R. R. Lutz - Wage Earning and Education

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CONTINUATION TRAINING FROM 15 TO 18

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

The vocational interests of young workers and the social interests of
the community are both opposed to the current practice of "graduating"
boys from the public schools at the ages of 15 or 16 and then losing
sight of them. The fact that the large number who go into industrial
occupations will not or cannot remain in school beyond these ages does
not absolve the school system from further responsibility for their
educational future. There should not be a complete severance between
the boy and the school until he has reached a relatively mature age.
In other words, the school system should maintain, as long as
possible, such a relation with him as will help to round out his
education and lead him to continue it after reaching manhood.

It is the opinion of the Survey Staff that the only practicable
solution of this problem lies in the day continuation school, backed
by a compulsory law which will bring every boy and girl at work under
the age of 18 into school for a certain number of hours per week. Only
through a comprehensive plan that will reach large numbers of young
workers can the difficulties inherent in the administration of small
classes be overcome. The night schools have never been successful in
holding boys long enough to make more than a beginning in
trade-extension training. It is certain that growing boys should not
be expected to add two hours of study to their nine or 10 hours of
unaccustomed labor in the shop. Both individual and community
interests demand that this problem be taken up in such a way as to
obviate the sharp cleavage between the boy's school life and his
working life. From every point of view it is unwise to permit him to
lose all contact with the educational agencies of the city during his
first years at work.

The compulsory continuation school avoids the difficulties which are
responsible for the common failure of those schemes which depend for
their success on the initiative of individuals or the voluntary
cooeperation of employers and trade unions. One of its great advantages
is that the principle on which it is based makes for equal justice to
all. There can be no doubt that the decline of apprentice training in
the shops is due partly to the fact that employers find that much of
the time and money it costs goes toward providing a skilled labor
force for competitors who make no effort to train young workers. The
cooperation of employers on a comprehensive scale will be secured only
when the burden is equally shared.

THE TECHNICAL NIGHT SCHOOLS

Night classes are conducted in both of the technical high schools for
two terms a year of 10 weeks each, the pupils attending four hours a
week. A tuition fee of $5 a term is collected, of which $3.50 is
refunded to those who maintain an average attendance of 75 per cent.
No special provision is made for apprentices as distinct from
journeymen, and the trade classes are attended by a considerable
number of wage-earners employed in occupations unrelated to industrial
work. The list of courses offered during the past year, with the
number enrolled in each course at the beginning of the second term, is
shown in Table 12.

A glance at the list of courses shows at once that while the
vocational motive is given first importance, the schools also aim to
provide instruction in cultural subjects which have only an indirect
vocational application. Less than one-third of the students are
pursuing courses which are directly related to their daily work. The
remainder are enrolled in courses which have little or no connection
with their daily occupations. In but four of the courses--machine
shop, architectural drawing, printing, and sheet metal work--are more
than half of the students employed in directly related occupations.

TABLE 12.--COURSES AND NUMBER ENROLLED IN THE TECHNICAL NIGHT SCHOOLS,
JANUARY, 1915

Number
Course enrolled

Mechanical drawing 328
Machine shop 222
Electrical construction 159
Sewing 103
Mathematics 89
Architectural drawing 83
Pattern making 73
Woodworking 67
Chemistry 59
Sheet metal drawing 52
Cooking 46
Foundry work 36
Agriculture 31
Printing 27
Sheet metal shop 23
Business English 20
Electric motors 19
Arts and crafts 18
Millinery 18
Electricity and magnetism 16
------
Total 1,489

The policy of the schools is to form a class in any subject for which
a sufficient number of students make application. Only a small
proportion of the pupils attend more than one year, and the mortality
from term to term is very high, although the tuition fee plan insures
fairly good attendance during the term. The data collected by the
survey indicate that the average length of attendance is approximately
two terms--the equivalent in student hours of less than three weeks in
the ordinary day school.

Most of the men who enroll in night school classes need a course of at
least two or three years. All but a few, however, insist on having
their supplementary training in small doses. Frequently they want
only specific instruction about a specific thing, such as how to lay
out a certain piece of work or how to set up a particular machine
tool. They want to secure this knowledge in the shortest possible
time, and very few want the same thing. A course of two or three years
does not appeal to them. Another difficulty is that their previous
educational equipment varies widely, and some are not capable of
assimilating even the specialized bit of trade knowledge they need
without a preliminary course in arithmetic. As the personnel of the
classes changes to a marked degree from term to term, the courses
undergo frequent modifications. Apparently the teachers and principals
have made a sincere effort to adapt the instruction to the demands of
the men who attend the schools, but the fact is that the difficulties
inherent in such work make it impossible to organize the classes on
any basis except that of subject matter, which means fitting students
into courses, rather than adapting courses to the needs of particular
groups of workers.

The enrollment is far below what should be expected in a city of
nearly three-quarters of a million inhabitants. The total number of
journeymen, apprentices, and helpers from the skilled manual
occupations, receiving trade instruction in the night schools, is
considerably less than one per cent of the total number in the city.

A large enrollment is necessary for efficient administration. Success
in specializing courses in night schools, as in day schools, requires
a large administrative unit. The possible variety of courses is in
direct ratio to the number enrolled. In a class of 200 carpenters
there would probably be, for example, 10 or 15 men who need
specialized instruction in stair-building. On the basis of the present
enrollment of 40 or 50 carpenters the class would dwindle to three or
four, with the result that the per capita teaching cost becomes
prohibitive.

The relatively small result now obtained is not the fault of the
schools, but is due principally to the fact that the great field of
evening vocational instruction is treated by the school system as a
mere side line of the technical high schools. The evening classes are
taught by teachers who have already given their best in the day
classes. The enrollment cannot be greatly increased so long as this
type of education is handled as one of the marginal activities of the
school system, manned by tired teachers and directed by tired
principals. It is a totally different kind of job from regular day
instruction and requires a different administrative organization, with
a responsible head vested with sufficient authority to meet quickly
and effectively the widely varying demands of its students. This will
require the speeding-up of administrative methods in the establishment
of courses and the employment of teachers, a freer hand for the
principals as regards both expenditures and policy, and most important
of all, the organization of all forms of continuation and night school
instruction under a separate department.

A COMBINED PROGRAM OF CONTINUATION AND TRADE-EXTENSION TRAINING

In considering the general conclusions of the survey as to what should
be done in the matter of trade preparatory and trade-extension
training in both day and night schools, it must be borne in mind that
these two types of vocational training are still in the experimental
stage. Their future development will probably involve a wide departure
from conventional school methods and the evolution of a special
technique through trial and experiment. At the present time we can
only formulate certain of the main conditions to which future advance
in these fields must conform.

First of all, it must be recognized that such work is a big job in
itself and cannot be successfully conducted as an appendix of the day
school. It is worth doing well, or it is not worth doing. It needs an
organization sufficiently elastic and adaptable to quickly make
adjustments to unusual and unexpected conditions. It needs the
supervision of a competent director who can devote to it all his time
and energy, and a corps of teachers who not only know how and what to
teach, but who possess a firm conviction of the value and utility of
this kind of instruction. In the hands of teachers who bring to it
only the margin of interest and energy remaining after a hard day's
work in the high school, or who are unable to comprehend the radical
difference between teaching a boy in the day school 35 hours a week
and teaching a boy four hours a week in the continuation school or
evening class, the full measure of success cannot be expected. The
employment of day teachers for night school work has never been other
than a makeshift, and the insignificant results attained in night
schools throughout the country have been due in great measure to this
cause.

Apart from the fact that the interests of adolescent workers
imperatively demand the establishment of day continuation schools, an
additional argument in favor of such schools is that they would
provide a means for making the night trade-extension work effective,
through the use of continuation day school teachers for night school
work. Such a plan would mean that teachers employed on this basis
would have charge of a day continuation class during one session of
four hours, and a night class of two hours, making a total of six
hours' work per day. A plan of this kind would make possible the
establishment of the fundamental conditions for successful
trade--preparatory and trade-extension training in the night schools.
The present system is unjust to both teachers and students;--to the
students because the man or boy who sacrifices his recreation time to
attend night school has a right to the best the schools can give; to
the teachers because no teacher can work a two-hour night shift in
addition to seven or eight hours in the technical high school without
seriously impairing his efficiency.

The development of this plan would necessitate the establishment of
two centers, one located in the eastern and one in the western section
of the city. In these centers should be housed the day vocational
school, the day continuation classes, and the night vocational
classes. This would relieve the technical high schools of a task which
does not belong to them, and which by overloading the teachers
seriously interferes with the work they were originally employed to
do. At present a considerable number of the technical high school
teachers are devoting from one-fifth to one-fourth of their total
working day to elementary teaching, as most of the work in the night
schools is below high school grade.

By bringing together all the trade preparatory and trade-extension
work under one roof, it is possible to secure the highest efficiency
in the use of equipment. Expensive shops can be justified only on the
basis of constant use. If the suggestion for the establishment of a
vocational school is acted upon, such future contingencies as the
continuation school should be borne in mind in planning the buildings
and equipment, so as to permit of extensions as they may be required.
It is practically certain that universal continuation training for
young workers up to the age of 17 or 18 will be made compulsory in all
the progressive states of the country within the next decade. The Ohio
school authorities should get ready to handle the continuation school
problem before the example of other states and the overwhelming
pressure of public opinion forces it upon them.

CHAPTER IX

VOCATIONAL TRAINING FOR GIRLS

The discussions in the preceding chapters have been limited
intentionally to a consideration of the needs and possibilities of
training for wage-earning pursuits in which men predominate. The
conditions which surround vocational training for girls are so
fundamentally unlike those encountered in the vocational training of
boys that a combined treatment leads to needless complexity and
confusion.

Cleveland uses a relatively smaller amount of woman labor than most
other large cities. In only one of the 10 largest cities in the
country--Pittsburgh--is the proportion of women and girls at work
smaller as compared with the total number of persons in gainful
occupations than in Cleveland. In 1900, 20.4 per cent of the workers
in the city were women; by 1910 the proportion of women workers had
increased to 22 per cent, a shift of less than two per cent for the
decade.

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

The most radical and important difference between the two sexes with
respect to wage-earning is found in the length of the working life.
The transitory character of the wage-earning phase in the life of most
women is clearly seen in the contrasted age distribution shown in
Table 13.

TABLE 13.--PER CENT OF TOTAL POPULATION ENGAGED IN GAINFUL OCCUPATIONS
DURING THREE DIFFERENT AGE PERIODS

----------------------+-------------+------------+
Age period | Women | Men |
----------------------+-------------+------------+
16 to 21 | 60 | 85 |
21 to 45 | 26 | 98 |
45 and over | 12 | 85 |
----------------------+-------------+------------+

Approximately 85 per cent of the boys and slightly less than 60 per
cent of the girls between the ages of 16 and 21 are at work. In the
next age group--21 to 45--given by the census, 98 per cent of the men
are at work, but the proportion of women employed in gainful
occupations drops to 26 per cent, or about one in four; in the next
age group--45 and over--it falls to about 12 per cent, as compared
with 85 per cent of the men. Of the women still at work in the older
age group, over one-half are engaged in domestic and personal service
as servants, laundresses, housekeepers, etc.

TABLE 14.--NUMBER EMPLOYED IN THE PRINCIPAL WAGE-EARNING OCCUPATIONS
AMONG EACH 1,000 WOMEN FROM 16 TO 21 YEARS OF AGE

Manufacturing and mechanical industries:
Apprentices to dressmakers and milliners 4
Dressmakers and seamstresses (not in factory) 20
Milliners and millinery dealers 17
Semi-skilled operatives:
Candy factories 6
Cigar and tobacco factories 15
Electrical supply factories 10
Knitting mills 11
Printing and publishing 8
Woolen and worsted mills:
Weavers 5
Other occupations 7
Sewers and sewing machine operators (factory) 53
Tailoresses 25

Transportation:
Telephone operators 19

Trade:
Clerks in stores 28
Saleswomen (stores) 35

Professional service:
Musicians and teachers of music 6
Teachers (school) 4

Domestic and personal service:
Charwomen and cleaners 5
Laundry operatives 13
Servants 81
Waitresses 9

Clerical occupations:
Bookkeepers, cashiers, and accountants 26
Clerks (except clerks in stores) 20
Stenographers and typewriters 62

The occupations in which the girls now in the public schools will
later engage can be determined with a relative degree of accuracy by
employing a method in general similar to that utilized in forecasting
the occupations of boys. It must be taken into account, however, that
the wage-earning period for women, except in the professional
occupations, usually begins before the age of 21. For this reason the
16 to 21 age group probably offers the best basis for determining the
future occupational distribution of girls in school. If all women at
work up to the age of 25 were included the figures would be more
nearly exact, but unfortunately data for the period between 21 and 25
are not available. The figures at the right of Table 14 show the
number engaged in each specified occupation among each thousand women
in the city between the ages of 16 and 21. The proportions given for
the professional occupations, particularly teaching, are too small,
because of the fact that few women enter the professions before the
age of 21.

Applying these proportions to the average elementary school unit, it
will be seen at once that the number of girls old enough to profit by
special training is too small in any single occupation to form a class
of workable size. In such a school there would be about 80 girls 12
years old and over. Of the skilled occupations listed in the table
stenography and typewriting offers the largest field of employment,
yet the number who are likely to take up this kind of work does not
exceed five or six.

DIFFERENTIATION IN THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

The organization of the junior high school, where the enrollment is
made up entirely of older pupils, obviates this difficulty to some
extent. Instead of 80 girls there are from 300 to 500, with a
corresponding increase in the number who will enter any given
wage-earning occupation.

Not less than one-eighth and probably not more than one-fifth of these
girls will become needleworkers of some kind. They will need a more
practical and intensive training in the fundamentals of sewing than is
now provided by the household arts course. The skill required in trade
work cannot be obtained in the amount of time now devoted to this
subject. It should be made possible for a girl who expects to make a
living with her needle to elect a thoroughly practical course in
sewing in which the aim is to prepare for wage earning rather than
merely to teach the girl how to make and mend her own garments. As
proficiency in trade sewing requires first of all ample opportunity
for practice, provision should be made for extending the time now
given to sewing for those girls who wish to become needle workers.
This can easily be done through the system of electives now in use.
The establishment of classes in power machine operating during the
junior high school period appears to be impracticable, due to the
immaturity of the girls and the small number who could profit by such
instruction.

A discussion of the present sewing courses in the public schools will
be found in Chapters XIV and XV, which summarize the special reports
on the Garment Trades and Dressmaking and Millinery. In the present
chapter the consideration of these occupations is limited to an
examination of the administrative questions connected with training
for the sewing trades.

SPECIALIZED TRAINING FOR THE SEWING TRADES

The compulsory attendance law requires all girls to attend school
until they are 16 years old. This forces a considerable number into
the high schools for one or two years before they go to work. As a
rule the type of girl who is likely to enter the needle trades selects
the technical high school course, not because she has any idea of
finishing it, but because she believes it offers a less tiresome way
of getting through her last one or two years in school than the
academic course. The technical course requires three and three-quarter
hours a week of sewing during the first two years. The student may
elect trade dressmaking and millinery during the third and fourth
years.

Very few girls who can afford to spend four years in high school ever
become dressmakers or factory operatives. If the school system is to
do anything of direct vocational value for them it will have to begin
further down. Most of them leave school before the age of 17 and the
years between 14 and 16 represent the last chance the school will have
to give them any direct aid towards preparation for immediate
wage-earning.

For successful work in machine operating the class must be large
enough to warrant the purchase and operation of sufficient equipment
to give the pupils an opportunity for intensive practice. The only way
this condition can be secured is by concentrating in large groups the
girls who need such training. Little will be accomplished in training
for the sewing trades without specialization, and specialization in
small administrative units is impossible. The teaching and operating
cost in a school enrolling, say 200 girls, who want the same kind of
work, can be brought within reasonable bounds. In a school where the
total number who need specialized training does not exceed 10 or 15
the cost is prohibitive.

In the opinion of the Survey Staff a one or two year vocational course
in the sewing trades should be established. The entrance age should
not be less than 15. Courses should be provided for intensive work in
trade dressmaking, power machine operating, and trade millinery. A
conservative estimate of the number of girls who could be expected to
enroll for courses in these subjects is 500. A trade school might be
established where only this type of vocational training would be
carried on, or it might be conducted in the same building with the
trade courses for boys recommended in a previous chapter. In either
case the number of pupils would be sufficient to warrant up-to-date
equipment and a corps of specially trained teachers.

Training for the sewing trades consumes more material than any other
kind of vocational training. For this reason economical administration
requires some arrangement for marketing the product. During the latter
part of the course the school should be able to turn out first-class
work. The familiarity with trade standards the pupils obtain through
practice on garments which must meet the exacting demands of the
buying public has a distinct educational value. The Manhattan Trade
School for Girls in New York City and other successful schools in the
country operate on this basis. There is reason to believe that there
would be little difficulty in making arrangements with the clothing
manufacturers in Cleveland to furnish a good trade school as much
contract work as the classes could handle.

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