Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/366

362 These children are receptive, imitative and obedient. They are giving nothing; receiving everything. There are some sixty millions of older people outside these schools who are the burden bearers, in whom rests every whit of the fear and the hope and the accomplishment of the present day. There must be schools for this larger number. After the European practise, we must have day schools and night schools wherein our workers will develop their varied abilities in and through their occupations and adapt themselves to the changing requirements of invention and fancy. Nothing will more vitally better our national life and nothing will more contribute to the betterment of our foreign trade relations. In some parts of the country these industrial schools have been established by force of law, and all children out of school and at work under sixteen years of age are required to attend not less than a half day a week, there to be instructed in the employment in which they are engaged or, when that employment is unfortunate, instructed in a better occupation. Similar schools are opened for the voluntary attendance of adults in the evening, and in the daytime when unemployed. The working people are taking great advantage of this new opportunity, new to us but hundreds of years old in European countries. There is no doubt but these schools will be established generally in the near future and Congress is now considering extensive federal aid and guidance for such schools.

Our Present Foreign Trade.—A study of our present exports of so called manufactured products is illuminating. I quote from a report of the National Association of Manufacturers which I was privileged to write in 1913.

In 1911 we exported $1,189,536,724 of manufactured products, but of this, 56 per cent., or $666,582,970, were of crude and semi-crude materials, including such food stuffs as flour, meat, cottonseed, cake, etc., $282,016,883; copper in bars, wire, etc., $104,000,000; iron and steel in bars, billets, rails, etc., $71,000,000; petroleum and other mineral oils, $92,000,000; wood in its crude forms, $72,000,000; leather, furs, and fur-skins, $45,000,000, etc. Such exports carry only from 3 to 15 per cent, of factory labor. German, French and English exports carry 40 to 80 per cent. This left exports of only $523,000,000 of more highly finished manufactures. According to the Bureau of Statistics this equaled only one sixtieth of our total product of farm and factory, and one fortieth of our manufactured products.

As a people we are ignorant of foreign trade. America has been likened to a huge stevedore bearing down to the ships of the sea crude and semi-crude material for the use of the capital, labor and intelligence of foreign nations. Such exportation is a depletion of our natural resources, the heritage of the ages, and irreplaceable. Until a few years ago we were always speaking of our "limitless natural resources." We now see that under present processes those resources will be exhausted within a period that to the far-sighted is as a day. We have been proud of our agricultural exports; the scientists now tell us that every bushel of wheat exported carries with it 27c. worth of phosphorus; every bushel of corn, 13c.; every pound of cotton, 3c. These figures equal the supposed profits in the transaction. As President Wallace said at the recent