It is customary, in these days of centralized control, to take it for granted that everything worth while is highly organized. But when we examine the public school systems of the various states, we find that, for the most part, there is only local control and direction of the schools of the entire Nation. Only four or five states have boards of education with any real directing influence in educational affairs. In at least forty states public education is not a system but an incapable, semi-ignorant, headless jumble. The girls of sixteen who begin as teachers at $35 a month (we are reported to have five thousand such juvenile recruits for the teaching profession every year in Wisconsin alone) have more to do with making or unmaking our public school system than all the state boards and state superintendents. And to this aggregation of inadequately trained and unguided educators, the people of the United States give $500,000,000 a year under the delusion that they are thus providing for the education of their youth. To these educational shambles we are entrusting a billion-dollar investment in plants and the present and future welfare of 18,000,000 young Americans. We are handing over to this headless system the future of a Nation. And if you want proof that this system is a failure, consider that half of all who enter it leave as failures by the end of the sixth grade.

In short, the common schools are not giving the children what the children want and need. The business men of Wisconsin awoke some time ago to the fact that the common schools were at least fifty per cent. failures. After years of protest the business men, jointly with the very exceptional educational leaders and legislators, have found the remedy and are enthusiastic in their activity in helping to apply it. This work has given these business men an opportunity to prove their citizenship, to discharge in part their social obligations, by helping the state to provide education in a form that is of genuine benefit to those who receive it.

We did not jump blindly into a new experiment in education in Wisconsin.

A commission of experts was appointed by the legislature to investigate and t report a plan. This commission con sisted of the state superintendent d education, the director of the University! Extension Division, the dean of the College of Agriculture, the superintender of schools of our largest city, Milwaukee, the director of the legislative reference library, and the president of the state university. This commission sent Dr. McCarthy, the legislative reference librarian, to Europe, and he spent the larger part of a year investigating the conditions of industrial education in northern Europe.

On his reports and those of a subcommittee, which was at the same time in vestigating local conditions in the state. bills were drawn up, not only providing for vocational education, but making t possible to carry out the plan agreed upon. Bills were also drawn 47 amending the truancy laws, the compu sory education laws, the apprenticesh laws, and other laws, all dove-tailing concerning the relation of minors to labor and to school. Then, before these bills were submitted to the legislature, they were taken up with the organizations of employers and the labor organizations so that both might fully understand what was planned and how these schoos were to be controlled. And the legis lature passed the bills substantially the form in which the commission recommended them.

Under these laws night trade schools 1 were created for adults, a system of commercial schools, and a system of vocational continuation day schools fr boys and girls employed as wage-earners supplementing existing schools but 11 no way encroaching upon them or interfering with them. The government <f these new schools is in the hands of a governing board of nine, three of them, the state superintendent of education the head of the University Extensi Division, and the dean of the College of Engineering, representing theoretical edu cationalism; three others representing labe and three representatives of the mar facturing and commercial interests. The we created local boards of industriai

education, making it compulsory upon every city of five thousand inhabitants, and permissible in smaller communities, to have a local board composed of the superintendent of schools, two employers of labor, and two working men. In this way we established in every community a board qualified to look at the problem of industrial education from every possible point of view. Not only has the plan worked out admirably so far as the educational phase is concerned, but it has been found that this commingling of the interests of employer and employee, and the bringing of both into direct relation with the public as represented in the person of the public servant, the superintendent of schools, is really amounting to a new union of social forces, which is acting as a social leaven, from which a better mutual understanding and a closer cooperation of interests in other directions is arising.

We provided for the opening of thirty schools with a maximum state appropriation of $3,000 apiece (this sum not to exceed half of the local expenditure), and requiring the local boards to open continuation schools wherever as many as twenty children between fourteen and sixteen were found out of school, whether at work or not.

With the continuation schools opened in every industrial community, there will be no idle children learning the vices of the streets. Every local community is required to pay half the expense of the continuation schools within its boundaries, and, except in Milwaukee, the $3,000 state appropriation meets half the expense of every school. For the current school year the state has appropriated $150,000 and there will be forty-five continuation schools in operation, with at least twenty-five thousand in attendance. The children are required to attend a minimum of five hours a week and, in nearly every case, their employers give them this time without deducting anything from their wages.

One of the first things we discovered was that the children who had gone to work at the age of fourteen were to all intents and purposes uneducated. They

had been taught a little reading, writing, and arithmetic and possibly a little geography, most of which they proceeded at once to forget. We had many surprising revelations of the failure of common school education in the lower grades. Handsome, intelligent, supposedly educated mechanics of from nineteen to twenty-five years of age who had dropped out at the end of the sixth grade are coming into the industrial schools, and some of them have to begin their English studies with reading the primer. Scarcely any of them can do simple fractions and many of them have to go back to addition and multiplication. Their hunger for vocational education overcomes their embarrassment at their lack of knowledge. These are American-born young men and women. The city superintendent in one place where our vocational schools have been established is authority for the statement that it is clear that these children either never were taught spelling, reading, and arithmetic or they have wholly forgotten them, and he adds that they are taking hold of their new work with the utmost interest and avidity.

Child

The courses in our Wisconsin continuation schools include instruction in English, in elementary personal and social hygiene, and in citizenship, but the main stress is laid on the relation of the school work to the work the child is actually doing in the shop or store. Every child is given instruction in the theory and practice of the industry or occupation in which he is engaged, if it is a progressive and developing industry. Mechanical drawing, "the language of the shop," is taught, with shop mathematics. ren who could not do simple calculations when they had only abstract numbers to deal with show surprising aptitude in working out problems directly related to the work of their hands. The courses include such handwork as carpentry, pattern-making, printing, moulding, machine-shop work, etc., for the boys, and dressmaking, millinery, domestic science, and chemistry for the girls. Besides these in every city are taught the occupations most followed in its factories. The establishment of the first of these

and chemistry for

on the waiting-list, and one hundred and fifty others ready for admission was the law should be fully enforced.

schools, less than two years ago, demonstrated that it takes only from four to twelve weeks to start an industrial school for children between the ages of fourteen and sixteen in any progressive industrial community. Such a school, built up in such a space of time, will be substantially as perfect and complete as can be desired under existing conditions. In 1912 we started an industrial school at Racine on forty-eight hours' notice and in September of that year similar schools were started at twenty-five other places in Wisconsin. These schools were operated at a yearly cost per pupil of less than half that of the common schools, the expense varying in proportion to the size of the community and the number of pupils, from seven dollars to fifteen dollars a year for every pupil. The average for the entire state for the year was ten dollars per pupil.

Where did we get the teachers? Why, we got them from the place where the very best industrial teachers are always to be found plentifully we got them from the shops. In any community having modern industrial establishments there is no trouble in getting teachers who are not only competent but enthusiastic and up-to-date. And these teachers do more than teach they exert a very beneficial reflex influence on the teachers of the public school.

The wood-working class in the continuation school at Sheboygan furnishes an excellent illustration of what I mean when I say there are plenty of good teachers available. The teacher of this class is a middle-aged German. He served his apprenticeship in Germany and worked there as a journeyman before coming to America. That means that he had learned his trade thoroughly, as Germans learn trades. He worked in America. as a journeyman. Then he became a foreman. Later he became an employer and owner of a small furniture factory. He is teaching these children his craft as thoroughly as he learned it himself, with infinite patience and kindness, and they are responding with tremendous enthusiasm. At the end of the first six weeks there were three hundred and fifty children in the Sheboygan school, one hundred more

Though five hours a week is the minmum time required by law for attendance in the day continuation schools - we do not ask the children to go to school at night after working all day — there is n limit to the time a pupil may spend excer the time the employer is willing to give him from his work. No part of the wages paid brings larger returns than that paid for school time. Many of the 17,00 pupils in Wisconsin continuation schoos last year spent a whole day in sch every week. In Fond du Lac two d mestic servants attended school from ten to twenty hours every week. Two boys, employed by their father, got from ten t. fifteen hours a week in school. In Race a boy of sixteen who had worked ony two days in two years was compelled to attend five hours a week. After a few days he asked the teacher: "Can't I stay more than five hours?" He spent all his time in the continuation school after that, until he succeeded in getting a good job, and he is now putting in five hours a week while working.

The work of the continuation schools is not confined to those engaged in manufacturing industries. We are making them a training place for those engaged in commercial pursuits as well. This year particular attention will be paid to reta salesmanship. This will be done through the practical application of the results of the survey which Dr. Louis E. Reber. dean of the Extension Division of the University of Wisconsin, has been making of the business of retailing and salesmanship. The wages of retail salespeople, as a class, are very low. This is true throughout the country. It is also genera.y true that salespeople as a class are lacking in efficiency. The difference between a good salesman and a poor one is very great. Experience indicates clearly that a store gets a much lower return, in proportion to wages paid, from the fourdollar-a-week salesgirl than from the saleswoman who gets fifteen dollars a week or more. Here, as everywhere else, cheap help is costliest and the best

paid help is cheapest. And the inefficiency of salespeople can usually be traced directly to lack of knowledge of their work and its purposes, to lack of ambition, of energy, and sometimes to physical weakness. Two years ago the Extension Division of the University of Wisconsin began to educate retailers in the conduct of their business and salesmen in the art of selling. The continuation schools of Wisconsin are enlarging upon this work. Classes have already been established in several cities. They are very popular. They have increased rapidly and steadily in attendance and enthusiasm and in support given by all concerned. There are courses for beginners, courses for salespeople who have been in business for a longer time, and still different courses for store managers. The increase in the efficiency of those in attendance is apparent.

It takes but a little consideration to realize the importance of this particular branch of vocational education. We are accustomed to think of vocational training as something essentially related to manufacturing, but, as a matter of fact, manufacturing is the fourth in order of importance among American industries. Housekeeping comes first, with more people engaged in it than in any other one occupation. Farming employs more persons than any other occupation except housekeeping. Then, third, comes retail salesmanship. In our Wisconsin vocational schools we are teaching the five-dollar girl how to earn eight dollars and more. In some respects, the girl question is even more important than the boy question. The girl in industry is a newer phenomenon than the boy worker, and this phase of the problem has been less completely brought out. There is no indication that the position of woman in industry will become any less important in the future. There are many indications that it will be still more important than it has been. And it is as unjust to the woman wage-earner to withhold the special training and education that would enable her to do her work intelligently, interestedly, and profitably to herself and her employer, as it is to withhold it from the boy or man.

The underlying principle on which the whole scheme of industrial education is based, the justification for what we are trying to do, is that it is distinctly unjust to withhold from any member of society the opportunity to learn the things that will enable that man or woman or boy or girl to do his or her share of the world's work efficiently and joyously. Vocational training is neither a boon nor a privilege -it is the birthright of every American child. And, this being true, it follows that it is an essential obligation of the State to provide it - an obligation which the State cannot evade to-day without paying a serious penalty a generation hence.

Our Wisconsin schools aim to give to every person of every age in the state the special training that he or she needs. Gray-haired men and women are attending the evening industrial schools. The man I most trust as a building contractor in my home town came from the day-labor class. He can direct his workmen and build splendidly, but he does not know how to calculate costs and make up bills of materials well enough to be safe. He often works an entire summer at a loss, because he does not know well enough how to figure. This man needs just such night schools as we are providing for adults in our new Wisconsin system. We are providing these so that every citizen can be strengthened in his weak places, and so in the long run help make the Nation great and happy.

After a generation of continuation schools for children, however, there will be no need of night schools for the adults, except for the higher processes. So it is these schools for the boys and girls from fourteen to sixteen that we are concentrating on, to give them what the common schools have failed to provide. Eventually the whole public school system must be reshaped so as to give every child its just due. This is a task calling for the widest possible coöperation between all the interests involved.

The main trouble with our common schools is that they are designed essentially for the abstract-minded children - those who learn readily from the printed page. These are the children who have inherited

a certain kind of mental capacity, or who have from infancy been surrounded by books. But they constitute certainly not more than half of all the children that attend the public schools. I should judge the proportion to be considerably less than 50 per cent. And the public schools, as at present constituted, make no provision whatever for the other half, the concrete-minded child, who can, only with extreme difficulty and then imperfectly, learn from the printed page. I I call these "hand-minded" children. There is not or should not be any stigma in the fact that a child is unable to learn except through the same course by which the infinite majority of people in all ages have learned through contact with and control of the forces and materials of Nature and the relation of their daily occupations to the world of real things. Yet the schools have acted as though the child might as well be an idiot as concreteminded. They have turned this 50 per cent. away at fourteen and younger, and have focussed all their attention on the children who were able to master the abstractions of present-day teaching methods. I wish I could take every one who reads this on a visit to any one of our industrial continuation schools. I would point to boys who failed hopelessly in the common schools growing mentally from day to day, with increasing joy in their work. You would observe them acquiring such distinctly cultural accomplishments as habits of industry, observation, and honesty, the power of concentration on the task in hand, the perception and application of accuracy in every human undertaking and contact, the appreciation of ordered processes, whether in their own vocations or in the affairs of life generally. You would see You would see them developing the spirit of fellowship in service, and understanding the relation of cause to effect.

It is these things that make what we are trying to do worth while, and I believe that the way in which we have worked out the problem of industrial education in Wisconsin is the only way in which the problem can successfully be worked out. We have been talking

about trade schools since 1880. We talked and fought and struggled for thirty years, and in 1910 we had thirteen trade schools in a population of 90,000,000 people, with about 1,500 pupils in these thirteen schools, and were teaching, & the most, only four trades. We were not reaching the millions of children who become our mechanics and working people, who perform the ordinary turetions of life. Then Wisconsin opened the door of opportunity to all children.

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There has been a trade school in Miwaukee for a number of years which costs $300 a year per child and is only ha full. But now the state of Wisconsia takes every child working at any trace and puts him in school at a cost of $10 a year per child. We do not have to spend any public money for expensive buildings and equipment. The equip ment, so far as the practical shop training goes, is in the shops and factories and stores from which the children come to the continuation schools. The schoolhouses are there, and it is easy to arrange the hours for the continuation schools so that the same buildings answer for them and for the ordinary public schools. Connecticut has been spending $50,000 a year on two trade schools in Bridgeport and New Britain at a cost to the state of $200 a student per year, and has had only 250 children of the 40,000 or more in the state who need industrial education. Now the legislature is consider ing bills for the establishment of c tinuation schools throughout the state on the Wisconsin plan. New York City established a trade high-school, repre senting an investment of $1,500,000 and an operating expense of $200,000 a year. with a total cost of $100 per pupil, and reaches only 2,500 children. And none of these goes into the trades that are taught there. In the continuation schools of Wisconsin we now have ten times as many pupils as in all the trade schoois of the United States. What we are doing is to give the boy or girl a chance to work at the occupation he or she likes the best, and then give him or her all the special education that is available that will enable the pupil to excel at the chosen