environmental factors of life have become so plastic that individuals can fairly easily find congenial environment and occupational material near at home or far from it, if only they know for what environment and material their natural powers are best adapted. Modern life, whether in city or in country, has become so diversified and labor so divided, that a small community affords the vocational variety which only a few years ago was quite unfamiliar to it. Moreover, the various avenues of communication, transportation and coöperation have become so elaborate that workers in one part of a nation can with little difficulty profit by activities and opportunities existing in distant places. Each branch of industry, commerce and art, as well as each professional and occupational activity, provides not only for a larger number of workers but for a greater variety as well. There is thus a tendency for the individual at an early point in his career, not only to adapt himself to an environment already provided, but to a certain degree to select that environment for which his abilities and interests seem best to fit him.

Attempts at controlling fortune, as now exercised, are neither magical nor clairvoyant. They take the rational, selective form of fitting the individual to the place for which his natural aptitudes best adapt him, so far as these facts of adaptability are discoverable, and so far as the environment is plastic or optional. This is at least the description of the process in democratic conditions of society. In countries in which hereditary aristocracy and caste systems still exist, the fortune of the individual is determined to a considerable extent by his birthright, by the occupation of his father, above all by sex—all dominated by tradition. Within this field of guidance and selection, activity has developed rather independently in two different directions. There has been on the one hand the notion that all the individual needs for a satisfactory occupational adjustment is knowledge of available opportunities, and appropriate technical training for the occupation of his choice. This point of view is seen in our own country in the popularizing of general education.

Under this conception general education, instead of being the prerogative of the ruling or moneyed class, is urged as a common right, a social duty and an economic necessity. Learning is not limited to those who expect to enter the theological, medical, legal, or academic professions. A certain amount of elementary school-knowledge, or at least of school-attendance, comes to be required of every prospective worker. Even the feeble-minded are labored with in the attempt to bring them up to their highest possible academic level. Boys and girls alike are not only urged but compelled to equip themselves with the knowledge of the elementary formal subjects; and the community taxes itself to furnish the teachers, the books, and the necessary physical paraphernalia. In this earlier form of educational theory little effort is made to give immediate applicability to the subject-matter of the curriculum. Classical studies with very little relevance to contemporary life; dead languages, with only a feeble claim to concrete serviceability; formal exercises in designing and constructing useless bric-a-brac; trivial geographical, astronomical, anatomical, and military details: these are the subject-matter of the "general education." Back of their selection lies of course the doubtful conception that the general powers or faculties of the student are thereby cultivated, and that these may then be brought to bear effectively on any vocational activity which may be chosen.

The subject-matter is selected, not because of its interest or its utility, but mainly because of its difficulty and its formal character. Parental compulsion, vague social tendencies and impulses, petty personal rivalries, fondness for the teacher, and general cultural aspiration are relied on to facilitate the work of administration and to provide incentive. The "life-career" motive is but little utilized, and tends on the whole to be discouraged as sordid and commercial. But it is nevertheless believed that the grammatical, geographical, historical, and arithmetical elements will in the long run enable the pupil not only to enjoy life but to find it as well, or at least to be of the greatest possible service in the work into which he or she drifts. Only in the case of those who are utterly incompetent to deal with the general subject-matter, the feeble-minded, the blind, and the deaf, is this formal education willingly abandoned in favor of some definitely serviceable "industrial" training.

THE METHODS OF INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION

Quickly following this effort of the public schools to guide every boy and a few girls into successful careers through general education, came the realization that literary, linguistic, and mathematical information alone is inadequate to this task. It was felt by many that industrial or vocational education, calculated to fit the individual directly for his or her life occupation, should be begun at a much earlier age than that at which the group choosing the professions entered upon their further studies in the higher technical schools. It became obvious that many pupils terminated their public-school education as soon as they had satisfied the minimal requirements of the compulsory education law. These engaged at the earliest possible opportunity in some immediately gainful occupation. The occupations into which they commonly drifted were such as called for only a slight amount of intelligence and promised proportionately little by way of further equipment or promotion. They have come to be called "blind alley" occupations, and refer to such work as that of errand boys, elevator and telephone operators, small clerks, domestic servants, nursemaids, messengers, delivery boys, and teamsters.

Meanwhile those who had continued in school and completed the high-school curriculum emerged without special vocational fitness, and even without any knowledge of the vocational possibilities of their age and locality. The further development of vocational and industrial education of special sorts was then supplemented by general instruction in the vocational opportunities available. Vocational surveys were initiated for the purpose of acquiring information which could be placed in the hands of pupils and of those in charge of their training. These surveys made systematic inquiry into the vocational opportunities afforded to young people by the industries and enterprises of the vicinity. The assistance of employers was sought in the effort to learn the requirements of the various types of work; the nature of the labor involved; the wages; the general conditions, such as healthfulness, danger, companionship, and instruction; the rate of promotion; the prospect of future advancement. Such information has in many cases been published in pamphlets and bulletins and thus made accessible to teachers, pupils, and parents.

Along with this tendency went the attempt to give the pupil some first-hand knowledge of and immediate experience with the materials, implements, and products of the various industries from among which he or she might be expected to choose after leaving the school. This has been a difficult step to bring about, partly because of the various technical and administrative difficulties which it involved. Occasional hasty visits to mills, factories, stores, shops, offices, laboratories, and similar busy places give the pupil but a superficial notion of the actual work of the operations there observed. More extended and intensive