Language, work in Number, work in Physics, work in Geography. All of this would be practical. The Mathematics, or Number work, would deal with mensurations and those problems that connect more readily with the shop. The Geography would be commercial, with the questions of product and transportation constantly brought home. The Science would be of the same practical kind, and the Language lessons would deal with the business letter, the commercial form, the shop report. In every way the atmosphere of these two years of the child's life would be an atmosphere which constantly tended to make the child understand that what he was getting now was good for him to know in the life which he had elected to pursue. Followed in that way for the thirteenth and fourteenth years, it is believed that a number of the boys and girls would be willing to accept the further course, and would eagerly embrace the chance to carry forward such work in the secondary years. Thus the pupil could be kept until the sixteenth year in a school which gave instruction along specific lines, leading through the fundamental operations to some knowledge of one of a number of different trades-the machinist's trade, the cabinet maker's trade, the electrical trade, etc. Some one may feel that it is desirable to establish a trade school which shall graduate the boy of sixteen or seventeen as a finished workman ready to take his place in the trade. This is a mistake. First, because the boy is too young to do the work of the finished workman, and second, because this raises economic questions of the gravest significance in any country which has a large body of organized labor which is constantly seeking to raise the standard of living of its members. For these reasons and others, it is of the utmost importance that these schools do no more than is suggested—that is, prepare the boys and girls through four years of well adapted, vocational training, shop visits, and many subjects dealing specifically with the use of tools and machines and processes; to enter into apprenticeships and to shorten these apprenticeships materially. I assume that in any city a school of the type that I indicate which undertook to graduate at the age of sixteen, boys that had this three or four years' training would find that there were a dozen manufacturers bidding for those boys and willing to shorten their apprenticeship and advance them more rapidly to journeyman's wages than they could otherwise hope to be advanced. Organized labor will offer no objection to the development of these schools. As secretary of the National Association for the Promotion of Industrial Education, it has been my business to communicate with a great many representatives of organized labor all over the Republic, and the response has been almost unanimous in favor of trade teaching, so longand this phrase occurs in practically every letter "so long as you do not try to graduate from this school a boy of sixteen, not yet prepared and of no experience in the trade, and to exploit him at the expense of my family and myself." A Class-Room Idyll (Freely translated from the German of Alfred Schmidt). BY ROY TEMPLE HOUSE, WEATHERFORD, OKLAHOMA. The dull old master molds a bitter pill, Tomorrow's task from Bello Gallico; The teacher's voice alone. The class is still- Is wide awake, and sweet emotions fill All hearts: "The book-case; there's a mouse below!" Gone all reluctance, gone restraint. The gall What care these little rascals now for all The toils and burdens of the dark school-house? Self Help Among College Students W REV. CLAYTON H. RANCK, BALTIMORE, MD. HEN President Eliot said, "one fourth of the students of Harvard are poor and need to be helped through school," his words surprised many persons not unfamiliar with college life. Cases of self-help on the part of college men and women are frequently made public, but since the unique ones only are brought to the light they have come to be taken as typical of a relative small number of students instead of being the exceptional cases in a very large class. College men and women are not poor in every instance, but a larger proportion of them come from humbler homes than the writers on "The Luxuries of College Life" and kindred subjects would have one believe. With a view to getting an approximate idea of the probable number of such students and of the ways they find to earn their way through school, the following questions were submitted to the presidents of Senior classes in sixty institutions of higher learning in this country: "1. What percentage of your students, in your opinion, earn either a part or the whole of their college expenses?" "2. How do they do it?" "3. What would you advise a young man or woman, finding such a course necessary ?"" Forty-four answers to this list of questions were received, and the labor expended upon them, speaks eloquently of the spirit of these men and women, and of their kindly interest in their prospective successors. Not a word of disrespect or discouragement is given to the poor student, and many of them make it a point to state that no man will be thought the less of because he is earning his way, but will be respected for his grit. A number of them caution him, however, against over working, eating insufficient or improper food, and failing to take sufficient recreation and exercise. In several instances the college authori ties were consulted by the students before attempting to answer the questions, and in a few cases they answered for the students, but as there is no perceptible difference in the viewpoint or spirit of these letters, they have not been tabulated separately. Estimates of the number of students earning a part of their expenses were received from thirty institutions for men or for men and women, and from three women's institutions. In the former group with an aggregate attendance of more than 39,000 students, 13,700, or more than thirty-five per cent. of them are, according to these seniors' estimates, earning at least a part of their necessary expenses. In the three institutions for women with a total enrollment of more than 1,800 students, eleven per cent. or more than 200 of them are doing something toward meeting the expenses of their college education. The estimates of the number of students earning a part of their expenses range from five to ninety per cent. In no instance, however, is the estimate of those earning the whole of their funds higher than twenty-five per cent. It is rather generally supposed and frequently stated that it is very much less difficult to find opportunities for self-help in the larger institutions and in those located in the larger cities. This may, and is no doubt true, for those finding it necessary to earn all of their support, since in most instances a higher wage is paid for skilled service in the larger community, but for partial earnings there seems from the following estimates to be little or no difference. Of the institutions heard from, the aggregate enrollment of the first ten in order of size is more than 28,000 students. Of this number 9,400, or thirty-three per cent. plus, are earning a part of the needed funds. Again, the ten institutions found in the larger cities have a total enrollment of 20,400, from which number 6,930 or less than thirty-five per cent. are so engaged. That the small number of institutions used in making these summaries must give very incomplete results is granted, nevertheless, if the advantages in favor of the larger institutions, and of those found in the larger cities were as great as they are supposed to be, a perceptable difference would be apparent. To the second question concerning the kinds of employment secured by these men and women a student of a great university in the Middle West answered, "The ways are as numerous as there are men." They may be divided into work performed during vacation and that done at odd hours while the college is in session. That college students while on vacation, should be able and willing to do every kind of work done by any able bodied energetic young man or woman, is not surprising, but the kinds of employment they find or make for the odd hours during the college year is amazing. Last year college men were acting as agents for banners, books, chocolates, cigarettes, furs, hats, laundry work, pipes, pressing establishments, printing establishments, shoes, stationery, syllabi of lectures, tailoring establishments, and typewriters; as care takers of boys' clubs, of the blind, of cemeteries, of cows, of furnaces, of horses, of invalids, as carpenters, carriers of news papers, of mail, as chair caners, chemists, choremen, cigar packers, clerks, correctors of papers, as dishwashers, guards, guides, hotel helpers, janitors, lecturers, librarians, mail clerks, messengers, musicians, newspaper correspondents, private secretaries, readers of gas and electric meters, readers of proof, settlement workers, snow shovelers, stenographers, ticket takers, translators, tutors, ushers, waiters, wood sawers, and in an endless number of similar pursuits. One institution makes the cheering and suggestive report, "that sixty per cent. of those who reported their kinds of work are engaged in the lines of their chosen calling," kinds of work are engaged in the lines of their chosen calling," and another, "that every telephone on the side is managed by a University of student." The women are busy addressing invitations, assisting publishers as proof readers, reviewers, or as translators, making candy, carrying mail, catalogueing, acting as companion for aged or invalids, doing errands, making fancy work, doing fine laundry work, in kindergartens, libraries, at light house work, mending, as monitors, musicians, reading aloud to the sick, blind or shut ins, shopping, story writing, taking care of children, tutoring, typewriting, and as waiters. If any prospective student should doubt the wisdom of trying to work one's way through college, the testimony of these seniors, many of whom have earned every dollar spent on their preparatory and collegiate education, should give him courage. Their ad |