The San Francisco call. [volume], August 11, 1912, Image 4

About The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913

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William L. Altdorfer
■ ! r il2. !>y Wiiiiain 1.. AttAottWT)
Tin: wrecking ot ba4 Mm
of th« 4iW I ■ irt in
. have
readier] the point of ■ national
calamity. I .-t cases of the kind,
the blame is laid on the government,
not Men to be any
other ■way t>> correct the growing evil,
I'ncie Sam intends to assume the posi
tion of schoolmaster and teach his p«O
--ple the correct way of living through
the youth of the country. ,\
vocational or Industri&l training: in
every school throughout the United
States will be inaugurated, so that all
the boys may be trained in some use
ful occupation, and every girl be taught
♦he art of home making.
■lt has bf-pn the custom for many
years for girls to leave school at the
agre of 14 or 15 years and enter the
commercial world as department store
clerks, cash girls and factory workers,
the result that when they reach
ing age they know nottting
of t'-.f art of home making." This is
, eat of a. man w)»> has been
Cookie Schools to Banish
Race Suicide and Divorce
3
■ i loee ■• of social conditions in
thM ii'ii.ti;. i•. many years. "It is the
mistaken notion of many parents that
a chilil ■ should be taught first ef all
how to make a living. The direct re
sult of this idea has been an increasing
number of deserted homes with a cor
responding increase in the output of
the divorce courts. All of this may be
traced directly to the fact that our
girls are not fitted to become wives
end know little about the care of a
home and the many things that go to
make homo life the happiest existence
On earth."
* This same authority says that "thou
sands of boys leave school when they
reach the sixth or seventh grades.
With the elementary education they
enter the struggle for existence handi
capped by lack of training. In many
cases, under recent conditions, they may
forced to do this because the father
is not able to earn sufficient to support
the family, and the mite contributed by
th« child helps to pity the rent. But
the father is laying up future trouble
for his child. When the boy reaches
manhood he must compete with skilled
artisans in every branch of tr{\de, and,
if not trained, he must accept a labor
er's job. He must spend his life work
ing for a pitifully small wage, all be
cause he did not* receive proper train
ing in his boyhood."
A plan has been evolved by the of
ficials at Washington that will aid
every school in the country to inaug
urate a comprehensive system of voca
tional or industrial training. It includes
primarily the teaching of the art of
home making in the high schools and
alleges all over the United States, with
a thorough course in cooking, dress
"taking and the thousand and one
things that enter into home life. The
Ktys of the intermediate grades extend
ing up to the high school and the col
leges will be given a course in indus
trial training—the mechanical arts,
such as carpentry, blacksmithing, the
building trades, etc.—the idea being to
stimulate every child in the land to
become a useful rrrember of the com
munity and to teach him how this may
be done.
Senator Carroll S. Page of Vermont;
Dr. P. P. Claxton, United States com
missioner of education, and Willet H.
Hayes, assistant secretary of agricul
ture, are the three men who have
worked hardest to bring about action
oy the federal government. Senator
Page proposes to have the federal gov
ernment spend $1-,000,000 each year,
with the state contributing an equul
amount, for the working out of the
plan, and lie is confident that congress
will furnish the funds necessary to help
the youth of America. .
"I believe the country is fast awak
ening to Uμ fact that mor<- than 50 per
cent of all divorces could have beer,
avoided had the girls been good cooks,
good home makers and good mothers
We must give our girls a training dif
ferent front that they are receiving now,
for if we do not and :.<<■»■ ntictde and
divoric continue to increase in the fu
ture as In the past, 25 years from now
our social conditions will have become
unbearable." This was the startling
statement made by Senator Page when
asked to give his views on the subject,
ject.
It It unquestionably true," continued
the senator, "that too many of our
American girl? are not good housekeep
ers and are lamentably ignorant of the
I of motherhood. Thousands of
homes are wrecked, tens of thousands
of lives ruined, and hundreds of thou
sands are made unhappy because the.
home keepers of our country have no
training in that greatest of profes
sions, the profession of home making
and motherhood.
" Fifty years ago every girl believed
her proper calling in life was to be
come a good home maker, wife and
mother. Today, she looks forward to
a position in some trade or industry,
or perhaps to office work, as stenog
rapher, typewriter or telephone girl,
and when, as is usually the case, girls
find themselves brought face to face
with married life and the home, they
fail to bring to the discharge of the
wifely and motherly duties that ex
perience, skill and knowledge so ab
solutely eseential to a good home
meker.
"Any plan which involves the bet
terment and uplift of the sons and
daughters of the men of our nation
who toi! <;m no more be stopped than
we can tlam the waters of Niagara.
In order thai the great wrong to the
chief asset of this country—the Amer
ican boy and girl—may be righted and
the American people started upward
on » proper and better educational
highway, it*iK necessary that congress
biaze an educational trail along the
lines of the industries, agriculture and
home economic? and this trail, I be
lieve, will )>e followed by every state
In the union very shortly after active
steps are taken by the federal govern
ment.
"There is no more serious problem
before the American people today than
that of maintaining- the equilibrium of
population between rural and urban
life, involving as it does that other
tvvin problem, food production and
food consumption. Take for instance
the case of boys and girls who are
leaving the farms and going to the
cities. LAst June the authorities made
a canvass of the lodging houses in Chi
cago and found about 20,000 young
men under the age of 25 years who
were sleeping in basements where the
water would ooze up through the
floors and where they would lie down
to sleep with nothing but a newspaper
between them and the floor. These
young men were from the farms look
ing for jobs in the city. Twenty years
ngo it used, to be the practice for one
or two hoys or one or two girls from
a large family to go to the city. Now
the farmer sells his farm and the
whole family moves there —very often
18 to start wiin 3. diagnosis, lr you na\ c
anything the matter with you, you want
your physician first to make a proper
diagnosis. Down near Egypt, in the
southern part of Illinois, where the
land is poor, the department of agri
culture started a demonstration farm.
Uncle Sam Has a Vast
Plan to Teach Every
Girl the Art of Home
Making and to School
Every Boy in a Trade
A Doctor Hopkins was In charge, and
he made an analysis of the soil, which
showed it was lacking in phosphate and
other things. An old gray haired man
came up to the doctor and said, with
tears in his eyes: 'Doctor, I want to
thank you for what I have seen today,
but, God help me! if I only knew that
thing 40 years ago. I have nix boys in
my family, and I have labored r.ight and
day to keep the family together, but
what have I got on my farm? Fifteen
to 16 bushels of corn to the acre is all
I could make. I wanted to give my
children an education, but I could not
raise crops enough on that piece of
land, so 1 have worked hard all my life
and have barely enough to support my
family. If a man had only come to me
when I was young and told me the
thing you have told me today I could
have sent my children to the high
school, but,' he said, with tears running
down his face, 'I am now at the end,
with nothing in the future for either
myself or family."
"The untrained man is not neces
sarily a day laborer. He is such a man.
however, when thrown off his present
employment and upon his own re
sources he becomes a menace to society
and to himself. Something must be
done for this man and for men like
him. There are many young men wast
ing their lives along- more or less
profitable lines of endeavor who would
be valuable members of society if they
could have had the advantage of a
special training. Vocational education
helps the boy to find himself, so to
speak, especially if we link his voca
tional education with the seventh and
eighth grades before compulsory edu
cation ceases. My idea would be the
modern application of education to
practical life, which contemplates not
only assistance to the boy to find him
self, but also aids him in" finding a
place where he can get employment
afterward. «
"Raymond Robins, who is known as
p.-ossion to the following: thought,
which it would be well for all thinking
people to lot sink deep into their
minds: He says 'the old vertical lines
of social division—by income, profes
sion and family—are gone. The new
line is horizontal. Above it are all
those who live by dividends and below
all those who live by labor. But It Iβ
more than a line—it Is a crack, a
cleavage. And I tell you that unless
that cleavage is bridged in the next
10 years it never will bo bridged in
our time.' In this thought Raymond
Robins has given expression to no
threat, and he may he wrong in re
gard to the future of the American
people, but it does behoove all think
ing people to take cognizance of the
claims of a man like Raymond Robjns.
If we can lift some of those below the
horizontal line and give them a portion
of those above the line we should
"Home economics or the science of
home making is a much more compre
hensive term than one would believe
who has not given the matter soAie
thought. Broadly speaking it refers
to the improvement of conditions of
home life. Primarily it includes cook
ing, sewing, making articles of house
hold use, Tegetable gardening, home
nursing, ca*e of children, etc. These
are only the elementary studies for the
girl who would fit herself to be a true
home maker, who understands among
other things, for instance, the value of
foods that enter Into daily consumption
and how to buy them co as to prevent
waste. She should understand ventila
tion, hygiene, the prevention of disease,
serving of dinners, laundry work, house
planning, millinery, making her own
clothing, art needle work, household
decoration, household bookkeeping, iij
deed, her studies Should cover that
broad field which fit the girl to eco
nomically manage household affairs
when she becomes a wife and mother
and to have such an understanding as
will enable her to prevent waste and
plan intelligently as one must do who
provides for and presides over the
household and has to do largely with
the family living expenses.
"The difference between the girl who
leaves school on the completion of th*
seventh or eighth grade sviihout any
knowledge of these practical affairs of
life, and the one whose school life
has been prolonged for an added year
or two in the study of home economics,
is very often the difference between
success and failure at a wife and
mother. A good well kept home pre
sided over by an intelligent woman,
educated along general and practical
lines means health, happiness and
prosperity, with healthy children and
all those essentials which make life
worth living.
"Take for instance the great waste
in home management. More than ten
billion dollars are expended annually
in the United States for food, clothing
and shelter, when with greater knowl
edge and efficiency better satisfaction
could be obtained and vaore than a
billion dollars saved for higher things.
One-half million lives are cut short
and five million people are made ill
by preventable diseases every year.
With universal knowledge ot hygiene
and sanitation nearly all deaths and
Illness from such causes could be pre
vented. Six hundred thousand infants
~'nder two years of age end their little
span of life yearly, while millions of
children fail to reach their best physi
cal development because their fathers
and mothers do not understand how to
care for them. With more knowledge
at least one-half of these babies could
be saved.
"A group of philanthropists in New
York found upon investigation that the
wages of the unskilled female laborer
were declining, while those of the
skilled laborer were advancing, and
that the supply of the skilled laborer
was inadequate to meet the demand.
Now it is not expected that immature
girls of 14 and 15 years of age would
immediately upon entering the labor
market make large salaries, but th»
purpose is to educate these i?rms for
situations for which their qualifications
best fit them, better wages and a bet
ter life. To illustrate my --point: In
dressmaking the unskilled girl in New
York starts at $3 a week, but after
training in an industrial school they
earn $5 to $12. In millinery the girls
start at $". but after training receive
$12 per week. In operating machines
unskilled girls receive $4: after train
ing they are paid something like $20
to $25 per week. This all goes to prove
what I said in the first place, that the
trained worker is far more valuable to
themselves as well as to the commu
nity than the untrained worker.
"Then we come to the boy's side of
the qut-stion. As it is today, he looks
from the elementary school to tiie
lirst year of the high school, and there
he discovers Latin. French, geometry,
algebra. He props to his father and
mother and lays his troubles before
them. He says to them, 'I don't want
to learn French, I don't want to learn
Latin, I don't want to study algebra.
They will never do me any good.' Nine
times out of ten the father believes
vith the child, and opportunities are
too often given him by the parents to
avoid school life, even during the la:=t
or eighth year of compulsory at
tendance, and as soon as he has com
pleted the eighth grade, he takes final
leave of school.
"The father then says to his son:
'John, you must this year earn enough
to pay for your own clothing, and pro
vide your own spending money, and
you must pay your mother a dollar or
two a week toward your board.' With
this injunction the boy starts out, and,
following the lines of least resistance,
he is fortunate indeed if he does not
find himself in that class in which
statistics tell us that more than 40 per
«ent of the American boys In our large
The San Francisco Sunday Call
cities land, viz.: in the class of errand
boys, bootblacks and newspaper vend
ers.
"What is the result? Evil associates
surround and control the boy during
the two or more years of the more im
pressionable period of his life. On ar
rival at the age when he is permitted
to enter upon an apprenticeship or take
up some employment he finds that his
environment has been such as to
weaken every higher moral quality. In
stead of there being a growth for the
hetter from the fourteenth to the sev
enteenth year, he has actually been
allowed to degenerate. "Whereas had
these years been spent in college or
some vocational school where he was
learning the fundamentals of that trade
or calling which he elected to pursue,
he would not have found himself where
ho must on entering the workshop take
>ils place alongside the cheapest, low
est illiterate from some foreign land.
"Men like to do that which they can
Ao well. Place a boy in a position
where he must work in the lowest
grade of the establishment and work to
him is drudgery. Give him such work
as a year or two of education along
vocational lines would have permitted
him to do and all is changed. Hβ sees
not only a higher wage, but he sees
promotion, preferment, and honors. The
boy who has been drifting downward!
from the fourteenth to the seventeenth
year soon comes to know that he has
nnt had a square deal in the race of
life, and joins the order of malcontents
and anarchists.
"I do not believe I am mistaken in
regard to the duty of the country with
reference to the better education of
our boys and girls along agricultural
and industrial lines. I know there Is
intense interest in the movement
throughout every section of the
country, east and -west, north and
south. It is not confined to any one
section nor to any class of people, but
has taken deep hold upon the entire
agricultural, commercial and manufac
turing population. There Is not an im
portant organization in the country
which has for its object the uplift and
betterment of our people that has not
approved the plan. And all educa
tional organizations of the country
have approved it enthusiastically.
Willet M. Hi yes, assistant secretary
of agriculture, has been identifiod with
the agricultural school movement for
many years*. It is practically the same
as that outlined by Senator Page and
includes the training of the youth of
both sfxef. but it is confined princi
pally to the farming or rural popula
tion, and takes in all the ptiaaes ©f lit*
peculiar to fcgrfealture. Mr. Hayes IJT
an enthusiastic supporter of the plan
{•ml the idea of the government offi
cials is to combine the two plans—to
extend aid to city and country schools
in vocational training of all kinds. He
assisted in the establishment of the
first agricultural high school in the
T : nited States, which was organized
by the University of Minnesota in ISij?
From a very small beginning tru?
school has now about 1,000 students,
while the state recently established
two other agricultural high schools.
The movement has extended to many
other states and there are 25 agricul
tural schools scattered throughout the
country.