The daily telegram. [volume] (Clarksburg, W. Va.) 1901-1926, 1913-05-30
WHY Girls Leave school.

The idea that children leave school
to go to work because their parents
need the money, is vigorously com
batted in bulletin just issued by
the United States Bureau OF Educa-
ltion. The authors of the bulletin
have made careful study of trade
and labor conditions among girls in
worcester, Mass, preliminary to the
establishment of a trade school for
girls. They find that from one-half
to three-fourths of the girls at work
lin the factories could have had
further schooling If they had wanted
| to or il their parents had cared to
insist upon it.
The survey showed that the num-
Der of girls between 1 A and IL
years of age who leave school is
constantly increasing. During the
last five years many more girls bs-
tween those ages left the Worcester
schools than can. be accounted for by
increase in population. Only about
seventeen per cent of them had fin
Eished the grammar schools; most OF
them left DIN the sixth and seventh
grades. K ~"
why did the girls leave school?
Various reasons were assigned by
the girls themselves. Some thirty
! girls said they did not like to go to
school," or wanted to go to work.
Two were working to help pay for
lpiano. One of these was girl of
Ia years who had left the ninth
grade to go to work in department
store for 50, later $3.50 week.
| Another was girl of Is from the
eighth grade. who went to work in
corset factory for 81 and rose to
$4.S2. Still another girl was taking
music lessons and contributing 20
1.-The payment on the piano.
| Twenty-seyen girls were found at
home. In some cases they had left
Ito help in homework, while a few
had left at time OF temporary
stress and then had returned to
school, -Four girls had changed
places with the mother, who worked
in corset factory, laundry or some
such place, while the girl, whose
wage-earning power was small, KEEP.
house for the mother of the children
Curious differences as to what the
parents thought they could afford
were discovered. THE mother of a
family of eight children, living in
apparently direst poverty, would
have been glad to have sacrificed and
pinched still further to have had
JI,o,. .larob+ar e+oy IN rcbo01 longer
if she would The mother of an
other family of six, living in a COM
Portable apartment house, with
hardwood floors, piano and other
luxuries, said her daughter wished
Ito stay in school longer, but the bur
den of supporting the family was
too heavy for the father to bear
alone; so the girl was taken out OF
school to go to work. A visit to
Swedish family revealed a carpenter
and his wife, washerwoman, wao
had Just built and owned new
three-story apartment house. Yet
the Is year old daughter with sew
enth grade education had been sent
to work in a paper goods factory at
81 a week. ne Qu6SGlOnb w ~
did you leave school?'' was put to
some 1896 more mature workers in
the corset trade. Ninety-one per
cent of these women had left school
between the ages of ,13 and 16, and
fully fifty per cent because of their
dislike of school or because they
wanted to go to work. OF seventy
four workers in clothing factory
eighty-dve per cent had left school
between the ages OF IS and 16
twenty-five per cent of their own
volition.
In the opinion of the authors 81
the bulletin, conditions such as were
found in Worcester emphasize the
imperative need for special training
of practical sort for girls between
the ages of 10 and IS. In the main
/, the children left school simply be
cause they dfsliked the school work.
Not getting the kind of training they
might have liked and would have
profited by, they blindly joined the
army of shifting, inefficient, discon-
, tented girls that go from one mo-
notonous factory job to another, and
because of their lack of training,
rarely rise above the class of low
paid, unskilled workers.
UiIIiaro Peters NJ Parkersburg. is