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.
[5] Authorities differ widely; some even state that the ratio is now as
high as one to eight.
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.
[Illustration: 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.]
[Illustration: 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.]
[Illustration: 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.]
[Illustration: 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 UNITS | HORSE UNITS | CROPS
-----------+-------------+------------------------------------------
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
50 | 8 |Hops
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 | LIVE STOCK (Basis of One)
-----------+-------------+---------------------------------------------
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.