Wage Earning and Education Part 1

Wage Earning and Education.

by R. R. Lutz.

FOREWORD

This summary volume, ent.i.tled "Wage Earning and Education," is one of the 25 sections of the report of the Education Survey of Cleveland conducted by the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation in 1915 and 1916. Copies of all the publications may be obtained from the Cleveland Foundation. They may also be obtained from the Division of Education of the Russell Sage Foundation, New York City. A complete list will be found in the back of this volume, together with prices.

WAGE EARNING AND EDUCATION

CHAPTER I

THE INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION SURVEY

The education survey of Cleveland was undertaken in April, 1915, at the invitation of the Cleveland Board of Education and the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation, and continued until June, 1916.

As a part of the work detailed studies were made of the leading industries of the city for the purpose of determining what measures should be taken by the public school system to prepare young people for wage-earning occupations and to provide supplementary trade instruction for those already in employment. The studies also dealt with all forms of vocational education conducted at that time under public school auspices.

TYPES OF OCCUPATIONS STUDIED

Separate studies were made of the metal industry, building and construction, printing and publis.h.i.+ng, railroad and street transportation, clothing manufacture, department store work, and clerical occupations. The wage-earners in these fields of employment const.i.tute nearly 60 per cent of the total number of persons engaged in gainful occupations and include 95 per cent of the skilled workmen in the city. The survey also gave considerable attention to the various types of semi-skilled work found in the princ.i.p.al industries.

Each separate study was a.s.signed to a particular member of the Survey Staff who personally carried on the field investigations and later submitted a report to the director of the survey. Each report was also subjected to careful a.n.a.lysis and criticism from other members of the Survey Staff before it was finally pa.s.sed upon by the Survey Committee. Mimeographed copies were sent to representatives of the industry and to the superintendent of schools and members of the school board and their criticisms and suggestions were given careful consideration before the Committee and the director of the survey gave their final approval to the publication of the report. The value of the work was greatly enhanced through the ample discussion of the different studies from widely diverse points of view secured in this way. The industrial studies were carried through under the direction of the author of this summary volume.

THE SURVEY STAFF AND METHODS OF WORK

The reports of the studies relating to vocational education were published in a series of eight separate monograph volumes. The names of the reports and the previous experience in educational and investigational work of each member of the Survey Staff are as follows:

"Boys and Girls in Commercial Work"--Bertha M. Stevens; teacher in elementary and secondary schools; agent of a.s.sociated Charities; secretary of Consumers' League of Ohio; director of Girls' Bureau of Cleveland; author of "Women's Work in Cleveland"; co-author of "Commercial Work and Training for Girls."

"Department Store Occupations"--Iris P. O'Leary; head of manual training department, First Pennsylvania Normal School; head of vocational work for girls and women, New Bedford Industrial School; head of girls' department, Boardman Apprentice Shops, New Haven, Conn.; special investigator of department stores for New York State Factory Investigating Commission; three years' trade experience as employer and employee; author of books on household arts and department stores; Special a.s.sistant for Vocational Education, State Department of Public Instruction, New Jersey.

"The Garment Trades" and "Dressmaking and Millinery"--Edna Bryner; teacher in grades, high school, and state normal college; eugenic research worker New Jersey State Hospital; statistical expert in United States Bureau of Labor Investigation of women and child labor; statistical agent United States Post Office Department; Special Agent Russell Sage Foundation.

"The Building Trades," and "The Printing Trades"--Frank L. Shaw; teacher in grades and high school; princ.i.p.al of high school; a.s.sistant superintendent of schools; superintendent of schools; special agent United States Immigration Commission; special agent United States Census; industrial secretary North American Civic League for Immigrants; author of reports on immigration legislation.

"The Metal Trades"--R.R. Lutz; teacher in rural and graded schools; superintendent of schools; secretary of Department of Education of Porto Rico; took part in school surveys of Greenwich, Conn., Bridgeport, Conn., Springfield, Ill., Richmond, Va.; Special Agent Division of Education, Russell Sage Foundation.

"Railroad and Street Transportation"--Ralph D. Fleming; special agent and investigator for United States Immigration Commission, the Federal Census of Manufacturers, the United States Tariff Board, the Minimum Wage Commission of Ma.s.sachusetts, the National Civic Federation, and the United States Commission on Industrial Relations.

The work began in April, 1915, and ended in the same month of the following year. Two members of the staff, with one stenographer and a clerk, were employed during the entire period. One member of the staff was employed 11 months, one nine months, one approximately five months, and one two months.

The field investigations consisted largely of visits to industrial establishments for the purpose of securing first-hand information as to industrial conditions and the nature and educational content of particular occupations. Over 400 visits of this kind were made by members of the Survey Staff. Many conferences were held with employers and employees with the object of securing their views as to the needs and possibilities of industrial training.

The task of tabulating and cla.s.sifying the data obtained by the individual investigators in their visits to the local industrial establishments involved much time and labor. Although it was not found practicable to maintain complete uniformity in the different inquiries, the members of the staff kept in close touch with each other, so that with respect to the points of princ.i.p.al importance, the results of their investigations are comparable. Practically every recommendation made in the reports was discussed in conferences with school princ.i.p.als and with other members of the teaching force engaged in the teaching of vocational subjects.

Throughout the survey the objective held constantly in mind was the formulation of a constructive program of vocational training in the public schools. In outlining the field of inquiry a clear distinction was drawn between those kinds of general education which have a more or less indirect vocational significance, and vocational training for specific occupations in which the controlling purpose is direct preparation for wage-earning. The studies were purposely limited to this latter type of vocational training. The survey did not concern itself with manual training conducted for general educational ends, with the art work of the schools, or with courses in domestic science and household arts. These subjects in the curriculum were dealt with in different sections of the education survey, but were considered as being outside the legitimate field of the vocational survey.

CHAPTER II

FORECASTING FUTURE PROBABILITIES

The industrial education survey of Cleveland differs from other studies conducted elsewhere in that it bases its educational program on a careful study of the probable future occupational distribution of the young people now in school. It does not claim to foretell the specific positions that individual boys and girls will hold when they are adults but it does claim very definitely that our safest guide in foretelling their future vocational distribution is to be found in the official figures of the present occupational census of the city.

One of the most familiar and time-worn plat.i.tudes of educational speakers and writers is that "The children of today are the citizens of tomorrow." In the field of industrial education it is quite as true that the school children of today are the workers of tomorrow.

Moreover, since occupational distributions change but slowly even in these modern times, it is unquestionably true that the boys and girls now studying in the public schools will soon be scattered among the different gainful occupations of Cleveland's industrial, commercial, and professional life in just about the same proportions as their fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters are now distributed.

The plan of the survey in advocating types of present preparation based on studies of future prospects seems at first sight so obvious a mode of procedure as hardly to warrant extended explanation. This is far from being the case. The reader who proposes to follow the working-out of the principle and to scrutinize the evidence underlying it must be prepared to scan many a detailed table of statistics and to arrive at most unforeseen conclusions.

THE POPULAR CONCEPT OF INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION

For many years past the public has given respectful attention to the arguments of the champions of industrial education. There has been general a.s.sent to the proposition that the schools should train for and not away from the industrial age in which we live. We have come to think of the carpenter shop, the machine shop, the forge shop, and the cooking room as necessary and desirable adjuncts of the modern school and to our minds these shops have typified industrial education. All of these have come to be almost synonymous with progressive thought and action in public education. Very generally it has been felt that the problems of industrial education were to be solved through the wider extension of these shop facilities in our public schools.

When these familiar generalizations are submitted to careful a.n.a.lysis their whole structure begins to totter. In Cleveland about 3,700 boys leave school each year and go to work. They represent various stages of advancement from the 4th grade of the elementary school to the 4th year of the high school. They are scattered through more than 100 school buildings. The problem of industrial education is to give these boys with their differing ages, their widely varied school preparation, and their scattered geographical distribution, the best possible preparation for taking their places in the work-a-day world.

They represent every grade of intelligence, every stratum of social and economic life, and it is extremely difficult to bring them together for instructional purposes. They are scattered in little groups through more than a thousand cla.s.srooms.

THE IMPORTANCE OF RELATIVE NUMBERS

Now it is possible to foretell with some certainty what these young people will be doing a few years from now. Almost all of them are of American birth and it is certain that in a few years they will be engaged in doing just about the same sorts of work as are now done in the city of Cleveland by adults of American birth. The data of the United States Census of Occupations show us that among every 100 American born men in Cleveland there are eight who are clerks, seven who are machinists, four who are salesmen, and so on through the list of hundreds of occupations. The number of American born men in each 100 engaged in each of the 10 leading sorts of occupations is approximately as follows:

Clerks 8 Machinists 7 Salesmen 4 Laborers and porters 4 Retail dealers 4 Draymen, teamsters, etc. 4 Bookkeepers 3 Carpenters 3 Commercial travelers 2 Manufacturers 2 ---- 41

This simple list at once calls into question all the standard a.s.sumptions about the extension of industrial education depending on greatly increasing the number of carpenter shops and machine shops in the public schools. The figures show that among each 100 American born men in Cleveland only seven are machinists and only three are carpenters. Clearly we should not be justified in training all the boys in our public schools to enter the machinist's trade or the carpenter's trade when nine out of each 10 will in all probability engage in entirely different sorts of future work. The more the figures of the little table given above are studied, the clearer it appears that our conventional ideas about industrial education need critical scrutiny and careful challenge. These 10 leading occupations include only 41 out of each 100 American born men. Moreover, more than half of these 41 are engaged in mental work rather than in manual work.

From these considerations one definite conclusion inevitably emerges.

It is that the safest guide for thinking and planning for industrial education is to be found in a study of the occupational distribution of the present adults. From the very outset such a study indicates that the most difficult and important problems which must be met and coped with are not those relating to methods of instruction but rather those of organization and administration. The future carpenters and machinists cannot be taught until we can get them together in fair sized cla.s.ses. They represent the most numerous of the industrial groups and yet their numbers are relatively so few that the average Cleveland school sends out into the world each year only two or three future machinists and perhaps one future carpenter.

The trouble with present thinking about this matter has been that we have noted the very large numbers of machinists and carpenters in the population and have failed to realize that while these groups are numerous in the aggregate they are after all quite small when relatively considered and compared with the total number of workers.

Another important fact that has been almost invariably overlooked is that many of the present carpenters and machinists are foreigners by birth and that there is every prospect that this same condition will maintain in the future. Hence these trades and most other industrial occupations are not recruited from our public schools to anything like the degree that has been a.s.sumed.

A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM MUST FIT THE FACTS

The simple principle which underlies the method employed by the survey is the same on which all large business undertakings are conducted.

The results of its application in the field of industrial education are, however, fundamentally different from those commonly arrived at on the a.s.sumption that nine-tenths of the rising generation will earn their living in industrial pursuits. The fact is that no such proportion of the children in school will become industrial workers.

All the native born labor now employed in manufacturing and mechanical industries const.i.tutes only 44 per cent of the total number of native born workers in the city. Moreover, nearly half of the industrial workers are employed in unskilled and semi-skilled occupations for which no training is required beyond a few days' or weeks' practice on the job. Such training calls for a mechanical equipment far more extensive than the resources of the school system can provide, and can be given by the factory more effectively and much more cheaply than by the schools.