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 geographical 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 extremely difficult to bring them together for instructional 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 engaged 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 Census 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 each 100 engaged in each of the 10 leading sorts of occupations is approximately as follows:

This simple list at once calls into question all the standard assumptions about the extension of industrial 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. 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 education 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.

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 population 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 invariably overlooked is that many of the present carpenters 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.

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 results of its application in the field of industrial education 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 industrial workers. All the native born labor now employed 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 unskilled 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 mechanical equipment far more extensive than the resources 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 number 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 enrollment. All the weight of educational opinion and experience is on the side of excluding the children 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 foretold by state and federal census data. The methods used were characterized by a member of the Cleveland 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 employed 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 commerce and industry. They deal with mass data rather than with individual figures, and with relative values rather than with absolute ones.

CHAPTER IIIToC

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