Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1917-12-11
VIZ ASHINGTON, ID. c., Dec. 3.-Suppose
Wv you are young man engaged in the 7

VTT ASHINGTON. d. c., Dec. 3.-Suppose that
wv you young engaged in the print
ing trade, having begun as an apprentice
and worked up to the grade of jOurneyman printer
and that YOU wish to open shop of your OWL II
is assumed that you have saved enough money 10
make first payment on job press. OF course
you Will know all about your machine and now 10
run it, because that is your business. Now Gus
toner comes t. you with big job. He wants TO
know what you will bid an issue of five thou
sand twenty-page circulars advertising ne" IN
cubator. What is there in your experience 20
teach you how to figure the cost of that job?
Your customer also wants your advice as pro-
fessonal. concerning the makeup of his circular
that it will be most effective. and he further ex-
poets you to read proof it, and put it into clear
and orcible English that will be UNDERSTANDINGS 10
a child and will not offend person of cultivated
taste. What will there have been in your expe-
rience printer to fit you for these requirements?
Something in the way of chance opportunity, per-
haps but nothing in the way of systematic training
the only thing you have really learned is how
to run your machine. Furthermore, if you look
about for school in which to learn these things
which are necessary to your further progress, you
are unable to find it. The public schools in your
town will teach you to read and write, which is OF
course, necessary to printer or anyone else. But
at that point most of them depart from the line or
necessity, a skyrocket leaves the horizon. They
offer you course In Latin, SO that you may spenu
your leisure hours chanting the Odes of Horace in
the original. They offer you course in botany,
and after hard days work, you go out in the
tionship between the common spinach Ccreamed
or plan) and the trailing arbutus. They teach you
French, not you speak it; but so you can de-
cline irregular verbs in your sleep.
All of these things are offered to you in the
same guise that the Germans hand their fright
fulness to-wit, as culture. The purveyors Of this
modern high school culture seem to overlook the
fact that there would be just much culture in a
study of the relation of art to printing with special
courses in margins types, and two color processes,
and that for you ambitious young printer, there
would be a great deal use in this latter form
of culture.
The federal board for vocational education pro-
poses open in every important city in the United
States schools which will teach the young printer
these very subjects, will give him the chance not
only to learn how to be journeyman printer, but
to go as far in the printing trade his brain and
his nerve will carry him. And not only the young
printer is to come in for this course of education
which is some use, but the also the young cleo
trician the young plumber, and the young man IN
every other line of industrial work, including agr1
culture. And not only the young ones but all or
the old who not too old to learn, Will get
share of the benefits. The hours Will be so ad-
.justed that man hold his job while learning
something about the job Just ahead.
This new boon in the educational world is con-
ferred by an act of congress called the Smith
Hughes act which passed last February. The
board was organized last summer and is just now
getting we'll under way, with every indication that
It is really live institution and not merely one
more board for the writing of reports and obserV-
ing of the sacred ritual of the Great Red Tape.
The most significant thing about this board is
that il has some real money to spend. 1t does not
merely Investigate and advise the state govern