workroom; (6) to develop a better woman while making a successful worker; (7) to teach the community at large how best to accomplish such training, i. e., to serve as a model whose advice and help would facilitate the founding of the best kind of schools for the lowest rank of women workers.

In other words, the Manhattan Trade School aimed to find a way (1) to improve the worker, physically, mentally, morally, and financially; (2) to better the conditions of labor in the workroom; (3) to raise the character of the industries and the conditions of the homes, and (4) to show that such education could be practically undertaken by public instruction. The four aims are really one, for the better workers should improve the product, make higher wages, react advantageously on the industrial situation and on the home, and the course of instruction formulated to accomplish this end would help in the further introduction of such training.

It was not expected that immature girls of fourteen or fifteen years of age would, immediately on entering the market, make large salaries or be broad-minded citizens. The hope was to give them a foundation which would enable them to adapt themselves to situations best fitted to their abilities and to make possible a steady advance toward better occupations, wages, and living. In order to do this, each girl on entering the school must be regarded as having capacity for some special occupation. This aptitude must be discovered that she may be placed where she can attain her highest efficiency as rapidly as possible. She must be treated individually, not as one of a class. Her own efforts must be awakened, her handicaps, such as inadequate health and unadaptable education, must be removed, and her training proceed in a way to give her possession of her powers.

Conditions among the Workers

The conditions of life among many of the wage-earners of New York City are, briefly stated, as follows: Thousands of families are so poor that the children must go to work the moment the compulsory school years are over. In 1897, 14,900 boys and girls dropped from the fifth school grade, most of them going to work from necessity more or less pressing. To rise to important positions in factories, workrooms, or department stores will require a practical combination of any needed craft with the ability to utilize their school education in rapid deductions, business letters, accounts, and trade transactions. The public school offers such children a general education which will be completed in the eighth grade, but the majority leave before that time. For varying reasons, such as their foreign birth, irregular attendance, the impossibility of much personal attention in the crowded classes of a great city, poor conditions of health, and the desire of the pupils to escape the routine of school as soon as the law will allow, the greater number of them, who go early into trade, have not had a satisfactory education for helping them in their working life. Year after year are they found wanting, and yet young workers still come from the schools at fourteen with poor health, little available hand skill, unprepared to write business letters or to express themselves clearly either by tongue or pen, uninterested in the daily news except in personal or tragic events, unaware of municipal conditions affecting them, ignorant of the simple terms of business life, and with their arithmetic unavailable for use, even in the simple fundamental processes when complicated with details of trade. The mechanical processes, therefore, which they do know are now useless unless they can first think out the problem.

These boys and girls have no regret at leaving the schools, and are, as a rule, glad to get to work. The tragedy of life, however, begins when they become wage-earners, for they are only fitted for unskilled and poorly paid positions. A little fourteen-year-old girl finds it difficult to obtain a satisfactory occupation in the teeming workrooms of New York. She, or some member of her family, eagerly searches the advertising sheet of one of the daily papers. Most of the "Wants" are entirely beyond her crude powers to supply. An unskilled worker is perhaps desired in some business house, but the applicant finds that hundreds of other girls are flocking to obtain the same position, and her chance is too remote for hope. Or perhaps, after weary days of wandering about from place to place, she is recommended to the boss of some shop, and finds herself in the midst of machines which rush forward at 4,000 or more stitches a minute. She assists a busy worker on men's shirts, her duty being to pin parts together, to finish off, or to run errands. From early morning to late afternoon, with an interval for lunch, she must be ready to lend a hand. She can get at best but $2.50 or $3.00 per week. No rise is possible in this shop unless she can work well on a machine. Her fellow-workers are too busy to teach her, for each moment's pause means reduction in their little wage. Perhaps she does persist and finally can control a machine. By learning to do one thing rapidly she can obtain a better wage, but two or even more years in trade often pass before she can earn five dollars a week. After several seasons spent in doing the same process thousands of times, her desire for new work becomes deadened, and she is afraid to attempt anything different from her one set task. She usually refuses to try more advanced work, even if offered a good salary while she is learning, for she has lost her ability to push ahead.

In general, it may be said that the untrained girl has to take the best place she can find, without reference to her ability, her physical condition, or her inclination. The most desirable trades are seldom open to her, for they require workers of experience, or, at least, those who have had recognized instruction. Even if a green girl enters a skilled trade, she cannot rise easily in it, and is apt to be dropped out at the first slack season. The sort of positions open to her have usually little future, as they are isolated occupations that do not lead to more advanced work. Illustrations of these employments are wrapping braid, sorting silk, running errands, tying fringe, taking out and putting in buttons in a laundry, dipping candy, assorting lamps, making cigarettes, tending a machine, and tying up packages. These young, unskilled girls wander from one of these occupations to another; their salaries, never running high, rise and fall according to the need felt for the worker, and not because her increasing ability is a factor in her trade life. After several years spent in the market, she is little better off than at her entrance.

Some Difficulties of Organization

It was to relieve this serious situation that the Manhattan Trade School was founded. It began its work in the face of great discouragements. Employers were prejudiced against such instruction, for girls trained in former technical schools had not given satisfaction in the workrooms. The parents of the pupils felt that they could not sacrifice themselves further than the end of the compulsory school years, but must then send their children into wage-earning positions. It was impossible to obtain state or municipal aid, and it was known that the experiment must be costly, for: (1) A trade school must be open all the year for day classes, and for night work when needed (schools usually are open from eight to ten months). (2) The work must be done on correct materials, which are often expensive and perishable; but pupils are too poor to provide them, therefore the school must plan to do so. (3) The supervisors must be well educated, with a broad-minded view of industry, capable of original thought, and having a practical