Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/377

 THE WORKING BOY

approve, really believing that the children will learn a trade when they enter a factory.

In the public schools, wherever a primary is in a building by itself, as it very frequently is, parents and children are prone to assume that the end of the primary is the end of school. This impression is strengthened by the policy of the Boards of Edu- cation, which nowhere supply as many seats in the upper grades as in the lower ones. Especially is this true of manufacturing districts of the great cities. This whole policy of the Boards of Education, of supplying diminishing accommodations in the ascending grades, shows that the public mind is still dominated by the tradition that the workingman's child is ready at the age of confirmation to enter the industrial army.

From parish schools, both Catholic and Lutheran, boys eleven and twelve years old have carried letters of recommenda- tion stating that the bearer is a worthy boy and has finished his education. The bearer can usually write his name, but he can- not always write more than that, nor always spell the name of his city, state, and nation, nor the name of the street in which he lives. When the bearer presents his letter to a law-abiding manufacturer he is told, of course, that he cannot go to work until he is fourteen years old. But he replies that he has finished school and graduated and been confirmed. Such a child does not go back to school. He merely finds work in some occupa- tion which does not fall under the factory law. Children sent out from public and parish schools, during the past fifteen years, under the legal age for work, constitute today a heavy burden upon every manufacturing community.

A most promising deviation from the established policy of the Boards of Education has been undertaken by way of experi- ment, in Chicago, at the suggestion of Mr. Thomas Cusack, a member of the board, representing a large manufacturing dis- trict. An unusually fine schoolhouse has been built to contain all the grades including kindergarten and high school, with manual training in every grade and ample provision for teaching cooking. The University of Chicago grants scholarships every