The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1915-03-25

Lne farms and dalrleS and lumber camps
the ranches and oyster beds and bee
hives and chicken coops. THAT is less
idyllic than it may sound) Most of the
rest would come from kitchens and
nurseries, factories, mills, machine
shops and stores. quarries and mines,
foundrles and glasswOrks and printing
presses and sweatshops, and from the
streets, where they have been selling
newspapers, backing boots, driving
grocery wagons, and running to and
fro with kilograms and hat boxes and
proof and other things that must be
carried quic<lY from one place to an
other.
We hoped when the National Child
Labor Committee was organized in
1904 that it would be able to accom-
plish its purpose and go out of exis-
tence after ten years if it worked hard.
| am greatly disappointed that it has
not. A great deal has been accomplish
ed, but, as DR.. Adler, VINO has been
chairman of the committee since the
beginning, said at the tenth annual
meeting last year:
Though there is more or less ade-
quate legislation in the great majority
Of the States. thprn orc still enormous
obstacles TO be su"mounted; Indifference
is to be turned into ardor, and laws that
now lie cold in the statute-book as in a
tomb are to be resurrected into the life
of enforcement
With all the children shut out of in
dustrY to the age of sixteen, as all girls
are in Ohio, we have discharged our
first duty to normal adolescence. The
next step is to keep them in school.
WHERE THE RESPONSIBILITYFo FOR SOLVING
EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS MUST REST
1t is on the teaching profession that
the main responsibility must rest for
solving these educational problems, for
'rationalsing" and "democratizing"
the public schools and making them as
useful to the boys and girls who leave
them at sixteen to go INTO factory as
they have been to those who go on into
normal school or college. We may
safely leave this responsibility with the
educators of the country if the students
of industrial problems do their part in
supplying information about the con-
ditions in the various industries and in
helping to analyze the various industries
and in helping to analyze the various
processes with a view to discovering
what is the precise training for each.
Education for efficiency is not to be
identified with narrowly specialized
vocational" education. Too narrowly
specialized training may have precisely
the opposite result. Processes in any
vocation may be completely revolutioniz-
ed within few years, or the vocation
itself may disappear. Adaptabllity to
changing conditions becomes, therefore,
quite as desirable for the normal man
and woman as specialized skill in a par
ticular process. Points of similarity in
several different occupations are more
numerous and important than appear
upon the surface. Quickness, dexterity,
skill in making particular combinations,
coordination of eye and hand, may be
transferred from one kind of factory to
another if trades-union regulations or
traditional notions of administration do
not interfere.
Specialized training for a particular
vocation is exceedingly important to
supplement this education in adapta-
bility, but it should not begin before
sixteen. The child who has had an I'M
differentiated general education, as
diversified and weIl-rounded as possible.
including training of muscles and senses,
as we'll as of reasoning powers and
other faculties which we have been in
the habit of referring to as 1.-THE brain"
but without special instruction in the