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Page 38
Certain it is that no sufficient study has been made of the child who
enters into industrial life early and stays there permanently, to give
him some offset to its monotony and dulness, some historic significance
of the part he is taking in the life of the community.
It is at last on behalf of the average workingmen that our increasing
democracy impels us to make a new demand upon the educator. As the
political expression of democracy has claimed for the workingman the
free right of citizenship, so a code of social ethics is now insisting
that he shall be a conscious member of society, having some notion of
his social and industrial value.
The early ideal of a city that it was a market-place in which to
exchange produce, and a mere trading-post for merchants, apparently
still survives in our minds and is constantly reflected in our schools.
We have either failed to realize that cities have become great centres
of production and manufacture in which a huge population is engaged, or
we have lacked sufficient presence of mind to adjust ourselves to the
change. We admire much more the men who accumulate riches, and who
gather to themselves the results of industry, than the men who actually
carry forward industrial processes; and, as has been pointed out, our
schools still prepare children almost exclusively for commercial and
professional life.
Quite as the country boy dreams of leaving the farm for life in town and
begins early to imitate the travelling salesman in dress and manner, so
the school boy within the town hopes to be an office boy, and later a
clerk or salesman, and looks upon work in the factory as the occupation
of ignorant and unsuccessful men. The schools do so little really to
interest the child in the life of production, or to excite his ambition
in the line of industrial occupation, that the ideal of life, almost
from the very beginning, becomes not an absorbing interest in one's work
and a consciousness of its value and social relation, but a desire for
money with which unmeaning purchases may be made and an unmeaning
social standing obtained.
The son of a workingman who is successful in commercial life, impresses
his family and neighbors quite as does the prominent city man when he
comes back to dazzle his native town. The children of the working people
learn many useful things in the public schools, but the commercial
arithmetic, and many other studies, are founded on the tacit assumption
that a boy rises in life by getting away from manual labor,--that every
promising boy goes into business or a profession. The children destined
for factory life are furnished with what would be most useful under
other conditions, quite as the prosperous farmer's wife buys a
folding-bed for her huge four-cornered "spare room," because her sister,
who has married a city man, is obliged to have a folding-bed in the
cramped limits of her flat Partly because so little is done for him
educationally, and partly because he must live narrowly and dress
meanly, the life of the average laborer tends to become flat and
monotonous, with nothing in his work to feed his mind or hold his
interest. Theoretically, we would all admit that the man at the bottom,
who performs the meanest and humblest work, so long as the work is
necessary, performs a useful function; but we do not live up to our
theories, and in addition to his hard and uninteresting work he is
covered with a sort of contempt, and unless he falls into illness or
trouble, he receives little sympathy or attention. Certainly no serious
effort is made to give him a participation in the social and industrial
life with which he comes in contact, nor any insight and inspiration
regarding it.
Apparently we have not yet recovered manual labor from the deep distrust
which centuries of slavery and the feudal system have cast upon it. To
get away from menial work, to do obviously little with one's hands, is
still the desirable status. This may readily be seen all along the line.
A workingman's family will make every effort and sacrifice that the
brightest daughter be sent to the high school and through the normal
school, quite as much because a teacher in the family raises the general
social standing and sense of family consequence, as that the returns are
superior to factory or even office work. "Teacher" in the vocabulary of
many children is a synonym for women-folk gentry, and the name is
indiscriminately applied to women of certain dress and manner. The same
desire for social advancement is expressed by the purchasing of a piano,
or the fact that the son is an office boy, and not a factory hand. The
overcrowding of the professions by poorly equipped men arises from much
the same source, and from the conviction that "an education" is wasted
if a boy goes into a factory or shop.
A Chicago manufacturer tells a story of twin boys, whom he befriended
and meant to give a start in life. He sent them both to the Athen�um for
several winters as a preparatory business training, and then took them
into his office, where they speedily became known as the bright one and
the stupid one. The stupid one was finally dismissed after repeated
trials, when to the surprise of the entire establishment, he quickly
betook himself into the shops, where he became a wide-awake and valuable
workman. His chagrined benefactor, in telling the story, admits that he
himself had fallen a victim to his own business training and his early
notion of rising in life. In reality he had merely followed the lead of
most benevolent people who help poor boys. They test the success of
their efforts by the number whom they have taken out of factory work
into some other and "higher occupation."
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