of procedure, normal development as used in the laws will have a definition; and physical fitness for a specific occupation can be determined by a precise and definite knowledge of the physical condition of the child; and, by a repetition of the examination, definite data can be obtained as to the effect of the various occupations on the growth of the body and on the health of the child.

No state now requires that every working child be examined at regular intervals. With the establishment of continuation or vocational school, a splendid opportunity is afforded to provide for re-examinations of children at work and to gather much desired data on the influence of occupations on growth, health, and development.

Twenty-two states now have in force a compulsory continuation school law, i.e., Arizona, California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin; all except Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Washington have provisions requiring schools to be established and children to attend under certain specified conditions. These four have no compulsory provisions for establishment.

In Milwaukee two school physicians and one nurse are assigned to duty at the continuation school. Health supervision is conducted at this school in exactly the same manner as it is in the other schools, the teachers sending all children who seem to be ailing in any way to the doctors. Besides this the children are given a physical examination at as regular intervals as may be. These physicians also examine all children who desire a working permit if such examination has not already taken place at the school which the child last attended. It is the practice, whenever possible, to have the child examined in the school which he is attending so that the advisability of permitting the child to go to work may be determined by a consulta- . tion of principal and school doctor, i.e., those who have had the child under observation for a long period of time. If the child's application is considered favorably, his entire health record since his advent at the school is sent to the physicians at the continuation school for their enlightenment as to the health of the child during his school career. Because this close supervision is possible, it was determined to issue several kinds of permits, as follows:

A provisional permit.—Issued to children who have a correctable physical defect but who must pay for the correction of this defect from their own earnings because of poverty in the family. Such permits are issued with the proviso that the defect be corrected within a definite period of time, usually one month for defects of vision, for other defects up to three months as the judgment of the examining physician may dictate. Of 1,070 such permits issued from October 8, 1920, to June 1, 1921, 594 secured corrections within the time specified, 350 required one extension of time, 107 required two extensions, and 19 required more than two extensions. No extensions are granted unless definite proof is offered that the child is receiving regular treatment If proof of treatment is not present, revocation of the permit is recommended.

Temporary refusal of permit.-If correction of a defect was recommended wl. the child was in attendance at school, and the parents were financially able to secu correction, the issuance of a permit is not recommended until correction is had.

re not

Permit limited as to job.-Permits are recommended for definite Mads of work only, because of some untoward physical condition in the chil recommended when, in the judgment of the principal and the

h of

the child would suffer by entry into industry. Revocation or suspension of permit is recommended when sufficient diligence is not shown in securing correction or if work is proving detrimental to the child.

Unreserved permits are recommended when the child has met all educational and physical requirements. This method of procedure is only possible because of the splendid co-operation of the State Industrial Commission in requiring children to report to the doctor at the time set. This is done by means of a postal card notice sent to the employer or to the child. It is distinctly stated on the permit that it is a provisional permit only, giving the reason for the proviso. Thus the co-operation of the employer is secured and he frequently insists that the child secure treatment as quickly as possible.

C. NOTES ON STREET TRADES DEPARTMENT AND MILWAUKEE NEWSBOYS' REPUBLIC

Perry O. Powell, Supervisor of Street Trades, Milwaukee Public Schools

The Wisconsin Street Trades Law, forbidding boys under twelve, and girls under eighteen years of age, and licensing all newsboys, bootblacks, bill boys, and street venders from twelve to seventeen years of age in cities of the first class, was enacted by the legislature in 1911, and took effect January 1, 1912. The law was made statewide in 1918. The Industrial Commission of Wisconsin established the inforcing agency January 2, 1912, to license all street traders within the city limits of Milwaukee. The duty of inforcement was transferred from the Industrial Commission to the Milwaukee Board of School Directors in June, 1913.

The Wisconsin law is progressive and practical, but additional power is given the inforcing bodies by virtue of the Wisconsin Workmen's Compensation Law, which stipulates that the employer will be assessed triple damages in case the child was unlawfully employed at the time of the accident. Two-thirds of the assessment must be paid by the employer, while the ordinary assessment or one-third can be liquidated by the insurance company. The Supreme Court has upheld this clause in the compensation law, hence strengthening the street trades law.

The Milwaukee Newsboys' Republic was founded October, 1912, for the purpose of inforcing the street trades law and carrying on a general program of constructive welfare work. The constitution of the Republic, which followed the plan of the United States Constitution, was adopted.

At present, there are about 4,000 licen follows: 1,000 inactive and irreg carriers, and 50 miscellaneous str blacks and guides must secure sp The granting of a special permit to

work and the previous good record of

All applicants for street-trades bad

age record, school record, promise of parent

company to employ and

for on the application

up each street trader

alphabetical arrangem

All newsboys in the public and large parochial schools are organized into clubs in charge of a teacher who acts as club advisor. Inspections are made by the club advisors once a month and checked over by the Supervisor of Street Trades at least once a year. A city-wide clean-up of miscellaneous violations of the law committed by boys outside of the rank and file of licensed street traders is conducted in the schools twice a year. About five hundred violations a year are checked in this manner.

The law is enforced by seventy-two newsboy officers, who wear badges of authority and report violations of the street trades law on a regular complaint blank. Upon receipt of the complaint at the office a summons is sent to the parent in accordance with the nature of the violation.

Nine forms of summons are used by the department, ranging from an ordinary notice to appear, to a summons requiring speedy action on the part of the parents. The attendance of the trial board is very satisfactory. About 30 per cent do not respond to the first notice sent out, but usually make their appearance upon receipt of another letter which conveys the importance of the violation. It is presided over by three newsboy judges who are assisted by the Supervisor of Street Trades.

The trial board has disposed of over five thousand cases involving the many sections of the street trades law in addition to cases such as smoking, swearing, petty stealing, and first stages of delinquency among newsboys. The aid of the Juvenile Court has been invoked in approximately fifteen cases.

Our direct control over the money-earning privileges of the newsboy and the present limitations of the Juvenile Court law are the reasons that the large percentage of street trades violations are handled in the trial board in preference to the Juvenile Court.

The first technical offender is usually warned and dismissed, but a record is kept of the case in the current file for future reference to be used in the event that the street trader becomes a chronic repeater. About 25 per cent become second offenders and the percentage of chronic violators is reduced to 2 per cent. The street trader who appears in trial board three times or more, loses his badge for a period of from two weeks to six months, which is equivalent to a fine, because he is prohibited from plying his trade during the period of suspension. We have our own reporting system, but do our best to refrain from using the terms of the regular court and, therefore, do not call it a probation system.

In 1911, 76 out of 143 boys from Milwaukee County at the Industrial School for Boys of Wisconsin were newsboys. In 1916, of 55 boys from Milwaukee County, 3 were newsboys, showing the decrease in the number of newsboys in Milwaukee County that had been committed to the industrial school.

Principals and teachers report less truancy and a higher standard of deportment and scholarship from newsboys than that achieved prior to the enactment and enforcement of the present street trades law.

The Republic is divided into states and the congressmen from each state are supervised by a deputy who must report to the president of the Republic and the Supervisors of the Street Trades as to the condition of his state and the work accomplished by the congressmen. The newsboy officers include president, vice-president, cabinet members, judges, deputies, senators and congressmen, who are elected annually by popular election in all the schools. The congressmen and officers of the Republic are presented with bronze and enamel buttons as a token of honor for services rendered to the Republic. Carfare is paid to all officers of the Republic.

297

The Republic publishes a regular magazine known as the Newsboys World, conducts social center clubs and has established a character-building scheme known as the Knights of the Canvas Bag, for group clubwork in the social centers. Scholarship, sick benefit, and athletic funds are created by small contributions from general Milwaukeeans. The Republic conducts the usual program carried on by agencies working with boys, using the social centers for meeting purposes.

The enforcement of the street trades law in Milwaukee by self-governing methods has raised the standard of Milwaukee newsboys and decreased juvenile delinquency among street traders, all being the objectives of the law. The Milwaukee Newsboys' Republic is a permanent social agency of the city.

Although co-operation with the newspaper men was difficult to secure when this department was created, at present every circulator in the city is anxious and genuinely willing to do all in his power to aid in the enforcement of the law, because a practical law helps to eliminate the undesirable and non-producing newsboys from the ranks, and serves to act as a control or balance-wheel for those who become incorrigible and have gone beyond the control of the circulation department. We are fortunate in having an excellent corps of circulators in Milwaukee, and have sufficient data on hand to verify the splendid co-operative relationship with all the publications in the city. Co-operation with the newspaper men is one-half the battle and must be secured in order to obtain satisfactory results.

The inforcement of the law in Milwaukee has proved that the street trades problem is an educational one and a burden for the public school system to assume. The law, by requiring school attendance of all licensed street traders, eliminates the element of child labor and in its place presents an educational problem, and, as such, the public schools should assume the responsibility. It is the duty of the public schools to place in charge of the work a person who has a social vision, coupled with the knowledge of, and love for, boys, because the street trades project, as a schoolboy problem, should be engineered by a worker in charge who uses boys' work methods to accomplish the purpose for which the street trades law was enacted.

D. JUNIOR EMPLOYMENT PROBLEMS

Mary Stewart, Chief, Junior Division, U.S. Employment Service, Washington

We listened last night to an able educator discussing the problems of the schools and lamenting the vast amount of illiteracy in the United States. He lamented, and properly, the menace of this ignorance to good citizenship. However, I am not nearly so much concerned about the ignorance of the illiterate as I am about the ignorance of the literate. With the age-long emphasis on the three R's, we are wont to confuse intelligence with information, education with refinement, and culture with learning. If a person spoke good English, did not eat with his knife, and read the classics, he was likely to be considered cultured, however dark his ignorance in relation to life-forces and life-values. The ideal of the old culture seemed to be to translate life into terms of learning and not learning into life-values, as if contemplation rather than living, were the end of life. Social progress has for twenty years been restating, or attempting to restate, these values which formal education has rather grudgingly and slowly con

ceded. In fact, they are very far from conceded yet, though some progress has been made.

A new culture appears on the horizon, somewhat vague as yet, but bright enough to be the unmistakable evidence of a new day. New political and economic systems are demanding different educational values. For a long time schools seemed to determine their cultural standards in inverse ratio to living facts. Learning was learning, and it was the business of life to conform to a preconceived standard of living. With a devotion to this standard almost as blind and irrational as that of the Chinese to their classics, the American school system tried for many years to mold all boys and girls who entered their halls according to this form. If they could not be molded, so much the worse for the boys and girls. Though I am personally grateful for the power and the general enhancement of life secured by a classical education, I freely admit that I became truly educated after my college days. Up to the time I had taken a B.A. degree, I knew very little that had happened since the birth of Christ, though I was very much at home with Greek columns, Egyptian obelisks, Assyrian temples, and Babylonian tablets, all valuable in their way, but obviously not the only way to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The inability of the schools to meet the life-needs of average boys and girls has been a matter of much concern and discussion among school men for the last twenty years, and more particularly for the last ten, with the result that public school systems have been enriched lately by industrial and vocational education. This was probably done, to begin with, to meet the immediate needs of modern industrial and economic life; but it has brought with it a recognition of the cultural value of work and the duties of both schools and industry to so modify their operation as to serve this end, if a healthy and happy people should be developed.

We are up against facts, not theories. We are living in an industrial age. There is a vast amount of work to be done with the hands as well as with the head. Obviously somebody must do it, and quite as obviously we must either find a way to give this work a cultural value or frankly admit that culture is outside the possible attainment of a vast majority of our people. Think of the absurdity of a compulsory school system that would serve so-called culture at the expense of the individual's needs, or else force him to meet these practical needs by withdrawing outside the pale of any recognized culture. Yet, that is about what we have done. The kind of education that has the stamp of popular approval and is placed before boys and girls as the worthiest aim of all youthful ambition, has been, in the very nature of the case, not only outside the practical attainment of most of them, but the capacity or taste as well. That is what I mean by saying that if a democracy is to survive at the present stage of industrial and scientific development, we must remold our ideas of culture.

If it is possible for the schools to enter the world of industry, may it not be possible by the same process of evolution, for industry to enter the world of the humanities? In short, if modern civilization is to survive, and democratic government to become more than an experiment, public education must find some way to meet both of daily living and the urge of human life, to get the work of the world done and to satisfy the individual need for joy and self-expression. The work of is multiple, and human joy has many sides. May we not evolve a culture l to meet the double need? This is the task of public education, a task the war