state the kind of work, the pay, the number
of boys needed, the duration of service, the living conditions, the provisions
made for the food supply for the first week, and so on. It made it clear that
there should be an assurance in writing of what the boys were to expect, and
that someone should be delegated to see that the employer lived up to his
agreement. Out of a theory not based upon any previous experience it was
obviously easy to write up such a statement, but to expect it to be carried
out without a hitch in all parts of the state and for all kinds of work and all
types of employers, not taking into consideration climatic and market
conditions, to say nothing about the prejudices and idiosyncrasies of
employers and boys, was to count the chickens before they were hatched.
About all that can be said at this stage of this movement is in illustration of

the way the job guarantee was handled. In what follows it must be kept in
mind that much of what has been said or what may be said about the
proposition of guaranteeing the job is not at all difficult to carry out in the
case of general farming and is only moderately difficult in the case of
vegetable growing.

Every camp failure due to the lack of a workable contract justifies the
original contention that guaranteeing the job is extremely important.

MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING IN REFERENCE TO THE
SOUTH LIMA (NEW YORK) CAMP

Between the New York State Military Training Commission Farm-Cadet
Bureau, West Central Zone (Nathaniel G. West, Field Inspector, Rochester,
New York) and the Growers' and Shippers' Association of South Lima, New
York.

The Farm-Cadet Bureau, West Central Zone, agrees:

1. To furnish 25 or more unskilled farm cadets, 16 to 19 years of age, for
labor on muck and upland farms.

2. To furnish a camp leader, who shall have general charge of the camp of
boys, who shall hire out the boys to near-by farmers, collect all wages, and
purchase supplies.

3. That the camp leader shall keep an accurate account of all wages paid to
farm cadets and percentage collected, such accounts to be open for
inspection by committee designated by the Growers' and Shippers'
Association.

4. To furnish a competent camp cook who shall prepare all meals for the
farm cadets.

5. To pay each week, through the camp leader, to the Growers' and
Shippers' Association a sum for overhead expenses, as explained below,—

such sum to be procured by adding to all wages earned by the cadets a sum
equal to five per cent of such wages.

The Growers' and Shippers' Association agrees:

1. To provide work, as continuously as possible, for each of the farm cadets
in the above camp from June 11, 1917, to November 3, 1917.

2. To pay wages for each farm cadet at the rate of $2 per day's work, such
day's work not to exceed ten hours.

3. To pay at the end of such week to the camp leader all wages earned by
farm cadets during that week.

4. To pay in addition to the above wages a sum equal to 5 per cent of the
wages, such sum to be turned over to treasurer of the Growers' and
Shippers' Association for payment of overhead expenses of the camp.

5. To arrange for rental of suitable quarters for the cadets, furnish two
ranges and fuel for same, furnish 27 or more cots, tables, benches, and
chairs for the quarters, install a telephone, and arrange with local grocer for
two weeks' credit for the camp leader for the purchase of supplies.

6. To pay for the items mentioned under 5, above, out of the 5 per cent
received from the camp leader, as agreed above.

MASSACHUSETTS PLAN OF INDIVIDUAL AGREEMENT WITH
FARMER

To the Committee on Food Production and Conservation

(Department of Mobilization of Schoolboys for Farm Service)

Dear Sirs:

I hereby apply for ____________ boys to be employed by me as general
farm labor according to the terms and regulations on the reverse side of this
application.

I shall require these boys to begin work upon ______________ and
probably require their services, if satisfactory, until
______________________

I agree to pay each boy $4 per week for the first two weeks, and $6 per
week thereafter; such payment to be made on Saturday of each week.
(Afterwards changed, see chapter on "Farm Cadets," p. 250.)

If the boy lives in a camp, I agree to pay $4 per week for his board, and if
he lives with me, I will furnish his board; the above to be in addition to his
wages.

I agree to employ the boy on rainy days as well as fair days, and on rainy
days to use his service as far as possible under cover.

I agree, if the boy is unsatisfactory, to give him one week's notice or one
week's pay, providing him with a statement in writing giving my reasons for
his discharge.

Whenever in the opinion of the local supervisor, the conditions of living or
of labor are not satisfactory, the boy may be withdrawn without prejudice to
him.

The nature of the work for which the boy is required is
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
Sign here ___________________________________________
(Farmer)
Phone ____________ Street address _____________________
Date ________________________ Town _____________________

The right leadership in a camp is very essential. The camp, after all, is but
the lengthened shadow of its leader. It is not difficult to write the
qualifications essential to leadership in a boys' farm camp, but it is another
matter to find any one person who will fill all the conditions that are
peculiar to a labor camp. A hundred-point man capable of measuring up to

the problems involved in camp leadership must have had experience in
school or Association work. He would have knowledge of cooking utensils
and personal equipment necessary to take to camp; capacity to arrange for
transportation for the boys by the most direct, convenient, and economical
route; ability to deal successfully with the problem of the first night in
camp,—a night when boys cannot or will not sleep, when they are stirred up
by the novelty of the situation. He would be able to recognize good,
substantial, nourishing food, and to see that the boys had proper food in
such an emergency as the camp cook's suddenly being taken ill or deserting
his job. He would have had experience in adjusting working conditions,
would know how many quarts of fruit, for example, the average boy can
pick; would be able to help these boys get the most out of their work by
showing them the most effective method of harvesting; would understand
how to use first-aid equipment. He would have to see that the boys kept up
correspondence with their homes. He might have to sit up all night with a
boy who had eaten more fruit than was good for him.

The right leader will also have to think of reading matter for the camp and
of the problem of having the boys attend church services on Sunday when
the membership of the camp has varied religious beliefs. He may have some
orthodox Jews in camp when the country village has only a Methodist
church. He must satisfy the boys who want to have a minstrel show, or the
townspeople who offer to entertain the boys. He may even have to arbitrate
in labor disputes. He may be the local placement bureau. He should be able
to drive an automobile, in order that he may carry a flying squad five miles
from camp for a day's work for a farmer who is in immediate need. He must
be able to answer the questions asked on blanks sent out by the state
departments of agriculture and education, by city boards of education, by
state Y.M.C.A.'s, by child-labor bureaus, and by all other organizations
more or less directly interested in the new aspects of old problems. If the
boys have been excused from school, he must certify that their labor-camp
work has been equivalent to the school work which they otherwise would
have had. He must be the banker of the camp and help the boys conserve
the money which they earn. He is accountable to the group for the expenses
of the camp, in order that these may be divided pro rata. He must be able to
buy supplies at the least cost.

It is with deliberate intention that this list has been made lengthy and of
wide range, in order to show that no man exists who could meet adequately
every condition imposed. He is bound to be "born short," as William
Hawley Smith would state it, on some of these angles. If he is a social-
minded man of the Boy Scout or Y.M.C.A. type, he will be long on
entertainments, recreation, food requirements, knowledge of personal
equipment, group work, first aid, and sanitation. If he is of the school-
teacher type, he will probably be strong on discipline, efficient in looking
after details of school credits, camp expenses, records, moral conditions,
letter writing, and keeping boys busy. If he is a technical man in agriculture,
he may know nothing about baseball on Saturday afternoon or how to
organize a minstrel show, but he will probably know how to do more than
keep boys busy. He will keep them effectively busy; that is, he will arrange
to have certain boys do the lines of work adapted to their skill and
knowledge. He will discover ways of utilizing the labor of the unskilled
boy. He will be able to judge whether or not a boy is working to his full
capacity, and he may be somewhat pitiless if the boy does not measure up to
a farm-labor standard. In other words, such a man will be very largely
interested in a working camp. He will be interested in meeting the
conditions imposed by the farmers. He will know that the berries must be
expressed by four o'clock and that the picking may have to stop promptly at
two. He will know that a leaky crate of raspberries means a low price for
possibly a whole carload. He will be less interested, perhaps, in the
balanced ration and more interested in using the products of the community
on the camp table. He will not be interested in the records required by
school officials so much as in those expected of him by the farm-bureau
agent. In short, his idea is to promote agriculture and not to promote the
county Y.M.C.A. movement, the back-to-the-farm movement, or any other
movement which may be allied with the farm-cadet service.

It is not possible to find any one man who is socially, pedagogically, and
agriculturally minded. If he claims to be good in all three fields he probably
is mediocre. The experience of the past year, however, shows some
remarkably fine work done by leaders of boy camps. Some have been
public-school teachers who have given their summer services for nothing or
for a nominal fee. Some have been released from their duties as Y.M.C.A.
secretaries in order that the association might make a contribution to the

farm-cadet movement. Some have been physical directors in public schools.
Some have been scout masters among the Boy Scouts. Others have been
agricultural teachers who saw that this work was, after all, in the line of
their usual duties.

The following illustrates one of the hundred things which a camp leader
must know about:

INSTRUCTIONS TO FARM CADETS

ENLISTED FOR CAMP-SQUAD SERVICE
IN NEW YORK STATE

WHAT TO TAKE

NECESSARY ARTICLES

Bed sack 75 × 30 inches (to be stuffed with straw at camp) or cot
mattress; enamel-ware plate, cup, saucer, sauce dish, also knife,
fork, and spoon; dinner pail or box, two heavy blankets, small
pillow, working clothes, sweater, gymnasium shirt, raincoat or
old overcoat, heavy shoes, toothbrush, tooth powder, small
mirror, towels, extra socks, rubbers or rubber boots, extra
underwear, hairbrush, comb, soap, handkerchiefs, pajamas, a
good disposition, and a spirit of loyalty to the camp and its aims.

DESIRABLE ARTICLES

Musical instruments, camera, baseball, glove, bat, needles,
thread, safety pins, notebook, pencils, writing paper, envelopes,
good books, magazines.

The methods of housing the boys differ widely. Ordinarily one thinks of
tents as being the most feasible, but the scarcity and high cost of such

equipment during the past year prevented the boys from living under
canvas. Generally speaking, it would be better to think in terms of
something more permanent than tents, as these do not last more than three
years, and if the camp idea of harvesting crops by the use of boys is to
continue,—and many believe it will,—it is advisable to plan for a
permanent and inexpensive type of building. A rough board shack with a
good roof is highly desirable in the early spring days and in the late fall.

Many of the cadets in New York State camps were quartered in berry
houses (which are really packing and storage houses located in the berry
fields), in vacant houses, in schoolhouses, in grange halls, and in buildings
located on the fair grounds. Most of these berry houses were two stories
high, the first floor being used for the commissary department and the
second floor for dormitories. In such cases the berries were packed in
temporary shacks adjoining the berry houses. In other cases the boys have
used the first floor for a sitting room and built a rough shack back of the
berry or storage house for kitchen and dining room.

One of the most significant camping places was that of a two-room
schoolhouse, where cots for fifty boys were put into the rooms, and the
basement was used as a kitchen. The boys built a table outside and put up a
canopy over it for a dining room. They next dammed up a brook which ran
back of the schoolhouse and made what they termed a "bathtub," which was
capable of holding about six boys at a time. They also put into fine
condition the rather disreputable schoolhouse latrines. These boys made the
schoolhouse ring at night with their popular school songs; the old piano did
its best to bring together the heritages of the East Side and of the Highlands
of the Hudson.

There are several ways of making provision for camp equipment. One is to
develop, under state, county, or local auspices, a series of permanent camp
quarters located in small-fruit, large-fruit, and muck-land districts. This
equipment need not be expensive. It will be located very near the source of
labor demand and can always be used, whether boy or adult labor is
employed. Fruit and produce growers and kindred establishments have in
the past provided, more or less, for such an equipment.

Another plan is to use schoolhouses, grange halls, vacant farm buildings,
and agricultural-fair equipment. It is unfortunate that so much property
ordinarily used for public purposes lies idle for long periods of time. Some
may say that the city boy will not leave country property in good shape, but
experience so far has shown that the city boys have left things better than
they found them.

Still another type already spoken of is tentage, and perhaps the best way to
provide such an equipment is to have the state furnish it through the
adjutant general's office.

The sanitary aspects of any type of camp are highly important. In
Massachusetts the committee of public safety, which established boy
camps, required that the sanitary conditions of these camps should be
inspected by the board of health, and the committee furnished full
directions and a blue print for the building of a sanitary latrine.

Some of the camps burn their garbage in home-made incineration plants.

Ordinary garden hose with a watering-pot sprinkler attachment, or an
elevated barrel with a sprayer attached, and filled by the use of a pail and
ladder, were shower-bath devices worked out by the boys in various camps.

All the camps devised some method of keeping food cool, ranging from
those that had a real city ice chest down to those that cleaned out a spring
and set in it a bottomless, covered box.

The job of feeding boys in camp is not a sinecure. Every scheme has been
tried, from engaging at a salary of one hundred dollars a month a Pullman
dining-car chef down to, or shall it be said up to, a boy cook. The cook
problem in a labor camp is as difficult to handle as is the so-called "servant"
problem of the city. The average cook knows more about cooking than he
does about dietetics. He is very likely to lack adaptability. He is usually
untrained for camp cooking and is not particularly open to suggestions.
Experience seems to show that the best cook is the one who has done work
in a Y.M.C.A. camp or in a Boy Scout camp. Of course, this year there was
a great scarcity of the latter class to be found, as they were needed in their
own organizations, and therefore many camps were obliged to employ a

local woman of the matronly type to cook for the boys; sometimes an
experienced camp leader has developed some good cooks among the boys
in camp. Perhaps the best results, however, were obtained from boys who
before the opening of camps were given from two to four weeks of camp-
cooking instruction in the school system from which they came. These boys
were ready to use the products of the localities, such as peas, beans,
tomatoes, radishes, lettuce, and corn, while the professional cook often
seemed more familiar with the use of the can opener.

The quantity and variety of food was practically in the hands of the boys
themselves, assuming that the cook was a good one. If the allowance of
fruit for breakfast, for example, consisted of four prunes or one banana or
half an orange, and the group as a whole desired a larger portion, it was
perfectly possible for them to secure it by so voting, for it must be
remembered that the food expense of the camps was divided pro rata among
the boys. Under these conditions, however, it was found that the boys were
very economical and frowned upon the few malcontents who wanted to
gorge themselves.

The cafeteria style of serving prevailed generally.

Providing amusements in recreation camps is always a problem, but farm
cadets require little in the way of entertainment after eight or ten hours of
field service. Camp-fire talks on agriculture, corn roasts, toasting
marshmallows, giving musical entertainments and minstrel shows, holding
mock trials, playing baseball on Saturday afternoons or Sundays, constitute
the chief forms of recreation. In every instance the lads have been well
received in the local communities. They were popular features at church
entertainments, Red Cross benefits, and country sociables. Often the boys,
especially in the berry-picking regions, went swimming about 4 P.M., after
the crates had been sent by the afternoon express.

In every instance the village church and the county Y.M.C.A. took an active
interest in the farm cadets. Many of the boys played musical instruments,
and their confidence in themselves was contributory to many supplementary
boy choirs. The country pastors evidently made it a point to do what they
could for the pleasure of all the boys, and without exception there seemed
to be no religious distinctions. In some camps the Catholic priest expressed

his fatherly feeling for the lads. In others the Jewish and Catholic boys
attended the union village church. In brief, the boys entered into the spirit of
the rural life, and both the country folk and the youth of the city were the
better for it.

A study of the different camps in operation in various parts of the country
seems to indicate that they might be grouped under six heads as follows.

I. Concentration, or training, camps. These are usually located in
agriculturally strategic sections of the state, where boys may receive
preliminary training in camp life and in farm work under disciplinary and
instructional conditions. Of course such a camp can do nothing more than
give the boys a training in the elements of farm activities (such as
harnessing a horse, running a hand cultivator, using a hoe, driving a team)
and serve as a trying-out period for weeding out boys who are
unsatisfactory. These camps cannot be considered places which will give a
preliminary agricultural education, for that is very different from giving a
preliminary idea of farm operations. After these boys have received a
course of such training, they are sent out under leadership to work in a
section of the state where a group may work for one farmer and live at the
camp meanwhile or may work for individual farmers and live with the
employer. Obviously it is taken for granted that such a camp is located in a
good agricultural section and that its surroundings have something more
than fine swimming holes or beautiful scenery. These boys must be trained
in an environment and under conditions similar to the farm life in which
they are to participate later. It would seem that the agricultural colleges of
the country and the secondary schools of agriculture would, generally
speaking, offer splendid locations for establishing training camps. Here
would be found, or ought to be found, good land. This is not always true,
because occasionally an agricultural college has been located irrespective of
good land. The technical and dormitory facilities, however, would be
available for the boys in training.

II. Farm-working, or labor-distributing, camps. These are concentration
camps in a certain sense, but they are located directly in the farm district
where the boys, after receiving their preliminary training, are to find work
in the community adjoining the camp. Several camps of this order have

started out with the idea of giving a preliminary training in agriculture in
the camp itself, and have borrowed or bought farming implements and
teams and leased land in order to give the training. But in the majority of
cases this idea was abandoned, for it was found that these boys could
receive all their preliminary training with the farmers, provided the leader
of the camp could establish helpful relations between the boy and the
employing farmer and could, out of his wisdom and experience, protect the
boy in the early stages of the work and guide him in all its stages. In other
words, in this type of camp a city man, acting as leader, comes into a
community with a group of boys who live at the camp but receive their
training with the near-by farmers. A labor-supply camp, composed of able-
bodied boys, is a type which adequately meets the need at small expense.

III. Military farm-training camp. This is a type of camp where city boys,
under the direction of a school or some organization, go into a farming
community and open up new land which otherwise would not have been put
under cultivation. These boys stay at the camp during the season. They do
not work for the farmers near by, or, at least, not ordinarily,—the intention
being to establish a self-supporting and self-maintaining camp for the use of
the boys who attend. The land is tilled, the seed planted, and the harvest
gathered for the benefit of the boys. Any profits are given to the boys or to
the school, and any expenses for conducting the camp, or overhead charges,
usually come out of the organization or school represented. It is
questionable whether, generally speaking, this type of camp is on a sound
economic and agricultural basis. If such a camp could be carried on for a
number of years with a strong school or other organization behind it, and
plenty of capital, it is very likely that it would succeed. It takes capital to
establish good soil conditions and purchase tools, farm machinery, and
stock, and to put up buildings. It is a highly desirable type of camp to
consider in terms of many years or where a school wishes to give its boys a
military and farm experience. But in the food emergency through which the
country is now passing, it is doubtful if this type of camp should ever have
been started. It is, however, an excellent type to establish as a permanent
adjunct to a city school system.

IV. Coöperative camp where the boys share in proceeds. This type of camp
is practically like III, and if the farm land is new and the camp leader is

untrained in agricultural operations and the boys are unskilled, it is about as
likely to be doomed to failure as is the other.

V. The village- or country-school type of camp. This is a camp where the
schoolboys, under the leadership of a teacher, go to the outskirts of the
village and develop a garden. If the land is good and the teacher knows
agriculture and the boys attend to business, they will most certainly receive
an excellent practical training useful to them in life. They will have learned
how to work in the soil, how to work together for a common purpose, how
to stick to a job until it is finished, how to look ahead from the time seed is
purchased until the crop is placed in the hands of the customer. All these
things are good and they are useful to any boy, but, of course, from the
standpoint of increasing the food supply in any large way through the
growing of wheat, feed corn, oats, rye, buckwheat, potatoes, and large fruits
there is little to be said. The work is to be commended on the basis of its
value to the individual boy.

VI. Short-term camp, sometimes called "flying squadron". This type of
camp is advisable only in an intensive-farming region where quick service
for the harvesting period is needed. The squad itself will serve to keep a
balance between the demand for labor and the supply. It is easy to picture a
fruit region around and through which are a number of camps. Each one
ought to be working to the limit, but, of course, as a matter of fact in one
section there would be a greater demand for boys than could be met by the
local camp. It is at this time that the flying squadron comes in, when, in
response to the SOS call, a group of temporarily idle boys from one camp
may be sent to another camp which is short of help.

CHAPTER XII

A SUMMARIZED PROGRAM OF ACTION

Out of this war we are going to have a new spirit and method in education.
England has already begun to evaluate its present system. It has issued a
report on the assistance which education, if properly directed, can give to
industry and commerce after the war. The results of a recent investigation
afford—so the report states—a convincing proof of the necessity of
improving and extending the provisions hitherto made for instruction and
training in scientific studies as a necessary foundation for fruitful research.

The report goes on to say that, in a sense unknown to former generations,
England has become a part of Europe; and in the interest not merely of
commerce but of the intelligent conduct of national affairs an adequate
knowledge of the languages—and, through the languages, of the literatures,
histories, and civilizations of European countries—should be in the
possession of a far larger proportion of its population than in the past. It
states that particular subjects of instruction in the high schools and institutes
cannot be divorced from the consideration of their organization and of their
curricula as a whole, if a proper balance of studies is to be secured and if
higher education is to be truly liberal and humane in its spirit and influence.
It insists that access to the schools must be rendered easier for native ability
wherever it is found, and affirms again and again that the needs of the
nation cannot be satisfied merely by changes affecting higher education or
by a provision of educational facilities confined to scholars of special gifts
and abilities. It closes by saying that the future will make new and increased
demands, especially in a democratic community, on the health, character,
and intelligence of every citizen; and these demands can only be met by
comprehensive and far-reaching improvements and developments of
elementary education.

Military engineering will become a popular and necessary part of the
curricula of our colleges and technical institutes. A class in suspension-
bridge work at Wentworth Institute, Boston, Massachusetts.

Military preparedness of college boys and schoolboys includes other
activities than merely drilling. Trench drainage, one of a score of war
emergency courses, at Wentworth Institute, Boston, Massachusetts.

Returned convalescent soldiers, who would be idle but for the opportunity
offered to brush up their education. Ogden Military Convalescent Hospital.

A corner of the printing and photo-engraving shop at Manitoba Military
Convalescent Hospital, Winnipeg. These men have been assigned to courses
of reëducation because of inability to return to their former occupations.

The individual-industrial-efficiency idea which we obtained from Germany
will have to be interpreted in America not for military purposes, but in
terms of personal and vocational service for the nation. Just as the academic
militarism of the Old World has been found wanting and has been gradually
transformed into the mobilization of all forces behind the lines on an
entirely new basis and conception of what may be done by a people in time
of war, so we in this country shall learn that we may in times of peace,
through efficient and effective living, prepare for defense. In this
preparation we may learn that improved elementary education, that
vocational training, that bringing into the schools the Boy Scout spirit, that
teaching of sanitation and personal hygiene, that organizing our courses on

a unit and project basis, that developing systems of student service in school
life, that extending school facilities to adults, and a hundred other things
which have been thought of as fads and pedagogical idiosyncrasies will, to
quote the New York State law relative to military equivalents, "specifically
prepare for service useful to the state in the maintenance of defense, in the
promotion of public safety, in the conservation and development of the
state's resources, or in the construction and maintenance of public
improvements." Truly, a program for peace as well as for war.

The school board and its executive officer, the superintendent, should do
everything to save the school buildings for school purposes. They are
literally factories turning out, it is hoped, handmade products; and in time
of war their service should be increased rather than diminished. To use them
as hospitals will be a mistake,—better by far confiscate department stores.
Bring the war into the schools in the spirit already interpreted in preceding
chapters, but do not take the schools into the war.

Do not eliminate studies indiscriminately. Evaluate if you will,—and this is
always well,—but wholesale cutting out is to be avoided. It may be that the
cost and value of instruction in freehand drawing will have to be compared
with the permanent value of the study of Latin. It may be that instead of
adding to the vocational department a machine-shop equipment, which is
always expensive, it will be discovered that a coöperative course can be
developed, employing the equipment of a neighboring factory, and that all
the school need furnish is a teacher for blackboard work in mathematics,
drawing, and science. It is likely that a longer school day will be advisable
and also a longer school year. It is quite probable that the introduction of the
methods of the Boy Scout movement into the public schools will be found
superior to some of the present teaching of nature study, recreational work,
civics, and conduct.

Provision must be made for filling the places of the male teachers who will
be drafted. Many of these will be instructors in science and mathematics. It
ought to be possible to secure the services of retired civil or mechanical
engineers for teaching these subjects. It is feasible to draft into service
married women who have once taught. It is to be hoped that the government
will eventually recognize that educational enterprise as well as industrial

enterprise ought to furnish grounds for exemption. As war comes closer to
us provision must be made for keeping the schools open twelve months in
the year, and from eight in the morning until ten at night for six days in the
week. Every child up to the age of 14 must be kept in school. It is the best
place for him, provided, of course, the school rises to its full height,—and it
is taken for granted that it will. The physical condition of the younger
children especially should be watched very carefully. The teacher should
discover the conditions at home. It may be that some pupils have had no
breakfast and are not likely to have a suitable lunch or even a supper. Some
will have to be fed in the schools, and here is an opportunity for the older
girls in domestic-science classes. Some will report certain home conditions
that will require that the school make a report to the local Red Cross chapter
or some other relief agency. Again there is opportunity for the older girls to
serve through their knowledge of home nursing, infant feeding, and first
aid.

If the war strikes us hard, we may have to think of part-time work for
children above 14, but we must never let the children get away from us as
they have in England. We must control the exodus. We must not abrogate
the existing compulsory-attendance laws and the existing labor laws. We
must not interpret these laws with laxity and shut our eyes while the
children go by us on their way to work. We may do well to amend these
laws if in so doing we can incorporate useful labor into the educative
process. In other words, we must be constructive in any part-time measures
which are adopted. The educative value of profitable labor need not be lost.

It will be well for us to look into the real value of military training for
schoolboys before we adopt in a wholesale fashion obsolete militarism. The
value of wooden-gunism is questionable. Physical training, vocational
training, athletics, Boy Scout work, team play, and discipline are far more
valuable. Military drill given in addition to these activities may be
advisable. However, on this point there is still a difference of opinion. But
to give formal military instruction without considering its adaptability to the
methods used in modern warfare and the training incident to effective
preparation for them is neither military preparedness on the one hand nor
sensible educational procedure on the other.

School boards ought to organize at once vocational courses to secure state
and national aid, and seek from the legislature state aid for directors of
community gardens, as, from now on, these will be a permanent feature of
community life. Some sort of provision ought to be made relative to
bringing agriculture into the city school or taking the city boy to agriculture.
A country branch of a city school is possible. Play and recreation centers
must be developed. The increase of juvenile offenses in both England and
France during this war has been tremendous. Many of these offenses are
committed by children who are still at school. There is much evidence that
owing to the absence of military service of their fathers,—and, perhaps
even more, of their elder brothers,—the industrial employment of their
mothers, the darkened streets, and other circumstances, many school
children are suffering from the lack of proper care and discipline and are
exposed to serious risks of deterioration. These conditions have been
mitigated through the establishment of evening play centers, which provide
the children with suitable occupation and amusement after school hours.

The principal of a school can play a large part in a war-emergency program.
He can develop the idea of War Savings among the children in his school.
Announcement has been made that the government intends to develop the
War Savings Certificate plan of England. These certificates are perhaps
better adapted to persons of small means than a Liberty Bond. The United
States Treasury Department has set forth a plan for advertising and selling
these certificates through the public schools of the nation. The aim is to
have every pupil an owner of a "little baby bond" and a participant in a
democratic plan of government security. A campaign for thrift has been
started. The schools must do their part.

The principal can organize patriotic meetings at which he can explain the
purposes of the Red Cross, the Liberty Loan, and the garden and
conservation movements. He can distribute pamphlets relating to war
service. In a small community he can be the leader of the Red Cross
movement, only he must always remember that he is to work with state and
national organizations and is not to write to Washington when he can
perhaps step across the street to local headquarters or write directly to state
headquarters. Of course, he will follow closely the printed directions with
reference to bandages, shipping, etc., for the general organization has put

more thought into it and gained more experience than he could possibly
gather.

Obviously the principal ought to allow no competition between school
organizations and local organizations. If the local organization is strong and
effective, he ought to work under it. If it is not, he may well work over it.
By all means he should inform pupils of the meaning of the war, that they in
turn may carry word to their parents; and such work is not always limited to
districts where people are foreign born. There may be as much need for
such work in the West as in New York City. A Western farmer is reported as
saying that he did not care who owned the country or whether the Germans
took it or not so long as he sold his wheat crop.

The principal may direct a state census on some particular data for which
state authorities may call. He should bring together various bulletins issued
by state and national governments which concern food production and
conservation, sanitation, public health, nursing, dietetics, etc., and by
publishing lists of such material in newspapers and posting them on school
bulletin boards, bring the information within them to the people who need it
most. He should make the hall exercises in the school mean more than ever.
Let us hope that "America" may be sung with more vim, and that the
principal will know the second stanza. The "Marseillaise" and other
national songs of our allies may be sung. Of course a service flag made by
the girls in the school hangs prominently in the assembly hall, and each of
its stars speaks for a teacher, a student, or a graduate who represents the
life-giving contribution of the school to the cause of democracy.

The country-school principal has a great deal to do. His work differs from
that of the city principal in that he may be a recognized leader in almost
everything, while the city principal must necessarily coöperate with
individuals and organizations. The principal in the open country can be the
local agent for seed and fertilizer and for the distribution of farmers'
bulletins. In fact, he may be the local representative for the state
departments of education, of agriculture, of labor, and of health.

He ought to use judgment in excusing boys from school for farm work. He
will know the exact circumstances under which a boy goes to work. He will
know whether he is working on his father's farm or that of a neighbor. He

can help that boy with his lessons so that he can do some studying at home
and keep up with his classes. And in the late fall, when the boys return to
school from their farm work, he can organize a special class in order that
they may satisfactorily make up their studies. This extra work on his part
and that of his coworkers will make one of the answers to the call to the
colors which comes to every man and woman in this country.

A city principal can organize an agricultural course in his city school, and
obtain a state-aided teacher for giving agricultural theory in the winter in
connection with biological science, and have this teacher take a group of
boys into the country in the spring. He can always think of his boys as
going out to farm work on the basis of an organized group, and on that basis
only. A teacher from his school might go with these boys and serve as their
leader. It is probable that educational experiments of this nature will lead
eventually to country branches of city schools.

It is clear that the industrial and trade schools, because of the very nature of
their purpose, may render unusual service, but they must start out with the
idea that they are to take their directions from the state boards of control of
vocational education rather than go off at a tangent independent of any state
or national movement. It must be remembered that provision has been made
for a national system of vocational education with a Federal Board of
Vocational Education guiding it, and that every state board having charge of
vocational education is working in conjunction with the national board. We
must keep in mind that the Federal Board of Vocational Education is in
close touch with the National Council of Defense at Washington, and
consequently with all departments of the national government which
concern war measures. For a local school to jeopardize its chances for
national and state aid through failure to follow a program provided by these
authorities, or to develop types of work which are out of accord with
national needs, will not be the part of wisdom or common sense. These
schools must not forget that their primary function is to make mechanics
and not army supplies, but if they are called upon to do the latter work, or if
they can do it effectively, they must make it educational in its aim and not
merely productive work.

State officials ought to have inventories made of the equipment of the
vocational schools, with a census of the experience and training of the
instructors, and a state study ought to be made of plans to train workers for
the different branches needed. Such a study would point out how the
semiskilled may become skilled, how the unskilled may become
semiskilled, how the necessary training may be given to specialist tool
makers, and how there can be developed a type of industrial work suitable
for women and girls.

The directors of trade schools will provide opportunities for the training of
foremen in evening classes, or at other times if necessary, using methods of
instruction which will increase their skill in dealing with green help or
unskilled laborers. These men will adjust the evening schools to run the
year round, and also provide for off-time classes.

In vocational schools of the commercial order, of which we have very few
in the country, provision will be made for short-unit courses in commercial
practice for women and girls to fit them to take the place of men drafted.

As has already been stated, it is very likely that the day vocational schools
will have comparatively few pupils during the war period, as young persons
who ordinarily go to these schools will have readily obtained work in
factories. However, such youth can still be instructed if the school will go to
the factory and there establish training courses.

The present is a good time to develop commercial courses which have a
vocational purpose, and which have methods more in accord with the
definition of vocational training. The commercial departments in the
majority of our high schools rather indifferently train stenographers, typists,
and clerks. They do not even attempt to train salesmen and saleswomen,
index and statistical clerks, comptometer operators, etc. Very few of the
commercial courses have either the definiteness of aim of the industrial and
trade schools or the practical contact with actual commercial practice which
will be necessary if they are to meet the requirements of modern business.
Commercial schools have not yet caught the spirit of part-time, off-time, or
short-unit programs.

The manual-training teacher will find plenty to do; that is, if the state
departments of education furnish him definite data and specifications for
war-emergency work. It will be practically useless for him to carry on
special work in any large way unless the field of service of the boy workers
is organized in some such way as is the Red Cross work. If boxes are
needed for packing supplies, a working drawing of the same ought to be
furnished by the state department. If hospital furniture, such as bed racks
and tables, is needed, the articles should be standardized in order that they
may be made in quantities and may be serviceable when they reach the
source of need. The same is true of splints. The reason for the great
accomplishment of the French and Canadian boys in the making of splints
used temporarily on the field of service is that they have been furnished
with very definite directions as to size, material, and method of making.

It cannot be too emphatically stated that the war-service work of the
elementary and secondary schools needs definite direction from the state
departments of education if the unity of effort based upon directions
common to all are to result not only in effective work but also in fulfilling
the social and civic purposes which are behind the service.

This is an opportune time for the manual-training teacher to abandon his set
of models. They should have been set aside long ago. His war-service duties
will give an additional motive for socializing his work. In small cities and
villages where there is plenty of land available for cultivation the director of
manual training, on the first of May, ought to change his title and assume
his duties as director of community gardens. He should have been preparing
for this work by giving instruction in garden work in the manual-training
room during March and April. Meanwhile he should have interested adults
of the community in the plan of a garden where both old and young might
work, and should have brought together civic forces to accomplish the
purpose—a purpose which is educational, social, recreational, and useful.

Dealing with boys under fifteen, as the average manual-training teacher
will, it is possible for him to develop a type of manual arts which will serve
to create or arouse a set of industrial interests helpful to the boy in
determining his life career. With every temptation to a pupil to leave school,
the manual-training teacher will now have an unusual opportunity to make

his work so attractive and economically so helpful that the boy may see the
advantage of paying no attention to industrial-service inducements.

This is a time for increasing the field of usefulness of the industrial arts in
connection with the problems involved in the junior high school. This type
of school is certain to meet with increased favor during and after the war,
and the reasons are both educational and administrative.

So much has already been said in several places in this book about the
service which cooking and sewing teachers may render, that it is hardly
necessary in this place to do more than give a very brief summary. As
supplies for cooking lessons become more expensive, the cooking teacher
must make more of demonstrations to pupils, and less, perhaps, of actual
practice. The war recipes which she uses must be mimeographed or printed
and given the pupils to take home. She must organize classes for adults in
unit courses and hold them afternoons and evenings. In fact, she might well
have the mothers come with the children during the regular session and
receive some special instructions which the children receive. She will be
busy the year round; her larger work will begin when the schools close, in
that she will start her canning and community-club work. A situation can
easily be conceived wherein she will have in reality very little teaching
responsibility in the classroom. She will be looked upon as the community
organizer for all types of food conservation, and some of her older girls
will, in all probability, be teaching in the regular classes. Of course, she will
interest all the children in the school in saving bottles, jars, crocks, large-
mouthed bottles, tumblers, small wooden pails, etc. for containers for the
jams, preserves, and fruit juices which will be put up. She will obtain all the
new bulletins on processes of drying and dehydrating. Perhaps she may
have initiative enough to discover a fruit crop which will not be picked
except through her efforts. Perhaps she will find an orphan asylum in the
community filled with boys and girls who can pick this fruit crop.

The sewing teacher has more than enough to do. If the Red Cross chapter
does not keep her busy, then she can keep the chapter active. With the price
of materials as high as it is now and the quality as poor, there is plenty of
opportunity to look over, in every home, the last year's wardrobe. She might

organize a Thrift Club. Enthusiastic youth will do almost anything under the
name of "club."

It is to be hoped that every girl in the school above the age of ten will enroll
in the sewing class and not sit idly by while a few do all the work. Very
likely the household-arts teacher will organize a home-cadet unit, just as the
boys will be organized into farm-cadet units. The girls will have their
pledge of loyalty and perhaps will wear their chevrons, badges, or buttons,
and will enroll for specific work in food, clothing, or shelter projects.

The agricultural teacher will have more than he can do. An effective teacher
in normal periods is always busy with his supervision of home-project
work, preparation of material for classroom teaching, gathering of
laboratory exhibits, etc. But in war time he must carry on his shoulders still
larger burdens. In the early spring he will discontinue his formal
agricultural teaching to the special vocational group and broaden his work
to include those who have not regularly enrolled in the agricultural course.
To the latter he will give some very definite suggestions for immediate use
on the farm; while the boys who have been with him all winter will be
excused from school to give their entire time to their home projects. To
those who have recently come into the class there will be given special
work in the classroom which they may practice outside of school hours and
which they can follow for full time during the summer.

He will have a good deal to do with the farm-cadet idea, and in the winter
he will doubtless be thinking of the type of camp which he will establish or
with which he will be connected. He may decide that he can do best by
organizing a labor-distributing camp on his own initiative, or that he will
serve as an assistant at the state-farm training camp, or that he will take his
boys, if they are village boys, to the outskirts of the village and establish a
coöperative camp; or he may get in touch with the teacher of biology in a
city school and offer the country schoolhouse and his services for a training
camp made up of city boys. It is assumed that he is in close touch with the
county farm agent; perhaps he is the local representative of the club work
which the United States Department of Agriculture is promoting; and, of
course, he is taking the responsibility of acting as agent in his territory for

the United States Boys' Working Reserve,—a really wonderful organization
full of immense possibilities.

This Boys' Working Reserve movement started under the auspices of the
United States Department of Labor in coöperation with the Council of
National Defense, for the purpose of mobilizing young men between the
ages of 16 and 21 for productive labor in the war emergency.

During the summer of 1917 the Reserve confined its activities principally to
giving federal recognition to those youths who, as members of state
organizations, had worked at least three weeks on farms or in food
production. At present it is organized in 40 states and in the District of
Columbia. Recently it has extended its activities to include industrial
occupations. Each boy who is physically fit and who, with the consent of
his parents, has taken the oath of service, is enrolled as a recruit and given
an enrollment button and a certificate bearing the great seal of the United
States. When he has worked faithfully and capably for the stated period, he
is awarded a federal bronze badge of honor.

After January 1, 1918, thirty-six days of eight hours each are to be required
on the farm or in food production in order to earn the badge. In industrial
occupations the boy will be required to work at least sixty days of eight
hours in some occupation considered essential in helping the nation in the
conduct of the war, in order to receive recognition.

The national director, Mr. William E. Hall, encourages every boy to remain
in school and in spare time to pursue some vocational training to make
himself capable of performing a productive war service, in the expectation
that he will be awarded a badge of honor when he has actually entered an
essential occupation. It is expected that we shall soon see a registered army
of young men ordinarily not available, which may be used to fill the gaps in
the labor ranks caused by war activities.

The Reserve has been indorsed by President Wilson in the following
language:

Permit me to express my great appreciation of the work undertaken by
the United States Boys' Working Reserve of the Employment Service

of Department of Labor. To give to the young men between the ages of
16 and 21 the privilege of spending their spare time in productive
enterprise without interrupting their studies at school, while their older
brothers are battling in the trenches and on the seas, must greatly
increase the means of providing for the forces at the front and the
maintenance of those whose services are needed here. It is a high
privilege, no less than a patriotic duty, to help support the nation by
devoted and intelligent work in this great crisis.

Theodore Roosevelt, in writing of the good work which the Reserve is
doing, says, in part:

I am glad that you intend to encourage the training of the boys to
prepare for some essential industry where they can take the place of a
man called to the front. One of the great benefits you confer is that of
making the boy realize that he is part of Uncle Sam's team; that he is
doing his share in this great war; that he holds his services in trust for
the nation; and that though it is proper to consider the question of
material gain and the question of his own desires, yet that what he
must most strongly consider at this time is where his services will do
most good to our people as a whole.

The teachers of America, as well as the boys, are making themselves a part
of Uncle Sam's team; and they too hold their services in trust for the nation.
The Junior Red Cross movement in the schools has swept the country. The
school children have advertised and sold bonds of the second Liberty
Loan.12 The teachers of cooking are serving as local representatives for the
food administrator at Washington. Agricultural teachers have pledged
themselves as community workers for the summer of 1918. Manual-training
teachers are developing plans for substituting garden projects in the spring
for the manual-training models of the schoolroom. Technical colleges and
institutes are filled with students in uniform. Industrial and trade schools on
the seacoast are planning to discard their house carpentry for shipbuilding
courses. County superintendents of schools are studying government
bulletins for the last word in preserving and drying farm products on a large
scale, in order that they may give directions to the schools. Teachers in
academic schools have enlisted for service on relief, loan, garden, thrift, and

conservation committees. Men who were leaders and supervisors of farm-
cadet camps in 1917 are planning for similar work in the future on a larger
and improved basis. Programs for teachers' institutes and state associations
of teachers now include the topics: "What can our schools do in war time?"
and "Our schools after the war."

These efforts of the teachers and the pupils respond to our President's
appeal that each of us must do his share in making the world safe for
democracy.

At present, to be sure, we center our thoughts on how to make the world
safe for democracy. But what of the future? What of the contribution of the
schools after the war? Should not the schools then center their aims and
methods on making democracy safe for the world? If the people themselves
are to be masters, must they not be provided with an education making for
mastership? Is it not well for us to examine our present schools to determine
whether they are making a democracy which will be safe for the world?
Have we a system of education which actually gives an opportunity for
every child to make the most of himself? Have we a liberalized course of
study which actually stimulates and develops intellectual and aesthetic
interests in music, art, literature, science, travel, and history? Have we
evolved a socialized education developing moral habits, civic incentives,
possession and use of ethical ideals and standards for a successful group
life? Has our formative process been able to bring about refinements of
social behavior beyond the point required for group participation? Have we
arrived at the point where we can say that our people have even the
common culture which it is expected all members of a democracy shall
possess, to say nothing about the development of individual culture, which
is a possession of the interested individual and his congenial fellows? How
far have we gone in recognizing that "by-education" which comes through a
child's self-direction of his natural or spontaneous learning instincts and
impulses?

How much have we accomplished in giving educational and vocational
guidance to children between the ages of 12 and 16? What has been done in
the way of fulfilling the national obligation to teach the strangers within our
gates our language and the principles and forms of our civic life? What has

been our program for subnormals in order that they may be prepared for
independent living in the competitive social order? Have we established
clear-cut distinctions between subnormal and crippled cases that must
remain custodial and those that can be prepared for independent existence?
What are we doing in the way of education for delinquents? To what extent
have we utilized the discovery that these antisocial manifestations of youth
are results of heredity, or of inferior homes, or of a lack of playgrounds, or
of poor schools?

Have the schools missed a great opportunity for giving moral, civic, and
physical training to youth by failing to absorb the Boy Scout and Camp Fire
Girl movements and thus failing to grasp the full educational significance of
the methods adopted by those who so well understand adolescent youth?
Are the disciplinary methods of the teachers and the general internal
management of the schools such as will develop among pupils a democracy
which is safe even in the schoolroom? What have we done in determining
what is desirable and feasible for extending general education to average
adults who have early entered upon specialized occupations?

How far have we gone in our program of vocational education to recognize
and to provide for the influence of automatic machinery upon the physical,
mental, and vocational welfare of workers? Have we so thoroughly grasped
the idea of an educational democracy that no child in our schools is
disadvantaged by the section of the state or of the country in which he
happens to be born?

Have we in our vocational training set up any program for the industrial
training of women which recognizes that the modern problem of women's
work concerns the following of some productive vocation away from
home? Have we even begun to realize that every person should have
definite vocational training with such distinctive purpose back of it that it
will produce the skill, knowledge, ideals, and general experience that
function in distinct callings?

Have we even thought of a program of education for leisure which will
develop enduring tastes and interests established toward the enrichment of
the individual and indirectly of social life? Do we fully understand that to
make democracy safe for the world all people should have some leisure or

time apart from vocational, civic, and physical necessities of life, that such
leisure should be filled with sociability, amusement, recreation, and
satisfaction of the aesthetic and physical desires, and that the public schools
must in some measure provide for these?

Will a democracy proclaiming equality of opportunity as its ideal require an
education which unites from the beginning of the child's school life, and for
all pupils of the school, learning and social application, ideas and practice,
work and recognition of the meaning of what is done? Or can a democracy
be developed by dividing the public-school system into parts, one of which
pursues traditional methods with incidental improvements, and another in
which children "learn through their hands" and are given only the "essential
features" of the traditional bookwork?

All that the schools are now doing in war time, and much more which they
are not yet doing, to make the world safe for democracy, may be effectively
used after war time to make democracy safe for the world.

INDEX

Agricultural education, establishment of, in city schools, 156, 314
home-project work, 321
relation of, to farm-cadet service, 322
Agricultural labor, resolutions of New York State Board of
Regents in regard to, 95
shortage of, 136
farm-garden permits for, 159
release of schoolboys for, 161-163
justification for employment of boys for, 164
German women and children in, 236, 242, 243
English children in farm work, 236-240
organizing boys for, 246-256
example of distribution of, 255-256
social significance of boys in, 270-271
age distinctions of boys, 274
types of farm employers, 280-282
Attendance laws, abrogating of, in England, 135
types of action possible in regard to, 138-139
action of various states in regard to, 140-143
lessons to be learned from England, 144-146
modification of, 155
changes in New York State, 157-159
enlistment for farm service in New York State and relation to, 160-161
relaxing, for agricultural work, 237-239
constructive policy in amending, 309
Aviation schools, 98

Blind, the, reëducating, 211-213, 215
Boy Scouts, 87, 130, 140, 172, 306, 309,
328

Camp Fire Girls, 328
Canada, convalescent homes for disabled soldiers in, 215
work of Military Hospitals Commission in, 228-231
boys for farm work in, 247
Census, agricultural, by schools of New York State, 24, 277
school principal may direct, 312
Claxton, P. P., 92, 146-150

Colleges, continuance of, during war time, 80-83, 92
spirit of mobilization of, 83-86
war-emergency courses in, 86-90, 96-103
maintenance of academic status of, 91, 93-94
field of service for departments of psychology in, 101-103
contribution of geological departments of, 105
effect of war on curricula of, 111
demand for graduates of, 147-148
Commercial schools, indefiniteness of aim in, 316-317
short-unit and part-time courses in, 317
Community canning clubs. See Conservation of food
Conservation of food, need of, 25-28
saving of waste in New York City, 29-31
Columbia lectures on, 87-88
canning clubs, 125-127, 320
drying and evaporating, 126-127, 320
county superintendents' duties, 326
Continuation schools, enacting of laws for, 155
Council for National Defense, 94, 96, 315
Cripples, reëducating the, 211-233

Democracy, teaching of, 149-150
making safe for the world, 326
leisure necessary for, 329
Disabled soldiers, reëducating the, 211-233
Domestic arts, new spirit of teaching, 118
criticism of existing teaching of, 192
improvements in teaching, 193-194
Thrift Club, 321
Domestic science, new spirit of teaching, 119
teaching adults, 122, 319
traveling kitchens, 124
demonstration train, 124
war recipes, 319
home cadets, 321

Education, effect of war on, 113-114
equal opportunity for, 327
socialized, 327
vocational guidance in, 327
for subnormals and cripples, 328.
See also Colleges, Commercial Schools, Schools, etc.
Employment of children, care exercised in, 146
out of school hours, 149
divergent points of view in regard to, 150-151

recognizing work impulses in, 151-152
occupational study of a group of boys, 186-190
"blind-alley occupations," 190-191
waste of boy power, 191
England's schools, use of buildings in war, 18-20
as distributing agencies for information, 23-24
compiling of National Register by, 24
open days for parents, 28
traveling kitchens in, 29, 124
thrift teaching in, 31-32
training semiskilled workers in, 59-60, 66, 75-76
productive work of technical schools, 60-61
courses in cantonments, 101-102
garden work as substitute for manual training in, 121-122
short courses in cookery in, 123
training cooks for army, 128
furnishing meals to children in, 129
furnishing soldiers' kits and hospital equipment, 132-134
abrogating attendance laws, 135, 137-138
restricting labor of school children, 144-146
children for farm work, 236-240
plans for supervision of schoolboy farm labor, 240-242
reorganization of, 304
Evening schools, trade-extension work in, 72
training of foremen in, 316

Farm cadets, organization of, in New York State, 172
reason for organizing, 234-245
plan for use of, 246, 272-274
rearrangement of school program for, 247-248, 313-314
wages of, 249, 250, 253, 261, 262, 265,
267, 278
agreements and contracts, 251-252, 279-280, 282-287
New York State plan, 253-254
physical examination, 264, 274-275
enlistment blanks, 276
Farm-labor camps, explanation of, 245
Massachusetts plan, 248-253
agreements and contracts, 251-252, 265
illustration of different types of, 256-261
food cost and preparation, 258, 295-297
menus, 259
recreation, 260, 297
wages, 261, 262, 265, 267-269
labor distribution, 261-262, 266-268

personal equipment, 262, 292
camp equipment, 262, 264, 268
illustration of training type, 263-266
agricultural instruction in, 267, 297-299
flying-squadron type, 267-268, 302-303
leadership, 273, 287-292
sanitation, 295
definitions of various types, 298-303
Federal Board of Vocational Education, 54-55, 314-315
France, reëducation of disabled soldiers in, 214-225
French schools, use of buildings in war, 20-21
war financing helped by teachers of, 39-40
teaching the meaning of the war in, 41, 44-46
changing aspects of, due to war, 41, 51-52
sewing for soldiers in, 133
part-time, 155
normal schools' contribution to war service, 199
Red Cross work, 208

German schools, efficiency spirit of, 17, 104
contribution to agricultural labor, 242-243
conservation of natural resources in, 243-244
industrial-efficiency idea in, 305

History, teaching of, 46-47

Industrial and trade schools, contribution of, to manufacturing
needs, 60
war-emergency courses in, 63, 314-315
question of production in, 66-67
readjustment in war time, 71
open in summer, 72-73
part-time classes in, 74-76
teaching of hygiene in, 77
producing farm-camp equipment, 252
inventories of equipment, 315
state study of possible war uses of, 315

Junior Red Cross, 207, 209-210

Labor, war demands for, 58
industrial schools meeting shortage of, 61, 68-69
one method of training, 61-64
educative value of, 152-153
Liberty Loan bonds, and the schools, 37-39, 311, 325

Library, service of, in war time, 104-105

Manual training, garden work in place of, 130-131
war-service work in, 131-132, 317-319
making Red Cross splints, 206, 317
abandoning models, 318
in connection with junior high schools, 319
Military equivalents, recognition of, in New York State, 171, 305
experience in England, France, and Germany, 173
necessity of conscious service, 174, 177-180
types of occupations having, 175-176
"Moral Equivalent of War," 176
an example of, in agriculture, 181-185
an example of, in industry, 186-189
farm labor as a military equivalent, 254
Military training, exemptions from, 165, 167
compulsory in New York State, 166
in high schools, 167-170
including employed boys, 168, 170-171
vocational training in relation to, 173
adaptability of, 309
"Moral Equivalent of War," 176

National Board for Historical Service, 46
National Council of Defense, 94, 96, 315
National Security League, 49-50, 140
National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education, 64
Naval schools, description of, 77-79

Off-time classes, importance of, 72

Part-time education, opportunity for, 74-75
war-emergency courses in, 154-155
enacting laws for, 155
farm work and, 240
as an economy measure, 308-309
Patriotism, teaching meaning of the war, 42
necessity for teaching, 42-44, 48-49
topics in relation to, 50-51
Physical training, compulsory in New York State, 166
recommendations of New Jersey Commission in regard to, 167-170
importance of, from military standpoint, 168-169
advantages of, over military training, 309
Posters, war, 129-130
Practical arts, definition of, 116