Chapter II: Part 2

MUNICIPAL MUSIC IN NEW YORK

S. H. J. SIMPSON

When the sailing list of each trans-Atlantic liner reads like the program of an all-star gala performance, and conductors, managers and husbands also sail, the small number of the cultured rich who maintain music in New York go likewise; but the city is not left empty. Then the Metropolitan assumes a perpetually “morning after” appearance; so, too, Carnegie Hall; and the new piano emporium will serve as a sounding board for band concerts across the way. It is to these band concerts—not only in Bryant Park but in almost every park and pier in the city—that the reader’s attention is called.

The vastness of New York is one of the greatest problems confronting any public spirited enterprise which aims to reach that vague, elusive faction—the people. The problem has been met and fairly solved musically by the three men who are responsible for the invasion by band and orchestra of the city’s parks and piers during the past three years. It is refreshing to meet with a movement which aims toward no tangible education, moral rescue or poor relief, and to find a department of city government frankly idealistic enough to organize a force whose only aim is the presentation of pure beauty. And it is curiously paradoxical that this movement should have found its opportunity in New York. It is, nevertheless, true that New York supports more entirely free summer concerts than any city in the world.

At the beginning of the current municipal administration the park and pier music in its present form had its birth in the constitution of a committee consisting of the commissioner of docks and ferries, the commissioner of parks and a new official designated as the supervisor of municipal concerts in parks and recreation piers. To the latter is due the lion’s share of credit for the ideals, the organization and the practical working of the system. To the commissioners New York owes a debt for their hearty co-operation, and in some cases, acute personal interest in the problems of the undertaking.

Not only has the size of the music loving population been considered in the multiplication of concerts, but the varieties of appreciation and the national tastes of different neighborhoods have been sympathetically studied by Arthur Farwell, the supervisor. The $100,000 annual municipal appropriation is divided between the piers and parks, and provides for a force of about seventy bands and conductors. Extraordinarily interesting is the study of neighborhoods in connection with the make-up of programs. This is especially so among the docks. The long pier at 129th Street, with an orchestra attracts what the directors are pleased to designate as the “high-brow” crowd. The call there is for the best in operatic and symphonic music—two and three movements of symphonies are often given. Selections from Italian opera flourish at East 112th Street, and at East 3d Street, all sorts of Jewish religious music is featured. The only crowd which has given any trouble assembles at West 50th Street, and the largest of the pier audiences is found at East 34th Street. Probably the most generally representative gathering is in the Mall in Central Park, where seven concerts a week are given in summer.

In thus cursorily reviewing the facts of the condition of municipal music in New York, only the smaller part of the situation is discussed. The movement, under its present impetus, is new, and to a large number of people, unknown. Although it is beyond the scope of the present article to consider, in any detail, the ethical aspect of the situation, it is, nevertheless, appropriate, in view of the comparative untriedness of the idea, to answer a few questions which are constantly brought up by those who are interested in the conditions. Even so, it seems that the time has come when the movement may fairly be said to have passed the experimental stage, if success may be measured by popular approval.

It merely remains to count the numbers in attendance. And here we find the answer to the most frequent query as to whether there is sufficient popular demand to warrant all this effort. The question has been submitted to a practical referendum. Do the people want it? Although no formal count of the audiences has been made it has been estimated that they ranged during the summer of 1912 from 5,000 to 15,000, in the various localities. In Central Park, every seat in the Mall and on the terrace was filled by eight o’clock, and stragglers wandered about the outskirts or stood packed between the benches all the evening. Every spot within hearing was filled, and it was with some difficulty that aisles and passages were kept clear. Nor is this audience a casual one. Any number of habitues are noticeable, night after night, in the same seats—jealous of their places—and night after night, the same tired mothers are there, with the same baby carriages. And way off, along the driveways, or here and there in a street near the docks, a policeman, a laborer, a little street urchin, may sometimes be seen to stop, and, “lifting his head in the stillness,” listen—and pass on.

This attention is, with few exceptions, so marked, that it, of itself, answers another question: Isn’t all this stuff way above the heads of the people? Again, the size of the audiences furnishes the most convincing answer. Theoretically, of course, the best, being the most human, is above no one’s head. But even practically, no genuine heterogeneous crowd of “street-bred people” trails from the dark places on a hot night—carrying or wheeling babies, with small children tugging at the skirts or clamoring to be carried—to hear such things as are above its head.

The aim of the movement is distinctly not educational in the instructive sense, nevertheless, the popular interest in the programs has been taken into consideration by Mr. Farwell in his brief and readable program notes. These give simple, important facts relating to composers and compositions, and do not attempt any detailed analyzation such as is familiar to the average concert goer. That these find a place, would seem to be proved by the knots of people who gather, program in hand, under the lights.

Underlying the entire discussion of this, or any purely artistic movement in this country, there is often the question: What’s the use? Be the reason what it may—personal gratification, civic pride, or any other cause—it is almost safe to say that no citizen grudges New York its parks, its buildings, or its Metropolitan Museum of Art. Why, then, its public music, which gives innocent pleasure, rest, perhaps inspiration to thousands? I do not think that this is grudged to the people. Its neglect is simply a matter of ignorance, rather than indifference, on the part of many men who regularly pay their opera and symphony subscriptions, and who have watched with interest the efforts of several organizations to bring the price of concert tickets down to a low figure. But this philanthropic effort does not strike at the root of the matter. Ideally, music should not have to be offered to the people as a commodity, nor as a charity, nor, primarily, as an education. It should stand, rather, as a temple, to which they may come gladly and freely, and from which they may go full hearted, carrying its best with them.

And this has been accomplished in the piers and parks in the last three years. But the winter contrast is striking. Fed up all summer, it seems hardly fair that men should be starved all winter. The daily papers printed, during September, 1912, a number of letters, asking why these concerts could not be continued through the winter months. There is but one solution of the problem—the municipal orchestra—and in this connection I cannot do better than quote a letter, written by Mr. Farwell to the New York _Times_, in response to the various suggestions and inquiries:

“The Central Park concerts have shown once for all that the greatest
in music appeals directly and powerfully to the people when it is
given to them under the right conditions. This is one of the mysteries
of music—its power to short circuit an intellectual by a spiritual
process. To wait until some hypothetical time in the future for the
high gift of music to be given to the people is to be both dilatory
and blind. The time for national initiative is at hand. What the
people of New York really need is a permanent municipal symphony
orchestra.”

Popular response to good music is no longer an open question. The people have answered it conclusively, and popular demand has become a live issue.

THE HOUSING PROBLEM AS IT AFFECTS GIRLS

EDITH M. HADLEY
President Chelsea House Association, New York

In a factory town, at the lunch hour, have you ever consciously watched the girls and women thronging down the steps and filling the streets surrounding the workshop? Have you listened to their noisy laughter and scraps of conversation and tried to understand their meaning? In 1910, when the last Census of Manufactures was taken, there were over 1,500,000 of these girls and women—factory workers in the United States.

In a large city at nightfall, when the lamps are lighted, have you ever observed the streams of girls flowing into the streets from the offices and great department stores? Again at night, have you seen the girls, waiting at the entrances of tenement houses or on the street corners for their “gentleman friends” who are to emancipate them for a few hours from their cramped and dingy environment? And have you asked yourself where and how do these girls live?

During the last few years we have heard so much about the discontent of the labor classes, the “restlessness of the present age,” that the phrases fall upon unheeding ears. But it takes no Socialist to understand that, if a family man’s expenses are $900 a year, and that working to the best of his ability he can earn only $700 to $800, and that if it costs a girl $8 a week to live, and she cannot earn that much, there must be discontent. It is time for the community to regulate such conditions.

The question of wages is so closely allied to the question of housing that a study of the latter involves some knowledge of the former. Cost of living and standard of living must be approached from a fact basis. Studies by Robert Chapin, Scott Nearing and the commission appointed by Congress, indicate that a man, his wife and three children under fourteen, cannot live and maintain efficiency under $900 a year on the Island of Manhattan. This is not excessive for Boston, Buffalo and Chicago. It is low for Pittsburgh, a little high for Philadelphia and Baltimore but a fair average for the great cities east of the Mississippi and north of Virginia.

Investigations prove that there is no great wage variation in different sections of the country. In the West wages run slightly higher than in the East, and in the larger cities than in the smaller towns. From a study of 1,391 New York girls working in department stores, the average earnings were reported as $4.69 a week during the first year and $5.28 the second. They increased in ten years, to $9.81, during which period many fall out of the ranks. Buyers and expert saleswomen remain. Their average earnings mount up to $13.33. In factories the average earnings of 3,421 girls showed $4.62 a week for the first year and $5.34 for the second year. After ten years’ experience $8.48 was reached.

The majority of girls at work live at home and, in many cases, have to a certain extent the protection of their family. But an ever-increasing number of girls are entering the towns and cities, quite alone and friendless, to earn their way. These girls either keep house, live in families, in boarding and lodging houses or in the organized boarding house.

The girl who lives at home usually gives all her earnings to her parents—over 84 per cent working in shops, and 88 per cent in factories in New York city, and a similar number in Chicago and St. Louis. The parents rely upon their daughters for an exact amount of income, so that these girls are in no sense “pin money workers.” The girl at home in New York city usually lives in a three to five-room flat in a tenement house, for which her father pays from $10 to $35 a month; and into these cramped quarters, one, two or more boarders are frequently taken.

In New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Boston, Minneapolis and St. Paul, it has been estimated that about 65,000 girls, exclusive of stenographers, office girls, nurses and teachers, are without homes, and entirely dependent upon themselves for support. Girls with a low standard of living can live more cheaply by keeping house than in any other manner. This means that several girls may join together and rent a two or three room flat. After their daily work of eight to twelve hours in factory, shop or office, is over, they have the housework to do—cleaning, cooking, washing and sewing. A girl keeping house or living in lodgings may save on food. She may go without breakfast or lunch, or have bread and coffee for breakfast, bread for lunch, and bread and soup or meat for dinner. She may spend part of her evenings making clothes, the material for which has been bought with money saved from food. “Oh, my, where would we get our clothes, if we bought meat every day?” asked one girl. How long do these girls remain economically efficient?

Fortunate is the girl who can find a home with some respectable tenement house family. Here she frequently underpays. Anna Friedman earns $7 a week as cashier; she lives with Mrs. McCoy in a $27 a month five-room flat. Anna pays $3 a week for her accommodation, but considers herself entirely self-supporting, as Mrs. McCoy’s husband is absent part of the time, and Anna’s companionship is of some value. She therefore has a margin of $4 for clothes, laundry, amusements, sickness and incidentals, and is well off. Girls living in this way usually associate with the family, using all rooms in common.

The most dangerous way in which a girl can live is in a lodging, or as they are called “a furnished-room house.” Investigations of forty-three boarding and lodging houses in one city showed that five were known to be houses where fast women lived. “Not only were good and bad houses on the same block, but good and bad people were living in the same house.”

Freda Lippeg earned $3 a week, and paid $1.50 for her room; her food, which she cooked in her room, cost her $1.46. Seeing how easy it is for them to get plenty to eat, pretty clothes to wear, and to have “good times,” what temptations are placed in the way of such girls living in houses with immoral women!

While a landlady may prove to be a girl’s best friend, giving her advice, trusting her when she is unable to pay, even lending her money, in the majority of cases the girl has no supervision at all. With the exception of houses in Philadelphia, where the wage earner’s standard of respectability demands a sitting room, few houses can afford to have one. As a lodging house is now conducted, the landlady’s net profits, are usually free rent of her room and $150 a year. As the parlor is the best paying room, the requirement of its use for lodgers would mean a readjustment of rents, either of house or rooms or both. So the girls receive their “gentlemen friends” in their bed rooms.

For the young girl in a strange city, earning moderate wages, no manner of life is so capable of approaching that of the home as the organized boarding house. Scattered throughout the United States are a number of these houses, but the supply can in no way approach the demand. In many cases they are too expensive for the poorer girl to afford. Few of these houses aim to be self-supporting, which fact also deters many self-respecting girls. The girl rightfully wishes to be a customer at the boarding house, and not an object of charity. The rules in some of the houses are stringent; sometimes a closing hour is enforced, and girls returning later may be locked out. Nearly all have an age and a wage limit. But they all have a drawing room which is usually furnished with a piano, books and magazines. Here girls may receive their friends, and have the companionship of other girls. Often warm friendships are formed.

The welfare of the house depends upon the “housemother,” whose opportunities and responsibilities are unbounded. To be able to keep a clean, well ordered, full house; to supply an ample amount of nourishing food; to receive enough board money from the girls to cover all expenses without dunning them is no easy matter. But in addition to this to be sympathetic without being partial or sentimental; to be able to care for the tired and sick; to be patient and firm with the hysterical; to understand and direct youth, gayety and extravagance; and to help the girls who are in danger of losing their “woman’s heritage,” a woman must give the best that is in her. The Eleanor Clubs in Chicago; the Ladies’ Christian Union Houses, the Chelsea House Association and the Virginia in New York; and the Girl’s Friendly Society Lodges in New York, Providence and Louisville are helping to solve the housing problem for girls. But why have we not hundreds, instead of tens of these houses? Can we not see the relationship between unsanitary, overcrowded homes, the loneliness and often vicious environment of many lodging houses, and human waste and immorality?

“If, because of our privileges, because of our warm, comfortable clean homes, we can not say to these girls ‘My sister come home,’ surely it rests upon us to do it in some community way. And if we can not get the housing of girls taken up as a community duty, then all the more must we struggle by private enterprise to find out the way. We must say there shall be no town throughout the length and breadth of our land where the girl can not find safe shelter, a place which if her need is great, she may call home.”

JERSEY HOUSING ASSOCIATION FORMED

One hundred and seventy-four delegates attended the first state housing conference and participated in the organization of the New Jersey State Housing Association, in the City Hall, Newark, last month. The conference and the formal organization of the association had its inception at the National Housing Conference in Philadelphia in December, 1912, when William L. Kinkead of Paterson and Captain Charles J. Allen, secretary of the New Jersey Tenement House Department, gathered the New Jersey delegates and took the preliminary steps which led to the recent action.

Among the speakers were John A. Campbell, president of the State Board of Tenement House Supervision; former Governor Franklin Murphy, James Ford of Harvard University and his brother George B. Ford of Columbia University, who had just completed an exhaustive survey of Newark, for the City Plan Commission; Judge Harry V. Osborne, of the Essex County Court of Common Pleas; Richard Stevens, Miles W. Beemer and others.

The dominant note in the conference was the proposed amendment to the present Tenement House Law of New Jersey which Professor George B. Ford referred to as “the best law of its kind in America when enacted in 1901 and not far behind the best laws of its kind at this time.” The delegates were agreed that the present law should be amended to include two family houses, many of which it was agreed are in worse condition than the tenement houses.

Another proposed amendment which practically all the delegates favored was to require that all tenement houses three stories high be equipped with fire escapes. The law at present reads that outside iron fire escapes be provided on all non-fireproof tenement homes more than three stories in height. It was stated that the enactment of the proposed amendments would necessitate a considerable increase in the staff of the Tenement House Department and the delegates pledged themselves to use every effort to secure a larger appropriation for additional inspectors and clerks.

In his address Col. Franklin J. Murphy, Jr., called attention to the fact that the city of New York, with 104,000 tenement houses, spends $800,000 annually for the tenement house department, or $7.69 per house per year, while in the last fiscal year New Jersey allowed $51,000 for the tenement department, with 71,000 houses, or seventy-one cents per house per year.

The purposes of the association as set forth in the constitution adopted by the conference are as follows:

1. To improve housing conditions in every practical way.

2. To bring to the attention of each community the importance of right
housing conditions and the consequence of bad conditions.

3. To study in various cities and towns the causes of congestion of
population and bad housing conditions and the methods by which such
conditions may best be remedied.

4. To aid all local housing committees by advice and direction and to
encourage the formation of such committees where they do not at
present exist.

5. To act as a clearing house of information for such agencies and
committees and to furnish advice and suggestions to those interested
in housing reform and generally to promote popular interest in the
subject.

6. To aid in the enactment and enforcement of laws that will

a—Encourage the erection of proper types of dwellings;

b—Secure their proper maintenance and management;

c—Prevent the erection of unfit buildings;

d—Bring about a reasonable and practical improvement of the older
buildings;

e—Secure reasonable, scientific and economical building laws.

7. To aid in defending such laws when enacted and in correcting and
amending them from time to time to suit changing conditions.

IOWA’S REMOVAL LAW

Iowa claims to have in her “removal law” the best recall of all. This law makes it the duty of the attorney general, or, if he fails, of the governor or any six citizens, to take steps in the courts for the summary removal of any officer of a town, city or county who neglects to enforce any law.

EDUCATION

THE BEGINNINGS OF A NEW SCIENCE

If a man about town should drop into the Harvard psychological laboratory and see an operator in rough clothes slowly turning a small crank and calling off disconnected letters of the alphabet while a changing panorama of squares and digits passed by beneath a glass plate, he might think that this was the university’s day off and that here was a new game for the amusement of the employes. But if he should ask “What’s the ante?” and want to sit in, he would soon discover his mistake. He would learn that he was looking at one of the few experiments yet contrived for picking the right man for the right job. He might even be told that this was one of the wee beginnings of a new science which, by systematically placing the psychological experiment at the service of education and industry, may some day prevent the tragic waste of misfit starts in life and go far toward solving the problem of vocational guidance for the schools. The observer would probably be warned, however, against construing what he saw as any endorsement of the social desirability of guiding children into this vocation or that.

The device of the changing panorama is designed to test a man’s fitness to be a motorman on an electric street car. Worked out under the direction of Prof. Hugo Munsterberg,[5] it is calculated to discover powers of attention, discrimination and adjustment with respect to rapidly moving objects, some going at different rates of speed parallel to the line of vision, others crossing it from side to side. While Professor Munsterberg undertook to transplant the activity of the motorman into laboratory processes, he did not try to reproduce a miniature of the exact conditions under which the motorman works. As the crank is turned, a series of cards slips by under a glass plate, each card having two heavy lines down its center to represent a street car track. Along the sides of this track, between it and the curbstone at the edge of the card, are scattered various digits which have arbitrarily fixed movements, like the pieces on a chess board, though not so complex. The job of the person being tested is to pick out, as the cards slip by, the precise points on the track which are threatened by the moveable digits in the street. Some of these numbers represent pedestrians, some horses and some automobiles.

Footnote 5:

Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, by Hugo Munsterberg. Houghton,
Mifflin Co. 320 pp. Price $1.50: by mail of THE SURVEY $1.62.

Tried motormen, says Professor Munsterberg, agree that they really pass through this experiment with the feeling they have on the car. Though the test is not regarded as yet perfected, its results are thought to be fairly satisfactory when compared with actual efficiency in service. Efficiency, in this connection, means chiefly ability to avoid accidents. Some electric railroad companies have as many as 50,000 accident indemnity cases per year which involve an expense amounting in some instances to 13 per cent of the annual gross earnings. Professor Munsterberg believes that it may be quite advantageous later on to subject applicants for the position of motorman to tests based on the principle involved in the one here described. Even in this inadequate form, he thinks, the test would be sufficient to exclude perhaps one-fourth of those who are nowadays accepted for service.

In a public address recently Leonard P. Ayres, director of the Division of Education of the Russell Sage Foundation, brought together all the psychological tests in vocational guidance which, so far as he has been able to discover, are being used in any completed form. Besides the simpler tests for vision, hearing and color discrimination to which pilots, ship officers and railroad employes are usually subjected, there are only three, he said, which have for their object the more difficult task of selecting from among all the applicants those best fitted to perform the work. One of these is Professor Munsterberg’s test for motormen.

Another is a test used in a bicycle ball factory, where girls inspect the small polished steel balls for flaws by rolling them over and over on one hand with the fingers of the other and examining them under a strong light. S. E. Thompson, the employer, soon recognized that the quality most necessary in the girls, besides endurance and industry, was a quick power of perception accompanied by quick responsive action. He therefore subjected his girls to the laboratory test which measures in thousandths of a second the time needed to react on an impression with the quickest possible movement. The final outcome was that thirty-five girls did the work formerly done by 120; the accuracy of the work was increased by 66 per cent; the wages of the girls were doubled; the working day decreased from 10½ to 8½ hours; and the profits of the factory were increased.

The third example which Mr. Ayres found of the application of psychological tests to the selection of employes in industry is a series of tests for telephone operators. These also were conducted by Professor Munsterberg at Harvard. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company employs 23,000 operators. Applicants for positions are given a preliminary training of three months in the company’s schools. During this time they receive salaries. So many eventually prove unfitted for the work that more than a third leave within six months. Not only does this involve financial loss to the company but it is a heavy handicap to young girls who are trying to fit successfully into the industrial life of the day.

The object of the tests was to develop methods whereby the unfit girls could be eliminated before instead of after entering the service. The girls were examined with reference to memory, attention, general intelligence, space perception, rapidity of movement, accuracy of movement, and association. The results showed in general that those who came out best in the tests were most efficient in practical service, while those who stood at the foot of the list failed later and left the company’s employ.

“It seems fair to conclude,” says Mr. Ayres, “that when such tests are perfected, short examinations of a few minutes each will prevent thousands of applicants from wasting months of study and training in preparing for a vocation in which they cannot succeed.”

While these three tests have been used only on actual applicants for positions, a fourth test has been applied to beginning students in stenography and typewriting to determine which ones possess the abilities likely to bring success. This has been worked out under the direction of Prof. James E. Lough of New York University and consists chiefly of putting the subject through slight movements with a view to measuring his ability in habit formation.

In addition to actual tests Mr. Ayres found that experimentation is going on with regard to other occupations. Munsterberg is experimenting on tests for marine officers. Ricker of Harvard has constructed apparatus for testing chauffeurs. Whipple of Cornell has done some work with tests for motormen. Seashore of Iowa has published a careful study of tests of the ability of a singer. So far as is known, no work in this field is being done in Europe.

By the extension and amplification of such means as these Professor Munsterberg deems it not at all unlikely that we may some day have a real science of vocational guidance. That there is need for a far more adequate way of linking up young people to their work in life he has no doubt. “Society relies instinctively,” he says, “on the hope that the natural wishes and interests will push every one to the place for which his dispositions, talents and psychophysical gifts prepare him.” But this confidence he regards as unfounded. To quote further:

“In the first place, young people know very little about themselves
and their abilities. When the day comes on which they discover their
real strong points and their weaknesses, it is often too late. They
have usually been drawn into the current of a particular vocation, and
have given too much energy to the preparation for a specific
achievement to change the whole life-plan once more. The entire scheme
of education gives to the individual little chance to find himself. A
mere interest for one or another subject is influenced by many
accidental circumstances, by the personality of the teacher or the
methods of instruction, by suggestions of the surroundings and by home
traditions, and accordingly even such a preference gives rather a
slight final indication of the individual qualities.”

On the other hand, Professor Munsterberg recognizes that a valuable start toward enabling young people to make wiser selection of their work has been made by the agencies for vocational guidance already existing in Boston and elsewhere. But he says that most counselors engaged in studying the qualities of boys and girls about to enter industry seem to “feel instinctively that the core of the whole matter lies in the psychological examination,” and that for this they must wait until the laboratories can furnish them with really reliable means and schemes. They may then, he thinks, become the appropriate agencies for applying the methods of psychology. He instances the long list of questions which the late Professor Parsons, usually referred to as the father of vocational guidance, employed with the idea of finding out something definite about the mental traits of young people. Replies to questions of this kind says Professor Munsterberg,

“can be of psychological value only when the questioner knows
beforehand the mind of the youth, and can accordingly judge with what
degree of understanding, sincerity, and ability the circular blanks
have been filled out. But as the questions are put for the very
purpose of revealing the personality, the entire effort tends to move
in a circle.”

Of course Professor Munsterberg does not undertake to pass judgment on the social desirability of vocational guidance of any sort. That, he declares, is not the business of the psychologist. His concern is with means solely, not with ends. If the laboratory develops a way of telling who are fit for stenography and who are not, that does not mean that all the fit should be urged to become stenographers. The vocation may be overcrowded. Again, if a test be devised for discovering what qualities are essential to the successful operative in a particular industry, it does not follow that all who want to enter that industry and have the needed qualities should be advised to do so. Conditions as to health, wages, hours, and a score of other things may suggest that another trade ought to be chosen. So that vocational guidance, if it shall ever be a closed and perfected system, will yet demand the supplementary services of the labor investigator, the sanitary expert, the industrial technician and whoever else can contribute to any phase of the problem of why this calling should be followed instead of that.

THE WINTER’S FIGHT OVER VOCATIONAL TRAINING

The past winter has been perhaps the stormiest season which the incipient movement for vocational education has had to weather in this country. Before state legislatures and national Congress the battle has been fought. In Washington, D. C. the Page and Lever bills granting federal aid to industrial education in the states inflicted mutual slaughter on each other and died in conference. In Illinois a fight has waged over two measures, one providing for the “dual” system of administration and the other for the “unit,” and the probability is that neither will pass at this session.

But in spite of these casualties the war has not been without its fruits. Indiana enacted practically without opposition what is perhaps the most comprehensive statute on this subject yet passed. The Indiana Commission on Industrial and Agricultural Education, appointed in 1911, published during the closing days of 1912 a vigorous report on the whole subject of vocational training for youth. The reasons why boys and girls need such training were put by the commission as follows:

“The larger part of the boys and girls leave school before the
completion of the elementary course, unprepared in anything which will
aid them in their immediate problem of earning a living with their
hands. From statistics available in other states it is safe to
estimate that there are fully 25,000 boys and girls in this state
between fourteen and sixteen who have not secured adequate preparation
for life work in the schools and who are now working in “dead end” or
“blind alley” jobs, or in other words, jobs which hold no promise of
future competence or advancement. The investigations in Massachusetts
and New York city show that not more than one out of five of the
pupils leaving school at fourteen do so because it is necessary to
help make a living. The conditions are doubtless even better in
Indiana. The remainder, four out of five, leave school for a variety
of reasons, chief among which is the feeling among pupils and parents
that the schools do not offer the kind of instruction which they need
for the work they expect to do and which would justify them in
foregoing wage earning for a time in order to get it.”

The commission found no organized effort in Indiana to put pupils in touch with the opportunities for life work. The pupils are in the main, it declares, left to their own resources in choosing a vocation except where enterprising teachers have been able to give personal advice. It believes that every city and town should survey the vocational opportunities within its borders and place the information, together with all information available on vocational work, within reach of the pupil at the proper age.

Contrary to the claims of some of those who are administering industrial education in other states the commission found that the largest problem in carrying out such training is the lack of teachers competent to do the work. “If the vocational subjects are to find and hold the place that is due them in the common schools of the state,” says the commission, “the teachers must be educated to handle them more effectively than they have been able to handle such subjects in the past.”

The Indiana statute, which was signed by the governor in March, established a state system of vocational education and gave state aid for training in industries, agriculture and domestic science, through all-day, part-time, continuation and evening schools. This work is to be carried on either in separate schools or in special departments of regular high schools. In every case, the local control is vested in the regular board of education for the community and the laws are to be administered as a whole by the State Board of Education. The state board has been reorganized so that seven of its members must be professional educators. The remaining five may be laymen. Two of the laymen must be citizens of prominence and three of them shall be actively interested in vocational education. One of these last three shall be a representative of employes and one of employers. Attendance upon day or part-time classes is restricted to persons over fourteen and under twenty-five years of age; and upon evening classes to persons over seventeen years of age. The state superintendent of public instruction is made the executive officer and a deputy superintendent is to be placed under him in charge of industrial and domestic science education. The agricultural work is carried on by another deputy.

Local communities are required to supply the plant and equipment for carrying on the work. When this has been approved by the State Board of Education, the community is to be reimbursed out of the state treasury to the amount of two-thirds the salary of each teacher giving instruction either in vocational or technical subjects.

In order to secure the benefit of the knowledge and co-operation of the layman, local school authorities are required to appoint, subject to the approval of the State Board of Education, advisory committees composed of members representing local trades and industries, whose duty it shall be to counsel with the board and other officials in the conduct of the affairs of the school.

In both Pennsylvania and New Jersey bills creating state systems of vocational education are likely to pass soon. The Pennsylvania measure has already gone through the House by a vote of 182 to 2. This latter bill is very similar to the Indiana act. The State Board of Education administers the act, with the state superintendent of public instruction as the executive officer.

The regular board of education is in charge of the local schools. They are required to appoint advisory committees composed of members representing local trades, industries and occupations, to aid them in making the work practical and effective.

In general the New Jersey measure is similar to those of Indiana and Pennsylvania. There also the work is to be administered by the State Board of Education and local boards of education, and may be carried on either in approved schools or departments; these departments must consist of separate courses, pupils and teachers. Advisory committees are not provided for in the act, but it is expected that these will be required by the board of education under authority conferred by previous legislation.

In Connecticut and New York, which have already made some provision for vocational education, laws are pending which considerably extend the scope of the systems. In Washington a measure establishing a “dual” system of vocational schools is regarded as unlikely of passage. In Massachusetts a pending amendment to a former act authorizes school committees, with the approval of the State Board of Education, to require every child between fourteen and sixteen years of age who is regularly employed not less than six hours a day, to attend school at the rate of not less than four hours per week, during the school year. Another measure which will probably become a law raises the compulsory school age from fourteen to fifteen, for all children, and for illiterates from sixteen to seventeen. Attendance on a vocational school of children fourteen years of age is accepted as school attendance.

FROM SCHOOL TO JOB IN PHILADELPHIA

A twentieth century verification of the scriptural truth that “to him who hath shall be given” is put forward by the Public Education Association of Philadelphia, which recently completed a study of the children in that city who leave school at fourteen or fifteen to go to work.

There are in the Philadelphia public high schools, says a pamphlet issued by James S. Hiatt, secretary of the association, 13,039 boys and girls. At the same time there is a like number, 13,740, who have been allowed to drop out of school at fourteen and to fight their industrial battle alone. For the former group, who are really more able to take care of themselves, the city pays $1,532,000 a year for further training in citizenship and preparation for life. For the latter group it pays nothing.

“Is this a square deal?” asks the association. “Is it economy on the part of the city to permit these child workers to go out untrained into industry, to give their lives before they are mature and then to become a burden upon the community?”

With regard to these 13,740 between the ages of fourteen and sixteen whom the school census of June, 1912, found to be at work, the study undertook to answer two questions: first, are the occupations in which the boys and girls are employed of such a nature that they will train for a competence in later life? Second, is the immediate wage received of sufficient importance to counterbalance the tremendous loss of power in those who face mature life unprepared? As a continuation of this investigation the Compulsory Education Bureau has followed up since September of last year and will continue to do so, every child who leaves school to go to work. The kind of job taken, the exact nature of the work done, and the wage received will be learned. About 1,700 labor certificates are issued in Philadelphia every month.

At the outset it was discovered that the problem is not one of the immigrant child chiefly. The percentage of American parentage was 50.2; of foreign parentage, 48.1; of Negro parentage, 1.7 Nor is it a problem of boys chiefly, for 6,849, or 49.85 per cent of the total, were girls.

THE SURVEY has already told how the Vocational Guidance Survey of New York followed a group of boys and girls from the day they received their labor certificates through all the different jobs which they held during the next four or five months. The study emphasized the hit-or-miss jumping from one line of work to another which untrained youths are sure to resort to, acquiring no training and achieving no advance. The Philadelphia study furnishes a cross section of the positions held by this much larger group at a given moment. Forty-three per cent of both boys and girls were in the factory, where, says the report,

“the positions are largely mechanical and require but short time in
learning, little responsibility, and great specialization of
processes. These positions offer an initial wage which is alluringly
high, but hold out little incentive for growth and but slightly
advanced wages for the experienced operative.”

Twenty-nine per cent were in the store and the office, “where a few may advance to higher places, but it is evident that a majority must hold low-grade positions which require little preparation or skill.”

A comparison of the employments of both sexes showed that there is no kind of work which both boys and girls will not do. While boys predominate in the store, the office, in messenger service, street trades and skilled trades, girls have the largest number in the factory, in service and in house work. Yet twenty-five girls were exposed to the dangers of street trades and 118 boys were taken out of school to do house work in their own homes without pay. The diagram on the next page shows the percentages and numbers of the total engaged in the various lines of work, and the relative proportion of boys and girls in each.

When it came to tabulating wages the surprising discovery was made that with respect to 35.3 per cent of the total either no wage was received or the amount of it was entirely unknown to the family. Twenty-two per cent received between $2 and $4 a week, and 37 per cent between $4 and $6. Smaller wage divisions are shown here:

MALE FEMALE
_Wages_ _Number_ _Per cent_ _Number_ _Per cent_
Unknown or zero 1,961 28.4 2,893 42.2
Under $2 19 .3 22 .3
$2 to $2.50 59 .8 75 1.0
$2.50 to $3 72 1.0 113 1.6
$3 to $3.50 728 10.5 581 8.4
$3.50 to $4 806 11.6 624 9.1
$4 to $4.50 1,338 19.4 1,130 16.1
$4.50 to $5 610 8.8 525 7.6
$5 to $6 874 12.6 600 8.7
$6 and over 424 6.1 286 4.1
————— ———— ————— ————
Total 6,891 100.0 6,849 100.0

Split up by sexes these figures show that 42.2 per cent of the girls were found in the group whose wages were unknown or zero, while only 28.4 per cent of the boys were in that group. For both boys and girls the largest number of those whose wages is known is found in the group which receive $4.00 to $4.50. The detailed comparison is here given:

_Wages_ _Number_ _Per Cent_
Unknown or zero 4,854 35.3
Under $2 42 .3
$2 to $2.50 134 .9
$2.50 to $3.00 185 1.3
$3 to $3.50 1,308 9.5
$3.50 to $4 1,430 10.4
$4 to $4.50 2,468 17.8
$4.50 to $5 1,135 8.2
$5 to $6 1,474 10.7
$6 and over 710 5.1
—————— —————
Total 13,740 100.0

The average wage for all boys who receive between $2 and $6 is $4.26; that for girls $4.19, the large number of girls who receive a comparatively high wage in factories bringing their average up.

The average increase, between fourteen and fifteen years of age, of the workers noted is thirty-seven cents. It is much less in some of the industries. “Does such a slight return and such a meager raise,” asks the report, “pay for all the loss of mature power, as well as for that efficiency which might be gained by longer continuing in the proper kind of training?”

╔══════════════════════════════════════════════╤════════════╤═════════════════╗ ║ THE CHILD │ THE SCHOOL │ THE JOB ║ ╟──────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────────╢ ║THESE 13,740 JOBS ARE HELD BY WORKING CHILDREN│LABOR │TO WHAT DO THEY ║ ║IN PHILADELPHIA BETWEEN 14 & 16 YEARS OF AGE. │GREED │LEAD? ║ ║ │ │ │ │ │ │ │_PUBLIC EDUCATION║ ║ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ ASSOCIATION_║ ╠══════╪═══════╪═════════╪═══════╪═════════════╪══════╪═════╪═════════╤═══════╣ ║STREET│SERVICE│MESSENGER│SKILLED│MISCELLANEOUS│OFFICE│STORE│HOUSEWORK│FACTORY║ ║TRADES│ │ │TRADES │ │ │ │ │ ║ ╟──────┼───────┼─────────┼───────┼─────────────┼──────┼─────┼─────────┼───────╢ ║ 1.5%│ 1.2%│ 2.5%│ 3.0%│ 6.3%│ 8.7%│20.3%│ 12.8%│ 43.4%║ ║ 214│ 168│ 346│ 422│ 873│ 1200│ 2793│ 1756│ 5968║ ╚══════╧═══════╧═════════╧═══════╧═════════════╧══════╧═════╧═════════╧═══════╝

WHERE THE YOUNGSTERS WORK IN PHILADELPHIA

The figures and percentages refer to parts of the whole 13,740 boys and girls found in the lines of work named. The drawings show roughly the ratio of boys to girls in each line. “Housework” means housework in own home.]

The following conclusions are drawn by the association as a result of its study:

“1. That the problem of the working child is not an immigrant problem,
since over 50 per cent of those reported as at work are of the second
generation of American birth.

“2. That this is not the problem of the boy alone, since over 49 per
cent of the workers are girls.

“3. That the vast majority of children who leave school at fourteen to
enter industry go into those kinds of employment which offer a large
initial wage for simple mechanical processes, but which hold out
little or no opportunity for improvement and no competence at
maturity.

“4. That wages received are so low as to force a parasitic life.

“5. That but slight advancement is offered the fifteen-year-old over
the fourteen-year-old child worker.”

ILLITERACY AND THE RURAL SCHOOL

Hardly are we given time to grasp the Census Bureau’s new facts about illiteracy in the United States before the Bureau of Education gives us its own interpretation of some of them. Illiteracy, as viewed by the Census Bureau, means inability to write on the part of those ten years old and over. As a nation the number of illiterates among us decreased from 10.7 per cent of the population in 1900 to 7.7 per cent in 1910. In spite of this decrease a bulletin by A. C. Monahan of the Bureau of Education refers to the “relatively high rate of illiteracy” in the country and says that this rate is due not to immigration but to the lack of educational opportunities in rural districts. The percentage of rural illiteracy is twice that of urban, although approximately three-fourths of the immigrants are in the cities. Still more significant is a comparison between children born in this country of foreign parents with those born of native parents. Illiteracy among the latter is more than three times as great as that among the former, “largely,” says Mr. Monahan, “on account of the lack of opportunities for education in rural America.”

The decrease in national illiteracy during the decade 1900–1910 was not only relative but absolute, despite the growth of the population. In 1900 the figure was 6,180,069. In 1910 it was 5,516,163. But while illiteracy among the total population was decreasing, that among the foreign born whites remained almost stationary. In 1900 the percentage was 12.9, in 1910 12.7. Among the whites born in this country the decrease during the decade was from 4.6 to 3 per cent. Illiteracy among the Negroes showed a decrease of almost one-third. In 1900 44.5 of the whole Negro population could not write; in 1910 the percentage was 30.4.

The distribution of illiteracy between the sexes was very even. Among males it amounted 7.6 of the total, among females to 7.8. There was less of it among white females, however, than among white males, the percentage for the former being 4.9, for the latter 5. White girls and women born outside of this country show more illiteracy than men and boys of the same class, but those born in the United States show less than native males, as follows:

_Whites_ _Male_ _Female_
Foreign born 11.8 13.9
Native 3.1 2.9

The New England and the Middle Atlantic groups of states changed places in the illiteracy column between 1900 and 1910. At the former period New England was fifth and the Middle Atlantic states, comprising New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, fourth, but by 1910 New England had displaced the latter group. In both years the West North Central, comprising Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas, showed the least illiteracy of any of the geographical divisions, while the East South Central, comprising Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, had the worst record,

The section known as the West almost caught up with the North during the decade, the respective percentages being 4.4 and 4.3.

Mr. Monahan’s bulletin goes briefly into the whole rural school problem. The author found 226,000 one-teacher schoolhouses in the United States, of which 5,000 are log buildings still in active use. Although more than 60 per cent of the children in the United States are enrolled in country schools, the rural aggregate attendance is only 51 per cent.

With the help of recent appropriations made by Congress the Bureau of Education has undertaken to make a careful study of the needs of the rural schools, and the bulletin just issued is one of the first definite results of the work.

WOMEN IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

How women have advanced from the educational ranks to the highest administrative positions in the public schools is revealed in figures just compiled by the United States Bureau of Education. Four states, Colorado, Idaho, Washington, and Wyoming, have women at the head of their state school systems, and there are now 495 women county superintendents in the United States, nearly double the number of ten years ago.

In some states women appear to have almost a monopoly of the higher positions in the public-school system. In Wyoming, besides a woman state superintendent and deputy superintendent, all but one of the fourteen counties are directed educationally by women. In Montana, where there are thirty counties, only one man is reported as holding the position of county superintendent.

The increase in the number of women county superintendents is most conspicuous in the West, but is not confined to that section. New York reports forty-two women “district superintendents,” as against twelve “school commissioners” in 1900.

MOTHERHOOD AND TEACHING