The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-05-11

| painter, an engineer, all aHdlytlC chemist. bricklayer, a stone mason
 plasterer, a stone cutter, or some other vocation which turns him out
 perfectly good tradesman or q
 perfectly soundly skilled worker ill
 one form or another.
 Then We have no man linguist
 of course, no man who has head
 full of classical lore and hand
 unfit to turn a screw or drill hole
 or saw a two by four Every man
 is a skilled tradesman. He is ill
 the market as such, to compete with
 the rest who are in the market as
 such. The pick and shovel man
 knowing no skill is the rare bird.
 What happens then? Have we in ef- feet bettered the condition of the
 youth any? Why not bit of it. We
 have greatly helped the employer.
 He goes into the labor market look
 ing for a particular brand of skill
 He finds twenty or a hundred where
 one was rustling a job before. He
 will be able to treat the skilled man
 who asks for more, as he would
 treat the unskilled who would ask
 for more, that is by tying can to
 him and telling him to get out. Ii
 the one does not like it, ninety-nine
 are ready and willing to get the job.
 Labor, it cannot be repeated too , often and goodness knows it sinks slowly enough into some heads, IS requted in proportion to the quan-
 tity of the supply in relation to the . quantity in demand. If skilled be- , comes as plentiful as unskilled, the skilled will get exactly as the un-
 skilled are paid. There is no poetry but absolute truth about that. r We may all agree that classical education is useless to man as far E as aiding him make living. But . surely we will not admit that such l an education is wholly without a E value not measured in dollars and e cents. It may be particularly sor- | ry thing to find couple of ragged ] Greek scholars, hungry and helpless !, debate upon the position of an en. = clitic or the particular scanning or - particularly sonorous verse. But | it must afford them some satisfac
 ton that the rest of us may be un' ' able to see. Truly too, to appreciate f the written things and feel that C mental intoxication that follows z 0 perusal of the magnificent work oi T great men, is no worthless learning n We don't live by bread alone, al $ though in these days of high prices <; quite few will have to shift with f out bread itself in some manner or c other. The imagination and the r. mental horizon of every man is t brOadened by contact with the t worlds literature. Man was no' T made to be highly skilled slave oi h a benefcient employer, any more ' than the unskilled helot of mo ,. dcrn plutarchy. The man who ha: I to earn his bread with the sweat O. 6 his brow is entitled to know hi e Shakespeare and his Euripides a. ?, well as the master class whicl e would make it a monopoly fo W themselves alone.
 T Vocational training has its es n sence just now in the conception T. that the working classes were mad
 that the best citizen among tn It workers is he who produces for l- master the greatest profits.
 s, Hence the idea of teaching ther IT. to be skilled of hand. Hence tn 'e notion that it is waste of time t teach the future helots of the Ian of the notion that instead of literatur n the saw and the axe and the dri IT. and the lathe and induction coil an ly the motor and the dynamo shoul ,n be the objects of the workers stu at dies.
 " By the Splendor of God, as ol
 Earl Goodwin used to say. there a. now being held before the countr d. one ideal and one ideal only. Tha Id is the supremacy of American trad C. and commerce throughout tn lg world. Every article bespeakin lg the opportunity that lies befor