The Fulton County news. [volume] (McConnellsburg, Pa.) 1899-current, 1906-12-27

1t is a poor workman nowadays
who cannot exhibit diploma. The
washerwoman may have her sheep
skin and so may the janitor, while
the shop girl must graduate from the
school OF instruction especially pro-
vided for her.
This trend toward special training
is seen at its largest development in
the various trade schools maintained
by the Board of Education, but inter-
esting phases are found In the small
schools and classes organized and
managed by associations and by the
efforts of individuals.
More interesting, too, than the
classes In which fees are exacted and
the applicant must have some rudi-
mentary knowledge of the subject
are those In which people are taken
in all their crudeness and ignorance
and converted into skilled workmen
with no cost to themselves other than
the effort of learning. Hopeless,
helpless dependents are made into ef-
ficient laundresses, men whose great
est ability has been in running an ele-
vator are instructed in the care of
delicate electrical machinery, and
crippled women are taught to make
the finest lace and embroidery.
The school for washerwomen es-
tablished by the Charity Organization
Society, although less than four years
old, is almost the oldest of these
training schools for adults. Here
womep so shiftless as to make even
taught old fashioned, domestic wash
ing.
In the whole three floors of the
old residence on West Twenty-eighth
street that the school occupies there
is not a single piece of machinery
with the exception of the humble
wringer. There are tubs and soap
and water, and the women are taught
only to use the things found In the
ordinary home.
The course of instruction varies
according to the ability of the woman
employed. The greenest hand is
started with the tubs at daily wage
a month or six weeks there before
<sne is put on plain ironing and her
wages raised to 81. Later, as she
progresses upward, her wages ad-
vance also, and when she attains the
dignity of shirt ironer she receives
$3.50 a day.
Then she graduates. At least she
graduates If she can be persuaded to
do so.
Our greatest difficulty is in get
ting rid of the women after they have
learned all that we can teach them"
said Mrs. M. A. Williams, the super
interlent. "Of course, some of the
women we keep right on to act as
working instructors to the new COM
ers.
"One woman who has been with us
almost from the first is now practi-
cally the head of the ironing corps.
She has only one arm, but In spite
of this she is our best ironer.
"Of course many women are sent
here for instruction and have places
waiting for them when they finish.
In fact, many of cur patrons begin
by sending us their laundry to do and
end by taking one of our graduates
and continuing our system in their
own homes.
'The women are of all ages, but
! most of them are mothers whose
children are put in day nurseries
/, while they arc work. We have one
woman of sixty-five in the school just
now, and she is Coing good work, too,
and there are any number past fifty.
I'VE average about forty pupils in
the school, and have had as many as
sixty. The majority are foreigners.
Last year we had 49S Irish, 100 Ger
mans, 16S negroes-and two white
/ Americans"
Another school closely allied to the
Charity Organization Society is the
school for bead workers maintained
at tie Home for the Aged and Infrm
on Blackwell's Island. Miss Emma
Fowler goes over to the Island every
day and teaches the crippled, par
alyzsd men and women to make their
hands useful.
The work that these forlorn people
do, once their clumsy fingers have
been trained bit, is remarkable.
Elaborate bead embroideries, chains,
belts and trimmings are made, while
really beautiful baskets are turned
| oue.
Beginning with the bead work,
ether things have been added, wood
carving, crocheting and knitting,
until the collected exhibition OF their
work looks like booth at a village
fair. One old man who had been
spending his life sitting beside his
bed in hopeless idleness, last year
knitted twenty-five shawls and thirty
seven pairs of wristlets.
With the proceeds from the sale of
these things he bought delicacies fo-
p son dying of tuberculosis at the
Metropolitan Hospital, and later paid
his sons burial expenses. Nearly
$1,000 was earned last year by THESE
old people, to whom, up to the es-
tablishment of this school, even the
blessing OF occupation was denied.
The effort OF department store
managers to get more efiicient clerks
has resulted in the establishment of
Echool for shop girls, where classes
are held and teachers are employed
for the sole purpose of instructing
tho ofrIo IN tba dufiac that will ha