The Brattleboro reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1907-1912, 1911-11-03
TEACHING FOREIGNERS ENGLISH.
Need of New Methods of Instruction
for Mill Workers.

The textile industry of New England
is facing a problem in the matter OF
labor that is surrounded by many dif
ficulties. Each year the so-called native
help is passing out of the mills, never
to return, and so far as we can see there
is no prospect of the growing genera.
ton of boys and girls in our mill towns
and cities feeling desire or a responsi.
bility to take the places of fathers and
mothers who have spent useful life
in making cotton and wool fabrics.
The present and the coming genera
ton will look to other fields for oc-
cupation, laboring under that serious
mistake that work in our mills is de-
grading, or at least not as desirable as
employment in many other lines, and
it falls upon foreigners to fill up the
ranks of mill workers. These foreigners
are most seriously handicapped from
performing their duties in completely
intelligent way, even to degree IN
keeping with their natural adaptable
ity for the work, solely through their
lack of knowledge of our language, and
one of the most necessary develop
ments in textile education should be the
teaching of the foreign help, first our
language and then our general scheme
of working and living. Such effort will
make valuable mill workers much more
quickly than under present conditions,
where it falls upon the oyerseers and
second hands to teach these new hands
Accepting the situation as it exists, we
are completely dependent upon the for
eign operatives to make up the mill or
ganiZation This is a serious fact and
not a theory. and the next move must
be systematic arrangement whereby
+bngn fnrntupars ha tunnht IN gnpnk
and understand English. Overseers and
second hands are not available who can
master the several languages spoken by
the New England foreign mill help, as
about every nation on earth is repre-
sented so that il must fall upon the
manufacturers to provide some means
of making the new help of greater val.
ne, and all that is lacking to make good
hands of them is Il knowledge of our
language sufficient to give them an
understanding of what is told them
while picking up the details of carding,
spinning and weaving.
1t is an unpleasant occurance to see
second hand or an Overseer talking him
self blue in the face and using language
unfit to print, to make Greek or a Po-
lander understand that he IS dong some
thing wrong. The poor fellow means
well, and by his earnest efforts he shows
that he is trying his best TO do the right
thing. but he cannot understand what
is said to him, and neither can he under
stand the attitudes of the man talking
to him, as it becomes threatening or
the reverse.
1t will save money for the mill cor
porations to work up some plan of ed
ucation for their foreign help. The in
dustrial schools are doing good work in
this direction, and more or less good re-
suits are shown by the textile schools.
Still, these institutions do not begin to
meet the problem and some broader
system should be worked out, so that
the men and women of more mature
years would have an opportunity to
grasp our language sooner and become
more valuable to the mills sooner and
more valuable to themselves.