1 1
UC-NRLF
SB 43b 717
WAGE EARNING AND EDUCATION
THE SURVEY COMMITTEE OF THE
CLEVELAND FOUNDATION
Charles E. Adams, Chairman
Thomas G. Fitzsimons
Myrta L. Jones
Bascom Little
Victor W. Sincere
Arthur D. Baldwin, Secretary
James R. Garfield, Counsel
Allen T. Burns, Director
THE EDUCATION SURVEY
Leonard P. Ayres, Director
/-*r»CH. Ck.
\.OwJ
CLEVELAND EDUCATION SURVEY
WAGE EARNING AND
EDUCATION
BY
R. R. LUTZ
THE SURVEY COMMITTEE OF THE
CLEVELAND FOUNDATION
CLEVELAND - OHIO
25
1916
Copyright, 1916, by
the survey committee of the
cleveland foundation
• • • • . t
•• • • » » • »• i :
• • •.> : \.
/ ; * .; •*:.-. . •••
WM'F. FELL CO* PRINTERS
PHILADELPHIA
FOREWORD
This summary volume, entitled "Wage Earning
and Education/' is one of the 25 sections of the
report of the Education Survey of Cleveland con-
ducted by the Survey Committee of the Cleve-
land Foundation in 1915 and 1916. Copies of
all the publications may be obtained from the
Cleveland Foundation. They may also be ob-
tained from the Division of Education of the
Russell Sage Foundation, New York City. A
complete list will be found in the back of this
volume, together with prices.
34601
***
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Foreword 5
List of Tables 10
List of Diagrams 12
CHAPTER
I. The Industrial Education Survey 13
Types of occupations studied 13
The Survey staff and methods of work 14
II. Forecasting Future Probabilities 18
The popular concept of industrial education 19
The importance of relative numbers 20
A constructive program must fit the facts 23
An actuarial basis for industrial education 24
III. The Wage Earners op Cleveland 25
IV. The Future Wage Earners of Cleveland 29
The public schools 29
Ages of pupils 32
Education at the time of leaving school 34
V. Industrial Training for Boys in Elementary
Schools 38
What the boys in school will do 40
Organization and costs 44
What the elementary schools can do 45
VI. The Junior High School 47
Specialized training not practicable 48
A general industrial course 49
Industrial mathematics 52
Mechanical drawing 54
Industrial science 55
Shop work 56
Vocational information 58
CHAPTER PAGE
VII. Trade Training During the Last Years in
School 60
The technical high schools 62
A two-year trade course 66
VIII. Trade-preparatory and Trade-extension
Training for Boys and Men at Work 69
Continuation training from 15 to 18 74
The technical night schools 76
A combined program of continuation and trade-
extension training 80
IX. Vocational Training for Girls 83
Differentiation in the junior high school 86
Specialized training for the sewing trades 88
Other occupations 90
X. Vocational Guidance 92
The work of the vocational counselor 92
The Girls' Vocation Bureau 94
XI. Conclusions and Recommendations 97
SUMMARIES OF SPECIAL REPORTS
XII. Boys and Girls in Commercial Work 101
A general view ol commercial work 106
Bookkeeping 108
Stenography 108
Clerks' positions 109
Wages and regularity of employment 110
The problem of training 111
XIII. Department Store Occupations 115
Department stores 115
Neighborhood stores 116
Five and ten cent stores 117
Wages 118
Regularity of employment 122
Opportunities for advancement 123
The problem of training 124
Character of the instruction 129
CHAPTER PAGE
XIV. The Garment Trades 131
Characteristics of the working force 132
Earnings 135
Regularity of employment 139
Training and promotion 140
Educational needs 143
Sewing courses in the public schools 145
Elective sewing courses in the junior high school 147
A one year trade course for girls 148
Trade extension training 149
XV. Dressmaking and Millinery 151
Dressmaking 151
Millinery 153
The problem of training 156
XJ^Dthe Metal Trades 158
Foundry and machine shop products 159
Automobile manufacturing 169
Steel works, rolling mills, and related industries 170
XVII. The Building Trades 173
Sources of labor supply 173
Apprenticeship 174
Union organization 176
Earnings 176
Hours 178
Regularity of employment 179
Health conditions 179
Opportunities for advancement 180
The problem of training 181
XVIII. Railroad and Street Transportation 187
Railroad transportation 187
Motor and wagon transportation 192
Street railroad transportation 193
XIX. The Printing Trades 195
The composing room 198
The pressroom 201
The bindery 203
Other occupations 204
The problem of training 206
LIST OF TABLES
TABLE PAGE
1. Occupational distribution of the working population
of Cleveland 26
2. Nativity of the working population in Cleveland 27
3. Pupils enrolled in the different grades of the public 30
day schools in June, 1915
4. Enrollment of high school pupils, second semester,
1914-15 31
5. Ages of pupils enrolled in public elementary, high,
and normal schools in June, 1915 33
6. Educational equipment of the children who drop out
of the public schools each year, as indicated by the
grades from which they leave 35
7. Per cent of total male working population engaged in
specified occupations, 1900 and 1910 40
8. Distribution of native born men between the ages of
21 and 45 in the principal occupational groups 41
9. Distribution of third and fourth year students in trade
courses in the Cleveland technical high schools, first
semester, 1915-16 63
10. Distribution by occupations of Cleveland's technical
school graduates 64
11. Time allotment in the apprentice course given by the
Warner and Swasey Company, Cleveland 70
12. Course and number enrolled in the technical night
schools, January, 1915 77
13. Per cent of total population engaged in gainful occu-
pations during three different age periods 84
14. Number employed in the principal wage earning occu-
pations among each 1,000 women from 16 to 21
years of age 85
TABLE PAGE
15. Per cent of women employees over 18 years of age
earning $12 a week and over 120
16. Wages for full-time working week, women's clothing,
Cleveland, 1915 139
17. Average wages for full-time working week for similar
workers, in men's and women's clothing, Cleveland,
1915 139
18. Proportions and estimated numbers employed in
machine tool occupations, 1915 161
19. Average, highest, and lowest earnings, in cents per
hour, and per cent employed on piece work and
day work, 1915 162
20. Estimated time required to learn machine tool work 164
21. Average earnings per hour in pattern making, mold-
ing, core making, blacksmithing, and boiler making 166
22. Estimated number of men engaged in building trades,
1915 174
23. Union regulations as to entering age of apprentice 175
24. Union regulations as to length of apprenticeship
period 175
25. Union scale of wages in cents per hour, May 1, 1915 177
26. Usual weekly wages of apprentices in three building
trades 178
27. Average daily earnings of job and newspaper com-
posing room workers, 1915 199
28. Average daily earnings of pressroom workers, 1915 202
29. Average daily earnings of bindery workers, 1915 203
30. Average daily earnings in photoengraving, stereo-
typing, electrotyping, and lithographing occupa-
tions, 1915 205
LIST OF DIAGRAMS
DIAGRAM PAGE
1. Boys and girls under 18 years of age in office work 103
2. Men and women 18 years of age and over in clerical
and administrative work in offices 104
3. Per cent of women earning each class of weekly wages
in each of six occupations 1 19
4. Per cent of salesmen and of men clerical workers in
stores, receiving each class of weekly wage 121
5. Per cent of male workers in non-clerical positions in
six industries earning $18 per week and over 122
6. Per cent that the average number of women employed
during the year is of the highest number employed
in each of six industries 123
7. Distribution of 8,337 clothing workers by sex in the
principal occupations in the garment industry 134
8. Percentage of women in men's and women's clothing
and seven other important women employing in-
dustries receiving under $8, $8 to $12, and $12 and
over per week 136
9. Percentage of men in men's and women's clothing and
seven other manufacturing industries receiving
under $18, $18 to $25, and $25 and over per week 138
10. Average number of unemployed among each 100
workers, men's clothing, women's clothing, and
fifteen other specified industries 141
11. Percentages of unemployment in each of nine building
industries 180
12. Number of men in each 100 in printing and five other
industries earning each class of weekly wage 196
13. Number of women in each 100 in printing and six
other industries earning each class of weekly wage 198
WAGE EARNING AND EDUCATION
CHAPTER I
THE INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION SURVEY
The education survey of Cleveland was undertaken
in April, 1915, at the invitation of the Cleveland
Board of Education and the Survey Committee of the
Cleveland Foundation, and continued until June,
1916. As a part of the work detailed studies were
made of the leading industries of the city for the pur-
pose of determining what measures should be taken
by the public school system to prepare young people
for wage-earning occupations and to provide sup-
plementary trade instruction for those already in
employment. The studies also dealt with all forms
of vocational education conducted at that time under
public school auspices.
Types of Occupations Studied
Separate studies were made of the metal industry,
building and construction, printing and publishing,
railroad and street transportation, clothing manu-
facture, department store work, and clerical occupa-
tions. The wage-earners in these fields of employ-
13
ment constitute nearly 60 per cent of the total num-
ber of persons engaged in gainful occupations and
include 95 per cent of the skilled workmen in the
city. The survey also gave considerable attention
to the various types of semi-skilled work found in the
principal industries.
Each separate study was assigned to a particular
member of the Survey Staff who personally carried
on the field investigations and later submitted a re-
port to the director of the survey. Each report was
also subjected to careful analysis and criticism from
other members of the Survey Staff before it was
finally passed upon by the Survey Committee.
Mimeographed copies were sent to representatives
of the industry and to the superintendent of schools
and members of the school board and their criti-
cisms and suggestions were given careful considera-
tion before the Committee and the director of the
survey gave their final approval to the publication
of the report. The value of the work was greatly en-
hanced through the ample discussion of the different
studies from widely diverse points of view secured
in this way. The industrial studies were carried
through under the direction of the author of this
summary volume.
The Survey Staff and Methods of Work
The reports of the studies relating to vocational
education were published in a series of eight separate
monograph volumes. The names of the reports and
14
the previous experience in educational and investi-
gational work of each member of the Survey Staff
are as follows :
"Boys and Girls in Commercial Work" — Bertha
M. Stevens; teacher in elementary and secondary
schools; agent of Associated Charities; secretary of
Consumers ' League of Ohio; director of Girls'
Bureau of Cleveland; author of "Women's Work
in Cleveland " ; co-author of " Commercial Work and
Training for Girls."
"Department Store Occupations" — Iris P.
O'Leary; head of manual training department,
First Pennsylvania Normal School; head of voca-
tional work for girls and women, New Bedford In-
dustrial School; head of girls' department, Board-
man Apprentice Shops, New Haven, Conn.; special
investigator of department stores for New York
State Factory Investigating Commission; three
years' trade experience as employer and employe;
author of books on household arts and department
stores; Special Assistant for Vocational Education,
State Department of Public Instruction, New Jersey.
"The Garment Trades" and "Dressmaking and
Millinery" — Edna Bryner; teacher in grades, high
school, and state normal college; eugenic research
worker New Jersey State Hospital; statistical ex-
pert in United States Bureau of Labor Investigation
of women and child labor; statistical agent United
States Post Office Department; Special Agent Rus-
sell Sage Foundation.
" The Building Trades," and " The Printing Trades "
— Frank L. Shaw; teacher in grades and high school;
principal of high school; assistant superintendent of
schools; superintendent of schools; special agent
15
United States Immigration Commission; special
agent United States Census; industrial secretary
North American Civic League for Immigrants;
author of reports on immigration legislation.
"The Metal Trades" — R. R. Lutz; teacher in rural
and graded schools; superintendent of schools;
secretary of Department of Education of Porto
Rico; took part in school surveys of Greenwich,
Conn., Bridgeport, Conn., Springfield, 111., Rich-
mond, Va.; Special Agent Division of Education,
Russell Sage Foundation.
"Railroad and Street Transportation" — Ralph D.
Fleming; special agent and investigator for United
States Immigration Commission, the Federal Census
of Manufacturers, the United States Tariff Board,
the Minimum Wage Commission of Massachusetts,
the National Civic Federation, and the United States
Commission on Industrial Relations.
The work began in April, 1915, and ended in the
same month of the following year. Two members of
the staff, with one stenographer and a clerk, were
employed during the entire period. One member of
the staff was employed 11 months, one nine months,
one approximately five months, and one two months.
The field investigations consisted largely of visits
to industrial establishments for the purpose of secur-
ing first-hand information as to industrial conditions
and the nature and educational content of particular
occupations. Over 400 visits of this kind were made
by members of the Survey Staff. Many conferences
were held with employers and employees with the
object of securing their views as to the needs and
possibilities of industrial training.
16
The task of tabulating and classifying the data
obtained by the individual investigators in their
visits to the local industrial establishments involved
much time and labor. Although it was not found
practicable to maintain complete uniformity in the
different inquiries, the members of the staff kept in
close touch with each other, so that with respect to
the points of principal importance, the results of their
investigations are comparable. Practically every
recommendation made in the reports was discussed
in conferences with school principals and with other
members of the teaching force engaged in the teach-
ing of vocational subjects.
Throughout the survey the objective held con-
stantly in mind was the formulation of a constructive
program of vocational training in the public schools.
In outlining the field of inquiry a clear distinction
was drawn between those kinds of general education
which have a more or less indirect vocational sig-
nificance, and vocational training for specific occu-
pations in which the controlling purpose is direct
preparation for wage-earning. The studies were pur-
posely limited to this latter type of vocational train-
ing. The survey did not concern itself with manual
training conducted for general educational ends, with
the art work of the schools, or with courses in do-
mestic science and household arts. These subjects
in the curriculum were dealt with in different sec-
tions of the education survey, but were considered
as being outside the legitimate field of the vocational
survey.
2 17
CHAPTER II
FORECASTING FUTURE PROBABILITIES
The industrial education survey of Cleveland differs
from other studies conducted elsewhere in that it
bases its educational program on a careful study of
the probable future occupational distribution of the
young people now in school. It does not claim to fore-
tell the specific positions that individual boys and
girls will hold when they are adults but it does claim
very definitely that our safest guide in foretelling
their future vocational distribution is to be found in
the official figures of the present occupational census
of the city.
One of the most familiar and time-worn platitudes
of educational speakers and writers is that "The
children of today are the citizens of tomorrow.' ' In
the field of industrial education it is quite as true
that the school children of today are the workers of
tomorrow. Moreover, since occupational distribu-
tions change but slowly even in these modern times,
it is unquestionably true that the boys and girls
now studying in the public schools will soon be
scattered among the different gainful occupations of
Cleveland's industrial, commercial, and professional
life in just about the same proportions as their
18
fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters are
now distributed.
The plan of the survey in advocating types of
present preparation based on studies of future pros-
pects seems at first sight so obvious a mode of pro-
cedure as hardly to warrant extended explanation.
This is far from being the case. The reader who pro-
poses to follow the working-out of the principle and
to scrutinize the evidence underlying it must be
prepared to scan many a detailed table of statistics
and to arrive at most unforeseen conclusions.
The Popular Concept of Industrial Education
For many years past the public has given respectful
attention to the arguments of the champions of in-
dustrial education. There has been general assent
to the proposition that the schools should train for
and not away from the industrial age in which we
live. We have come to think of the carpenter shop,
the machine shop, the forge shop, and the cooking
room as necessary and desirable adjuncts of the
modern school and to our minds these shops have
typified industrial education. All of these have come
to be almost synonymous with progressive thought
and action in public education. Very generally it
has been felt that the problems of industrial educa-
tion were to be solved through the wider extension
of these shop facilities in our public schools.
When these familiar generalizations are submitted
19
to careful analysis their whole structure begins to
totter. In Cleveland about 3,700 boys leave school
each year and go to work. They represent various
stages of advancement from the 4th grade of the
elementary school to the 4th year of the high school.
They are scattered through more than 100 school
buildings. The problem of industrial education is to
give these boys with their differing ages, their widely
varied school preparation, and their scattered geo-
graphical distribution, the best possible preparation
for taking their places in the work-a-day world.
They represent every grade of intelligence, every
stratum of social and economic life, and it is ex-
tremely difficult to bring them together for instruc-
tional purposes. They are scattered in little groups
through more than a thousand classrooms.
The Importance of Relative Numbers
Now it is possible to foretell with some certainty
what these young people will be doing a few years
from now. Almost all of them are of American birth
and it is certain that in a few years they will be en-
gaged in doing just about the same sorts of work as
are now done in the city of Cleveland by adults of
American birth. The data of the United States Cen-
sus of Occupations show us that among every 100
American born men in Cleveland there are eight who
are clerks, seven who are machinists, four who are
salesmen, and so on through the list of hundreds of
occupations. The number of American born men in
20
each 100 engaged in each of the 10 leading sorts of
occupations is approximately as follows :
Clerks 8
Machinists 7
Salesmen 4
' Laborers and porters 4
Retail dealers 4
Draymen, teamsters, etc 4
Bookkeepers 3
Carpenters 3
Commercial travelers 2
Manufacturers 2
41
This simple list at once calls into question all the
standard assumptions about the extension of in-
dustrial education depending on greatly increasing
the number of carpenter shops and machine shops in
the public schools. The figures show that among
each 100 American born men in Cleveland only seven
are machinists and only three are carpenters, j Clearly
we should not be justified in training all the boys in
our public schools to enter the machinist's trade or
the carpenter's trade when nine out of each 10 will
in all probability engage in entirely different sorts
of future work. The more the figures of the little
table given above are studied, the clearer it appears
that our conventional ideas about industrial educa-
tion need critical scrutiny and careful challenge.
These 10 leading occupations include only 41 out of
each 100 American born men. Moreover, more than
half of these 41 are engaged in mental work rather
than in manual work.
21
From these considerations one definite conclusion
inevitably emerges. It is that the safest guide for
thinking and planning for industrial education is to
be found in a study of the occupational distribution
of the present adults. From the very outset such a
study indicates that the most difficult and important
problems which must be met and coped with are not
those relating to methods of instruction but rather
those of organization and administration. The future
carpenters and machinists cannot be taught until we
can get them together in fair sized classes. They
represent the most numerous of the industrial groups
and yet their numbers are relatively so few that the
average Cleveland school sends out into the world
each year only two or three future machinists and
perhaps one future carpenter.
The trouble with present thinking about this
matter has been that we have noted the very large
numbers of machinists and carpenters in the popula-
tion and have failed to realize that while these groups
are numerous in the aggregate they are after all
quite small when relatively considered and compared
with the total number of workers.
Another important fact that has been almost in-
variably overlooked is that many of the present car-
penters and machinists are foreigners by birth and
that there is every prospect that this same condition
will maintain in the future. Hence these trades and
most other industrial occupations are not recruited
from our public schools to anything like the degree
that has been assumed.
22
A Constructive Program Must Fit the Facts
The simple principle which underlies the method
employed by the survey is the same on which all
large business undertakings are conducted. The re-
sults of its application in the field of industrial edu-
cation are, however, fundamentally different from
those commonly arrived at on the assumption that
nine-tenths of the rising generation will earn their
living in industrial pursuits. The fact is that no such
proportion of the children in school will become in-
dustrial workers. All the native born labor now em-
ployed in manufacturing and mechanical industries
constitutes only 44 per cent of the total number of
native born workers in the city. Moreover, nearly
half of the industrial workers are employed in un-
skilled and semi-skilled occupations for which no
training is required beyond a few days' or weeks'
practice on the job. Such training calls for a me-
chanical equipment far more extensive than the re-
sources of the school system can provide, and can be
given by the factory more effectively and much more
cheaply than by the schools.
In the final analysis, the problem of industrial
training narrows down to the skilled industrial
trades. Approximately 22 per cent of the total num-
ber of American workers in the city are employed in
skilled manual occupations. This does not mean
that a constructive program of industrial education
would affect 22 per cent of the present school en-
rollment. All the weight of educational opinion and
experience is on the side of excluding the children
23
of the lower and middle age groups as too young to
profit by any sort of industrial training, while the
evidence collected by the survey goes to show that
of the remainder less than one-fifth of the girls and
one-fourth of the boys are likely to become skilled
industrial workers.
An Actuarial Basis for Industrial Education
Considerations like the foregoing have determined
the fundamental method of the Cleveland Industrial
Survey. Plans for the present generation have been
formulated on the basis of future prospects as fore-
told by state and federal census data. The methods
used were characterized by a member of the Cleve-
land Foundation Survey Committee as "the actuarial
basis of vocational education." This is accurately
descriptive, because the method of forecasting the
number of men the community will need for each
wage-earning occupation closely resembles that em-
ployed by life insurance actuaries in foretelling how
long men of different ages are likely to live. Such
methods are similar to those commonly used in com-
merce and industry. They deal with mass data
rather than with individual figures, and with relative
values rather than with absolute ones.
24
CHAPTER III
THE WAGE EARNERS OF CLEVELAND
In 1910 Cleveland ranked sixth among the cities of
the United States as to number of inhabitants, with
a population of approximately 561,000. The city is
growing rapidly. From 1900 to 1910 the increase in
the total number of inhabitants was over 46 per cent.
The Census Bureau estimate of the population in
1914 is approximately 639,000.
Of the 10 largest cities in the country only one —
Detroit — had in 1910 a greater proportion of its
wage earners engaged in industrial employment than
Cleveland. Relatively Cleveland has one and one-
fourth times as many industrial workers as New
York, Chicago, St. Louis, or Baltimore, and one and
two-fifths times as many as Boston. On the other
hand a smaller proportion of the adult workers of
the city earn their living in professional, clerical, and
commercial work, or in domestic and personal ser-
vice employments than in most large cities.
Table 1 shows by large occupational groups the
distribution in 1910 of the working population in
Cleveland. The classification is that adopted by the
federal census. More than 56 per cent of the male
workers of the city and about 33 per cent of the
25
women workers were engaged in manufacturing and
mechanical occupations. The trade group ranks
next, about 14 per cent of the men and approximately
11 per cent of the women being engaged in commer-
cial occupations. Of each 100 women in employ-
ment 30 are servants, laundresses, housekeepers, or
are engaged in some other form of personal service,
while only five men of each 100 earn their living in
this kind of work. Railroad and street transporta-
tion, with the telegraph and telephone and mail
systems of communication, requires the services
of 11 per cent of the male working population, but
uses very few women. About seven per cent of the
men and 15 per cent of the women are employed in
clerical work. A slightly larger ratio of women to
men is found in the professional occupations, due
mainly to the large number of women in the teaching
profession. The whole professional group constitutes
less than five per cent of the total working popula-
tion.
TABLE 1.— OCCUPATIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE WORKING
POPULATION OF CLEVELAND, CENSUS OF OCCUPATIONS, 1910
Occupational group
Men
Women
Total
Manufacturing and mechanical industries
Trade
Domestic and personal service
Transportation
Clerical occupations
Professional service
Public service
Agriculture and extraction of minerals
109,644
27,229
9,546
21,530
14,047
7,204
3,461
1,367
18,201
5,942
16,467
1,110
8,100
4,869
39
80
127,845
33,171
26,063
22,640
22,147
12,073
3,500
1,447
Total
194,078
54,808
248,886
26
From the standpoint of vocational training one of the
most striking facts about Cleveland wage-earners is
that a large majority of them are not Clevelanders.
Almost exactly half of the men in gainful employ-
ment were born outside the United States and, due
to the rapid growth of the city, there has been a con-
siderable influx of workers from the surrounding
country in recent years, so that a large proportion
even of the American working population was born,
brought up, and educated in some other place. The
number and per cent of foreign born, of foreign or
mixed parentage but born in this country, and of
native parentage is shown in Table 2.
TABLE 2.— NATIVITY OF THE WORKING POPULATION IN
CLEVELAND. U. S. CENSUS, 1910
Nativity-
Men
Women
Number
Per cent
Number
Per cent
Foreign born
Foreign or mixed parentage
Native parentage
96,291
55,074
42,713
50
28
22
16,673
24,275
13,860
31
44
25
Total
194,078
100
54,808
100
More than three-fourths are foreign or of foreign or
mixed parentage. The proportion of those born in
this country of American parentage is approximately
the same for both sexes, but the number of women
workers of mixed parentage is relatively much larger
than among the men. Roughly, of each 10 men em-
ployed in gainful occupations, five, and of each 10
working women, three, were born abroad.
27
The large proportion of foreigners in the trades has
an important bearing on the problem of vocational
training. Some of the skilled occupations are mo-
nopolized by foreign labor to such an extent that they
offer a very limited field of employment for native
workmen. Cabinet making, tailoring, molding, black-
smithing, baking, and shoe making, are examples.
Some of these trades have practically ceased to re-
cruit from American labor. This condition has to be
constantly borne in mind in planning training courses
to prepare boys for the skilled trades, because of the
marked disparity which often exists between the
size of a trade and the field of opportunity it presents
for boys of native birth.
28
CHAPTER IV
THE FUTURE WAGE-EARNERS OF
CLEVELAND
In 1915 there were in Cleveland approximately 50,000
boys between the ages of six and 15, and 56,000 girls
between the ages of six and 16, the age period dur-
ing which school attendance is required by law.
Of these 106,000 children approximately 37,000 boys
and 38,000 girls were enrolled in the public schools.
Exact data as to those attending private and paro-
chial schools are not available. The total enrollment
in such schools has been variously estimated as be-
tween 25,000 and 30,000.
The Public Schools
The public school system in 1915 enrolled approxi-
mately 82,000 children of all ages, of whom about
half were boys and half girls. They are taught in 98
elementary schools and 10 high schools. The ele-
mentary course comprises eight grades. At the be-
ginning of the school year 1915-16 two junior high
schools were opened for pupils of the seventh and
eighth grades. It is to be expected that this plan
will soon be extended throughout the city, so that the
29
enrollment in elementary schools will be made up
of pupils of the first six grades only. The distribu-
tion by grade is given in Table 3. The kindergarten
grades and the special ungraded classes are omitted.
TABLE 3.— PUPILS ENROLLED IN THE DIFFERENT GRADES OF
THE PUBLIC DAY SCHOOLS IN JUNE, 1915
Grade
Pupils
1
13,108
2
10,857
3
10,562
4
9,323
5
8,902
6
7,259
7
6,429
8
4,903
I
3,122
II
2,100
III
1,534
IV
1,399
About 77 per cent of the children are enrolled in the
grades below the seventh, about 13 per cent in the
seventh and eighth grades, a little over six per cent
in the first two years of the high school, and less than
three and one-half per cent in the third and fourth.
There are eight academic high schools, two techni-
cal high schools, and two commercial high schools.
The technical high schools are steadily growing in
favor. The registration of boys in these schools in-
creased about 33 per cent from 1913 to 1915, and of
girls about 77 per cent. During the same period the
registration of boys in the academic high schools
decreased slightly, while the increase of girl students
was only eight per cent; in the commercial high
30
schools the number of girl students increased 20 per
cent, while the enrollment of boys fell off more than
10 per cent. The enrollment by individual schools
is shown in Table 4.
TABLE 4.— ENROLLMENT OF HIGH SCHOOL PUPILS, SECOND
SEMESTER, 1914-15
Schools
Enrollment
Boys
Girls
Total
Academic high schools
Central
East
Glenville
West
Lincoln
South
804
607
405
246
277
213
711
688
611
377
329
238
1,515
1,295
1,016
623
606
451
Total
2,552
2,954
5,506
Technical high schools
East Technical
West Technical
1,161
515
548
242
1,709
757
Total
1,676
790
2,466
Commercial high schools
West Commercial
East Commercial
249
49
528
96
777
145
Total
298
624
922
All high schools
4,526
4,368
8,894
About three-eighths of the high school pupils of the
city are in the technical and commercial schools. Of
the boys 56 per cent are enrolled in the academic
high schools, 37 per cent in the technical schools, and
31
seven per cent in the commercial schools. Of the
girls 68 per cent attend the academic high schools,
18 per cent the technical schools, and 14 per cent
the commercial schools. In the commercial high
school approximately two-thirds of the enrollment is
made up of girls. In the technical high schools the
opposite condition prevails, the girls constituting
less than one-third of the total enrollment, while in
the academic high schools the girls outnumber the
boys by nearly one-sixth.
Ages of Pupils
The distribution as to ages is shown in Table 5. The
largest group is made up of children seven years old.
Between 14 and 15 over 30 per cent leave school. The
loss from 16 to 17 is approximately 43 per cent, from
17 to 18 about 44 per cent, and from 18 to 19 nearly
62 per cent.
The compulsory attendance law requires boys to
attend school until they are 15 and girls until they
are 16. That the law is not adequately enforced is
demonstrated by the heavy loss between the ages of
14 and 15, and the fact that the loss between 15 and
16 is approximately the same for both boys and girls,
although girls are required to attend one year longer
than boys. Additional evidence as to the laxity in
the enforcement of the compulsory law is found in
the results of an inquiry conducted by the Con-
sumers, League of Cleveland in the spring of 1916, in
cooperation with the survey.
32
TABLE 5.— AGES OF PUPILS ENROLLED IN PUBLIC ELEMEN-
MENTARY, HIGH, AND NORMAL SCHOOLS IN JUNE, 1915
Age
Boys
Girls
Total
6
4,255
4,180
8,435
7
5,012
4,815
9,827
8
4,496
4,407
8,903
9
4,268
4,103
8,371
10
4,093
3,951
8,044
11
3,747
3,593
7,340
12
3,700
3,646
7,346
13
3,676
3,631
7,307
14
3,445
3,271
6,716
15
2,358
2,291
4,649
16
1,190
1,163
2,353
17
672
680
1,352
18
403
358
761
19
135
156
291
20
41
52
93
Over 20
••
22
22
Total
41,491
40,319
81,810
An attempt was made to follow up the cases of all
the children who had left one public elementary
school during the period of one year preceding the
study. The work was done by the case method and
the homes of the children were visited. The total
number of cases studied was 117, of whom 89 were
girls. It was found that one-third of these children
had graduated and gone on to high school. Another
third had gone to work, and of these, 40 per cent had
done so without graduating. The children con-
stituting the remaining third were staying at home,
and among these a majority had dropped out with-
out graduating.
Of the eighth grade graduates one-half were found
3 33
to be illegally employed, as they were less than 16
years of age. Among those who dropped out and
went to work before completing the course 80 per
cent were illegally employed.
The fact that many girls drop out without gradu-
ating and before the end of the legal attendance
period and remain at home indicates that most of
them do not leave on account of financial necessity.
This conclusion is substantiated by the testimony of
the girls and their parents, many of whom say that
the girls left simply because they grew tired of at-
tending and did not see the value of remaining.
These facts point to the necessity for much more
effective work in enforcing the compulsory atten-
dance laws, for far better inspection of shops and
factories to detect violations of the child labor laws,
and above all to such a reform of the schooling op-
portunities provided for older girls as will make them
and their parents see the value of securing the ad-
vantages of the training provided.
Education at the Time of Leaving School
About 3,700 boys and an approximately equal num-
ber of girls drop out of the public schools each year.
Most of the boys and a considerable number of the
girls enter wage-earning at once. Their educational
equipment at the time of leaving school is indicated
in Table 6.
34
TABLE 6.— EDUCATIONAL EQUIPMENT OF THE CHILDREN
WHO DROP OUT OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS EACH YEAR, AS
INDICATED BY THE GRADES FROM WHICH THEY LEAVE
Grade
Number leaving
4
70
5
440
6
960
7
1260
8
1630
I
890
II
590
III
150
IV
1410
Total
7400
Slightly less than one-fifth finish the high school
course. Nearly three-fifths drop out before entering
the high school, and approximately three-eighths
before reaching the eighth grade.
Under the present compulsory attendance law
a boy who enters school at the age of six and after-
wards advances at the rate of one grade per year
until the end of the compulsory attendance period
should cover nine grades — eight in the elementary
school and one in high school — by the time he is 15
years old. In actual fact, however, only about two-
fifths get any high school training. Nearly all of the
rest take the eight to nine years' attendance required
by law to complete eight, seven, six, or even a smaller
number of grades.
It is from this body of pupils that most of the wage-
35
earners are recruited. In the course of the survey-
several investigations were made for the purpose of
finding out what educational preparation workers
in various industries had received. One of the most
extensive of these was conducted in connection with
the study of the printing industry. Educationally
the printing trades rank higher than most other
factory occupations, yet the average journeyman
printer possesses less than a complete elementary
education. Composing-room employees, such as
compositors, linotypers, stonemen, proof-readers,
etc., undoubtedly stand at the head of the skilled
trades as to educational training, but it was found
that only eight per cent were high school graduates.
Six per cent had left school before reaching the
seventh grade, and 16 per cent before reaching the
eighth grade. The other departments of the printing
industry made a much less favorable showing.
An investigation conducted by the Survey in the
spring of 1915, covering 5,000 young people at
work under 21 years of age, indicated that only
about 13 per cent of these young workers had re-
ceived any high school training and that less than
four per cent had completed a high school course.
Over one-fifth reported the sixth grade as the last
completed before leaving school, and nearly half had
dropped out before completing the elementary course.
Less than seven per cent of the boys engaged in in-
dustrial pursuits had received any high school train-
ing and only 42 per cent had got beyond the seventh
grade. The educational preparation of the boys en-
36
gaged in commercial and clerical occupations was
somewhat better, nearly 22 per cent having attended
high school one year or more; about one-half had
left school after completing the eighth grade and
nearly one-third had not completed the elementary
course.
These facts have a vital relation to the problem of
vocational training. If the great majority of the
children who will later enter wage-earning occupa-
tions do not remain in school beyond the end of
the compulsory attendance period, and in addition
over half fail to complete even the elementary course,
vocational training, to reach them at all, must begin
not later than the seventh grade, and if possible,
before the pupils reach the age of 14.
37
CHAPTER V
INDUSTRIAL TRAINING FOR BOYS IN
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
In Chapter III the distribution of the wage-earners
of the city was outlined, mainly for the purpose of
establishing a basis on which to make a forecast of
the future occupations of the children in the public
schools. Such a forecast is essential as the pre-
liminary step in any plan of vocational training to be
carried out during the school period, for the reason
that without it a clear understanding of the principal
factors of the problem is impossible. The kinds of
vocational training needed by children in school,
and how and where such training should be given,
must always depend in the first instance on what
they are going to do when they grow up.
The average elementary school in Cleveland en-
rolls between 350 and 400 boys. When they leave
school these boys will scatter into many different
kinds of work. With respect to the future vocations
of the pupils, the average school represents in a sense
a cross section of the occupational activities of the
city. It contains a certain number of recruits for
each of the principal types of wage-earning pursuits.
A few of the boys will later enter professional life;
38
many will take up some sort of clerical work; a
still larger number will be employed in commercial
occupations; and the largest group of all will become
wage-earners in manufacturing and mechanical
pursuits.
The future occupation cannot be foretold accu-
rately with respect to any particular boy, but we do
know that, whatever their individual tastes and
abilities, the boys must finally engage in activities
similar to those in which the adult born native male
population is engaged, and in approximately the
same proportions. We do not know, for example,
whether Johnny Jones will become a doctor or a car-
penter, but we do know that of each 1,000 boys in
the public schools about seven will become doctors
and about 25 will become carpenters, because for
many years about those proportions of the boys of
native birth in Cleveland have become doctors and
carpenters.
One of the most impressive facts which comes to
light in the study of occupational statistics is the
constancy in these proportions. The business of
any community requires certain kinds of work to be
performed and the relative amount of work required
and consequently the relative number of workers
vary but slightly over a long period of time. This
principle is illustrated in a striking way by the list
of occupations selected at random presented in
Table 7, showing the number of persons engaged in
the occupations specified among each 100 male
workers at two successive census years.
39
TABLE 7.— PER CENT OF TOTAL MALE WORKING POPU-
LATION ENGAGED IN SPECIFIED OCCUPATIONS, 1900 AND
1910
Per cent of total working pop-
nlnt.irm
Occupation
1900
1910
Machinists
4.7
5.8
Saloon keepers
1.1
.7
Tailors
2.1
1.7
Commercial travelers
.8
1.1
Lawyers
.5
.4
Barbers
.8
.7
Bakers
.6
.5
Physicians
.6
.5
Carpenters
3.4
3.3
Cabinet makers
.5
.4
Plumbers
.9
.9
Stenographers and typists
.3
.3
With the exception of plumbers and stenographers
there was either an increase or a decrease from 1900
to 1910 in the relative number employed in each of
these occupations. In only one occupation, however,
that of machinist, did the change amount to as much
as one per cent. In all the others the shift during
the decade was less than one-half of one per cent,
and in more than three-fifths of them it did not ex-
ceed one-tenth of one per cent of the total number of
male workers.
What the Boys in School Will Do
The figures in this table, presented for illustrative
purposes, do not accurately represent the propor-
tions of boys now attending the public schools who
are likely to enter the occupations named, because
40
they do not take into account the fact that a con-
siderable number of the workers in Cleveland came
to this country after they reached adult manhood
and that a disproportionate number of these foreign
born workers enter the industrial occupations. For
this reason the total adult working population is not
strictly comparable with the school enrollment,
which is approximately nine-tenths native born.
When the boys in the public schools grow up they
will be distributed among the different trades, pro-
fessions, and industries in about the same propor-
tions as are the American born men in the city at the
present time. This distribution is shown for the
different occupational groups in Table 8.
TABLE 8.— DISTRIBUTION OF NATIVE BORN MEN BETWEEN
THE AGES OF 21 AND 45 IN THE PRINCIPAL OCCUPATIONAL
GROUPS
Approximate
Occupational group per cent
Manufacturing and mechanical occupations 44
Commercial occupations 20
Clerical occupations 16
Transportation occupations 11
Domestic and personal service occupations 5
Professional occupations 3
Public service occupations 1
Total 100
The figures in the column at the right of the table
represent the number of native born men between
the ages of 21 and 45 among each hundred native
born male inhabitants engaged in the occupations
comprehended in the various groups. In the case of
the industrial group the figure is too high, as the
41
census data relative to the distribution of foreign
and native born include all ages, and there is a smaller
proportion of American born adult men employed
in industry than is found in the lower age groups.
Extensive computations have shown, however, that
the inaccuracies due to this cause are not serious
enough to affect the use of the figures for our purpose.
Let us now consider what these proportions mean
in establishing vocational courses to prepare boys for
wage-earning pursuits. The future expectations of
the boys in a large elementary school enrolling say
1,000 pupils of both sexes would be about as follows:
Number of boys who will enter
Manufacturing and mechanical occupations 220
Commercial occupations 100
Clerical occupations 80
Transportation occupations 55
Domestic and personal service occupations 25
Professional occupations 15
Public service occupations 5
Total 500
This distribution includes all pupils, from the be-
ginners in the first grade to the older boys in the
seventh and eighth grades. It is certain, however,
that differentiated instruction for vocational purposes
is not possible or advisable for the younger children.
According to the commonly accepted view among
educators, vocational training should not be under-
taken before the age of 12 years, and many believe
that this is too early. In an elementary school of
1,000 pupils there would be about 80 boys 12 years
42
old and over. Applying to this number the ratios
given in the previous table we obtain the following:
Number of boys who will enter
Manufacturing and mechanical occupations 35
Commercial occupations 16
Clerical occupations 13
Transportation occupations 9
Domestic and personal service occupations 4
Professional occupations 2
Public service occupations 1
Total 80
The industrial group includes all of the skilled trades
and most of the semi-skilled and unskilled manual
occupations. The skilled trades are usually grouped
in four main classifications: metal trades, building
trades, printing trades, and "other" trades, these
last comprising a number of small trades in each of
which relatively few men are employed. With respect
to their future occupations the 35 boys in the in-
dustrial group are likely to be distributed about as
follows:
Number of boys who will enter
Metal trades 8
Building trades 7
Printing trades 1
Other trades 2
Semi-skilled and unskilled industrial occupations . . 17
35
The analysis can be carried still further, for these
trade groups are by no means homogeneous. The
building trades, for example, include over 20 dis-
tinct trades, a number of which have little in com-
43
mon with the others as to methods of work and
technical content.
Organization and Costs
At this point it becomes necessary to take cognizance
of certain administrative factors which have a
marked bearing on the problem. They relate to the
organization of classes in elementary schools and
the cost of teaching. In a school of 1,000 pupils there
would be at least five separate classes for the seventh
and eighth grades. The 35 boys who need industrial
training are not all found in a single class, but are
distributed more or less evenly throughout the five
classrooms, that is, there are approximately seven in
each class. A differentiated course under these con-
ditions is difficult if not impossible. In a few of the
Cleveland elementary schools the departmental
system of teaching is in use. Under this plan some-
thing might be done, were it not that the total num-
ber of pupils requiring instruction relating specifically
to the industrial trades is too small to justify the
expense necessary for equipment, material, and spe-
cial instruction required for such training. This is
true as regards even an industrial course of the most
general kind, while provision for particular trades is
entirely out of the question. The machinist's trade
employs more men than any other occupation in the
city, yet the number of seventh and eighth grade
boys in the average elementary school who will prob-
ably become machinists does not exceed five or six.
44
Not over two boys are likely to enter employment
in the printing industry. The smaller trades, such as
pattern making, cabinet making, molding, and black-
smithing are represented by not more than one boy
each.
A possible alternative is the plan now followed in
the teaching of manual training whereby the boys
of the upper grades in various elementary schools
are sent to one centrally located for a short period of
instruction each week. The principal objection to
this plan is that the amount of time now given is in-
sufficient to accomplish much in an industrial course,
nor can it be materially increased without seriously
interfering with the work in other subjects.
The first condition for successful industrial train-
ing is the concentration of a large number of pupils
old enough to benefit by such training in a single
school plant. Only in this way is it possible to bring
the cost of teaching, equipment, and material within
reasonable limits and provide facilities for differen-
tiating the work on the basis of the vocational needs
of the pupils. The fact that this condition cannot be
met in elementary schools is one of the strongest
arguments in favor of conducting the seventh and
eighth grade work under the junior high school form
of organization.
What the Elementary Schools Can Do
The most important contribution to vocational edu-
cation the elementary school can make consists in
45
getting the children through the lower grades fast
enough so that they will reach the junior high school
by the time they are 13 years old, in order that before
the end of the compulsory attendance period they
may spend at least two years in a school where some
kind of industrial training is possible. That this is
not being done at the present time the data presented
in Chapter IV amply demonstrate. In recent years
there has been a tendency to regard vocational train-
ing as a remedy for retardation. The fact is that the
cure of retardation is not a subsequent but a pre-
liminary condition to successful training for wage-
earning. Vocational training is not a means for the
prevention of retardation, but retardation is a most
effective means for the prevention of vocational
training.
46
CHAPTER VI
THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL
In 1915 the Board of Education authorized the estab-
lishment of a system of junior high schools in the
city, and at the beginning of the school year of 1915-
16 the new plan was inaugurated in two schools.
The Empire Junior High School, situated in the
eastern part of the city, had an enrollment of about
700 children made up of seventh and eighth grade
pupils formerly accommodated in the elementary
schools of that section. The Detroit Junior High
School on the west side had an enrollment of about
400 pupils. No decision has yet been reached as to
whether the course shall include only two years7
work, or three years, as in other cities of the country
where the junior high school plan has been adopted.
A comparison of the course with that for cor-
responding grades of the elementary schools shows
some marked differences. Less time is devoted to
English in the junior high school and considerably
more to arithmetic, geography, and history. Me-
chanical drawing, not taught in the elementary
schools except incidentally in the manual training
classes, is given an hour each week. All boys receive
one hour of manual training a week against slightly
47
less than one and one-half hours in the seventh and
eighth elementary grades, but they may elect an
additional two and one-half hours a week in this sub-
ject, together with applied arithmetic during the
first year, or with bookkeeping during the second.
Girls may elect an additional two and one-half hours
a week of domestic science, with bookkeeping. The
manual training for boys comprises woodwork and
bookbinding.
Specialized Training not Practicable
In the junior high school, as in the elementary school,
the greatest difficulty in the way of trade training
for specific occupations lies in the small number of
pupils who can be expected, within the bounds of
reasonable probability, to enter a single trade. Hand
and machine composition, the largest of the printing
trades, will serve as an example. In a junior high
school of 1,000 pupils, boys and girls, the number of
boys who are likely to become compositors is about
five. But to teach this trade printing equipment
occupying considerable space is necessary, together
with a teacher who has had some experience or train-
ing as a printer. The expense per pupil for equip-
ment, for the space it occupies, and for instruction
renders special training for such small classes im-
practicable. All of the skilled occupations, with the
exception perhaps of the machinist's trade, are in
the same case. An attempt to form separate classes
for each of the eight largest trades in the city would
48
result in two classes of not over five pupils, three
classes of not over 10 pupils, and only one of over 13
pupils. The following table shows the number of
boys, in a school of this size, who are likely to enter
each of these trades.
Number of boys who will probably become:
Machinists 36
Carpenters 13
Steam engineers 11
Painters 10
Electricians 9
Plumbers 7
Compositors 5
Molders 5
A General Industrial Course
The members of the Survey Staff were, however, of
the opinion that through the system of electives in
the junior high school, industrial training of a more
general type, made up chiefly of instruction in the
applications of mathematics, drawing, physics, and
chemistry to the commoner industrial processes,
would be of considerable benefit to those boys who,
on the basis of their own selection or that of their
parents, are likely to enter industrial pursuits. A
course of this kind is outlined in following sections
of this chapter.
The objections which may be brought against this
plan are frankly recognized. It takes into account
only the interests of the industrial group, comprising
less than one-half of the boys in the school. Unques-
tionably it would tend to vitalize the teaching of
4 49
mathematics, drawing, and science for the boys who
enroll in the industrial course, but it leaves unsolved
the question of method and content of instruction
in these subjects for the boys in the non-industrial
or so-called academic course. Very possibly future
experience may demonstrate that the plan recom-
mended for the general industrial course affords the
best medium for teaching science and mathematics
at this period to all pupils, in which case a differen-
tiated course would be unnecessary.
The organization of vocational training in junior
high school grades presents many difficulties which
cannot be solved by a more or less abstract study of
educational and industrial needs. Experimentation
on an extensive scale, covering a considerable period
of time, is necessary before definite conclusions can
be drawn as to the limitations and possibilities of
such work. It is with a full appreciation of this fact
that the following suggestive outline is presented.
The purpose of the general industrial course is to
afford to boys who wish to enter industrial occupa-
tions the opportunity to secure knowledge and train-
ing that will be of direct or indirect value to them in
industrial employment. It is not expected that by
this means they can be given much practical train-
ing in hand work for any particular trade. The most
the school can do for the boy at this period is to
bridge over for him the gap that exists between the
knowledge he obtains from books and the r61e which
this knowledge plays in the working world. It must
not be assumed that the transition can be effected
50
merely by the introduction of shop work, even if it
were possible to provide the wide variety of manual
training necessary to make up a fair representation
of the principal occupations into which the boys will
enter when they leave school. It is doubtful whether,
so far as its vocational value is concerned, shop work
isolated from other subjects of the curriculum is
worth any more per unit of time devoted to it than
several of the so-called academic subjects. This is
particularly true of the two most common types of
manual training — cabinet making and forge work.
Both represent dying trades. During the decade
1900-1910 the increase in the number of cabinet
makers in Cleveland fell far below the general in-
crease in population. The blacksmiths made a still
poorer showing. Both trades are recruited mainly
from abroad and the relative number of Americans
employed in them is steadily declining.
In the opinion of the Survey Staff a general in-
dustrial course should cover instruction in at least
the following five subjects: Industrial mathematics,
mechanical drawing, industrial science, shop work,
and the study of economic and working conditions
in wage earning pursuits. These may be offered as
independent electives or they may be required of all
pupils who elect the industrial course. The details
of organization must, of course, be worked out by
trial and experiment. They will probably vary in
different schools and from year to year.
51
Industrial Mathematics
Of the hundreds of employers who were interviewed
by members of the Survey Staff as to the technical
equipment needed by beginners in the various trades,
nearly all emphasized the ability to apply the princi-
ples of simple arithmetic quickly, correctly, and ac-
curately to industrial problems. Many employers
criticized the present methods of teaching this sub-
ject in the public schools. In the main their criti-
cisms were to the effect that the teaching was not
"practical." "The boys I get may know arith-
metic," said one, "but they haven't any mathematical
sense." Another cited his experience with an ap-
prentice who was told to cut a bar eight and one-half
feet long into five pieces of equal length. He was not
told the length of the bar, but was given the direct
order: "Cut that bar into five pieces all of the same
size." The boy was unable to lay out the work, al-
though when asked by the foreman, "Don't you
know how to divide 83^ by 5?", he performed the
arithmetical operation without difficulty. The em-
ployer gave this instance as an illustration of what
to his mind constituted one of the principal defects
of public school teaching. "Mere knowledge of
mathematical principles and the ability to solve ab-
stract problems is not enough," he said. "What the
boys get in the schools is mathematical skill, but
what they need in their work is mathematical in-
telligence. The first does not necessarily imply the
second."
This mathematical intelligence can be developed
52
only through practice in the solution of practical
problems, that is, problems which are stated in the
every day terms of the working world and which re-
quire the student to go through the successive mental
steps in the same way that he would if he were work-
ing in a shop. The problem referred to above is one
of division of fractions. If we state it thus : "83^-^5,"
the pupil takes pencil and paper, performs the
operation and announces the result. If we say, "A
bar 83^ feet long is to be cut into five pieces of equal
length; how long should each piece be?", the prob-
lem calls for the exercise of greater intelligence, as
the pupil must determine which process to use in
order to obtain the correct result. It becomes still
more difficult if we merely show him the bar and
say: "This bar must be cut into five pieces of equal
length; how long will each piece be?" Several ad-
ditional preliminary steps are required, none of
which was involved in the problem in its original
form. Before the length of the pieces can be com-
puted he must find out the length of the bar. He
must know what to measure it with, and in what
terms, whether feet or inches, the problem should be
stated. Again, if we say: "Lay this bar out to be cut
in five equal lengths," another step — the measure-
ment and marking for each cut — is added. Many
variations might be introduced, each involving ad-
ditional opportunities for the exercise of thought.
It is through practice in solving problems of this
kind that the pupil acquires what the employer called
mathematical intelligence. It consists in the ability
53
to note what elements are involved in the problems
and to decide which process of arithmetic should be
used in dealing with them. Once these decisions are
made the succeeding arithmetical calculations are
simple and easy. In technical terms the ability that
is needed is the ability to generalize one's experiences.
In every-day terms it is the ability to use what one
knows.
The work in applied mathematics should cover a
wide range of problems worded in the language of
the trades and constantly varied in order to estab-
lish as many points of contact as possible between
the pupil's knowledge of mathematics and the use
of mathematics in industrial life. Practical shop
work is one of the best means to this end. The trouble
with much of the shop work given in the schools is
that it runs to hand craftmanship in which the object
is to "make something" by methods long ago dis-
carded in the industrial world, rather than to give
the pupil exercise in the sort of thinking he will need
to do after he goes to work. Successful teaching does
not depend so much on the use of tools and materials
as on the teacher's knowledge of the conditions sur-
rounding industrial work and his ability to originate
methods for vitalizing the instruction in its relation
to industrial needs.
Mechanical Drawing
At the present time the junior high school course
provides for one hour a week of mechanical drawing.
54
All the boys who may be expected to elect the in-
dustrial course can well afford to devote more time
to drawing. For such boys no other subject in the
curriculum, except perhaps applied mathematics, is
of greater importance. In many of the trades the
ability to work from drawings is indispensable and
the man who does not possess it is not likely to rise
above purely routine work.
In a drawing course for future industrial workers
the emphasis should be placed on giving the pupil an
understanding of the uses of drawing for industrial
purposes, rather than on fine workmanship in making
drawings. Seventh grade boys can't be made into
draftsmen in three years and if they leave school at
15 they are not likely to become draftsmen. The
ordinary skilled workman seldom has any need to
make drawings or designs, beyond an occasional
rough sketch, but he often has to work from draw-
ings. To put it in another way, drawing to the
average workman is like an additional language of
which he needs a reading but not a writing knowl-
edge. No doubt it would be well to teach him to
write and read with equal skill, but in the two or
three years most of these boys will remain in school
there is not time enough to do both.
Industrial Science
In many of the trades an introductory knowledge of
physics and chemistry is of considerable advantage.
Boys in the junior high school cannot be expected
55
to take formal courses in these subjects, but they
should not leave school without some acquaintance
with them and a knowledge of their relations to in-
dustrial processes. A fair equipment should be pro-
vided for demonstrational and illustrative purposes.
The subject matter should be correlated as closely
as possible with the shop work, and the principal
mechanical and chemical laws explained as the shop
problems furnish examples of their application.
In addition the boys should be taught the common
technical terms used in trade hand books. The man
who expects to advance in his trade will have to keep
on learning after he leaves school. There are many
avenues of information open to him, and the school
can perform no more valuable service than to point
the way to the sources of knowledge represented by
reference books, trade journals, and other technical
literature. Some of the popular magazines, such as
"The Scientific American/ ' "The Illustrated World,"
and "Popular Mechanics" can be used most
effectively to bring home to the pupils the close con-
nection existing between the class work and the out-
side world of science and invention.
Shop Work
It is difficult to determine the exact function of the
manual training shop work in cabinet making and
bookbinding which figures in the curriculum at
present. That the work was not planned with voca-
tional training in mind seems clear from the action
56
of the school board in adding bookbinding to the
course about the middle of the year. The bookbind-
ing trade is one of the smallest in the city, and there
is little probability that more than one boy among
the total number enrolled in both junior high schools
will enter it after leaving school.
Fully three-fourths of the industrial group will
later be employed in occupations where most of the
work is done with machines or machine tools. Even
in the hand tool trades, such as carpentry, sheet
metal work, cabinet making, and blacksmithing, the
use of machines is constantly increasing. It would
seem, therefore, that some acquaintance with dif-
ferent types of machines would be of considerable
value to the pupils who may later enter industrial
employment. The number of boys who are likely to
become machinists is large enough to warrant the
installation of a small machine shop. Repairing,
assembling, and taking apart machines should occupy
an important place in the shop course. Most boys
are intensely interested in getting at the "insides"
of a machine, and the processes of assembling, with
their attendant problems of adjustment and co-
ordination of mechanical movements, afford oppor-
tunities for the best kind of practical instruction.
One of the great advantages of this type of shop work
lies in the fact that it consumes little or no material
and is therefore inexpensive; another is that a fairly
extensive equipment can be easily obtained, as any
machine, old or new, will serve the purpose and may
be used over and over again.
57
The extent and variety of shop equipment will
depend largely on the resources of the school system.
The more the better, so long as the money is ex-
pended on the principle of the greatest good to the
greatest number, which means that the kinds of tools
and equipment used in the large trades should be
preferred to those used only in the smaller trades.
In order that the time devoted to chop'work may
yield its greatest results, it is nebessary that every
lesson center around knowledge and ability that will
be of real subsequent use to the pupils. It must not
run to "art" and it must not be mere tinkering.
Its principal value as vocational training, in the last
analysis, lies in its use as an objective medium for the
teaching of industrial mathematics and science.
Vocational Information
During the second and third years all the boys who
elect the industrial course or who expect to leave
school at the end of the compulsory attendance
period should be required to devote some time each
week to the study of economic and working condi-
tions in wage earning industrial and commercial
occupations. A clear understanding of the compara-
tive advantages of different kinds of employment is
of the highest importance at this period of the boy's
life. It seems to be generally assumed that an ade-
quate basis of knowledge for the selection of an in-
dustrial vocation is an acquaintance with materials
and processes. Such knowledge is valuable, but
58
making a living is mainly an economic problem.
What an occupation means in terms of income is
more significant than what it means in terms of ma-
terials. The most important facts about the cabinet
making trade, for example, are that it offers very few
opportunities for employment to public school boys,
and that it is one of the lowest paid skilled trades.
The primary considerations in the intelligent selec-
tion of a vocation relate to wages, steadiness of em-
ployment, health risks, opportunities for advance-
ment, apprenticeship conditions, union regulations,
and the number of chances there are for getting into
it. These things are fundamental, and any one of
them may well take precedence over the matter of
whether the tastes of the future wage-earner run to
wood, brick, stone, or steel.
59
CHAPTER VII
TRADE TRAINING DURING THE LAST
YEARS IN SCHOOL
Between the end of the compulsory attendance
period and the entering age in most of the trades
there exists a gap of from one to two years which is
not adequately covered by any of the present edu-
cational agencies of the school system.
Two years ago the Ohio State legislature extended
the compulsory attendance period from 14 to 15 for
boys and from 14 to 16 for girls. The result has been
to force into the first years of the high school course
a considerable number of pupils who have no inten-
tion of taking the complete four year course, and who
will leave as soon as they reach the end of the com*
pulsory period. That these pupils are probably not
getting all that they might out of the time they at-
tend high school is no argument against the present
compulsory attendance age limit, which should be
raised rather than lowered.
The study of industrial conditions conducted dur-
ing the survey left every member of the Survey Staff
firmly convinced that the industries of Cleveland
have little or nothing worth while to offer to boys
60
under 16. Very few of the skilled trades will accept
an apprentice below this age. The general opinion
among manufacturers was unfavorable to the em-
ployment of boys under 16. "They are more of a
nuisance than a help," said one; "they are not old
enough to understand the responsibilities of work."
"They break more machinery and spoil more ma-
terial than they are worth," said another. In several
of the building trades apprentices must be 17 years
old, as the law forbids boys under this age to work on
scaffoldings. The new workmen's compensation law
exerts a strong influence in favor of a higher working
age limit, owing to the greater risk of accident among
young workers.
The fact is that the law is still about one year be-
hind the requirements of industrial life. If a vote
were taken among employers who can offer boys the
opportunity to learn a trade it would be found that a
large majority favor raising the working age to 16.
Employment before this time usually leads nowhere,
and the pittance the boy earns cannot be compared
with the economic advantage he could derive from
an additional year in a good vocational school. The
average boy who leaves school at 15 spends a year or
two loafing or working at odd jobs before he can ob-
tain employment that offers any promise of future
advancement. These years are often more than
wasted, as he not only learns nothing of value from
such casual jobs, but misses the healthy discipline of
steady, orderly work, which is of so great importance
during these formative years of his life.
61
The Technical High Schools
The two technical high schools, the East Technical
and West Technical, occupy an important place
among the secondary schools of the city. At the
present time the two schools enroll nearly two-fifths
of the boys attending high school. The course com-
prises four years' work. In the East Technical
the shop work includes joinery and wood-turning
during the first year, and pattern making and foun-
dry work during the second year. In the West Tech-
nical the first year course includes pattern making
and either forging or sheet metal work; and that of
the second year, forging, pipe-fitting, brazing, rivet-
ing, and cabinet making. During the remaining two
years of the course the student may elect a particular
trade, devoting about 10 hours a week to practice in
the shop during the last half of the third year, and
from 11 to 15 hours during the fourth year.
The proportion of pupils who graduate is small and
the mortality during the first two years is very heavy.
This is due in part to the fact that the type of pupil
who leaves school early is more likely to elect a
technical course than an academic course. About 25
per cent of each entering class drops out after at-
tending one year, and 25 per cent of the remainder
by the end of the second year. By the time the third
year is reached the classes are greatly depleted and
the survivors as a rule are of the more intelligent and
prosperous type. Only a small proportion of them
expect to enter skilled manual occupations. Table 9
shows the distribution of the third and fourth year
62
students among the different trade courses during
the first semester of 1915-16.
TABLE 9.— DISTRIBUTION OF THIRD AND FOURTH YEAR STU-
DENTS IN TRADE COURSES IN THE CLEVELAND TECHNICAL
HIGH SCHOOLS, FIRST SEMESTER, 1915-16
Trade courses Students
Electrical construction 68
Machine work 52
Printing 28
Cabinet making 22
Pattern making 12
Foundry work 1
Total 183
That relatively few of these students will ultimately
become journeymen workmen is shown by the rec-
ords of the boys graduated in the past. The principal
of the East Technical High School recently sent a
questionnaire to all the students graduated up to
1915, asking for information as to their present oc-
cupations and their earnings during the first four
years after graduation. Of those who replied, over
60 per cent either were attending college, or employed
as draftsmen or chemists. About 28 per cent were
employed in the skilled trades. The distribution in
detail is shown in Table 10.
The data furnished by graduates as to their earn-
ings during successive years after leaving school supply
still more convincing evidence to the effect that the
technical school graduate seldom remains in manual
work more than two or three years. The complete
course gives them an equipment of practical and
theoretical knowledge that speedily takes them out
63
of the handwork class. The technical high schools
are primarily training schools for future civil, electri-
cal, and mechanical engineers. To the student who
cannot afford a college course they offer excellent
preparation for rapid advancement to supervisory
and executive industrial positions, and for drafting
and office work in manufacturing plants.
TABLE 10.— DISTRIBUTION BY OCCUPATION OF CLEVELAND
TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES
Occupation Number
Attending college Ill
Draftsmen 51
Electricians 33
Machinists 32
Chemists 8
Pattern makers 7
Cabinet makers 6
Printers 3
Foundrymen 1
Unclassified 32
Total 284
The output of the' schools falls into two main divi-
sions: those who leave at the end of the second year
or earlier, and those who graduate. The records show
that most of the pupils who reach the third year com-
plete the course, but nearly half drop out during the
first and second years. The benefit they obtain from
these two years' attendance is problematical. The
course was designed on the basis of four years' at-
tendance, and the work of the first two years is to a
considerable degree a preparation for that of the
last two.
64
The principals of both schools are fully alive to the
disadvantages of the course for the large number of
pupils who drop out within a year or two, and admit
that such students would derive greater benefit from
more practical instruction aimed directly toward
preparation for the industrial trades. Both believe
that the only practicable solution is a two-year trade
course in a separate school, covering a much wider
range of shop activities than the present high school
course.
To the only alternative — the institution of a short
course within the technical schools to be conducted
either as a part of or simultaneously with the four
year course — they present objections of considerable
weight. They point out that a preparatory course for
the trades and a preparatory course with college as
the goal differ not only in length but in kind. The
work in mathematics for the future civil engineer,
for example, must conform to college entrance stand-
ards and involves an amount of study that is quite
unnecessary for the boy whose aim is to become a
carpenter or machinist. The first needs a thorough
course in algebra, geometry, and trigonometry; the
second needs industrial arithmetic, with only such
applications of higher mathematics as may be of use
to him in his trade. The same principle holds with
respect to other subjects.
What boys who expect to enter industrial occupa-
tions most need at this period is instruction that will
be of practical value to them for future wage earn-
ing. It is doubtful whether high school courses which
5 65
have been formulated in the first instance to prepare
pupils for a college course can furnish such instruc-
tion and it is still more doubtful whether the trade
training required by the future mechanic and the
broader preparation required for the professions can
be given effectively in the same school.
A Two- Year Trade Course
It is the opinion of the Survey Staff that a separate
school in which direct training for the industrial
trades is emphasized would result in more profitable
use of the pupils' time and probably induce many of
them to remain in school up to the apprentice enter-
ing age. Such a school, with a curriculum embracing
vocational training for all the principal trades, would
easily command an enrollment sufficient to justify
the installation of a good shop equipment and the
employment of a corps of teachers qualified by special
training and experience for this kind of work. Even
if only one-half the number who enter the skilled
trades each year attended the school, the enrollment
would reach at least 800 boys.
A trade school of this kind would relieve the first
and second year classes of many pupils that the
technical high schools do not want and cannot ade-
quately provide for. The minimum entering age
should be not less than 14, and no requirement other
than age should be imposed. This would draw part
of the over-age pupils from the grades and take from
the junior high school a certain number of boys who
66
could profit by the greater amount of time given to
shop work in the trade school.
A good many will stay only one year, and every
effort should be made at the time of entrance to learn
the intentions of the pupil. If it seems fairly certain
that he will not remain longer than a year he may
well omit such studies as have no direct bearing on
the trade he wishes to learn. The courses should fol-
low the lines laid down in the general industrial
course recommended for the junior high school, but
with a greater proportion of the time devoted to
practical shopwork. As the number of pupils for
each trade class would be relatively large, a closer
correlation could be effected between the academic
subjects and the work in the shops than is possible in
the junior high school.
Both general and special courses should be pro-
vided. Many of the pupils will wish to specialize on a
particular trade. Others who have not yet reached a
decision need a general course that will give them a
wide range of experience with materials and proc-
esses. The organization of classes should be planned
so as to permit transfers, whenever desirable, from
the general to the special courses, or vice-versa.
By the time the pupil has reached the second year
he usually will settle down to steady work on the
trade he selects, although here again the organiza-
tion should be sufficiently elastic to allow transfers
when there seems to be good reason for making them.
It is to be expected, however, that nearly all the
pupils will devote their time during the second year
67
to practice and study limited to single trades. The
success of the school in holding boys to the age of 16
or 17 will depend on its ability to convince them that
the extra time in school is a paying investment, and
this cannot be done unless they stick to one line of
work.
68
CHAPTER VIII
TRADE-PREPARATORY AND TRADE-EX-
TENSION TRAINING FOR BOYS AND
MEN AT WORK
Several forms of trade-preparatory and trade-ex-
tension training for apprentices and journeymen
workmen are carried on in the city. Probably the
most effective work done in the teaching of boys
after they have entered employment is found in
manufacturing establishments which maintain ap-
prentice schools in connection with their shops.
There are two excellent examples of this type of in-
struction in Cleveland — the apprentice schools con-
ducted by the New York Central Railroad and by
the Warner and Swasey Company, manufacturers
of astronomical instruments and machine tools.
The Warner and Swasey Company school was
established in 1911. The course covers a total of 560
hours, extending over a period of four years. The
apprentices attend the school four hours a week for
35 weeks each year. The time allotment for the vari-
ous subjects included in the course is shown in Table
11.
In 1915 there were 65 apprentices enrolled in the
school, most of them from the machinist's trade.
69
The sessions are held during working hours in a room
in the factory fitted up with drawing tables and
blackboards. No shop equipment is used. The pur-
pose of the course is to develop a body of trained
workmen competent to take positions in the factory
as foremen or heads of departments. Less than one-
tenth of the total time of the course is devoted to the
study of shop practice. Standard textbooks are used
in the teaching of mathematics.
TABLE 11.— TIME ALLOTMENT IN THE APPRENTICE COURSE
GIVEN BY THE WARNER AND SWASEY COMPANY, CLEVELAND
Subject Hours
Arithmetic 35
English 65
Mechanical drawing 70
Shop practice 40
Algebra 70
Geometry 40
Trigonometry 30
Physics 70
Materials 35
Industrial history 35
Mechanics, strength of materials, and mechanical
design 70
Total 560
The enrollment in the school conducted by the
New York Central Railroad is about 140 boys, nearly
all of whom are machinists, apprentices. They are
divided into three classes, the members of each class
attending the school four hours a week. About two-
thirds of the time is devoted to mechanical drawing
and one-third to mathematics and shop practice.
The instruction in these two latter subjects is based
on a series of graded mimeographed or blue print
70
lesson sheets, containing a wide variety of shop prob-
lems, with a condensed and simplified explanation of
the mathematical principles involved. In the main
the work is limited to the application of simple arith-
metic to problems of shop practice. No textbooks
are used, but the booklets on machine shop prac-
tice published by the International Correspondence
Schools are studied in connection with the course.
In addition to the required classroom work in
mechanical drawing, each apprentice serves four or
five months of his term in the regular drafting rooms
of the company. The classroom is equipped with
models of railway appliances and machinery, to-
gether with laboratory apparatus for teaching the
laws of mechanics. No machine tools or other shop
equipment are used in the classes. The course covers
about 700 hours of instruction exclusive of the time
spent in regular drafting room work. About 20 ap-
prentices finished the course in 1915.
Several of the building and printing trades' labor
unions take an active interest in the training of ap-
prentices, and in at least two instances the unions
maintain evening classes for teaching trade theory.
The Electrical Workers' Union, made up principally
of inside wiremen, conducts apprentice classes taught
by journeymen. The International Typographical
Union course for compositors and compositors' ap-
prentices is undoubtedly the best yet devised for
giving supplementary training in hand composition.
It is taught by journeymen in evening classes, under
the supervision of the central office of the Typo-
71
graphical Union Commission, to which all the work
must be submitted. In February, 1916, about 100
students were enrolled, of whom approximately one-
third were apprentices and two-thirds journeymen.
The course consists of 46 lessons in English, lettering,
design, color harmony, job composition, and impo-
sition for machine and hand folding. The classes
are held at the headquarters of the union. As the
students' daily practice in the shop provides plenty
of opportunity for the acquisition of manual skill,
no apparatus or shop equipment is used in connec-
tion with the course.
The apprentice school conducted by the Y. M. C.
A. represents another type of apprentice training.
The instruction is given during the day. The ap-
prentices are sent to the school by various firms in
the city under an arrangement whereby the boys
attend four and one-half hours each week during
regular shop time. In February, 1916, the enroll-
ment consisted of 46 apprentices, practically all
from the metal trades. The employers pay the tui-
tion fee, which amounts to $20 a year. The course
requires four years' work of 40 weeks each, a total
of 720 hours. It comprises instruction in shop mathe-
matics, drawing, English, physics, and industrial
hygiene. No shop equipment is used. Fifteen boys
were graduated from the course this year.
The factory apprentice school of the Warner and
Swasey Company and New York Central Railroad
type possesses many advantages over any kind of
continuation instruction carried on outside of the
72
plants where the boys are employed. A better cor-
relation between the class and shop work is possible
together with a more personal relation between
teacher and pupils than is usually found when the
pupils are drawn from a number of different estab-
lishments. It must be admitted, however, that this
method of training apprentices is not feasible except
in very large plants, as in small classes the teaching
cost becomes prohibitive. There is little probability
that it will ever be adopted by enough employers to
take care of more than an insignificant proportion of
the boys who enter the skilled trades.
The results obtained, here and in other cities,
through cooperative schemes, such as the Y. M. C. A.
continuation school, are in the main disappointing.
Their failure to reach more than a few of the boys
who need trade-extension training is due partly to
the fact that they operate under a condition that is
fundamentally unjust. One employer interviewed
during the survey stated the case very clearly: "I
can see no good reason why I should make pecuniary
sacrifices for the benefit of my competitors. Very
few of my apprentices remain until the end of their
term, because by the time they have completed their
second year other firms which make no effort to train
their quota of skilled workmen for the trade steal
them away from me. Any plan for the training of
apprentices which does not apportion the burden
among the different establishments in direct pro-
portion to the number of men they have, simply
73
penalizes those public-spirited employers who par-
ticipate in it."
Continuation Training from 15 to 18
The years between 15 and 18 are among the most im-
portant in the life of the young worker. If left to his
own devices during this period, he is very likely to
lose much of vocational value of his earlier educa-
tion, because he does not grasp the relation which the
knowledge he acquired in school bears to his daily
work. As a result the problem of supplementary in-
struction at a later age, when he wakes up to his
need for it, becomes much more difficult than if trade-
extension training had been taken up at once when
he entered employment.
The vocational interests of young workers and
the social interests of the community are both op-
posed to the current practice of "graduating" boys
from the public schools at the ages of 15 or 16 and
then losing sight of them. The fact that the large
number who go into industrial occupations will not
or cannot remain in school beyond these ages does
not absolve the school system from further responsi-
bility for their educational future. There should not
be a complete severance between the boy and the
school until he has reached a relatively mature age.
In other words, the school system should maintain,
as long as possible, such a relation with him as will
help to round out his education and lead him to con-
tinue it after reaching manhood.
74
It is the opinion of the Survey Staff that the only-
practicable solution of this problem lies in the day
continuation school, backed by a compulsory law
which will bring every boy and girl at work under the
age of 18 into school for a certain number of hours per
week. Only through a comprehensive plan that will
reach large numbers of young workers can the diffi-
culties inherent in the administration of small classes
be overcome. The night schools have never been
successful in holding boys long enough to make more
than a beginning in trade-extension training. It is
certain that growing boys should not be expected to
add two hours of study to their nine or 10 hours of
unaccustomed labor in the shop. Both individual
and community interests demand that this problem
be taken up in such a way as to obviate the sharp
cleavage between the boy's school life and his work-
ing life. From every point of view it is unwise to
permit him to lose all contact with the educational
agencies of the city during his first years at work.
The compulsory continuation school avoids the
difficulties which are responsible for the common
failure of those schemes which depend for their suc-
cess on the initiative of individuals or the voluntary
cooperation of employers and trade unions. One of
its great advantages is that the principle on which it
is based makes for equal justice to all. There can be
no doubt that the decline of apprentice training in
the shops is due partly to the fact that employers
find that much of the time and money it costs goes
toward providing a skilled labor force for competitors
75
who make no effort to train young workers. The co-
operation of employers on a comprehensive scale will
be secured only when the burden is equally shared.
The Technical Night Schools
Night classes are conducted in both of the technical
high schools for two terms a year of 10 weeks each,
the pupils attending four hours a week. A tuition
fee of $5 a term is collected, of which $3.50 is re-
funded to those who maintain an average attendance
of 75 per cent. No special provision is made for ap-
prentices as distinct from journeymen, and the trade
classes are attended by a considerable number of
wage-earners employed in occupations unrelated to
industrial work. The list of courses offered during
the past year, with the number enrolled in each
course at the beginning of the secoud term, is shown
in Table 12.
A glance at the list of courses shows at once that
while the vocational motive is given first importance,
the schools also aim to provide instruction in cul-
tural subjects which have only an indirect vocational
application. Less than one-third of the students are
pursuing courses which are directly related to their
daily work. The remainder are enrolled in courses
which have little or no connection with their daily
occupations. In but four of the courses — machine
shop, architectural drawing, printing, and sheet
metal work — are more than half of the students em-
ployed in directly related occupations.
76
TABLE 12.— COURSES AND NUMBER ENROLLED IN THE TECH-
NICAL NIGHT SCHOOLS, JANUARY, 1915
Number
Course enrolled
Mechanical drawing 328
Machine shop 222
Electrical construction 159
Sewing 103
Mathematics 89
Architectural drawing 83
Pattern making 73
Woodworking 67
Chemistry 59
Sheet metal drawing 52
Cooking 46
Foundry work 36
Agriculture 31
Printing 27
Sheet metal shop 23
Business English 20
Electric motors 19
Arts and crafts 18
Millinery 18
Electricity and magnetism 16
Total 1,489
The policy of the schools is to form a class in any
subject for which a sufficient number of students
make application. Only a small proportion of the
pupils attend more than one year, and the mor-
tality from term to term is very high, although the
tuition fee plan insures fairly good attendance during
the term. The data collected by the survey indicate
that the average length of attendance is approxi-
mately two terms — the equivalent in student hours
of less than three weeks in the ordinary day school.
Most of the men who enroll in night school classes
need a course of at least two or three years. All but
a few, however, insist on having their supplementary
77
training in small doses. Frequently they want only
specific instruction about a specific thing, such as
how to lay out a certain piece of work or how to set
up a particular machine tool. They want to secure
this knowledge in the shortest possible time, and very
few want the same thing. A course of two or three
years does not appeal to them. Another difficulty is
that their previous educational equipment varies
widely, and some are not capable of assimilating even
the specialized bit of trade knowledge they need
without a preliminary course in arithmetic. As the
personnel of the classes changes to a marked degree
from term to term, the courses undergo frequent
modifications. Apparently the teachers and princi-
pals have made a sincere effort to adapt the instruc-
tion to the demands of the men who attend the
schools, but the fact is that the difficulties inherent
in such work make it impossible to organize the
classes on any basis except that of subject matter,
which means fitting students into courses, rather
than adapting courses to the needs of particular
groups of workers.
The enrollment is far below what should be ex-
pected in a city of nearly three-quarters of a million
inhabitants. The total number of journeymen, ap-
prentices, and helpers from the skilled manual occu-
pations, receiving trade instruction in the night
schools, is considerably less than one per cent of the
total number in the city.
A large enrollment is necessary for efficient ad-
ministration. Success in specializing courses in night
78
schools, as in day schools, requires a large adminis-
trative unit. The possible variety of courses is in
direct ratio to the number enrolled. In a class of 200
carpenters there would probably be, for example,
10 or 15 men who need specialized instruction in
stair-building. On the basis of the present enroll-
ment of 40 or 50 carpenters the class would dwindle
to three or four, with the result that the per capita
teaching cost becomes prohibitive.
The relatively small result now obtained is not the
fault of the schools, but is due principally to the fact
that the great field of evening vocational instruction
is treated by the school system as a mere side line of
the technical high schools. The evening classes are
taught by teachers who have already given their
best in the day classes. The enrollment cannot be
greatly increased so long as this type of education is
handled as one of the marginal activities of the school
system, manned by tired teachers and directed by
tired principals. It is a totally different kind of job
from regular day instruction and requires a different
administrative organization, with a responsible head
vested with sufficient authority to meet quickly and
effectively the widely varying demands of its stu-
dents. This will require the speeding-up of ad-
ministrative methods in the establishment of courses
and the employment of teachers, a freer hand for the
principals as regards both expenditures and policy,
and most important of all, the organization of all
forms of continuation and night school instruction
under a separate department.
79
A Combined Program of Continuation and
Trade-Extension Training
In considering the general conclusions of the survey
as to what should be done in the matter of trade pre-
paratory and trade-extension training in both day
and night schools, it must be borne in mind that these
two types of vocational training are still in the ex-
perimental stage. Their future development will
probably involve a wide departure from conven-
tional school methods and the evolution of a special
technique through trial and experiment. At the
present time we can only formulate certain of the
main conditions to which future advance in these
fields must conform.
First of all, it must be recognized that such work
is a big job in itself and cannot be successfully con-
ducted as an appendix of the day school. It is worth
doing well, or it is not worth doing. It needs an
organization sufficiently elastic and adaptable to
quickly make adjustments to unusual and unex-
pected conditions. It needs the supervision of a
competent director who can devote to it all his time
and energy, and a corps of teachers who not only
know how and what to teach, but who possess a firm
conviction of the value and utility of this kind of
instruction. In the hands of teachers who bring to
it only the margin of interest and energy remaining
after a hard day's work in the high school, or who
are unable to comprehend the radical difference be-
tween teaching a boy in the day school 35 hours a
week and teaching a boy four hours a week in the
80
continuation school or evening class, the full measure
of success cannot be expected. The employment of
day teachers for night school work has never been
other than a makeshift, and the insignificant results
attained in night schools throughout the country
have been due in great measure to this cause.
Apart from the fact that the interests of adolescent
workers imperatively demand the establishment of
day continuation schools, an additional argument in
favor of such schools is that they would provide a
means for making the night trade-extension work
effective, through the use of continuation day school
teachers for night school work. Such a plan would
mean that teachers employed on this basis would
have charge of a day continuation class during
one session of four hours, and a night class of two
hours, making a total of six hours' work per day. A
plan of this kind would make possible the establish-
ment of the fundamental conditions for successful
trade — preparatory and trade-extension training in
the night schools. The present system is unjust to
both teachers and students; — to the students because
the man or boy who sacrifices his recreation time to
attend night school has a right to the best the schools
can give; to the teachers because no teacher can
work a two-hour night shift in addition to seven or
eight hours in the technical high school without seri-
ously impairing his efficiency.
The development of this plan would necessitate
the establishment of two centers, one located in the
eastern and one in the western section of the city.
6 81
In these centers should be housed the day vocational
school, the day continuation classes, and the night
vocational classes. This would relieve the technical
high schools of a task which does not belong to them,
and which by overloading the teachers seriously in-
terferes with the work they were originally employed
to do. At present a considerable number of the
technical high school teachers are devoting from one-
fifth to one-fourth of their total working day to ele-
mentary teaching, as most of the work in the night
schools is below high school grade.
By bringing together all the trade preparatory
and trade-extension work under one roof, it is possi-
ble to secure the highest efficiency in the use of equip-
ment. Expensive shops can be justified only on the
basis of constant use. If the suggestion for the
establishment of a vocational school is acted upon,
such future contingencies as the continuation school
should be borne in mind in planning the buildings
and equipment, so as to permit of extensions as they
may be required. It is practically certain that uni-
versal continuation training for young workers up
to the age of 17 or 18 will be made compulsory in all
the progressive states of the country within the next
decade. The Ohio school authorities should get ready
to handle the continuation school problem before the
example of other states and the overwhelming pres-
sure of public opinion forces it upon them.
82
CHAPTER IX
VOCATIONAL TRAINING FOR GIRLS
The discussions in the preceding chapters have been
limited intentionally to a consideration of the needs
and possibilities of training for wage-earning pur-
suits in which men predominate. The conditions
which surround vocational training for girls are so
fundamentally unlike those encountered in the voca-
tional training of boys that a combined treatment
leads to needless complexity and confusion.
Cleveland uses a relatively smaller amount of
woman labor than most other large cities. In only
one of the 10 largest cities in the country — Pitts-
burgh— is the proportion of women and girls at
work smaller as compared with the total number of
persons in gainful occupations than in Cleveland. In
1900, 20.4 per cent of the workers in the city were
women; by 1910 the proportion of women workers
had increased to 22 per cent, a shift of less than two
per cent for the decade.
A consideration of the occupational future of boys
and girls shows at once how widely their problems
differ. The typical boy in Cleveland attends school
until he reaches the age of 15 or 16. About this period
he becomes a wage-earner and for the next 30 or 40
• 83
years devotes most of his time and energy to making
a living. The typical girl leaves school about the
same time, becomes a wage-earner for a few years,
then marries and spends the rest of her life keeping
house and rearing children. To the man wage-earning
is the real business of life. To the woman it is a means
for filling in the gap between school and marriage,
a little journey into the world previous to settling
down to her main job.
The most radical and important difference be-
tween the two sexes with respect to wage-earning
is found in the length of the working life. The transi-
tory character of the wage-earning phase in the life
of most women is clearly seen in the contrasted age
distribution shown in Table 13.
TABLE 13.— PER CENT OF TOTAL POPULATION ENGAGED IN
GAINFUL OCCUPATIONS DURING THREE DIFFERENT AGE
PERIODS
Age period
Women
Men
16 to 21
21 to 45
45 and over
60
26
12
85
98
85
Approximately 85 per cent of the boys and slightly
less than 60 per cent of the girls between the ages of
16 and 21 are at work. In the next age group — 21 to
45 — given by the census, 98 per cent of the men are
at work, but the proportion of women employed in
gainful occupations drops to 26 per cent, or about
one in four; in the next age group — 45 and over —
84
it falls to about 12 per cent, as compared with 85 per
cent of the men. Of the women still at work in the
older age group, over one-half are engaged in do-
mestic and personal service as servants, laundresses,
housekeepers, etc.
TABLE 14.— NUMBER EMPLOYED IN THE PRINCIPAL WAGE-
EARNING OCCUPATIONS AMONG EACH 1,000 WOMEN FROM
16 TO 21 YEARS OF AGE
Manufacturing and mechanical industries:
Apprentices to dressmakers and milliners 4
Dressmakers and seamstresses (not in factory) 20
Milliners and millinery dealers 17
Semi-skilled operatives:
Candy factories 6
Cigar and tobacco factories 15
Electrical supply factories 10
Knitting mills 11
Printing and publishing . 8
Woolen and worsted mills:
Weavers 5
Other occupations 7
Sewers and sewing machine operators (factory) 53
Tailoresses 25
Transportation:
Telephone operators 19
Trade:
Clerks in stores 28
Saleswomen (stores) 35
Professional service:
Musicians and teachers of music 6
Teachers (school) 4
Domestic and personal service:
Charwomen and cleaners 5
Laundry operatives 13
Servants 81
Waitresses 9
Clerical occupations:
Bookkeepers, cashiers, and accountants 26
Clerks (except clerks in stores) 20
Stenographers and typewriters 62
The occupations in which the girls now in the pub-
lic schools will later engage can be determined with
a relative degree of accuracy by employing a method
in general similar to that utilized in forecasting the
occupations of boys. It must be taken into account,
however, that the wage-earning period for women,
except in the professional occupations, usually begins
85
before the age of 21. For this reason the 16 to 21 age
group probably offers the best basis for determining
the future occupational distribution of girls in school.
If all women at work up to the age of 25 were in-
cluded the figures would be more nearly exact, but
unfortunately data for the period between 21 and 25
are not available. The figures at the right of Table
14 show the number engaged in each specified occu-
pation among each thousand women in the city be-
tween the ages of 16 and 21. The proportions given
for the professional occupations, particularly teach-
ing, are too small, because of the fact that few
women enter the professions before the age of 21.
Applying these proportions to the average elemen-
tary school unit, it will be seen at once that the num-
ber of girls old enough to profit by special training
is too small in any single occupation to form a class
of workable size. In such a school there would be
about 80 girls 12 years old and over. Of the skilled
occupations listed in the table stenography and type-
writing offers the largest field of employment, yet
the number who are likely to take up this kind of
work does not exceed five or six.
Differentiation in the Junior High School
The organization of the junior high school, where the
enrollment is made up entirely of older pupils, obvi-
ates this difficulty to some extent. Instead of 80 girls
there are from 300 to 500, with a corresponding in-
crease in the number who will enter any given wage-
earning occupation.
86
Not less than one-eighth and probably not more
than one-fifth of these girls will become needle-
workers of some kind. They will need a more practi-
cal and intensive training in the fundamentals of
sewing than is now provided by the household arts
course. The skill required in trade work cannot be
obtained in the amount of time now devoted to this
subject. It should be made possible for a girl who
expects to make a living with her needle to elect a
thoroughly practical course in sewing in which the
aim is to prepare for wage earning rather than merely
to teach the girl how to make and mend her own gar-
ments. As proficiency in trade sewing requires first
of all ample opportunity for practice, provision
should be made for extending the time now given to
sewing for those girls who wish to become needle
workers. This can easily be done through the system
of electives now in use. The establishment of classes
in power machine operating during the junior high
school period appears to be impracticable, due to the
immaturity of the girls and the small number who
could profit by such instruction.
A discussion of the present sewing courses in the
public schools will be found in Chapters XIV and XV,
which summarize the special reports on the Garment
Trades and Dressmaking and Millinery. In the pres-
ent chapter the consideration of these occupations
is limited to an examination of the administrative
questions connected with training for the sewing
trades.
87
Specialized Training for the Sewing Trades
The compulsory attendance law requires all girls to
attend school until they are 16 years old. This forces
a considerable number into the high schools for one
or two years before they go to work. As a rule the
type of girl who is likely to enter the needle trades
selects the technical high school course, not because
she has any idea of finishing it, but because she be-
lieves it offers a less tiresome way of getting through
her last one or two years in school than the academic
course. The technical course requires three and
three-quarter hours a week of sewing during the
first two years. The student may elect trade dress-
making and millinery during the third and fourth
years.
Very few girls who can afford to spend four years
in high school ever become dressmakers or factory
operatives. If the school system is to do anything
of direct vocational value for them it will have to
begin further down. Most of them leave school be-
fore the age of 17 and the years between 14 and 16
represent the last chance the school will have to
give them any direct aid towards preparation for
immediate wage-earning.
For successful work in machine operating the class
must be large enough to warrant the purchase and
operation of sufficient equipment to give the pupils
an opportunity for intensive practice. The only way
this condition can be secured is by concentrating
in large groups the girls who need such training.
Little will be accomplished in training for the sewing
88
trades without specialization, and specialization in
small administrative units is impossible. The teach-
ing and operating cost in a school enrolling, say 200
girls, who want the same kind of work, can be
brought within reasonable bounds. In a school where
the total number who need specialized training does
not exceed 10 or 15 the cost is prohibitive.
In the opinion of the Survey Staff a one or two year
vocational course in the sewing trades should be
established. The entrance age should not be less
than 15. Courses should be provided for intensive
work in trade dressmaking, power machine operat-
ing, and trade millinery. A conservative estimate of
the number of girls who could be expected to enroll
for courses in these subjects is 500. A trade school
might be established where only this type of voca-
tional training would be carried on, or it might be
conducted in the same building with the trade
courses for boys recommended in a previous chapter.
In either case the number of pupils would be suffi-
cient to warrant up-to-date equipment and a corps
of specially trained teachers.
Training for the sewing trades consumes more ma-
terial than any rfther kind of vocational training.
For this reason economical administration requires
some arrangement for marketing the product. Dur-
ing the latter part of the course the school should be
able to turn out first-class work. The familiarity
with trade standards the pupils obtain through prac-
tice on garments which must meet the exacting de-
mands of the buying public has a distinct educational
89
value. The Manhattan Trade School for Girls in
New York City and other successful schools in the
country operate on this basis. There is reason to
believe that there would be little difficulty in making
arrangements with the clothing manufacturers in
Cleveland to furnish a good trade school as much
contract work as the classes could handle.
Other Occupations
From one-fourth to one-fifth of the girls in the school
will later enter employment in commercial and cleri-
cal occupations, as stenographers, typists, clerks,
cashiers, bookkeepers, saleswomen, and so on. Their
needs will be considered in Chapters XII and XIII,
in which the findings of the special reports on Boys
and Girls in Commercial Work and Department
Store Occupations are summarized.
A relatively small number will become semi-skilled
operatives in industrial establishments, such as job
printing houses, knitting mills, and factories making
electrical supplies, metal products, and so on. As
a rule such work requires only a small amount of
manual skill or deftness. Not much training is needed
and it can be given quickly and effectively in the
factories.
About one-ninth of the girls in the school will
enter paid domestic or personal service of some kind.
The household arts courses probably meet the needs
of girls who may be employed in such occupations as
far as they can be met under present conditions.
90
The woman domestic servant occupies about the
same social level as the male common laborer, and a
course which openly sets out to train girls to be ser-
vants is not likely to prosper. The load of social
stigma such work carries is too heavy. At some time
in the future it may be possible to ignore the tradi-
tional and universal attitude of our public toward the
so-called menial occupations sufficiently to consider
training servants. At present such a possibility
seems remote.
91
CHAPTER X
VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE
Very few of the army of young people who become
wage earners each year take up the occupations in
which they engage as the result of any conscious
selection of their own or of their parents. They drift
into some job aimlessly and ignorantly, following the
line of least resistance, driven or led by the accidents
and exigencies of gaining a livelihood. They possess
no accurate or comprehensive knowledge of the ad-
vantages and disadvantages of different types of
wage earning occupations, and frequently take up
work for which they are entirely unfitted or which
holds little future beyond a bare livelihood.
The Work of the Vocational Counselor
The plan now followed in the technical high schools
of the city, by which one teacher in the school spe-
cially qualified for such work is charged with the
duty of advising pupils who leave school and aiding
them in securing desirable employment, could be
adapted to the junior high school, where the need for
service of this kind is even greater than in the techni-
cal high schools. Such work requires men who have
92
had some contact with industrial conditions, and
who possess sound judgment, common sense, and a
fairly comprehensive knowledge of the local in-
dustries. If the curriculum embraces the course in
" Industrial Information" suggested in a previous
chapter, the teacher of this subject might well be
designated as vocational counselor for the boys in
the school. A course similar in nature should be pro-
vided for the girls and a woman teacher selected to
advise them when they leave school. Considerable
difficulty probably will be experienced in securing
women teachers competent to assume this task, but
any wide-awake teacher who will devote some atten-
tion to published studies of industrial conditions and
get in touch with the local organizations engaged in
the investigation of wage earning employments, such
as the Consumers' League and the Girls' Vocation
Bureau, can soon acquire a fund of information that
will enable her to offer valuable suggestions and ad-
vice to girls who expect to become wage earners.
The vocational counselor must guard against con-
ventional thinking and the mass of " inspirational"
nonsense which forms the main contribution to the
vocational guidance of youth provided in the average
schoolroom. The ideals of success usually held up
before school children seem to have been drawn
from a mixture of Sunday school literature and the
prospectuses of efficiency bureaus. Boiled down the
rules prescribed for their attainment are two: first,
"Be good;" and second, "Get ahead." The pupils
are told about well-known men who became famous
93
or rich, usually rich, by practicing these rules. Oc-
casionally there is some prattle about the " dignity
of labor/ ' as a rule meaningless in the light of our
current ideas of success. We do not think of a well-
paid artisan as "successful." His success begins
when he is promoted to office work, or becomes a
foreman.
The inherent difficulty with ideals of success which
demand that the worker become a boss of somebody
else is that the world of industry needs only a rela-
tively small number of bosses. Theoretically it is
possible for any individual to reach the eminence
of boss-ship. In real life less than one-tenth of the
boys who enter industrial employment can rise above
the level of the journeyman artisan, at least before
later middle age, because only about that proportion
of bosses are needed.
The task of the vocational counselor will consist
in putting the pupiFs feet on the first steps of the
ladder rather than showing him rosy pictures of the
top of it. For the great majority the top means no
more than decent wages. This, after all, is a worthy
ambition, frequently requiring the worker's best
efforts for its realization.
The Girls' Vocation Bureau
The Girls' Vocation Bureau, for the placement of
girls and women in wage-earning employment, has
been in operation about six years. At present it is
under the general charge of the state and municipal
94
employment bureau, although part of the funds for
the support of the bureau is raised through private
subscription. From July, 1914, to July, 1915, the
Bureau secured positions for nearly 11,000 girls and
women. Of these approximately 12 per cent were
girls under 21. In many instances only temporary
employment is secured, although efforts are made to
place the girls in permanent positions. More girls
are placed in office positions than in any other line
of work, but a considerable proportion take employ-
ment in factories, domestic service, restaurants, and
stores.
A careful record is kept of each applicant's quali-
fications, home conditions, the names of employers,
etc. The Bureau endeavors to keep in touch with
the girls after they are placed through follow-up
reports and visits by members of the office staff or
by volunteer investigators.
This spring every school in the city was visited by
representatives of the Bureau in the endeavor to in-
terest principals in the work of placement, and ar-
rangements were made for sending to the Bureau
lists of the girls who were expected to leave school
permanently. This effort met with slight success,
as only about 100 girls were reported from all the
schools in the city, although the number of girls
leaving school each year from the elementary grades
alone is over 2,000. In all cases the girls were visited
by a representative of the Bureau and urged to re-
turn to school, or if they were determined to seek
95
employment the advantages of registering in the
Bureau were brought to their attention.
It is to be hoped that more effective cooperation
between the Bureau and the schools can be estab-
lished and that plans for a placement bureau for
boys similar in method and aim to the Girls' Bureau
may be realized. The matter of placement is the
most difficult part of the vocational counselor's
duties, and an arrangement whereby the vocational
guidance departments of the various schools might
serve as feeders to a central placement bureau would
probably in the long run give the best results. Both
guidance and placement are new things in the public
schools and efficient methods of administration can
be worked out only through trial and experiment.
96
CHAPTER XI
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
1. The future occupations of the children in school
will correspond very closely to those of the native-
born adult population. The occupational distri-
bution of the city's working population therefore
constitutes the best guide as to the kinds of industrial
training which can be undertaken profitably by the
school system.
2. Industrial training in school has to do chiefly
with preparation for work in the skilled trades.
Training for semi-skilled occupations can be given
more effectively and cheaply in the factories than in
the schools.
3. As a rule, industrial training is not practicable
in elementary schools, for the reason that the num-
ber of boys in the average elementary school who are
likely to enter the skilled trades and who are also
old enough to profit by industrial training is too
small to permit the organization of classes.
4. The most important contribution to vocational
education the elementary schools can make consists
in getting the children through the course fast enough
so that two or three years before the end of the com-
pulsory attendance period they will enter an inter-
7 97
mediate or vocational school where some kind of in-
dustrial training is possible.
5. The survey recommends the establishment of a
general industrial course in the junior high school,
made up chiefly of instruction in the applications of
mathematics, drawing, physics, and chemistry to
the commoner industrial processes. The course
should also include the study of economic and work-
ing conditions in the principal industrial occupations.
6. One or two vocational schools equipped to offer
specialized trade training for boys and girls between
the ages of 14 and 17 are needed. At present a gap
of from one to two years exists between the end of the
compulsory attendance period and the entrance age
in practically all the skilled trades, which could well
be employed in direct preparation for trade work.
Such schools would relieve the first and second year
classes of the technical high schools of many pupils
these schools do not want and cannot adequately
provide for. General as well as special courses should
be offered, although pupils should be encouraged to
select a particular occupation and devote at least one
year to intensive preparation for it.
7. The survey favors the extension of the com-
pulsory attendance period for boys to the age of 16.
The industries of Cleveland have little or nothing
worth while to offer boys below this age.
8. The best form of trade-extension training is that
provided in a few establishments which maintain
apprentice schools in their plants. This plan is feasi-
ble only in large establishments. It will never take
98
care of more than a small proportion of the young
workers who need supplementary technical training.
9. Plans for trade-extension training of apprentices
depending on the cooperation of employers have met
with slight success. The principle difficulty is that
the sacrifices they involve are borne by a relatively
small number of employers while the benefits are
reaped by the industry in general. Either the in-
dustry as a whole or the community should bear the
cost of such training.
10. The vocational interests of young workers and
the social interests of the community demand the
establishment of a system of continuation training
for all young people in employment, up to the age of
18 years. The classes should be held during working
hours and attendance should be compulsory.
11. The enrollment in the trade classes of the night
schools is far below what it should be in a city as large
as Cleveland. The relatively small result now ob-
tained is not the fault of the schools, but is due
mainly to the fact that the field of vocational even-
ing instruction is treated by the school system as a
mere side line of the technical high schools.
12. The survey recommends the organization of
all forms of continuation, night vocational, and
day vocational training under centralized full-time
leadership. Only in this way can there be secured
a type of organization and administration suffi-
ciently elastic and adaptable to meet the widely
varying needs of the working classes.
13. Industrial training for girls will consist in the
99
main of preparation for the sewing trades. Prac-
tically no other industrial occupations in which large
numbers of women are employed possess sufficient
technical content to warrant the establishment of
training courses in the schools. The survey recom-
mends a practical course of needle instruction in the
junior high school and the introduction in the voca-
tional schools of specialized courses in dressmaking,
power machine operating, and trade millinery for the
older girls who wish to enter these trades.
14. The present experiment in vocational guidance
and placement should be extended as rapidly as pos-
sible. Courses in vocational information should be
offered in the junior high school and vocational coun-
sellors appointed to advise pupils in the selection of
their future vocations and aid them in securing de-
sirable employment when they leave school. The
full measure of success in this work demands better
cooperation with outside agencies on the part of
teachers and principals than has been secured up to
the present time.
100
CHAPTER XII
SUMMARY OF REPORT ON BOYS AND
GIRLS IN COMMERCIAL WORK
Particular attention is given throughout this report
to the differences which exist between boys and girls
in commercial employment with respect to the con-
ditions which govern success and advancement.
The majority of boys begin as messengers or office
boys and subsequently become clerks or do book-
keeping work. As men they remain in these latter
positions or, in at least an equal number of cases,
pass on into the productive or administrative end of
business. The majority of girls are stenographers, or
to a less extent, assistants in bookkeeping or clerical
work. Boys' work may be expected to take on the
characteristics of the business that employs them;
girls' work remains in essentials unchanged even in
totally changed surroundings. Boys' work within
limits is progressive; girls' work in its general type —
with individual exceptions — is static. Boys as a rule
cannot stay at the same kind of work and advance;
girls as a rule stay at the same kind of work whether
or not they advance. Boys in any position are ex-
pected to be qualifying themselves for "the job
ahead," but for girls that is not the case. Boys may
101
expect to make a readjustment with every step in
advancement. Each new position brings them to a
new situation and into a new relation to the business.
Girls receive salary advancement for increasingly
responsible work, but any change in work is likely
to be so gradual as to be almost imperceptible if they
remain in the same place of employment. If they
change to another place, those who are stenogra-
phers have a slight readjustment to make in getting
accustomed to new terms and to the peculiarities
of the new persons who dictate to them. Bookkeep-
ing assistants may encounter different systems, but
their part of the work will be so directed and planned
that it cannot be said to necessitate difficult adapta-
tion on their part. The work of clerical assistants is
so simple and so nearly mechanical that the question
of adjustment does not enter. These girl workers do
not find that the change of position or firm brings
them necessarily into a new relation to the business.
Even moderate success is denied to a boy if he has
not adaptability and the capacity to grasp business
ideas and methods; but a comparatively high degree
of success could be attained by a girl who possessed
neither of these qualifications. A boy, however, who
has no specific training which he can apply directly
and definitely at work would be far more likely to
obtain a good opening and promotion than a girl
without it would be.
The range of a boy's possible future occupations is
as wide as the field of business. He cannot at first
be trained specifically as a girl can be because he does
102
not know what business will do with him or what he
wants to do with business. The girPs choice is limited
by custom. She can prepare herself definitely for
stenography, bookkeeping, and machine operating
and be sure that she is preparing for just the oppor-
tunity— and the whole opportunity — that business
offers to her. Her very limitation of opportunity
makes preliminary choice and training a definitely
possible thing.
Diagram 1. — Boys and girls under 18 years of age in office
work in Cleveland. Data from report of Ohio Industrial
Commission, 1915
The difference between boys and girls begins at
the beginning. Boys are given a larger share of the
positions which the youngest worker can fill. Dia-
gram 1 illustrates this and the figures of the United
States Census for 1910 clearly corroborate it. Boys
are taken for such work and taken younger than girls,
not merely because the law permits them to go to
work at an earlier age, but also because business
103
itself intends to round their training. Girls, on the
contrary, are expected to enter completely trained
for definite positions. This fact alone would in
most cases compel them to be older. Furthermore,
because boys in first positions are looked upon as
potential clerks, miscellaneous jobs about the office
have for them a two-fold value. They give the em-
ployer a chance to weed out unpromising material;
and they give boys an opportunity to find them-
Clerical Administrative
t Men 9^ I
Diagram 2. — Men and women 18 years of age and over in
clerical and administrative work in offices in Cleveland.
U. S. Census, 1910
selves and to gather ideas about the business and
methods which they may be able to make use of in
later adjustments.
Diagram 2 shows that girls' training, if it is to
meet the present situation, must prepare for a future
in specialized clerical work; boys' future must ap-
parently be thought of as in mostly the clerical and
administrative fields. The term "clerical" as here
used, covers bookkeepers, cashiers and accountants,
104
stenographers and typists, clerks and a miscellane-
ous group of younger workers such as messengers,
office boys, etc. "Administrative" covers proprie-
tors, officials, managers, supervisors, and agents, but
it does not include salespeople.
The usual commercial course gives impartially
to boys and girls two traditional "subjects" which
they are to apply in wage earning whatever part of
the wage earning field they may enter. These are
stenography and bookkeeping. The evidence col-
lected during the survey shows that these are rarely
found in combination except in small offices. Of the
men employed who are stenographers, the majority
are of two kinds: (1) those who use stenography in-
cidentally with their other and more important work
as clerks, and (2) those for whom stenography is
but a stepping-stone to another kind of position.
The only firms which make a practice of offering
ordinary stenographic positions for boys are those
which restrict themselves to male employees for
every kind of work.
Independent stenographic work of various kinds
is of course open to the sexes alike. In Cleveland
there are a few women in court stenography. The
10 public stenographers' offices were found upon in-
quiry to include two men and 10 women. No figures
regarding convention reporters were obtainable. In
the positions of the bookkeeping group also there
was some sex difference. The accountants, book-
keepers, cashiers, pay-masters and other persons
of responsibility are, in large offices where both sexes
105
work together, much more likely to be men than
women; the assistants who work with these may
be of either sex, but girls and women are likely to
make up the greater portion. Of the small office this
is less generally true. Boys who do machine operat-
ing are usually clerks whose machine work, as in the
case of stenography, is merely an adjunct to other
work; with girls machine operating is either the
whole of the position or the most important part
of it.
The essential difference between the clerkship
which boys for the most part hold and the general
clerical work which girls do is that the boys' work is
unified and is a definite, separate responsible part
of the business, usually in line for promotion to some
other clerkship; the girls' is a miscellany of more or
less unrelated jobs and is not a preparation for spe-
cific promotion.
A General View of Commercial Work
All commercial occupations may be roughly divided
into two classes: those which have to do with ad-
ministrative, merchandising, or productive work,
and those which carry on the clerical routine which
the others necessitate. The first class of occupations
may be designated by the term " administrative
work " and the second by " clerical work." A varying
relation exists between the two which depends chiefly
upon the kind of business represented. In some
kinds clerical work is the stepping stone by which
106
administrative work is reached; in others employ-
ment in clerical work side-tracks away from the ad-
ministrative work.
There is, of course, a future of promotion within
the limits of clerical work without reference to its
relation to administrative work. The practical aspect
of it is, in most kinds of business, that the subordi-
nate clerical positions far outnumber the chief ones.
Promotion of any sort depends largely upon indi-
vidual capacity; but this general distinction may be
made between promotion in clerical work and in ad-
ministrative work; in the clerical field it tends to be
automatic but limited; in administrative work it
comes more often through a worker's initiative or
individuality than through automatic progression
and it has no arbitrary limits.
Obviously one kind of person will be adapted to
an administrative career; another to a clerical one.
Even a beginner in wage earning might be able to
classify himself on a basis like this; yet it is not essen-
tial, for in many cases it is possible that his first
positions recognize this choice. He needs funda-
mental experience in business methods whatever he
is going to do; and for most administrative positions
he needs maturity. He can achieve both by serving
an apprenticeship in some form of clerical work.
The important things for him in the early part of his
career are to understand the distinction between the
two classes of occupations; to sense the relation he
holds to the business as a whole; and to act intelli-
gently in the matter of making a change.
107
Bookkeeping
The bookkeeping which modern business, except
in the small establishment, demands of young
workers is certainly not the journal and ledger book-
keeping of the commercial schools. A modern office
organization may have in its bookkeeping depart-
ment of 20 persons only one "bookkeeper." This
person is responsible for the system and he super-
vises the keeping of records and the preparation of
statements. A minority of his assistants will need
to be able to distinguish debits from credits; the
rest will be occupied in making simple entries or in
posting, in verifying and checking, or in finding
totals with the aid of machines. The bookkeeping
systems employed show wide variation, not only in
different kinds of business, but in different establish-
ments in the same kinds of business. Many firms are
using a loose-leaf system; some use ledgers; and
others have a system of record keeping which calls
for neither of these devices. Bookkeeping work,
especially in the positions held by girls, is frequently
combined with comptometer or adding machine
work, with typing, billing, filing, or statistical work;
but rarely, except in the small office, are bookkeeping
and stenography — the Siamese Twins of traditional
and commercial training — found linked together.
Stenography
Stenography is used throughout business chiefly in
correspondence; to a less extent for report and state-
108
ment work, for legal work, and for printer's copy.
The stenographer in any business office, more than
other clerical workers, is supposed to look after a
variety of unorganized details including the use of
office appliances, the filing of letters, and sometimes
dealing with patrons or visitors in the absence of the
employer. She is more important to the employer
in his personal business relations than any other em-
ployee, except in the case of those few employers who
have private secretaries.
Clerks' Positions
In the case of large corporations, which are by far
the largest employers of clerks, this work has been
standardized to a marked degree. The organization
of the office work of the telegraph, telephone, and
express companies, the railroads, and the occasional
large wholesale company in Cleveland is a nearly
exact duplication of that of other district or division
offices controlled by these companies in other cities.
The same is true of the Civil Service. Whatever
effects standardization may have upon opportunity,
it obviously makes for definiteness in regard to train-
ing requirements. All the positions are graded on the
basis of experience and responsibility and a logical
line of promotion from one to another has been
worked out.
The report contains detailed studies of different
kinds of clerical work in the offices of transportation
and public utility corporations, retail and wholesale
109
stores, manufacturing establishments, banks, the
civil service, and small offices employing relatively
few people. In each of these such matters as char-
acter of the work, opportunities for advancement,
kind of training needed and special qualifications
are taken up.
Wages and Regularity of Employment
Stated briefly the conclusions of the report with
respect to wages and regularity of employment in
office positions are as follows:
The wage opportunities for clerical workers, espe-
cially men, lie in business positions outside the limits
of clerical work. Men clerical workers average about
the same pay as salesmen and more pay than in-
dustrial workers. Women clerical workers receive
more than either saleswomen or industrial workers.
Employment is much more regular in clerical work
than it is in salesmanship or industrial work. For
men clerical workers the wage opportunity is better
in manufacturing and trade than in some kinds of
transportation business. For women it is better in
manufacturing and transportation than it is in trade.
Men's wages tend to be higher than women's in all
branches of clerical work.
Among the clerical positions, bookkeeping shows
the highest wage average for men; clerks' positions
show the lowest. Stenography shows the highest for
women; machine work the lowest. Men bookkeepers
show their best wage average in the wholesale busi-
110
ness, clerks in transportation, and stenographers in
manufacturing. The small office gives better wage
opportunity to women bookkeepers and men ste-
nographers; the large office favors women stenogra-
phers and men clerks.
For boys, there is some indication that advanced
education and commercial training, in their present
status, are less closely related to high wages than are
personal qualities and experience. For girls, the
combination of high school education and business
training is the best preparation for wage advance-
ment. A general high school education and usually,
business training, are essential to the assurance of
even a living wage. Business training based upon less
than high school education is almost futile.
The Problem of Training
Six chapters of the report are devoted to a con-
sideration of the needs and possibilities of training.
The work now being done in the public schools of
the city is discussed in detail, with suggestions for a
better adaptation of the courses of study and meth-
ods and content of instruction to the needs of boys
and girls who wish to prepare themselves to enter
clerical occupations. The observations on training
for such work may be summarized as follows :
Commercial training should be open to all students
whom commercial subjects and methods can serve
best; but graduation should depend upon a high
standard of efficiency.
Ill
Statistics show that commercial training is not to
be looked upon, in a wholesale way, as a successful
means of taking care of backward academic students.
Commercial students' need for cultural and other
supplementary education may be even greater than
that of academic students.
The graduation rate of commercial students in
public schools has been increased since the organiza-
tion of a separate commercial high school and the
number of students entering has been decreased.
Commercial high schools receive a grade of chil-
dren who are about medium in scholarship and
normal in age.
Commercial and academic high school teachers
are similar in scholastic preparation and in the
salaries they are paid.
The Cleveland Normal School does not prepare
definitely for the teaching of commercial subjects.
Commercial teachers are nominally supervised by
the district superintendents.
Public schools receive 29 per cent of the city's day
commercial students. The private schools receive a
few more than the sum of public, parochial, and
philanthropic schools.
Public schools receive 22 per cent of the city's
night commercial students. The private schools
receive more than twice as many as the public and
philanthropic schools. There are no night commercial
classes in parochial schools.
The length of the day course in most private
112
schools is eight months or less; in public schools it is
four years.
The public school, if it believes in longer prepara-
tion for commercial work than most private schools
give, should demonstrate the reason to parents and
children.
Training for boys and girls should be different in
content and in emphasis.
The usual course of study in commercial schools
is suitable for girls and unsuitable for boys.
A girl needs, chiefly, specific training in some one
line of work. She has a choice among stenography,
bookkeeping, and machine operating.
A boy needs, chiefly, general education putting
emphasis on writing, figuring, and spelling; general
information; and the development of certain quali-
ties and standards.
For students electing to go into commercial work,
general education may be taught more effectively
through the medium of commercial subjects than
through academic ones.
Boys' training looks forward to both clerical work
and business administration; but as clerical work is a
preparation for business and is likely to occupy the
first few years of wage earning, training should aim
especially to meet the needs of clerical positions.
Clerical positions for boys cover a variety of work
which cannot be definitely anticipated and cannot
therefore be specifically trained for. But certain
fundamental needs are common to all.
113
Most of the specialized training for boys should be
given in night continuation classes.
Girl stenographers need a full high school course
for its educational value and for maturity. Girls
going into other clerical positions can qualify with
a year or two less of education; but immaturity in
any case puts them at a disadvantage.
Boys' training, for those who cannot remain in
school, should be compressed into fewer than four
years. Immaturity in the case of boys is not a great
disadvantage.
Bookkeeping has general value in the information
it gives about business methods and for its drill in
accuracy. To some extent it may aid in the develop-
ment of reasoning.
Much of the bookkeeping in actual use in business
consists in making entries of one kind only and in
checking and verifying. Understanding of debit and
credit, posting, and trial balance, is the maximum
practical need of the younger workers.
Penmanship demands compactness, legibility,
neatness, and ease in writing; also, the correct
writing and placing of figures.
The chief demand of business in arithmetic is for
fundamental operations — adding and multiplying —
also for ability to make calculations and to verify
results mentally.
Undergraduate experience in school or business
offices may be a valuable method of acquainting
students with office practice and routine and with
business organization and business standards.
114
CHAPTER XIII
SUMMARY OF REPORT ON DEPARTMENT
STORE OCCUPATIONS
The field covered in this volume is limited to the
business of retail selling as carried on in the depart-
ment stores and some other stores of Cleveland.
The retail stores considered can all be assigned to one
of the three following classes: (1) The department
store of the first rank which draws trade not only
from the whole city and the suburbs but also from
the towns and smaller cities of a large surrounding
district; (2) the neighborhood store which does a
smaller business within narrower limits, drawing
its trade, as the name indicates, from the immediate
neighborhood; (3) the five and ten cent store, well
known by syndicate names, where no merchandise
which must be sold above 10 cents is carried.
Department Stores
The five largest department stores in Cleveland em-
ploy about 5,800 people distributed among several
mercantile departments, and in a variety of occupa-
tions that find a place in the industry. Of these
5,800 people approximately seven-tenths are women
115
and three-tenths are men; 90 per cent are over 18
years of age and 10 per cent are under 18.
The entire force of a store is sometimes arbitrarily
divided by the management into "productive/' and
" non-productive" help. From 40 to 60 per cent of
the employees were reported as actually taking in
money, while the remainder, the " non-producers/ '
were engaged in keeping the business going and mak-
ing it possible for the " producers" to sell goods.
The greatest number of opportunities either for
employment or promotion are in the selling force.
This is often spoken as being "on the floor." Both
boys and girls may find employment here, though a
large majority of the sales force is made up of them.
Speaking in general terms, men are only employed
to sell men's furnishings, sporting goods, bulky mer-
chandise, such as rugs, furniture, blankets, etc., and
yard goods which are difficult to handle, such as
household linens and dress goods. Positions as
buyers and buyer's assistants are not restricted by
sex and boys and girls may both consider them as a
possible goal.
Neighborhood Stores
A neighborhood store is that type of department
store which draws its trade from a comparatively
limited area of which the store is the center. The
kind of goods carried are practically the same as in
the large department store and the variety of mer-
chandise may be nearly as great; but the selection is
more limited because of the small stock.
116
Promotion to selling positions is more rapid in the
neighborhood stores than in regular department
stores. One reason for this is that a larger propor-
tion of the force is "productive," t, e., selling. This
proportion may run as high as 80 or even 90 per cent,
as compared with the 40 to 60 per cent of "pro-
ductive" help in large department stores.
Employment in these stores is looked upon as de-
sirable preliminary training for service in larger de-
partment stores. This is the general opinion held
by those who hire the employees in the larger stores.
The selling experience gained in neighborhood stores
is looked upon as general, in that it gives an ac-
quaintance with a variety of merchandise rather
than an extensive knowledge of any line of stock.
This experience makes the employee adaptable and
resourceful. Another advantage of neighborhood
training for sales people is the fact that they are
brought into closer human relations with the cus-
tomer and thus learn the value of personality as a
factor in making sales.
Five and Ten Cent Stores
Cleveland had in the fall of 1915 six large stores
where nothing costing over 10 cents is sold. These
belong to three syndicates or chains. To show the
extent to which this business has developed it may
be stated that the largest of these syndicates, which
controls three of the six Cleveland stores, has 747
branches in different parts of the country.
117
The number of saleswomen in a single store ranges
from 12 to 70. The total number in the six stores
was approximately 226. The shift in this branch of
retail trade is large, as there are continual changes in
the selling force. One store reported the number of
new employees hired in six months as being about
equal to the average selling force.
The managers of the five and ten cent stores with-
out exception stated that they preferred to hire be-
ginners who were without store experience. The
hours of work are longer and the conditions under
which the work is done are more trying than is
usually the case in the larger department stores.
The girl who expects her application for employ-
ment in the five and ten cent store to be accepted
must be 18 years old in order that she may legally
work after six o'clock. It is better for her to be with-
out previous selling experience (unless in other five
and ten cent stores), as employers in these stores
prefer to train help according to their own methods.
Wages and Employment
The wages paid beginners in the department stores
are fair as compared with other industries employing
the same grade of help. Boys and girls when they
first enter employment receive from $3.50 to $7, de-
pending on the store where they get their first job.
In addition to the salary most department stores
give bonuses or commissions through which the
members of the sales force may increase their com-
118
pensation. The Survey Staff worked out compari-
sons on the basis of data supplied by the State In-
dustrial Commission between the earnings of workers
in department store occupations and those in other
LMT»J4Jb£-
$15 and over
Workers in millinery and lace goods
3
Saleswomen in retail and wholesale stores
IF1
M
m
m±
2^£^
10
Employees in women's clothing factories
Wage earners (not clerks or salespeople) in stores
Workers in telephone and telegraph offices
' ,— , I 1
Diagram 3. — Per cent of women earning each class of weekly
wages in each of six occupations
industries. Diagram 3 shows graphically a compari-
son of the wages of women workers in six different
industries. An interesting point brought out by this
graphic comparison is that retail trade constitutes a
119
much better field for women's employment as com-
pared with the great majority of positions open to
them in other lines than is commonly assumed to be
the case. This is brought out even more clearly in
Table 15, which compares, on a percentage basis,
those who earn $12 a week and over, in all of the in-
dustries of the city employing as many as 500 women
in 1914.
TABLE 15.— PER CENT OF WOMEN EMPLOYEES OVER 18 YEARS
OF AGE EARNING $12 A WEEK AND OVER
Office employees, in retail and wholesale stores. .31.8
Employees in women's clothing factories 22.5
Saleswomen in retail and wholesale stores 21.0
Employees in men's clothing factories 13.3
Employees in hosiery and knit goods factories. . 7.9
Employees in printing and publishing establish-
ments 7.7
Employees in telephone and telegraph offices ... 6.3
Employees in laundries and dry cleaning estab-
ments 4.4
Employees in cigar and tobacco factories 3.9
Employees in gas and electric fixtures concerns . . 3.2
If the data were for retail stores only and did not in-
clude wholesale stores, then office work, which now
stands at the head of the list, would probably not
make so good a showing, although the superiority
over the selling positions is, from the wage-earning
standpoint, so marked that there seems to be no es-
cape from the conclusion that on the whole women
office workers are better paid than women in the
sales force. On the other hand the proportion of sales-
women earning $12 and over is from nearly seven
times as great to not far from twice as great as it is
in the factory industries, if we except the workers
120
in women's clothing factories, whose earnings per
week are better than those of the saleswomen.
With respect to the men employed on the sales
force of the department stores a somewhat different
situation exists. In Diagram 4 a comparison is made
of the wages paid in sales positions with the wages
paid in clerical positions. Here it will be noted that
men who sell goods in retail and wholesale stores earn
more on the average than men occupying clerical
positions, such as bookkeepers, stenographers, and
$25 and over
Salesmen in stores
Clerical workers in stores
Diagram 4. — Per cent of salesmen and of men clerical workers
in stores receiving each class of weekly wage
office clerks. This comparison does not include
traveling salesmen. A further comparison of the
earnings of the men in stores with the earnings of
male workers (omitting office clerks) in the different
industries of the city employing the largest number
of men is given in Diagram 5, which shows the per
cent in each industry earning $18 a week and over.
In comparing wages in stores with those in the
manufacturing industries it must be not forgotten
121
that the working day and week in the larger stores
is shorter than in most of the factories. Hence a
comparison of earnings on the basis of wage per
hour would show a still greater advantage in favor
of both sales persons and clerical workers.
Printing and
publishing eetablishmenta
50
Steel work 8 and
rolling mills
31
Automobile
factories
30
RETAIL AND
WHOLESALE STORES
2S
Stove and
furnace factories
27
Foundry and machine
shop products
2k
Diagram 5. — Per cent of male workers in non-clerical positions
in six industries earning $18 per week and over
Regularity of Employment
In department store work and in nearly all branches
of retail selling there is a marked fluctuation in the
number employed during the year. Sales work in
the department stores is seasonal in the sense that
a large number of extra sales women are taken on
during the Christmas season for a period of tempo-
rary employment, usually lasting from one to two
months. The proportion of the total working force
for the whole year employed in such transient jobs
122
is approximately one-fourth. How selling positions
in retail and wholesale stores compare with other
fields of employment in this respect is seen in Dia-
gram 6.
Workers in telephone and telegraph offices
Average Employed — 9*$
Office workers in retail and wholesale stores
Average Employed — 9l£
Wage earners (not clerks or salespeople) in stores
Average Employed — Slf>
Employees in women's clothing factories
Average Employed — 83J&
Saleswomen in retail and wholesale stores
Average Employed — 79/&
Workers in millinery and lace goods
Average Employed — 59^
Diagram 6. — Per cent that the average number of women em-
ployed during the year is of the highest number employed in
each of six industries
Opportunities for Advancement
In regard to promotion in department stores it
should be noted that as a rule the executives are
made in the business and are not, as in some in-
dustries, brought in from the outside because they
123
must have some special training which the organiza-
tion itself does not provide. Not only in Cleveland
but in other cities where studies of the same kind
have been made it has been found that practically
all the people holding important floor positions have
come up from the ranks. The various lines of pro-
motion through the different departments are an-
alyzed in detail in the report.
The Problem of Training
That vocational training for department store em-
ployees is both desirable and possible is proved by
the fact that most of the large stores in Cleveland
make some provision for the instruction of their
workers. Some of these classes are carefully organ-
ized and excellently taught with every promise of
increasing in usefulness. Others employ methods of
instruction which belong to the academic school of
an earlier decade and give evidence that the problem
of vocational training with which they are presum-
ably concerned is not even understood.
From the standpoint of the school there are two
well recognized kinds of training possible for depart-
ment store employees: trade preparatory and trade
extension training. Eventually it may prove prac-
ticable to organize instruction of both kinds, but it
is the opinion of the author of the report that under
present conditions the surest results can be expected
from trade extension training. In trade extension in-
struction the members of the group to be dealt with
124
have already secured their foothold in the industry;
and having mastered at least the rudiments of their
job they have acquired a basis of experience which
may be utilized for purposes of instruction. These
people are responsive to teaching organized with re-
gard to their needs, for daily experience is demon-
strating to them their deficiencies.
The success of the proposed training will largely
depend upon the employment of simple and direct
methods that shall place this knowledge in the hands
and head of the person or group needing it. The
application of this instruction must be immediate
and practical and must not be dependent upon the
working out of a complicated course or schedule.
The organization must be flexible enough to admit
of bringing together a group having a common need,
although they may come from different departments
of the business. Since the unit of class organization
is not previous school experience or similar employ-
ment, it will be seen that this class should be held
only until the need is fully supplied and should then
give place to another organized on the same basis.
As in all vocational teaching, the size of the class
should be limited. To make this work really effec-
tive, the instructor should come in sufficiently close
contact with all pupils to enable him to obtain a
personal knowledge of their needs and capabilities.
A further necessity for small classes and individual
instruction is found in the fact that there is a con-
stant shift of employees in the industry as well as
frequent accessions from the outside.
125
It readily can be seen that this is not a problem of
the regular school and that it cannot be met by ordi-
nary classroom methods. Part time or continuation
classes, such as have already proved feasible for
other kinds of trade instruction, are the most practi-
cable methods of doing this work.
Classes for the instruction of employees are al-
ready maintained in the majority of large stores.
The extension of this plan of separate responsibility
is one way of meeting the problem. But this method
has certain obvious faults. The unequal opportunity
which it affords to department store employees as a
body is a conspicuous drawback. The value of the
instruction so given, moreover, will always depend
to a large extent on the comprehension of the prob-
lem by the firm maintaining the classes. The method
involves much duplication of effort, which is par-
ticularly wasteful when the instruction of small
groups is involved.
Another possible method would be for the several
department stores to get together and cooperate in
providing instruction. There would seem to be no
reason why stores should not unite for this purpose
as well as for any other. The advantages of this
method are economy of maintenance and adminis-
tration, the ability to command expert service, and
the possibility of securing and sharing the results of a
great variety of such experiences as does not consist
of exclusive trade secrets.
The number of people whom it would be necessary
to employ exclusively for the purpose of conducting
126
these classes would be small as compared with the
results accomplished. Collectively these stores now
have in their employ a body of highly paid experts
in all lines of merchandise. A large amount of the
most accurate technical knowledge covering the
work of all departments is already available in the
several stores. These are valuable resources which
should be utilized by a cooperative school of this
kind.
For the head of such a school, it would be desirable
to secure a man or woman of more than usual ability
and discernment who, above all else, could sense the
business and routine of each contributing store from
the standpoint of the employee and of store organ-
ization. It would be the business of this person to
become familiar with the available sources of knowl-
edge in the different stores and then arrange for the
presentation of this knowledge to the various classes.
By cooperation with the floor men, heads of sections
and departments, as well as with the employees
themselves, he should come into close contact with
the requirements of the workers and should gather
from the different stores those who, because of their
common need, can be made into a "school unit."
It would also be necessary to employ assistants of
practical experience who would attend to the details
of routine teaching, and act as interpreters for those
experts who have the knowledge but not the ability
to impart it even to a small class.
It is realized that a scheme of this kind would in-
volve the overcoming of many objections and diffi-
127
culties of adjustment before it could be put into
actual operation. It would necessitate mutual con-
cessions and forbearance on the part of everybody
concerned, but the results would unquestionably
justify the labor.
A third method, already in operation in Boston,
New York, and Buffalo, calls for the cooperation of
the stores and the schools. This partnership, it is
claimed, makes certain that the needs of the pupil
are considered before the demands of the business.
It insures equal opportunity for all employees so far
as instruction is concerned and it divides the ex-
pense of maintenance between the industry and the
school. It is to be regretted that this scheme fre-
quently results in the employment of teachers who,
although certificated for regular school work, have
no other qualifications, instead of persons of practical
experience. The employment of such teachers too
often leads to the following of ordinary school prac-
tices and academic traditions rather than the meth-
ods and practice of business.
In some quarters it is maintained that this in-
struction should be entirely taken over by the public
schools, thus relieving the store of any responsibility
in the matter. It is probably not now advisable for
the school to assume full responsibility for such train-
ing. The heavy expense involved and the physical
limitations of the schools would make it difficult,
without the cooperation of the store, to reproduce
the trade atmosphere necessary for real vocational
training. As a result, the instruction would become
128
abstract and theoretical, with the major portion of
the effort limited to a continuation of elementary
school subjects taught with reference to their appli-
cation to department store work.
Character of the Instruction
The analysis of the industry shows that in each occu-
pation or job there is a definite amount of knowl-
edge which must be acquired by the efficient worker.
A study of this analysis and of the examples of tech-
nical knowledge needed by the worker at different
points in the industry will show that no such thing
as a general course is possible. In every case the
character of the instruction should be such that it
will answer a definite need of the employee. What
this instruction should be in specific cases can be
settled only, on the one hand, by a thorough analysis
of the occupation to determine what demands it
makes upon the workers, and on the other, by a care-
ful study of the workers themselves to ascertain how
far they have been unable to meet these demands
without assistance. Lessons can then be organized
dealing with such subject matter as individuals or
groups have failed to grasp, the lack of which limits
their efficiency or restricts their usefulness. It can
readily be seen that this instruction will cover a wide
range of subjects, from the use of fractions needed by
checkers and salesgirls in yard goods sections, to the
special technical knowledge of fine furs required by
the salesperson who handles this merchandise.
9 129
The method by which this instruction can best be
given is in a series of short unit courses. In every
case the length of the course is to be determined by
the subject matter. For instance, two one-half hour
lessons may be a "course/' when this time is suffi-
cient for the necessary teaching.
The group or class to which this instruction is
given might be made up of those who need the same
technical knowledge, although they might expect
to make a different application of this instruction.
For instance, the unit course on silks might be given
to a group composed of salespeople from the silk
section, the waists and gowns section, and the section
of men's neckwear.
The report gives detailed examples of the kinds of
technical knowledge needed in the different depart-
ments of the store. It maintains that such instruc-
tion cannot be successfully given by regular school
teachers. As in other industries the teacher needs
actual experience in the occupation for which train-
ing is given. Academic training and teaching ex-
perience are desirable and valuable, but among the
qualifications demanded of a teacher of this kind
they are of secondary importance.
The final chapter of the report contains valuable
instructions for young persons who desire to secure
positions in retail trade. These instructions cover
such matters as work papers, methods of securing a
position, and requirements for employment in vari-
ous kinds of department store work.
130
CHAPTER XIV
SUMMARY OF REPORT ON THE
GARMENT TRADES
The clothing industry in Cleveland has grown very
rapidly in recent years. During the 10 year period
from 1900-10 the number of persons employed in
the industry increased approximately 100 per cent.
This increase was much greater than the increase
throughout the country as a whole and was more
than twice as large as the increase in the population
of the city. There is every indication that this rapid
growth is still continuing. It is estimated that ap-
proximately 10,000 workers are employed in the in-
dustry at the present time.
The distribution of men and women in the in-
dustry is most interesting. The making of men's
garments has been more fully standardized and is
subject to fewer changes than the making of women's
garments. In this standardized and systematized
branch of the industry the women now outnumber
the men. In the manufacture of women's garments,
where the styles change more frequently and the
work is of a more varied character, more men than
women are employed.
The methods of work are of three general types:
131
The old tailoring system known as "team work," or
a slight modification of it; piece operating; and sec-
tion work. Under the team system, used extensively
in the making of women's coats, a head tailor hires
his own helpers (operators and finishers), supervises
them and pays them by the week out of the lump
sum he receives for the garments from the clothing
establishment. Under the piece operating system
each operator sews up all the seams on one "piece, "
or garment, and each finisher does all the hand sewing
on one garment. Each operator and each finisher
is an independent worker. The whole body of fin-
ishers keeps pace with the whole body of operators.
Piece operating is used almost entirely in dress and
skirt making, and to some extent in coat making.
The section system is based on the subdivision of
processes into a number of minor operations. The
workers are divided into groups, each group making
a certain part of the garment. The various opera-
tions are divided into as many minor operations as
the number of workers and quantity and kind of
materials will warrant. Each of these minor opera-
tions is performed by operators who do nothing else.
This specialization has been carried to a high degree
in the manufacture of men's clothing, and section
work is increasingly used on women's coats.
Characteristics of the Working Force
One of the objects of the study was to find how many
positions there are for men and women in each occu-
132
pation in the industry. Through the cooperation of
employers data were obtained from the records of
50 establishments employing a total of 8,337 garment
workers, approximately four-fifths of the total number
in the city. The distribution of workers by sex in
the various occupations is shown in Diagram 7. The
apportioning of work to the two sexes seems to de-
pend partly upon the weight of materials and partly
upon previous training. The men are mostly foreign
born tailors who have had the kind of training neces-
sary for the more complicated work. The women are
largely American born of foreign parentage, trained
in American shops and employed chiefly upon opera-
tions that may be learned in a relatively short time.
Cutting and pressing are practically monopolized by
men. Nearly all hand sewers are women, except for
a few basters on men's clothing. Most designers are
men, although a few women designers are found in
dress and waist shops.
In the largest trade, — machine operating, — about
two-thirds of the workers are women. In no trade
in which both sexes are employed is the difference
in their work more apparent. The weight of ma-
terials decides to some extent the division of operat-
ing between men and women. Some employers are
of the opinion that garments made of such thick ma-
terials as plush, corduroys, and cheviots are too
heavy to be manipulated under needle machinery by
women and consequently employ only men operators.
Where light weight materials are used, as in the
manufacture of dresses and waists, delicacy in hand-
133
•
O
3
Designers
Trimmers
Examiners
53 men
29 men
67 men
k women
1^3 women
12U women
Total 57
Total 172
Total 191
J
O
•
Forepersons
Miscellaneous
Cutters
192 men
50 men
6l6 men
98 women
286 women
3 women
Toted 290
Total 336
Total 619
•J
Press ere
O
Hand sewers
3
Machine operators
731 »«i
122 men
1U48 men
98 women
1825 women
2U4g women
Total 829
Total 19^7
Total 3896
Diagram 7. — Distribution of 8,337 clothing workers by sex in
the principal occupations in the garment industry
134
ling is required, and nearly all the operators are
women.
Four-fifths of the men and two-fifths of the women
employed in the industry are of foreign birth and the
majority of the native born workers are of foreign
parentage. There is an increasing demand for work-
ers who understand English, due to the fact that they
are able to follow directions more intelligently.
There are relatively few workers under the age
of 18. Many firms will employ no one under this age
because of various complications which arise in con-
nection with the age and schooling certification of
girls between the ages of 16 and 18. Of 25 women's
clothing factories visited during the Survey only
nine had any workers under 18. According to the
report of the Industrial Commission of Ohio for 1914
only eight per cent of the workers employed in mak-
ing men's clothing, and less than two per cent of the
workers employed in making women's clothing were
under 18 years of age.
Earnings
In general the wages paid in garment making com-
pare favorably with those of other manufacturing
industries. This is particularly true with respect to
the earnings of women workers. A considerably
larger proportion of the women employed in the gar-
ment industry earn what may be considered high
wages for industrial workers than in any of the larger
factory industries of the city. This is clearly shown
135
WOMEN'S CLOTHING
55
Retail and wholesale stores
1
MEN'S CLOTHING
Hosiery and knit goods
Printing and publishing
Laundries
Gas and electric fixtures
ft]
Under $8 $8 to $12 $12 and over
l
]
Diagram 8. — Percentage of women in men's and women's
clothing and seven other important women employing in-
dustries receiving under $8, $8 to $12, and $12 and over per
week
136
in Diagram 8 which lists nine of the principal fields
of industrial employment for women. The propor-
tions of women receiving under $8 a week are lower
in men's and women's clothing than in the other
seven industries. In the proportion of women re-
ceiving $12 and over, women's clothing ranks first
and men's clothing third.
The comparison of the wages paid men employees
shown in Diagram 9 is somewhat less favorable.
Women's clothing ranks with printing and publish-
ing as to the proportion of male workers receiving
the highest specified earnings per week. Men's
clothing ranks sixth among the industries compared.
The various kinds of work do not command fixed
wage rates, as do many other types of industrial em-
ployment. Quantity of output as well as quality of
workmanship is an important factor in the deter-
mination of wages. Men generally turn out a greater
output than women on the same kind of work and
piece workers usually earn more than those paid by
the week. The lowest, average, and highest wages for
each of the principal occupations in the two branches
of the industry are shown in Tables 16 and 17.
One reason often given for the higher earnings re-
ceived by workers on women's garments is the greater
irregularity of employment in this branch of the in-
dustry. This, however, does not sufficiently account
for the difference. The most weighty reason is that
a higher degree of adaptability is required of workers
than is the case in the manufacture of men's clothing.
137
Printing and publishin
WOMEN'S CLOTHING
Automobiles
Steel works and rolling mills
Shipbuilding including boatbuildini
MEN'S CLOTHINa
Stoves and furnaces
m
Foundry and machine shop products
Electrical machinery, apparatus, and supplies
Under $18 $18 to $25 $25 and over
■■■i w///Mm i i
Diagram 9. — Percentage of men in men's and women's clothing
and seven other manufacturing industries receiving under $18,
$18 to $25, and $25 and over per week
138
TABLE 16.— WAGES FOR FULL-TIME WORKING WEEK,
WOMEN'S CLOTHING, CLEVELAND, 1915
Workers
Lowest
Average
Highest
Assorters, women
$6.00
$8.75
$14.00
Hand sewers, women
6.00
10.00
20.00
Trimming girls
7.00
10.25
15.00
Operators,* women
6.00
12.00
30.00
Sample makers, women
10.00
12.75
15.00
Examiners, women
8.00
13.50
18.00
Models, suit and cloak
10.00
15.25
21.00
Forewomen
9.00
16.25
25.00
Operators,* men
7.00
17.75
50.00
Pressers, men
9.00
18.25
35.00
Cutters, f men
8.00
19.25
30.00
Pattern graders, suit and cloak, men
13.00
22.00
27.50
Sample makers, men
13.00
22.50
25.00
Examiners, men
16.00
25.00
45.00
Head tailors, men
18.00
25.00
Foremen
14.00
30.00
75.00
* Includes piece and section operators and helpers to head tailors
t Includes all cutters except foremen, apprentices, and pattern graders
TABLE 17.— AVERAGE WAGES FOR FULL-TIME WORKING
WEEK FOR SIMILAR WORKERS, MEN'S AND WOMEN'S
CLOTHING, CLEVELAND, 1915
Workers
Hand sewers, women
Section operators, women
Examiners, women
Section operators, men
Pressers, under
Forewomen
Pressers, upper
Cutters, cloth
Examiners, men
Foremen
Men's
Women's
clothing
clothing
$9.50
$10.00
9.25
11.25
7.00
13.50
16.50
15.25
12.00
15.75
11.00
16.25
18.50
19.50
18.75
20.00
17.75
25.00
29.25
30.00
Regularity of Employment
The making of women's clothing is seasonal, to meet
a seasonal purchasing demand. Most people pur-
chase their summer clothes in April and May, and
139
their winter clothes in October and November.
During the months previous to these purchasing
seasons a large number of workers are needed, but
after the height of the purchasing period employ-
ment becomes less and less steady until the first de-
mands of the new season are felt. During the rush
season a greater number of workers is employed, or
the output may be augmented by increasing the
speed at which the work is performed or the number
of hours in the working day. A combination of these
methods is frequently used. During dull periods the
workers may be busy from a few hours a week to full
working time; while in rush periods they may work
not only the regular working hours, but in addition
a good deal of over-time.
Compared with other manufacturing industries
as regards regularity of employment men's clothing
makes an excellent showing while women's clothing
ranks low. In Diagram 10 the average number of
unemployed among each 100 workers is shown for
men's and women's clothing and for 15 other large
manufacturing industries in the city. Men's cloth-
ing leads the list, with an average unemployment of
four among each 100 workers, while women's cloth-
ing ranks 14th, with 15 among each 100.
Training and Promotion
Designers learn their work through apprenticeships
to custom tailors and cutters and by taking supple-
mentary courses in drafting and grading of patterns
140
Men1 8 clothing U
Foundry and machine shop products
Steel worke and rolling mills
Copper, tin, and sheet iron products
Lumber and planing mill products
Bolts, nuts, washers, rivets
Furniture and refrigerators
Stoves and furnaces
Hosiery and knit goods
Automobiles
Cutlery and tools
Women's clothing
Gas and electric fixtures
Slaughtering and meat packing
Shipbuilding
Printing and publishing
Electrical machinery
Diagram 10. — The black portions of the bars show the average
number of unemployed among each 100 workers in men's
clothing, women's clothing and 15 other specified industries
in a designing school. Most designers in Cleveland
have had training in designing schools in New York
or Chicago.
With but few exceptions organized training for
141
machine operating is found only in the largest estab-
lishments. There is general agreement among em-
ployers that it takes a girl who has never operated a
machine before about four weeks to learn an easy
operation well enough to be taken on at regular
piece rates. A much longer time is required to be-
come a first class worker on a single operation, and
to acquire skill in a group of operations takes from
one to two years.
Girls are not usually employed as hand sewers
unless they know how to do plain sewing. A girl who
starts with this knowledge should be able to learn
factory sewing well enough to earn fair wages within
from six months to a year.
In cutting, which has a so-called apprenticeship
lasting from two to six years, there is no formal sys-
tem of instruction. Boys must pick up the trade from
observation and practice. Beginners start as errand
boys, cloth boys, bundlers, or helpers.
Pressing is usually learned in cleaning and press-
ing shops. It takes about eight weeks for a green
hand to become a good seam presser. To become a
final presser on skirts and dresses requires from six
months to a year, and on jackets and cloaks from two
to three years.
Examiners have usually had considerable previous
experience as machine operators or finishers. The
length of experience depends on the kinds of gar-
ments and ranges from three to eight years.
Trimmers and assorters learn their work as helpers
to experienced employees. A year or so of experience
142
is required before they can be entrusted with re-
sponsible work.
Foremen are selected from the working force or,
in a few cases, trained especially for their positions.
Although there are few opportunities each year for
advancement to foremanship, employers declare they
cannot get enough persons of ability to fill vacancies.
A study of the previous experience of foremen and
forewomen made by the survey shows that they
come from nearly every department of the factory.
The length of previous experience among the cases
studied ranged from three months to nine years.
Educational Needs
The quality which proprietors of garment making
establishments value above all others in their em-
ployees is adaptability. The reason for this is that
the manufacturing of clothing differs from almost all
other kinds of industrial work in the frequency with
which changes take place in the size and shape of the
product and in the range of materials which must be
handled by the same workers. There is an annual
change in the weight of cloth used for the different
seasons, from light to heavy and from heavy to light.
The size and shape of the pieces which compose the
finished garment are determined by changes in style
which vary from the minor modifications occurring
yearly in men's clothing to the radical changes in the
style of women's clothing. A wide variety of fabrics
is employed, ranging from thick to thin, smooth to
143
rough, closely woven to loosely woven and from plain
weave to fancy weave. In one season a single estab-
lishment will make garments from as many as 200
different fabrics, and each operator is likely to work
upon 60 or more different kinds of cloth.
In view of the fact that many of the workers are
foreigners or of foreign parentage, and that the fre-
quent changes in styles and materials require the
giving of detailed instructions by foremen, instruc-
tion in English is of more importance in the garment
trades than in occupations where there is a larger
proportion of native born and where the products and
processes are more uniformly standardized.
All clothing workers should have a practical knowl-
edge of the fundamental operations of arithmetic.
Where the piece and section systems are in operation
it is important for the worker to keep account of
what she has accomplished and to know enough
arithmetic to check her own record with the tally
kept by the foreman or payroll girl. Some of the
occupations, such as cutting, involve a considerable
amount of arithmetical computation.
As in other trades, all workers and prospective
workers need a general knowledge of industrial con-
ditions. They would greatly benefit from a better
understanding of the supply of labor, factors affect-
ing prices, organization of workers, industrial legis-
lation, the relative importance of the field of employ-
ment in different industries, the nature of important
industrial processes, and the like. At the present
time there is little opportunity for gaining such in-
144
formation either before entering any specific line of
work or afterwards.
For certain small groups within the clothing in-
dustry there are needs in the way of technical train-
ing that are important and at present unsupplied.
Training in applied mathematics, drafting and design
would be of benefit to a considerable number of em-
ployees who are occupying or working towards ad-
vanced positions.
A large proportion of the women workers need skill
in hand sewing. Before girls enter the industry they
should have careful and systematic training in plain
sewing stitches, sewing on buttons and other fasten-
ers, and button hole making.
Machine operating is the most important occupa-
tion in the industry, and employs more women than
any other occupation in the city, except perhaps
dressmaking. After a careful study of the char-
acteristics of this occupation and the various condi-
tions affecting it, the survey reached the conclusion
that there should be established by the school system
a trade course for prospective power machine oper-
ators.
Sewing Courses in the Public Schools
In the elementary schools manual training sewing is
given in the fifth and sixth grades. It consists of
one hour a week of hand sewing taught by a regular
grade teacher or sometimes by teachers of domestic
science or other special subjects. The aim is to give
10 145
the girls a knowledge of practical sewing which may
be of use to them in the home. In five of the ele-
mentary schools hand and machine sewing is taught
by special sewing teachers. About four per cent of
all the seventh and eighth grade girls in the ele-
mentary schools receive this instruction. In the
technical high schools the sewing course covers four
years work. During the first two years all girls are
required to take plain hand and machine sewing three
and three-quarter hours a week. In the third and
fourth years they may elect either millinery or dress-
making, and special courses in these subjects are
provided for girls who wish to prepare for trade work.
The aim of the sewing course as stated in the outline
of the East Technical High School is " (1) Prepara-
tion for efficiency in the selection of the materials
used in sewing and the construction of articles re-
lating to the home and family sewing: (2) laying
the foundation for courses in college, normal school,
or business school." A two year elective course in
sewing is provided in the academic high school as a
part of the home economic course. The aim of this
sewing, which is called domestic art, is stated thus:
"Problem — my personal appearance is one of my
chief assets. What can I do to improve it?" Dress-
making and millinery classes are conducted in the
night technical high schools to teach girls how to
make their own clothes and hats.
The manual training sewing in the fifth and sixth
grades cannot be considered as furnishing any im-
portant contribution in the training of those who will
146
make their living in the sewing trades. Much the
same must be said of the work in the technical high
schools. It is taught not for the purpose of securing
quick, accurate hand or machine stitching, but to
enable the girls to make a few garments for their
personal use. Due to the fact that very few of the
girls who become wage earners in these trades re-
main in school after the completion of the elementary
course it is doubtful whether the technical high school
offers a hopeful field for practical training. The work
in the elementary schools is so hampered by lack of
equipment that the results, from the standpoint of
trade preparation, amount to very little.
Elective Sewing Courses in the Junior High
School
The reduction of retardation all through the grades
is of fundamental importance to any plan of voca-
tional training. The age of 15 is the final compulsory
attendance age for girls, and those who enter at six
and seven and make regular progress should be in the
first or second high school year by the time they reach
this age. Last year there were, however, 1,170 fif-
teen-year-old girls in the Cleveland schools who
were from one to seven grades below normal. In-
stead of being in the high school, they were scattered
from the second grade to the eighth, and they con-
stituted more than half of all the girls of that age in
the school system. It is clear that unless the schools
can carry them through more nearly on schedule
147
time there is no hope of providing industrial training
for a large proportion of them, because they reach
the end of the compulsory period before entering
the grades in which industrial training can be given
effectively and economically.
The report recommends that during the junior
high school period girls who expect to enter the
sewing trades should be given work in mechanical
drawing, elementary science, industrial conditions,
elementary mechanics and hand and machine sewing.
The fundamentals of sewing can be thoroughly
taught in two years. The work during the first year
might well be limited to hand sewing. Machine
sewing should be taken up in the second year, and
the girls given an opportunity during the third year
to specialize somewhat broadly in a trade school on
the kind of work in which they may wish to engage
— power operating, dressmaking, or millinery.
A One Year Trade Course for Girls
Specialized training must be conducted under condi-
tions closely resembling those found in the industry.
This involves equipment similar to that used in the
factory, an ample supply of materials, and a corps
of teachers who have had practical experience. It
might seem that on the score of adequate equipment
the factory itself would be the place for such train-
ing. But the fact is that the main object of the
factory is to turn out as large a quantity as possible
148
of saleable product. In the school the main object
should be to turn out as large a quantity of saleable
skill and knowledge as possible, with the saleable
product as a secondary, although necessary, feature.
The junior high school is not the place for special-
ized trade training, since it is reasonably certain that
there would not be a sufficient number of girls in
each junior high school desiring to enter a single
trade to warrant the provision of special equipment
and special teachers. For this reason the report
favors a trade course in a separate school plant where
girls who wish to specialize in any of the sewing trades
can be taught in fairly large classes. The work done
during the past few years in such institutions as the
Boston Trade School for Girls and the Manhattan
Trade School for Girls in New York City gives evi-
dence of the practicability of this plan.
Trade-Extension Training
The only instruction offered by the public school
system at the present time which can be considered
as trade-extension training for the garment industries
is that given in the sewing classes in the technical
night schools. The enrollment in these classes during
the second term of 1915-16 was 229. Only a small
proportion of the girls and women enrolled in the
night sewing classes make their living by sewing.
The students employed by day in clothing factories
or in any of the sewing trades constitute somewhat
less than 15 per cent of the total number enrolled.
149
Nearly half of the enrollment is made up of workers
in commercial, clerical or professional pursuits and
approximately one-third are not employed in any
gainful occupation.
In both technical night schools the emphasis is
laid on training for home sewing rather than on
training for wage earning. The courses now given are
not planned for workers in the garment trades, but
to help women and girls who want to learn how to
make, alter, and repair their own garments.
If a trade school of the kind described in the previ-
ous section were established it would be possible to
give at night short unit courses in machine or hand
sewing to those workers who wish to extend their ex-
perience and prepare themselves for advancement,
utilizing in the night classes the equipment of the
day school. It is probable also that special day classes
could be organized during the dull season to give
beginners the opportunity to learn new processes
and extend their knowledge of trade theory.
150
CHAPTER XV
SUMMARY OF REPORT ON DRESSMAKING
AND MILLINERY
At the time of the last census the total number of
women in Cleveland employed as milliners or dress-
makers was approximately 5,000, of whom about
seven-tenths were dressmakers and about three-
tenths milliners. For the most part they were of
native birth. The proportion of young girls engaged
in these occupations was relatively small, the age
distribution showing that only about one-third of
the milliners and less than one-fifth of the dress-
makers were under 21 years of age.
Dressmaking
Four distinctive lines of work are done by those who
are classified by the census as dressmakers and seam-
stresses: dressmaking proper, usually carried on in
shops; alteration work in stores; general sewing
done by seamstresses at home or in the homes of
customers; and the work of the so-called dressmak-
ing "school," in which the dressmaker helps her cus-
tomers do their general sewing.
Shop dressmaking is in the main confined to the
151
making of afternoon and evening gowns and fancy-
blouses. Nearly uniform processes of work are main-
tained and the workers in the different establish-
ments need about the same kinds of abilities and de-
grees of skill. There is a strong and increasing ten-
dency towards specialization of the work.
Among each 100 workers in dressmaking shops
about 13 are head girls, 55 are finishers or makers,
16 are helpers, eight are apprentices, and the rest are
lining makers, cutters, embroiderers, errand girls,
shoppers, and stock girls.
Alteration work constitutes a separate sewing
trade and consists of the adjustment of ready-made
garments to individual peculiarities. It furnishes
employment to several hundred workers in Cleve-
land.
The weekly wages most commonly paid to each
class of workers in dressmaking shops may be roughly
stated as follows: apprentices, $2 to $4; helpers $6
to $9; finishers or makers $10 to $12; and drapers
$18 to $20. Lining making, done in most shops by
apprentices or helpers, pays from $4 to $6 a week.
In one shop a specialist on linings received $12.
Women cutters, found in two shops, and doing super-
visory work similar to that done by drapers, earned
from $15 to $25. Hemstitchers earn $10 to $14 and
a guimpe maker in one shop earned $12. Errand girls
were found at $3 and $6; stock girls at $8, $12, and
$13; and shoppers at from $3.50 to $10.
Beginners in alteration departments are started
at from $5 to $7. Regular alteration hands earn from
152
$7 to $18, the average being $9 or $10. Fitters earn
about the same as drapers in dressmaking shops,
averaging from $15 to $18, with a range of from $10
to $25.
As a rule comparatively little time is lost through
irregularity of employment. Workers average from
10 to 11 months' work out of the year. Establish-
ments usually close during the month of August and
for one or two weeks in the spring. Workers in alter-
ation department average 11 months of work. Dress
alteration work is steady, while suit and coat altera-
tion is irregular.
Apprenticeship in dressmaking comprehends a
trying-out period of from six months to a year.
Most shops take apprentices, the proportion in the
trade being one to every 12 workers; and an effort
is made to keep these new workers if they are at all
satisfactory. There is no standardized apprentice-
ship wage. Girls may serve without pay for six
months, or may start at from 50 cents to $4 a week.
At the end of six months they may be earning from
$1.50 to $6. The lack of any wage standard in ap-
prenticeship probably accounts for the fact that it
is difficult to get girls to enter this trade.
Millinery
Millinery requires the handling of small pieces of
the most varied sorts of material, most of it perish-
able. The materials must be measured, cut, turned,
twisted, and draped into innumerable designs and
153
color combinations, and sewed with various kinds of
stitching. The main processes are making, trimming,
and designing. Making consists in fashioning a speci-
fied shape from wire or buckram and covering it
with such materials as straw or velvet. The covering
may be put on plain, or may be shirred or draped.
Trimming consists in placing and sewing on all sorts
of decorative materials. A combination of the two
processes of making and trimming, known as copy-
ing, consists in making a hat from the beginning
exactly like a specified model. Designing is the crea-
tion of original models.
The increase in the use of the factory-made hat
has decreased the number of workers in custom mil-
linery, and has also had an effect in diverting busi-
ness from small retail shops to millinery depart-
ments in stores. The number of millinery workers
constantly fluctuates, not only from season to sea-
son, but from year to year. According to a close esti-
mate not more than 2,000 workers were actually
engaged in millinery occupations during the busiest
part of 1915. Between 1,200 and 1,400 were in re-
tail shops; about 300 were in millinery departments
in stores; and about 300 more were in wholesale
houses.
The data collected indicate that the wages of
workers in retail shops are lower in general than the
wages of workers in millinery departments in stores
and in wholesale houses. Makers in retail shops earn
from $3 to $16 a week, the average being about $8.
Trimmers earn from $10 to $40, with an average of
154
about $18. Out of 45 retail shops, only 22 paid as
high as $10 to any maker; 15 paid as high as $12;
six paid as high as $15; and only one paid over $15.
In millinery departments in stores, trimmers, who
are generally designers, earn from $15 to $50 a week
or more. The rate most commonly received is $25.
Makers are started at from $4 to $6 and may advance
to $15, with an average of about $10.
In wholesale houses designers earn from $25 to
$60, or more. Makers start at about $5, and the
usual range is from $10 to $15. Those employed in
straight copying may earn between $15 and $20.
The 1914 report of the Industrial Commission of
Ohio presents data showing that of the women 18
years of age and over employed in wholesale houses
37 per cent receive under $8, about 22 per cent re-
ceive between $8 and $12, while 41 per cent receive
$12 and over. The girls under 18 years of age were,
with one exception, receiving less than $4 per week.
Employment in retail shops averages about 32
weeks during the year; in the millinery departments
of stores from 32 to 42 weeks; and in wholesale
houses about 40 weeks. The proportion of workers
employed the year round is very small. The major-
ity of millinery workers are faced with the problem
of tiding themselves over two dull seasons, aggre-
gating from 12 to 28 weeks each year.
The millinery apprenticeship period lasts for two
seasons of 12 weeks each. Almost all retail shops
take apprentices in large numbers, there being one
apprentice to every three or four workers in the trade.
155
Few apprentices are found in stores and wholesale
houses. The apprenticeship wage is extremely low.
The usual rate is $1 a week during the first season and
from $1.50 to $2 during the second.
The Problem of Training
The needs of girls who are soon to leave school and
go to work can best be met by a modification of the
junior high school course and by the establishment
of a one-year trade school for girls. Before a re-
organization of the junior high school work is made
to meet the needs of these girls an effort should be
made to reduce retardation so that more girls will
reach the junior high school before the end of the
compulsory attendance period. The present courses
should be reorganized so as to give basic preparation
for wage earning and should be as concrete and real
as a thorough understanding of the requirements of
the gainful occupations can make them. Thorough
sewing courses planned from the standpoint of the
sewing trades should be offered, extending over two
years. The program suggested closely resembles
that recommended for the garment trades.
It is also recommended that a one-year trade
school be established for preparing girls to enter
employment in dressmaking and millinery. The
history of trade schools for girls, both private and
public, indicates that such a school, if properly con-
ducted, would be highly successful in Cleveland.
The classes in sewing and millinery in the evening
156
technical high schools do not offer trade-extension
training for workers and it is not likely that they
could be easily reorganized to furnish such training.
It is recommended that if a trade school is estab-
lished in Cleveland, short unit courses in sewing and
related subjects, such as design, be given in even-
ing classes.
157
CHAPTER XVI
SUMMARY OF REPORT ON THE METAL
TRADES
Approximately one-half of the total number of per-
sons in Cleveland engaged in manufacturing are
found in the metal industries. When the last federal
census was taken nearly one-seventh of the entire
male population was employed in establishments
engaged in the manufacture of crude or finished metal
products. Pittsburgh only, among the 10 largest
cities in the country, has a higher proportion of its
industrial population working in such establishments.
In relation to its total population, Cleveland has
twice as many people working in these industries as
Chicago, three times as many as Philadelphia, and
four times as many as New York. It is estimated
that at the present time the number of wage earners
in the city engaged in this kind of work is between
70,000 and 80,000.
The report deals with the three leading industries
of the city, — foundry and machine shop products,
automobile manufacturing, and steel works and roll-
ing mills. The study of this last group also includes
several related industries, such as blast furnaces,
wire mills, nail mills, and bolt, nut, and rivet fac-
158
tories. About three-fourths of the total number of
wage earners in the city engaged in the manufacture
of metal products are found in these three industries.
The field investigations consisted of personal visits
to the manufacturing establishments for the purpose
of securing first hand data as to industrial conditions,
and conferences with employers, superintendents,
foremen, and workmen as to the need and possibili-
ties of training for metal working occupations. In
all, 60 establishments, employing approximately
35,000 men, were visited. The conclusions as to
vocational training were based on an analysis of
educational needs in the various metal industries,
together with an extended study of the social and
economic factors which condition the training of
all workers. Particular attention was given to the
administrative problems involved in such training
in public schools.
Foundry and Machine Shop Products
According to the United States Census, foundries
and factories making machine shop products gave
employment in 1909 to nearly 18,000 Cleveland
wage-earners. This industrial group ranks first in
the city, employing more than twice as many workers
as the next largest industry, — automobile manu-
facturing,— and approximately two-fifths of the
total working force in all metal industries. Its
growth during the previous five years, from the
standpoint of number of workers employed, showed
159
an increase of about 33 per cent, and it is estimated
that the total number of wage-earners in 1914 was
approximately 25,000. At the present time, due to
the impetus given to this branch of manufacturing
by the European war, the working force is undoubt-
edly in excess of this figure.
The report gives extended consideration to the
machinist's trade, which constitutes by far the largest
body of skilled workers in the city. This trade has
been affected more than any other by the progress of
invention and the modern tendency towards spe-
cialization. In many establishments the all-round
machinist, competent to do independent work and
operate the wide variety of machine tools now used
in the trade, had practically disappeared. In his
place are found " specialist" machine hands who have
learned the operation of a single machine tool, but
have no general knowledge of the trade, and who if
called on to perform work requiring the use of a
machine tool different from the one on which they
are employed are unable to do so. There are hun-
dreds of drill press hands who cannot operate a mill-
ing machine, lathe hands who know nothing of planer
work, and so on. The subdivision of these occupa-
tions follows closely the advance in invention, so
that employers advertising for help frequently spec-
ify not only the machine tool to be used but add the
name of the firm which manufactures that particular
type of machine, with the result that there are about
as many kinds of machinists as there are manu-
facturers of machine tools. Table 18 shows the esti-
160
mated number of men employed, with their distribu-
tion in the various branches of the trade.
TABLE 18.— PROPORTIONS AND ESTIMATED NUMBERS EM-
PLOYED IN MACHINE TOOL OCCUPATIONS, 1915
Estimated
Workers
Per cent
number
Lathe hands
18.8
3,384
Drill press operators
17.9
3,222
Bench hands
13.4
2,412
Machinists
12.7
2,286
Screw machine operators
9.4
1,692
Milling machine operators
8.6
1,548
Tool makers
8.3
1,494
Grinding machine operators
6.2
1,116
Planer hands
2.2
396
Turret lathe operators
1.8
324
Gear cutter operators
.7
126
Total
100.0
18,000
Specialization has operated to lower standards of
skill and keep down wages. The average wage of
the "all-round" machinist is very nearly the lowest
found among the skilled trades. The union scale is
but 14 cents an hour above that paid unskilled labor,
while the average earnings of machine operators
range from four to 12 cents above laborers' wages.
Only among the highly skilled tool makers do the
wages approach those received by skilled labor in
most other industries. Table 19 shows the average,
highest, and lowest rates per hour for all branches of
the machine trades in the establishments from which
data were collected during the survey, with the per
cent employed on piece work and day work.
161
li
TABLE 19.— AVERAGE, HIGHEST, AND LOWEST EARNINGS,
IN CENTS PER HOUR, AND PER CENT EMPLOYED ON PIECE
WORK AND DAY WORK, 1915
Per
Per
Low-
Aver-
High-
cent
cent
Workers
est
age
est
on
piece
work
on
day
work
Tool makers
25.0
39.0
50.0
100
Machinists
25.0
33.2
50.0
100
Planer hands
20.0
32.2
42.0
100
Grinding machine operators
20.0
32.0
50.0
70
30
Bench hands
17.5
29.0
45.0
48
52
Screw machine operators
17.5
29.5
63.8
79
21
Lathe hands
19.0
29.1
40.0
40
60
Turret lathe operators
25.0
29.0
47.5
80
20
Gear cutter operators
20.0
26.7
40.0
96
4
Milling machine operators
15.0
25.9
40.0
53
47
Drill press operators
Machinists' helpers
15.0
23.5
35.0
35
65
20.0
22.2
25.0
100
On the basis of weekly or yearly earnings, the trade
makes a better showing. Work is steady throughout
the year, and the time lost through unemployment
on account of seasonal changes is slight. Also, as
the usual working day is from nine to 10 hours, that
is, from one to two hours longer than in the higher
paid building trades, the difference in daily wages is
really less marked than a comparison of hourly rates
would seem to indicate.
Little attempt has been made to adapt the ap-
prentice system to modern conditions. The term of
service and rates of pay have changed but slightly
over a long period of years. As a result only a small
proportion of the boys who begin as apprentices
finish the apprenticeship term of three or four years.
Employers attribute this to the relatively high wages
paid for machine operating, and the slight advantage,
162
from a wage standpoint, of the "all-round" man over
the machine operator. After a year or two the ap-
prentice finds that he can double his pay by taking a
job as operator, and the inducement for learning the
trade thoroughly is too small to hold him. The re-
port gives a comparison of the earnings of an ap-
prentice and a machine operator, both starting at
the same age, the first becoming a journeyman ma-
chinist at the end of three years and the second spe-
cializing on a particular machine. Assuming that
both boys go to work at the age of 16 their total earn-
ings up to the age of 25 years will be approximately
equal. The lack of thoroughly trained workmen is
beginning to be felt, but the efforts made by industrial
establishments to meet it have small prospects of
success unless the economic factors of the problem
are given greater consideration.
Inasmuch as no regular apprenticeship period is
served for machine operating, a special effort was
made to secure data relating to the time usually re-
quired for the worker to learn the operation of each
tool well enough to earn average wages. In this
matter the individual opinions of foremen and super-
intendents differed widely, but when the reports from
all the establishments visited were compared, a
sufficient degree of uniformity was found to serve
as a basis for estimating the amount of experience
workers of average intelligence would need, under
normal shop conditions, in order to become fairly
proficient.
There was practical unanimity in fixing the period
163
at four years for tool makers and three to four years
for machinists. Higher estimates were received from
the superintendents of plants doing a jobbing busi-
ness or manufacturing high grade machine tools than
from the specialized shops making a single product.
The superintendents of automobile manufacturing
plants, where the standard of quality in production
is necessarily high, gave the lowest estimates of all.
Table 20 shows the estimated time required to learn
the various types of machine work.
TABLE 20.— ESTIMATED TIME REQUIRED TO LEARN MACHINE
TOOL WORK
Workers
Time required
Grinding machine operators
Lathe hands
Planer hands
Gear cutter operators
Turret lathe operators
Screw machine operators
Bench hands
Milling machine operators
Drilling machine operators
12 to 15 months
6 to 9 months
6 months
6 months
4 to 6 months
3 to 6 months
3 to 6 months
2 to 4 months
2 weeks to 4 months
The weakness of specialization, with its constant
tendency towards the substitution of semi-skilled
operatives for trained workmen, lies in its failure to
provide a body of workers from whom to recruit the
large directive force needed in any scheme of pro-
duction based on semi-skilled labor. This condition
is regarded by many employers with grave concern,
and in a few plants apprentice schools designed
primarily to train future foremen have been estab-
lished.
164
Practically all the foremen in the shops visited had
received an all-round training as machinists, and
there are few opportunities for promotion open to
men who have not a general knowledge of the trade.
On the other hand, such general knowledge is only-
one of the requisites for advancement. Others are
initiative, resourcefulness, tact, self-control, ability
to get along with men, and a disposition to subor-
dinate personal interests to the interests of the busi-
ness. To these should be added the quality of pa-
tience, for there must be vacancies before there can
be promotions, and vacancies among the better po-
sitions are not frequent. Ten of the establishments
visited, employing a total working force of over
5,000 men, reported but eight vacancies among fore-
men's positions over a period of one year. These
same establishments had in their employ a total of
618 all-round machinists and tool makers. Assuming
that only the machinists and tool makers were eligi-
ble for promotion, the mathematical chance per man
of becoming a foreman during the year was about
one in 77.
Other occupations studied in detail were pattern
making, molding, core making, blacksmithing, and
boiler making. Pattern making offers the most in-
teresting work and the highest wages among the
metal trades, but the total number of American born
pattern makers in the city does not exceed seven or
eight hundred, so the field of employment is rela-
tively limited. Molding and core making, in which
between 4,000 and 5,000 men are engaged, have
165
practically become foreign trades. Less than 20 per
cent of the molders in the city were born in this
country. These trades offer few opportunities for
employment to boys of native birth. Somewhat
similar conditions exist in the blacksmithing trade.
Changed methods of production have largely done
away with the old-time blacksmith, who survives
only in horse-shoeing and repair shops. The pro-
portion of native blacksmiths is steadily declining,
and it is unlikely that any considerable number of
boys from the public schools will enter the trade.
The boiler making trade employs relatively few men,
the total number of native born boiler makers at the
time of the last census being less than 600. The trade
seems to be at a standstill. The increase during the
previous decade was less than five per cent against a
total population increase of 46 per cent. The average
earnings per hour for these trades in the establish-
ments visited by members of the Survey Staff are
shown in Table 21.
TABLE 21.— AVERAGE EARNINGS PER HOUR IN PATTERN
MAKING, MOLDING, CORE MAKING, BLACKSMITHING, AND
BOILER MAKING
Average earnings
Workers Per Hour
Pattern makers 44
Skilled molders 39
Semi-skilled molders 27
Skilled core makers 39
Semi-skilled core makers 27
Blacksmiths 33
Boiler makers 32
The findings and recommendations as to training
emphasize the fact that the vast majority of boys
166
who become workers in the metal trades leave school
by the time they are 15 with at most a common
school education, so that any vocational training
before they go to work must be given between the
ages of 12 and 15 and before the end of the eighth
grade. The report points out the impossibility of
effective vocational instruction in elementary schools
on account of the prohibitive cost per pupil for both
equipment and teaching, and endorses the recently
adopted junior high school plan. This form of organ-
ization has the great advantage of concentrating in
large groups the boys who are old enough to make a
beginning in prevocational training, and through the
departmental system of teaching offers facilities for
differentiation of courses to meet their varying needs.
Whatever their cultural value, the present manual
training courses in woodwork have little relation to
the requirements of any metal working trade, except
pattern making, in which some of the same tools are
used. No manual training work in metal is offered
in the elementary and junior high schools.
The course recommended for the junior high school
lays especial emphasis on applied mathematics, me-
chanical drawings, practice in assembling and taking
apart machines, and the utilization of the shop as a
laboratory for teaching industrial science. The re-
port maintains that the object of such a course should
be the development of industrial intelligence through
the application of mathematical and mechanical
principles to the solution of concrete problems, rather
than the teaching of specific operations and skill in
167
the use of tools. In mechanical drawing the ability
to understand and interpret drawings should be
given more importance than the ability to make
drawings. Few workmen are ever called on to draw,
while the ability to read plans and sketches is always
in demand. It is also recommended that boys who
do not expect to take a full high school course or who
intend to leave at the end of the compulsory period
should devote at least a period each week to the study
of economic and working conditions in industrial
and commercial occupations.
With respect to the technical high schools the re-
port holds that these schools are primarily training
schools for the higher positions of industry. They
undoubtedly offer the best instruction obtainable
in the city for the ambitious boy who wishes to pre-
pare himself for supervisory and managerial posi-
tions in industry or for a college engineering course.
The establishment of a separate two-year voca-
tional school, equipped for giving instruction in all
the larger industrial trades, is recommended. The
number of boys in the public schools between the ages
of 14 and 16 who are likely to enter the metal trades
is between 700 and 800, of whom from 500 to 600 will
become machinists or machine tool operators. An
enrollment of much less than this number is sufficient
to justify the installation of good shop equipment and
the employment of a corps of teachers who have had
the special training necessary for this kind of work.
It should be possible to form a class in pattern mak-
ing and foundry work of from 80 to 100 boys, and one
168
of at least 30 in blacksmithing. Boiler making could
be taught in connection with sheet metal work.
Various changes are recommended in the present
evening school classes for machinists, molders, and
pattern makers now given by the technical high
schools. It is claimed that the courses as now organ-
ized are not elastic enough to meet the varying needs
of the journeymen, helpers, machine operators, and
apprentices employed in these trades. The great
need is for short unit courses in which the instruc-
tion is limited to a particular machine or a special
branch of the trade. The long course tends to dis-
courage the student, especially when it embraces
an amount of theory out of all proportion to his
working needs.
Automobile Manufacturing
Due to the large number and specialized character of
the occupations in this industry, they are taken up
in a more general way than the "foundries and ma-
chine shop" group. The productive departments of
the automobile factories utilize in the main the same
equipment as other machinery manufacturing plants,
but specialization has been carried to a degree found
in few other metal industries. The " all-round"
workman is a rara avis. The machine shops are
manned by machine " specialists" most of whom
know how to operate a single machine tool or per-
form a single operation made up of relatively simple
elements. From one-half to two-thirds of the work-
169
ing force is recruited from immigrant labor which
is "broken in" under skilful foremen within a period
varying from a few days to a few weeks. In the
simpler assembling operations the jobs are so subdi-
vided that any man who is not actually feebleminded
can learn the work in a few days. Production is on a
large scale, permitting the maintenance of high-grade
engineering and experimental departments, where
all of the work is planned to the last detail. As a
result the automobile manufacturers are turning out
one of the most complicated and most efficient ma-
chines known to modern industry with a working
force composed chiefly of semi-skilled labor.
For the machine shop workers the training sug-
gested is similar to that recommended for the same
class of workmen in other machine shops. The neces-
sity of short unit courses adapted for teaching parts
of the trade rather than the whole trade is obvious,
as most automobile workers are employed on spe-
cialized operations. Short unit evening courses for
motor and transmission assemblers, and testers and
inspectors, are recommended.
Steel Works, Rolling Mills, and Related
Industries
A somewhat similar treatment is followed with re-
spect to the iron and steel group of industries — blast
furnaces, steel mills, rolling mills, wire mills, nail
mills, and bolt, nut, and rivet factories. These in-
dustries are characterized by a high proportion of
170 *
common and semi-skilled labor in the working force.
Between 75 and 90 per cent of the workers are of
foreign birth. In the operating department of one
mill only two Americans were found among a total
of 600 employees. As a rule the native born workers
are mechanics employed in the power and main-
tenance departments.
With scarcely an exception the occupations are of
a nature that require the worker to learn through
actual experience in the mills. Theory and practice
must be learned at the same time. Even the super-
visory and executive positions in which a technical
education is of considerable value require a long and
arduous apprenticeship on the job before the worker
can compete with men who have started with the
scantiest educational equipment, but have picked
up a knowledge of the processes by experience and
observation. Below these positions the work rapidly
grades off to various kinds of machine operating in
which not even the ability to read or understand
English is required.
No plan of vocational training is presented, be-
cause at present the mills recruit almost exclusively
from foreign labor, and only a very small number of
boys from the public schools are likely to seek em-
ployment in them. The technical content of the
work which might conceivably be given in evening
classes, except in the case of the few directive and
supervisory positions, is so small that continuation
instruction offers but meager hopes of success. Under
present conditions the long working day and the
171
necessity of changing from the day to the night
shift, or vice-versa every two weeks, constitutes an
insuperable obstacle to the organization of night
classes.
The principal need of the rank and file is a speak-
ing and reading knowledge of the English language,
so that the workers can be taught to avoid and pre-
vent accidents, and give themselves the necessary
care when they occur. Instruction in English with
possibly courses in accident prevention and personal
hygiene represent about the only training possible
that can be said to have any real vocational signifi-
cance.
172
CHAPTER XVII
SUMMARY OF REPORT ON THE BUILDING
TRADES
A careful estimate places the number of men engaged
in building construction in Cleveland at the present
time at about 30,000, comprising more than one-fifth
of the total number employed in manufacturing and
mechanical occupations. About two-thirds of these
workmen are skilled artisans, distributed among
some 20 different trades. The estimated number in
each trade is shown in Table 22.
Sources of Labor Supply
The building trades get their workers from four prin-
cipal sources: immigration, native journeymen from
outside the city, helpers, and apprentices. Immigra-
tion contributes the largest proportion in both skilled
and unskilled work, practically monopolizing the
latter. Over four-fifths of all cabinet makers, more
than two-thirds of all brick and stone masons, and
nearly two-thirds of all carpenters are foreign born.
Plumbers and steam-fitters show the smallest pro-
portion of foreign labor.
173
TABLE 22.— ESTIMATED NUMBER OF MEN ENGAGED IN
BUILDING TRADES, 1915
Workers in trade
Number employed
Carpenters
7,105
Painters, glaziers, varnishers
2,746
Plumbers, gas- and steam-fitters
2,014
Bricklayers
1,800
Machine woodworkers
1,198
Sheet metal workers or tinsmiths
1,069
Cabinet-makers
895
Inside wiremen and fixture hangers
750
Plasterers
638
Paperhangers
379
Structural iron workers
356
Roofers and slaters
315
Stone-cutters
292
Lathers
275
Stone masons and marble setters
250
Ornamental iron workers
200
Cement finishers
200
Hoisting engineers
150
Elevator constructors
100
Parquet floor layers
100
Tile-layers
100
Asbestos workers
75
Wood carvers
63
Helpers
926
Apprentices
306
Total
22,302
Apprenticeship
The general decline of the apprenticeship system
which began with the invention of modern labor-
saving machinery has affected the building trades
least of all. Here it survives in an active state and is
steadily gaining ground. It is in favor with many
employers and with all unions. The best apprentice-
ship systems are found in the strongly organized
trades.
It is true that in some of the trades apprenticeship
is little more than a name, meaning simply that per-
174
mission has been granted to learn the trade. The
apprentice is left free to pick up what experience he
can between the odd jobs that are given him. What
meager instruction he receives comes from a journey-
man worker who is none too eager to give up what
he considers the secrets of his trade.
The union regulations provide that boys shall not
enter the trades as apprentices or helpers below the
age of 16. The limits set by the various trades and
the union regulations as to length of apprenticeship
are shown in Tables 23 and 24.
TABLE 23.— UNION REGULATIONS AS TO ENTERING AGE OF
APPRENTICES
Asbestos workers
Enter at any age
Bricklayers
Between 16 and 23
Carpenters
Between 17 and 22
Cement finishers
Must be full grown
Elevator constructors
Must be full grown
Lathers
Must be 18 years old
Inside wiremen
Between 16 and 21
Painters and paperhangers
Before 21 years old
Plumbers and gas-fitters
Must be 16 years old
Sheet metal workers
Must be over 16 years
Slate and tile roofers
Must enter before 25
Steam-fitters
Must be full grown
Structural and ornamental iron
workers
Between 18 and 25
TABLE 24.— UNION REGULATIONS AS TO LENGTH OF APPREN-
TICESHIP PERIOD
Trades in which indentures are usually signed
Bricklayers 4 years
Plasterers 4 years
Sheet metal workers 4 years
Trades in which indentures are seldom signed
Steam-fitters 5 years
Carpenters 4 years
Inside wiremen 4 years
Plumbers and gas-fitters 4 years
Cement finishers 3 years
Asbestos workers 3 years
Painters and paperhangers 3 years
Slate and tile roofers 3 years
Lathers 2 years
Structural and ornamental iron workers \}/$ years
Elevator constructors varies
175
All obtainable information points to the conclusion
that the number of apprentices employed in the city
is far below the maximum permitted by the unions.
Many large contractors have no apprentices and say
they will not bother with them. Others state that
they have been unable to get or keep good appren-
tices and have therefore given up the plan.
Union Organization
The building trades are among the most strongly
organized in the city. It is estimated that their
unions at the present time include about 90 per cent
of all the men engaged in building work. Practically
all the large contracting firms employ only union
labor. The few non-union workers are employed by
small contractors.
Requirements for admission to the different unions
vary to a marked degree. If the union is strong and
has a good control over the labor supply, admission
fees are higher and regulations as to apprentices and
helpers are more stringent than if the union is fight-
ing to gain a foothold.
Earnings
No industrial workers in the city are paid better
wages than those employed in the building trades.
More than one-half of the skilled workers are in
trades that pay an hourly wage of 50 cents or over.
The hourly rate in each occupation is shown in
Table 25.
176
TABLE 25.— UNION SCALE OF WAGES IN CENTS PER HOUR
MAY 1, 1915
70 Cents
Bricklayers 70.00
Hoisting engineers on boom derricks, etc 70.00
Stone masons 70.00
Structural iron workers 70.00
From 60 to 70 Cents
Marble setters 68.75
Inside wiremen 68.75
Plasterers 68.75
Slate and tile roofers 67.50
Parquet floor layers (carpenters) 62.50
Lathers, first class 62.50
Plumbers 62.50
Steam-fitters 62.50
Stone-cutters 62.50
Hoisting engineers, brick hoists 60.00
Elevator constructors 60.00
From 50 to 60 Cents
Tile layers ^ 59.38
Lathers, second class 56.25
Carpenters 55.00
Cement workers, finishers 55.00
Sheet metal workers 50.00
Painters 50.00
Paperhangers 50.00
From 40 to 50 Cents
Asbestos workers . 47.50
Composition roofers 42.50
Under Jfi Cents
Cabinet-makers and bench hands 37.50
Machine woodworkers 37.50
Electrical fixture hangers 37.50
Hod-carriers 35.00
Union organization is a more powerful factor in de-
termining wages in these trades than technical knowl-
edge and skill. A high degree of skill in a given trade
brings little advantage in the matter of wages. By
establishing a minimum scale below which no jour-
12 177
neyman shall work, the union secures practically a
flat rate of pay for most of the men in the trade.
When there is much building work and good men are
scarce, contractors sometimes pay higher wages to
highly skilled workmen in order to secure their ser-
vices. As a rule, however, their reward comes in the
form of steadier employment. The less skilled man
is the first to be laid off when business is slack, while
the first-class workman, for the reason that he is so
hard to replace, is the last to be discharged.
Many unions, among them those of the carpenters,
bricklayers, and painters, make no provision as to
the wages of apprentices. Table 26 shows the wages
in three of the building trades that have established
a uniform scale for apprentices. Sheet metal ap-
prentices are paid a bonus of $1 extra for each week
served.
TABLE 26.— USUAL WEEKLY WAGES OF APPRENTICES IN
THREE BUILDING TRADES
Year
First year
Second year
Third year
Fourth year
Inside wiremen
$5.50
13.20
17.60
22.00
Plasterers
$5.50 to $6.25
8.25 to 11.02
13.75 to 16.00
19.25
Sheet metal
workers
$5.00
5.50 to 6.00
6.50 to 7.00
8.00 to 9.00
Hours
The usual working day is eight hours. Many of the
trades work only a half day on Saturdays throughout
the year; practically all have this half holiday during
178
the four summer months. For holiday or over-time
work the men receive either pay and a half or double
pay.
Regularity of Employment
Due to the seasonal character of building work, it is
next to impossible for a building contractor to keep
a large force employed all the year. One result of
this situation is that the men change employers more
than any other workers in industry. Irregularity of
employment is greater in building construction than
in any other of the principal industries of the city.
A comparison between the different branches of
building work as to regularity of employment is
presented in Diagram 11. The best showing is made
by electrical contracting, in which the average num-
ber employed is 93 per cent of the maximum working
force, and the poorest by plastering in which the
average is only 66 per cent of the maximum.
Health Conditions
Nearly all of the building trades are open air occupa-
tions, much even of the inside work being done before
the buildings are closed in. For the most part the
materials used are not injurious to health if reason-
able precautions are taken and ordinary habits of
cleanliness observed. In general, health conditions
are better than those found in the factory industries.
179
Electrical contracting
87
Lumber and planing mills
SO
Ventilating and heating
75
Plumbing and steam fitting
68
Sheet metal work and roofin
50
General contracting
50
Brick, stone and cement work
U9 111
Painting and decoratln
Plastering
38
53
Diagram 11. — Sections in outline represent percentage of men
emploved, and sections in black percentage of men unemployed
in each of nine building industries at the time when each in-
dustry showed the largest percentage of unemployment
Opportunities for Advancement
The building trades offer many opportunities for ad-
vancement. One reason for this is the large number
180
of supervisory positions made necessary by the wide
range of building activities. A foreman in almost any
of the trades must be able to read plans, as he must
lay out the work. It is not necessary for him to be
the most skilled mechanic in the force. Employers
and superintendents say that in selecting foremen
they lay about equal weight on skill and on ability
to handle men.
As a rule, foremanship carries with it higher wages,
although in some cases the pay is the same as that
of the regular journeymen. The reward for the added
responsibility comes in the form of steadier employ-
ment. It is not uncommon for a foreman to be hired
on a salary basis and carried on the payroll through-
out the entire year.
Small contracting offers another form of advance-
ment. It requires but little initial investment to
make a modest beginning, because individual work-
men in the various building trades provide their own
tools and no expensive machines are required. Com-
paratively little working capital is necessary, as pro-
vision is made in most contracts for part payments
as the work progresses.
The Problem of Training
The recommendations of the report relating to train-
ing for the building trades may be summarized under
five headings:
1. Reduce retardation. The first step in improving
the educational preparation of workers entering the
181
building trades is to reduce retardation or slow prog-
ress in the elementary grades. At present it is ap-
proximately true of the men entering the building
trades that one-third drop out of school by the sixth
grade, two-thirds by the seventh grade, and three-
thirds by the eighth grade. Now according to law
a boy cannot go to work until he is 16, and if he has
made normal progress he will have completed the
eight grades of the elementary course before he has
reached that age. In point of fact, many of these
boys do not make normal progress through the grades
and hence they reach the age of 15 before completing
the elementary course. As a result they fall out of
school without having had those portions of the work
in reading, drawing, mathematics, and elementary
science which would be of most direct use to them in
their future work.
2. General industrial courses in seventh, eighth, and
ninth grades. If retardation could be largely reduced
in the elementary grades, industrialized courses
could be properly introduced in the seventh, eighth,
and ninth grades for boys intending to enter the
building trades. The specific changes recommended
include as their most important elements:
a. Increased training in industrial arithmetic be-
ginning in the seventh grade.
b. Courses in industrial drawing.
c. Courses in elementary science relating to in-
dustry.
d. Courses in industrial information.
e. General courses in industrial shop work.
182
These are general industrial courses and it is recom-
mended that they be introduced as prominent feat-
ures of the work of the junior high school. They
are not intended to take the place of specialized
courses in the building trades, but they are proposed
as courses valuable for all future industrial workers
and within which certain adaptations should be
made for those who are intending to enter the build-
ing trades.
3. A two year industrial trade school. In addition
to the general industrial courses in junior high schools
that have been recommended in the previous section,
there should be established a two year industrial
trade school for boys. It should receive boys 14 to
16 years of age who desire direct trade-preparatory
training. There are good reasons why the present
elementary schools, the proposed junior high schools,
and the existing technical high schools cannot satis-
factorily take the place of a specialized two year
course in giving boys direct trade-preparatory educa-
tion. Boys who go through the technical high schools
do not remain in the building trades as artisans.
This is shown by the fact that less than two per cent
of the graduates of these schools are working in the
building trades.
The elementary schools and the junior high schools
cannot conduct satisfactory trade-preparatory
courses for the building industry for the reason that
they do not bring together at any one point a suffi-
cient number of these future workers to make it
possible to teach them economically. This is a con-
183
sideration which conditions every plan for the organ-
ization of industrial education. It is a question of the
community's capacity to absorb workmen trained
for any given occupation. In Cleveland about 4,000
boys leave the public elementary schools each year.
Approximately 2,400 of them drop out of the ele-
mentary schools or leave after graduating from them,
while the remaining 1,600 go on to high school. The
future workers in the building trades will be largely
recruited from the 2,400 boys who leave the ele-
mentary schools each year. Most of them range in
age from 14 to 16 and in school advancement from
the fifth to the eighth grades. They represent a
cross-section of a large part of the city's adult man-
hood of a few years hence.
Now the census figures tell us that if present con-
ditions maintain in the future only about 100 of the
4,000 boys leaving school each year will be car-
penters. For the purposes of the present inquiry we
may assume that these 100 future carpenters are to
be found among the 2,400 boys who do not go on to
high school. But Cleveland has 108 elementary
schools and these 100 future carpenters are widely
scattered among them. Even if we knew which boys
were destined to become carpenters, and even if we
knew when they would leave school, and even if we
should decide to give them all trade preparatory
education for the last two years of their school life,
we should still have an average class in carpentry
of only two boys in each elementary school. This is
administratively and educationally impossible. For
184
similar reasons specialized trade preparatory classes
in junior high schools would prove exceedingly diffi-
cult to organize.
The whole situation is changed, however, when we
gather in a central school all these future artisans
who have decided that they wish to prepare for spe-
cific trades. Under these conditions classes would be
sufficiently large so that specialized training could be
given and special equipment provided. This work
would best be undertaken in a school entirely devoted
to the purpose, but such courses might be organized
in connection with the present technical high schools.
This arrangement would be less desirable and prob-
ably give inferior results. The important point, how-
ever, is not so much the organization or curriculum
for these classes, it is the fundamental fact that trade
classes can be wisely organized only when a suffi-
ciently large number of pupils can be gathered in one
place so as to make the work efficient and economical.
The effectiveness of the trade-preparatory training
recommended would be greatly increased if the upper
limit of the compulsory attendance period for boys
should be placed at 16 years instead of at 15 as it is now.
4. Trade-Extension Classes for Apprentices. At the
present time the technical high schools offer even-
ing classes for apprentices in the building trades.
About one-seventh of the apprentices of the city are
enrolled in these classes. In the main they are full
grown men. In general they do not want shop work
related to their own trades, but prefer instead to en-
roll in courses in drawing.
The considerations already presented bear in minor
185
degree on the problem of providing evening instruc-
tion for trade apprentices. The essential for efficient
work is that a sufficient number of pupils be brought
together so as to make it possible to organize spe-
cialized classes in different kinds of work that the
pupils want and need. So long as there are only 50
apprentices enrolled in the entire city, and these
represent a number of trades, many different stages
of advancement, and a variety of needs, truly effi-
cient work will be impossible. Better conditions can
be brought about only through the cooperation of
the unions, the employers, and the school people.
5. Trade-Extension Work for Journeymen. The
evening technical schools now maintain shop classes
and drawing classes for workers in the building
trades. Less than one per cent of the workers in these
trades are enrolled in these classes. There is little
differentiation in the school work offered to helpers,
apprentices, and journeymen. The result is that the
work is much less efficient than it might well be. It
cannot be rendered much more efficient than it is
until the classes are increased in size and as a result
the work differentiated and specialized. This type
of improvement will result only from putting the
night school work in the hands of skilful and well
paid directors and teachers who bring to it a degree
of energy, enterprise, ingenuity, and adaptability
that it is unreasonable to expect and impossible to
get from day school teachers who have already given
the best that is in them to their regular classes and
are giving a fatigued margin of work and attention
to their night school pupils.
186
CHAPTER XVIII
SUMMARY OF REPORT ON RAILROAD AND
STREET TRANSPORTATION
The report on railroad and street transportation
takes up a class of wage earning occupations that
give employment in Cleveland to approximately
15,000 men. A much larger proportion than is found
in most other industrial manual occupations are
natives of the city. Although some of the work is
relatively unskilled, all of the different occupations
have one common characteristic — the necessity for
a knowledge of the English language and some ac-
quaintance with local customs and conditions. For
this reason comparatively few foreigners are em-
ployed.
The report takes up separately three types of
workers, those employed in railroad train service,
those engaged in wagon or automobile transporta-
tion, and the car service employees of the street
railroad.
Railroad Transportation
The study covered only those railroad occupations
that are directly concerned with the actual opera-
187
tion of trains, such as those of engineers, firemen,
conductors, and trainmen. These occupations have
many points in common and bring into play many
similar mental and physical characteristics. The re-
quirements for entrance are strict and examinations
for the higher positions are obligatory. In all of them
the hazards are great. Each occupation is firmly in-
trenched in trade unionism. Differences with em-
ployers relating to such matters as promotion, hours
of labor, wages, and overtime are settled by collective
bargaining or, in case of failure to agree, by arbitra-
tion proceedings.
The estimated number of men in Cleveland em-
ployed in these occupations in 1915 is approximately
4,500. Of these about one-fourth are switchmen and
flagmen, one-fourth enginemen, one-fifth brakemen,
one-sixth conductors, and one-eighth firemen.
The requirements for entrance call for a high de-
gree of physical fitness. The applicant for employ-
ment mus t pass a severe examination as to vision and
hearing, and in addition furnish certain data as to
his family history, as it relates to insanity, tubercu-
losis, and certain other diseases. The high standard
maintained insures a type of employees which for
physical fitness, mental alertness, and ability to
handle difficult situations is unsurpassed in any
industry.
Frequent examinations, which are compulsory,
are the stepping-stones to the higher positions. In
this way a brakeman qualifies for the position of
freight conductor, a freight conductor for that of
188
passenger conductor, and a fireman for a position as
engineer.
Each of the two services, passenger and freight,
has its advantages. In the passenger service the
working day is short, with little overtime. Freight
service requires a longer working day and a con-
siderable amount of overtime. Promotions in both
services and from one to the other are made on the
basis of seniority.
Violation of the strict rules laid down for the opera-
tion of trains on the part of employees may result
in reprimand, suspension, or dismissal, according to
the gravity of the offense. The penalty of suspension
has practically superseded the others except in ex-
treme cases, such as drunkenness, theft, or other
serious violations of the rules, for which offenders
are summarily dismissed. On some railroads, a
graded system of demerits is used. When an em-
ployee has received a certain number of demerits he
is dismissed from the service.
The railroad unions are among the strongest and
most aggressive in the country. The total union
membership among train operating employees alone
in the country is approximately 350,000. The unions
are all modeled upon the same general plan. They
are quite independent of each other, keep strictly to
their agreements and oppose the sympathetic strike.
They all maintain some form of life insurance. Four
organizations have underwritten over $500,000,000
of insurance and one of them in a single year paid
claims amounting to $1,135,000. The influence of
189
these unions has been particularly effective in secur-
ing the passage of protective state and national legis-
lation such as full crew laws, standardization of train
equipment, employers' liability laws, car limit laws,
etc.
The hazardous nature of the work is indicated by
a statement made by a prominent union official to
the effect that the Trainmen's Brotherhood paid a
claim for death or disability every seven hours. A
report to the Interstate Commerce Commission
states that there is one case of injury in train or yard
service every nine minutes. With the invention of
safety devices the risk of accident has been greatly
lessened, but railroading is still one of the most
dangerous industrial occupations.
There is little chance of employment for applicants
under the age of 21 years. In fact, many roads refuse
to employ men below this age. Physical or sense de-
fects which often accompany advancing years, and
which would not disqualify a man in other occupa-
tions do so in railroad work. The average length of
the working life is a little over 12 years.
Railroad employees are among the best paid
workers in the country. A close estimate based on
extensive wage investigations places the annual earn-
ings of engineers at from $1,200 to $2,400 a year,
with an average of $1,600. Conductors average about
$1,350, firemen a little over $900, and other train-
men about $950. The usual working day is 10 hours,
although this is often exceeded. Overtime is paid
190
on a regular scale agreed upon by the companies
and the union.
The educational requirements are not very exact-
ing. A thorough grounding in the " three RV is
usually all that is necessary. A large amount of
trade knowledge is obtained through contact and
participation after entering employment and can be
gained in no other way. The examinations for pro-
motion are of a thorough-going character. One of
the roads in Cleveland requires an examination of
its firemen and trainmen six months after employ-
ment, as to vision, color-sense, and hearing. They
must also pass an oral examination on the char-
acteristics of their division and a written examina-
tion on certain set questions furnished them in ad-
vance. Two years later they are examined again,
the fireman for engineman, and the brakeman for
conductor. The scope of these examinations covers
the whole range of train operating. Each of the five
large railroads entering Cleveland has air-brake cars
equipped with various forms of air brakes, air sig-
nals, pumps, valves, and injectors for the purpose of
giving instruction to trainmen. A competent in-
structor is put in charge of these cars to explain the
theory and practice of the apparatus and also to give
instruction in any new type of engine or train equip-
ment.
The conclusions of the report are in the main nega-
tive with respect to specialized vocational training
in the public schools. There is no doubt that the
general industrial course recommended for the
191
junior high school period in previous chapters would
be of some value to boys who may enter this line of
work. Problems of railroad transportation might
well be included as part of the work in applied mathe-
matics. What workers in these occupations need
most, however, is a thorough elementary educa-
tion.
Motor and Wagon Transportation
This section of the report takes up such occupations
as those of teamsters, chauffeurs, and repairmen.
There are no reliable data as to the number of men
in the city employed in these occupations, but it is
certain that it does not fall below 9,000. Notwith-
standing the great increase in the use of automobiles
and auto trucks in recent years the number of team-
sters at the present time is in excess of 4,000 men. A
very large proportion of the men employed in these
occupations are of American birth.
The general conditions of labor such as wages,
hours of labor, and so on, are the same for team-
sters and chauffeurs. They earn about the same
wages, belong to the same union, and work about the
same hours. The wages range from 25 to 37 cents an
hour. Earnings in the better paid jobs compare
favorably with those in several of the skilled trades.
Automobile repairmen earn from 30 to 45 cents an
hour, and work from nine to 10 hours a day. The
working day for teamsters and chauffeurs is some-
what longer, ranging from 10 to 12 hours. At the
192
present time these occupations are only partially
organized in trade unions.
The report recommends the establishment of a
course in automobile construction and operation in
the technical high schools. In view of the constantly
increasing use of automobiles such a course would be
of value to many boys besides those who enter em-
ployment as chauffeurs and truck drivers.
Street Railroad Transportation
There are employed in Cleveland at present approxi-
mately 2,500 motormen and street car conductors.
Almost all of them are of American birth, and the
majority are natives of the city.
As in railroad work each applicant for employment
must pass an examination, although the requirements
are less exacting than those demanded in railroad
work. The preliminary training occupies about 10
days, during which the motorman is taught by actual
car operation how to operate the controller, how to
apply and release the brakes, and other duties con-
nected with the careful running of the car through
crowded streets. The conductor is taught the names
of the streets, how and when to call them, where
stops are to be made, when to turn lights on and off,
how to act in case of accidents, and the various
duties which deal with the sale, collection, and re-
porting of transfers and tickets.
No one is admitted into the service before the age
of 21 or after 35. Promotion usually comes in the
13 193
form of better runs. The chances of promotion to
positions above the grade of conductor or motor-
man are very slight. About 90 per cent of the men
belong to the local union. Union rates of pay for
motormen and conductors are higher in Cleveland
than in most cities in the country, in spite of the fact
that this is the only large city in the country with
a three cent street car far. The wages of both motor-
men and conductors are 29 cents an hour for the
first year and 32 in succeeding years. The hours of
labor are very irregular. The usual working day is
from 10 to 12 hours.
The author of the report is of the opinion that no
special instruction for this type of workers can be
given by the public schools.
194
CHAPTER XIX
SUMMARY OF REPORT ON THE PRINTING
TRADES
A smaller proportion of the industrial population in
Cleveland is engaged in printing than in most large
cities. The number of persons employed in printing
occupations in 1915 is estimated at approximately
3,900, made up chiefly of skilled workmen. Little com-
mon labor is used in any department of the industry.
The business of printing is usually conducted in
small establishments. There are not more than six
plants in the city which employ over 75 wage earners.
Data collected from 44 local printing shops, showed
an average working force of only 36 persons. Due
largely to this characteristic printing affords an un-
usual number of opportunities for advancement to
the skilled workers in the industry. The smaller the
establishments are the greater is the proportion of
proprietors, superintendents, managers and foremen
to the total number of wage earners. Ten per cent
of the total working force in the printing industry
is employed in supervisory and directive positions.
In many of the large manufacturing industries of
the city the proportion in such work is less than three
per cent.
195
No other manufacturing industry employs so large
a proportion of American born workers. In recent
years many of the skilled industrial trades have been
recruited to a very large extent from foreign labor,
Building construction
W/M///M »
Clothing factories
Steel works and rolling mills
Automobile factories
Foundries and machine shops
Diagram 12. — Number of men in each 100 in printing and five
other industries earning each class of weekly wage. Black in-
dicates less than $18, hatching, $18 to $25, and outline $25
and over
but in printing the American worker has so far held
his own remarkably well. This is due in part to the
relatively high wages and desirable working condi-
tions and to the necessity in all branches of printing
for a working knowledge of English.
196
Practically all of the trades are thoroughly organ-
ized. The unions are united in a body called the
Council of the Allied Printing Trades. Although
only about half of the shops in the city employ union
labor exclusively, the union regulations as to wages
and hours of labor are observed in both open and
closed shops.
Printing workers are among the best paid in-
dustrial wage earners in the city. A comparison of
the weekly earnings in the various manufacturing
industries is shown in Diagram 12. This comparison
is based upon the 1914 report of the Ohio Industrial
Commission.
The comparison of the earnings of women in vari-
ous industries, shown in Diagram 13, is less favorable
to printing. On the basis of the proportion of women
that earn $12 and over per week this industry takes
third place. It should be noted, however, that nearly
all the women employed are engaged in semi-skilled
work in binderies, — a lower grade of work than that
done by most women workers in clothing factories,
where wages are higher. Compared with other occu-
pations that require about the same amount of ex-
perience and training, in textile, tobacco, and con-
fectionery manufacturing establishments, the wages
of women employed in the printing industry are rela-
tively high.
Wage earners in printing establishments lose less
time through irregularity of employment than do
those in most other factory industries. The kind of
work done by women is more seasonal than that done
14 197
by men, although less so than in other manufacturing
industries which employ large numbers of women.
Man's clothing factories
i
Women's clothing factories
fl I
Gas and electric fixture establishments
ill
Printing and publishing establishments
Cigar and tobacco factories
m
Hosiery and knit goods factories
Confectionery establishments
!t3
Diagram 13.— Number of women in each 100 in printing and
six other industries earning each class of weekly wage. Black
indicates less than $8, hatching $8 to $12, and outline $12 and
over
Composing Room Workers
Nearly all the workers in this department of the in-
dustry are hand or machine compositors. Until
about 30 years ago, before practical type-setting ma-
chines were invented, all type was set by hand. To-
198
day the hand compositor, except in very small shops,
works only on jobs requiring special type and special
arrangement, such as advertisements, title covers of
books, letter heads, and so on.
In the city there are about 1,200 people employed
in composing room occupations, or about 30 per
cent of the total number of workers in the industry.
This number includes some 50 women employed as
proof-readers and copy-holders. Nine-tenths of the
composing room workers are members of the Inter-
national Typographical Union, although the num-
ber of shops that employ union men exclusively,
called closed shops, approximates only one-half of
the total number in the city. The remainder, while
employing union labor, observing union hours, and
paying union wages, reserve the right to hire non-
union workmen.
Composing room workers are the best paid in the
industry. A comparison of average wages in news-
paper and job establishments is shown in Table 27.
TABLE 27.— AVERAGE DAILY EARNINGS OF JOB AND NEWS-
PAPER COMPOSING-ROOM WORKERS, 1915
Newspaper
Workers in trade
Job offices
offices
Foremen
$5.19
$6.65
Linotype machinists
4.66
4.84
Proof-readers
4.63
3.98
Monotype operators
4.57
Iinotypers
4.28
4.65
Monotype casters
3.96
4.30
Stonemen
3.94
4.89
Hand-compositors
3.48
4.58
Copy-holders
2.30
2.93
Apprentices
1.64
1.39
199
Compositors suffer most from the diseases that are
common to indoor workers. The stooping position
in which much of the work is done, together with in-
sufficient ventilation and the presence of gases from
the molten metal used in monotype and linotype
machines, favors the development of lung diseases.
The number of deaths from consumption among
compositors is more than double that in most out-
door occupations.
The apprenticeship system has held its own in the
compositor's trade better than in most industrial
occupations. In the establishments visited by the
Survey Staff there were approximately 15 apprentices
to each 100 hand and machine compositors. As a
rule there is no real system or method of instruction.
The points principally insisted upon by the union,
which strongly favors the apprenticeship system, are
that the number of apprentices employed shall not
exceed that stipulated in the agreement between the
employers and the union, and that each apprentice
shall be required to serve the full term of five years.
' During the first and second years the apprentice
is required to perform general work in the composing
room under the direction of the foreman. In the
third year he joins the union as an apprentice. The
apprenticeship agreement stipulates that during
this year he must be employed four hours each day
at composition and distribution. In the fourth and
fifth years the number of hours per day on such work
is increased to six and seven respectively. During
the last two years of his term he must take the even-
200
ing trade course given by the International Typo-
graphical Union, the expense of tuition being met by
the local union. The agreement contains no stipula-
tion as to wages for the first and second years. The
wage for the third year is $9 a week, for the fourth
year $12, and for the fifth, $15. Apprentices in news-
paper composing rooms are permitted to spend the
last six months of their period working on type-
setting machines.
The Pressroom
The pressroom occupations include platen and cyl-
inder pressmen, web or newspaper pressmen, platen
and cylinder pressfeeders, plate printers, cutters,
flyboys and apprentices. Approximately 15 per cent
of the men employed are cylinder pressmen, about
10 per cent platen pressmen, and less than three per
cent web pressmen. Pressfeeders comprise over 40
per cent of the whole group. Nearly nine-tenths of
all pressroom workers are employed in job estab-
lishments. Five occupations — those of cutters, floor-
men, flyboys, plate printers, and web pressmen — give
employment to fewer than 40 men each.
The average daily earnings of pressroom workers
in the establishments from which wage data were
collected during the survey are shown in Table 28.
The hourly rates of pay are high as compared
with those in other occupations requiring an equal
or greater amount of skill and knowledge. Cylinder
pressmen earn more per hour than do tool and die
makers — the most highly skilled of the metal trades
201
— and platen pressmen in charge of five or more
presses earn more than all-round machinists and
boiler makers. The rate for cylinder pressfeeders is
about three cents an hour higher than that received
for specialized machine work in the metal trades.
TABLE 28.— AVERAGE DAILY EARNINGS OF PRESSROOM
WORKERS, 1915
Job pressroom workers
Foremen .$4.78
Cylinder pressmen 3.63
Cutters 3.41
Platen pressmen 2.97
Floormen 2.91
Cylinder pressfeeders, men 2.54
Cylinder pressfeeders, women 1.77
Platen pressfeeders, men 1.83
Platen pressfeeders, women 1.70
Flyboys 1.56
Newspaper pressroom workers
Foremen 6.11
Web pressmen 4.33
Web pressmen's assistants 2.95
Formal apprenticeship is practically unknown.
The boy begins as a pressfeeder, usually on a platen
press, and in the course of time gets to be a platen
pressman. A knowledge of platen presswork does
not qualify a man to run a cylinder press, and as a
rule the platen pressman who wants to change must
serve some time as a cylinder pressfeeder and cylinder
pressman's assistant. There is no organized system
for training beginners. The boy who wants to be-
come a pressman must pick up the trade through ex-
perience and practice, the length of time required
depending chiefly on how frequently changes occur
among the force of pressmen employed in the shop.
202
The Bindery
The bindery is the only department of the industry
in which any considerable number of women are em-
ployed. Some of the occupations, such as gathering,
sewing, and stitching, are practically monopolized
by women. They are also employed extensively in
hand and machine folding. About one-fifth are
gatherers and one-fifth sewers and stitchers. The
other three-fifths are distributed among a number
of occupations usually classed as general bindery
work.
The occupations in which men predominate are
forwarding, ruling, and finishing, and cutting. The
forwarders comprise more than one-fourth of the
total number of men engaged in bindery work. The
other two skilled trades — ruling and finishing — give
employment to about 35 men each.
The average daily earnings in the various occupa-
tions, based on returns from 44 establishments, were
as shown in Table 29.
TABLE 29.— AVERAGE DAILY EARNINGS OF BINDERY
WORKERS. 1915
Workers in trade
Men
Women
Foremen
$4.78
$2.05
Rulers
3.56
Finishers
3.51
Forwarders
3.23
Cutters
3.21
Machine-folders
2.81
1.49
Wire-stitchers
1.57
Apprentices
1.53
Gatherers
1.52
Sewers
1.52
Other bindery operatives
1.40
1.51
203
On account of the seasonal character of the work
considerable time is lost through unemployment,
particularly in those occupations in which women
predominate.
Beginners in these occupations in which the ma-
jority of the women are employed, start on folding
or pasting, and as opportunity presents, gradually
acquire practice in the higher grades of work, such
as gathering and machine operating. There are some
traces of the apprenticeship system in forwarding,
ruling, and finishing, but these trades are so small
that all of them combined require only a very few
new workers each year.
Other Occupations
Other departments of the printing industry are
photoengraving, stereotyping, electrotyping, and
lithographing. They give employment to approxi-
mately 700 workers, distributed among more than
20 distinct trades, requiring the most diverse sorts
of skill, knowledge, and training. There are about
100 men in the city engaged in the different processes
of photoengraving. Nearly all of the stereotypers,
numbering from 60 to 70, are employed in newspaper
offices. There are about 125 electrotypers and 400
lithographers. The labor conditions closely approxi-
mate those found in other departments of the in-
dustry. Average wages for the different occupations
are shown in Table 30.
204
TABLE 30.— AVERAGE DAILY EARNINGS IN PHOTOENGRAV-
ING, STEREOTYPING, ELECTROTYPING, AND LITHOGRAPH-
ING OCCUPATIONS, 1915
Average
Workers in trade daily earnings
Photoengraving
Artists $6.32
Photographers 4.69
Etchers 4.52
Routers 4.25
Finishers 4.21
Proofers 3.69
Strippers 3.61
Blockers 2.36
Apprentices 1.49
Art apprentices 1.27
Stereotyping 4.00
Electrotyping
Molders 4.41
Finishers 4.01
Casters 3.18
Routers 3.17
Builders 3.13
Blockers 2.05
Batterymen 1.97
Case fillers 1.59
Apprentices 1.10
Lithographing
Lettermen 6.63
Artists 6.41
Pressroom foremen 5.80
Grainers 4.73
Engravers 4.35
Pressmen 3.91
Transferers and proofers 3.41
Pressroom apprentices 2.80
Tracers 2.63
Stone polishers 2.53
Pressfeeders 1.72
Other apprentices 1.59
Artist apprentices 1.23
Flyboys 1.10
205
There is no well organized system for training
apprentices in photoengraving, stereotyping, and
electrotyping, or in any of the lithographic trades,
except that of poster artist, in which an efficient and
strictly regulated system of apprenticeship is main-
tained.
The Problem of Training
The report maintains that up to the end of the com-
pulsory attendance period school training prepara-
tory to entering the printing trades must be of the
most general sort, due to the fact that in the average
elementary school the number of boys who are likely
to become printers is too small to form special classes.
For example, in an elementary school of 1,000 pupils
the number of boys 12 years old and over to whom
instruction in printing would be of value from the
standpoint of future vocational utility, would prob-
ably not exceed two. While admitting the advan-
tages of the junior high school for the purposes of
vocational training, the report points out that even
in a school where only pupils of the upper grades are
admitted, the number who are likely to become
printers is still too small to warrant special instruc-
tion. In a junior high school of 1,000 pupils not more
than nine boys are likely to become printers.
The reporb recommends a general industrial course
during the junior high school period. What the boys
need at this time is practice in the application of
mathematics, drawing, and elementary science to
industrial problems. Shop equipment should be
206
selected with this object in mind. It is doubtful
whether it should include a printing shop, for while
such a shop would be useful to the few boys who will
become printers, it would be of little value in train-
ing for other industries. The report suggests as sub-
jects which should be included in the general in-
dustrial course practice in handling and assembling
machinery, the study of color harmony, and the
principles of design in connection with the work in
drawing, the use of printing shop problems in applied
mathematics, and thorough instruction in spelling,
punctuation, and the division of words. It also
recommends the course of industrial information
referred to in previous chapters.
The establishment of a two year printing course in
a separate vocational school is recommended to
meet the need for specialized instruction from the
end of the compulsory period to the apprentice
entering age. The printing trades are relatively
small and it is only by concentrating in a single
school plant all the boys who may wish to enter
them that specialized training can be made practi-
cable. In this way it would be possible to secure
classes of from 60 to 100 boys each for such trades
as composition and presswork. The report empha-
sizes the need for instruction in trade theory as
against practice on specific operations. It points
out that the boys will have plenty of opportunity
after they go to work to acquire speed and manual
skill, while they have little chance, under modern
shop conditions, to obtain an understanding of the
207
relation of drawing, physics, chemistry, mathematics,
and art to their work.
The only trade extension training offered by the
public schools at the present time is that given in the
technical night schools. During the second term of
1915-16 there were 28 persons enrolled in the techni-
cal night school printing class. Of these 28 persons
three were journeymen printers, five described them-
selves as " helpers," 11 were apprentices, one was
employed in the office of a printing establishment,
and eight were engaged in occupations unrelated to
printing. No special provision is made for the ap-
prentices. The course, which includes hand composi-
tion, a little press work, and lectures on trade sub-
jects, is planned "to help broaden the shop training
of those working at the trade " That it does so to
any considerable extent is doubtful. Too much of
the time is devoted to hand work and practice on
operations which the boys can easily learn in the
shops. It is believed that the plan followed in the
evening apprentice course prescribed by the Inter-
national Typographical Union, in which no shop
equipment or apparatus is used, is better adapted to
the needs of boys employed in the trade. The course
consists of 46 lessons in English, lettering, design,
color harmony, job composition, and imposition for
machine, and hand folding. The classes are taught
by journeymen teachers. In February 1916 about
100 students were enrolled, of whom approximately
one-third were apprentices and two-thirds journey-
men.
208
CLEVELAND EDUCATION SURVEY REPORTS
These reports can be secured from the Survey Committee of
the Cleveland Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio. They will be
sent postpaid for 25 cents per volume with the exception
of "Measuring the Work of the Public Schools" by Judd,
"The Cleveland School Survey" by Ayres, and "Wage Earn-
ing and Education" by Lutz. These three volumes will be
sent for 50 cents each. All of these reports may be secured
at the same rates from the Division of Education of the
Russell Sage Foundation, New York City.
Child Accounting in the Public Schools — Ayres.
Educational Extension — Perry.
^Education through Recreation — Johnson.
Financing the Public Schools — Clark.
Health Work in the Public Schools — Ayres.
Household Arts and School Lunches — Boughton.
U" Measuring the Work of the Public Schools — Judd.
^Overcrowded Schools and the Platoon Plan — Hart-
well.
School Buildings and Equipment — Ayres.
^Schools and Classes for Exceptional Children — Mit-
chell.
V~ School Organization and Administration — Ayres.
j_The Public Library and the Public Schools — Ayres
and McKinnie.
£, The School and the Immigrant — Miller.
i The Teaching Staff — Jessup.
>*What the Schools Teach and Might Teach— Bobbitt.
v The Cleveland School Survey (Summary) — Ayres.
u Boys and Girls in Commercial Work — Stevens.
^-Department Store Occupations — O'Leary.
Dressmaking and Millinery — Bryner.
Railroad and Street Transportation — Fleming.
The Building Trades — Shaw.
The Garment Trades — Bryner.
The Metal Trades— Lutz.
The Printing Trades — Shaw.
Wage Earning and Education (Summary) — Lutz.
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