annually more than $3,000,000,000 for education. It may well be asked under the circumstances whether the United States is receiving an adequate return upon its educational expenditure.

In 1913 Congress provided for the creation of a presidential commission to investigate the problem and to report upon the desirability and feasibility of Federal aid in the promotion of vocational training. As a result of the studies made by this commission, as well as from congressional hearings, it was revealed that of the men and women. engaged in agriculture and manufacturing in this country, of which there were more than 23,000,000, only 1 per cent were technically and skillfully trained to do the things that they were attempting to do. We were importing our trade skills from Germany and other countries in the form of craftsmen who had been given thorough vocational training before they came here. We were dependent upon these foreign sources for our trade skills. This was felt to be a national disgrace and a real menace, which might spell national disaster in case of war. Our national program of vocational education was in part an attempt to remedy this situation.

Of approximately 12,500,000 persons engaged in agriculture in the United States in 1910, not more than 1 per cent had had any adequate preparation for farming. Of 14,250,000 persons then engaged in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, not 1 per cent had had any opportunity for adequate training. Of the 25,000,000 persons over 18 years of age in the United States engaged in farming, mining, manufacturing, mechanical pursuits, trade, and transportation, the commission said that if these persons had been able to pursue a system of vocational education their wage-earning capacity, if increased at the rate of only 10 cents per day, would have constituted a wage increase for the group of almost $750,000,000 a year. This is certainly a fair dividend on an expenditure of $10,000,000 of Federal money each year.

The commission estimated the personnel requirements of our industries at that time as approximately a million new young people annually.

Of more than 7,000,000 young people between the ages of 14 and 18 years, only slightly over 1,000,000 were enrolled in high schools in 1910, and of these only a very small number were pursuing studies of a technical character. This vast body of potential workers needed. vocational education to make it efficient. The commission believed that the development of trade skills should become a domestic industry, that we should take steps to build up this industry and free ourselves from dependence upon foreign vocational training systems. The commission protested against the system of exporting our raw materials-the products of our farms and mines and forests-and importing trade skills in the form of these same materials worked up by skilled labor in foreign countries, with which we must compete in the world's markets.

SMITH-HUGHES LEGISLATION

The recommendations of the commission ultimately came before the Congress in the form of a bill presented in the Senate by Senator Hoke Smith, and in the House by Representative Dudley Hughes. The bill was approved by President Wilson on February 23, 1917. The fundamental act was approved by a Democratic President, but

the act itself was passed in both Houses of Congress without a dissenting vote. Republicans and Democrats united in its support, and successive Republican administrations have approved expansion of our program of vocational education.

The Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 provided for a Federal Board for Vocational Education; acceptance of the law by the States; national aid to the States for the salaries of teachers in the vocational schools and classes set up under the new national program; the States which voluntarily elected to cooperate under this joint program were required to match the Federal money dollar for dollar; provision was made for national studies and investigations regarding the vocational training needs of agriculture, home economics, industry, trade, and commerce. The vocational courses set up under the program were to be under the local supervision of public-school authorities in the States. The instruction must be suitable for students over 14 years of age. It must be of less than college grade, and must be intended primarily for those who had entered or who intended to enter a trade or useful industrial pursuit.

At the time of the passage of this legislation, every agency of our educational system-grammar school, high school, college, and university-was engaged particularly in providing training of academic character, adapted to what were conceived to be the requirements of a liberal arts or professional education. Only 8 per cent of our population ever got into these liberal arts and professional employments. Nevertheless, this sort of education was the only sort made available for anybody. The great mass of our population, representing the 92 per cent of our boys and girls, had no opportunity to get the sort of training they needed that is to say, training directed toward their peculiar needs in the rôle they must of necessity occupy in the economic and industrial life of the Nation. Training absolutely essential to insure their economic welfare was to be acquired only at their own expense or as apprentices in the crafts in which they engaged, under conditions neither scientific nor efficient, and to the material disadvantage of our whole industrial system. There is no contention here for less of this general academic education, but rather a desire to indicate the need for more ample provision for education specifically adapted to meet the vocational needs of our workers. The pick-up method of vocational training is entirely out of date, and the Nation which to-day neglects to train its workers scientifically is bound to lose out in the world's markets in competition with foreign nations, who have more accurately appreciated the economic value of adequate vocational training.

It is this 92 per cent of our workers who produce our food, our clothing, and our shelter. It is they, indeed, who produce not only the books but also all other instruments and materials upon which the 8 per cent are dependent in acquiring their education and training. The 92 per cent build our schools, our factories, our public buildings, our palatial private residences, and our mangificent structures of commerce and finance. They dig the coal, chop the wood, drill the oil, and produce the electricity for our light, heat, and power. It is they who clear our forests, build our railroads, span our rivers, and tunnel our mountains. It is they who have constructed the vast ocean liners, who have laid the ocean cables. They, too, have built our roads, our automobiles, our airplanes, and our radios.

And yet, it is from this group who contribute daily to our peace, our security, and our comforts that to-day the larger part of the great army of unemployed has been recruited. They reflect most and are more quickly responsive to the ever recurrent changes of our industrial life and progess, and lacking the flexibility of readjustment to these rapidly changing methods and processes find themselves constantly confronted with the hazard of unemployment. The introduction of every labor-saving device, the adoption of every new process in chemical and industrial engineering, involves an additional hazard of unemployment to those whose training and skill are inadequately responsive to the necessarily concomitant readaption.

It is with this great group of our population that the Smith-Hughes Act and subsequent acts, kindred in character, are concerned. At perhaps no other time in our history has the value of its benefit been more adequately realized and the necessity for its development and its continuance been more imperative.

The great leaders of our industrial life, indeed, the President of the United States himself, are unwilling to recognize the long-asserted fallacy that industrial depressions are inevitable, that they are, like floods and droughts, the acts of God. To-day the economists insist upon the principles of cause and effect being applied to industrial depression as to every other problem economic in its nature. For the first time in history, America to-day seeks by every process to correct the condition with which we are confronted. To-morrow we shall no longer be concerned with curative and remedial measures alone, but with measures of prevention. To-day the greatest of our captains of industry recognize clearly the inseparable interrelationship between consumption and production, hours of labor, and dollars of pay. It is the untrained or inadequately trained worker who loses his job first, and who finds greatest difficulty in getting a new job. The untrained worker is the first to be fired and the last to be hired, and in hundreds of thousands the untrained worker constitues the army of the unemployed.

Vocational training is of course not the only remedy for unemployment, but to the extent that the industrial progress, the introduction of machinery, the establishment of entirely new industries, mergers and consolidations of industrial enterprises, the geographical displacement of industry, or any other of the thousand and one changes in our economic system, tend to throw labor out of employment, through no fault or lack of foresight on their own part, a social responsibility is created by these changes to provide a way and means of earning a living for those definitely thrown into the ranks of the unemployed. Vocational training at public cost, to the extent that it can be utilized as a means of minimizing the evils of unemployment should be liberally provided for.

No man willing to work, able to work, needing to work to provide for himself and his family, should be left to walk the streets seeking work, or stand in the bread line for food, or continue dependent upon charity or doles, provided he can be trained back into regular employment. At least to the extent that he needs training, training should be provided at public charge.

TYPES OF EDUCATIONAL SCHOOLS

As a direct result of the participation of the Federal Government in the program of vocational education, three types of vocational schools have been established as integral parts of our public school system: (1) The vocational day school, for boys and girls who have chosen an occupation and desire training for it; (2) the part-time school, for persons who are employed but who can devote part of the day to receiving systematic instruction and training in the line of their employment; (3) the evening school, for workers who desire to devote some time outside their regular employment hours to improving their efficiency in the occupations in which they are engaged. Instruction in these schools reaches out into those employments which require such technical or mechanical skill as may be taught advantageously in the public school or under its supervision. In 1930 as a result of the stimulus given this endeavor by the Federal Government, more than a million persons of both sexes, young and old, were enrolled in these schools learning to farm better, to make better homes, or to be more efficient at some particular job in industry. And this as a result of but slightly more than 10 years' participation on the part of the Federal Government.

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What is the worth-the dollar value of this training? What return does the community get for it? We can not measure it accurately. But we may say that it certainly pays for itself many times over. the earning power of labor is increased by only a few cents a day, the return will be many times the cost. Each penny added to the daily earning power of our 45,000,000 workers gainfully_employed means $135,000,000 of increased production power a year. It is not unreasonable to assume that an adequate vocational program will increase the earning power of our workers by so much as 1 cent a day. And yet even this insignificant return would exceed more than four times our present total expenditure for vocational education. Expenditure for vocational education is an investment which is bound to pay large dividends.

The objective of the Federal Board for Vocational Education, the Federal agency charged with the promotion of this vital aspect of our educational program, has been in part to assure to every boy and girl, every adult worker, and every disabled person in America an opportunity to acquire or to improve his or her vocational, efficiency in some selected field of human endeavor, and this upon the theory that educating for work is as truly the responsibility of our free publicschool system as is educating for college, for the professions, for citizenship, or for leisure. Indeed, it is undeniable that our future prosperity is inseparably associated with training for industrial or vocational efficiency. The pursuit of happiness is in no small degree a part of the citizen's ability to find employment suited to his capacity, and to be able so to devote himself to such employment as to derive therefrom the greatest degree of satisfaction incidental to such employment. It is upon this principle that an efficient citizenship must be developed, and to this end, certainly the Federal Government should be willing to contribute.

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION

Due to the fact that the Federal Government had, under the landgrant acts, endowed in each State a college of agriculture, it was but natural that agricultural education for pupils of high-school age should have been the first of the vocational subjects to be developed.

Although in 1910 not more than 1 per cent of the total agricultural population had had adequate preparation in farming, in 1930 about 7,000 agricultural schools were receiving Federal aid under the program which Congress has established. Of this total of 7,000 schools, 3,905 were all-day schools; 582 were day-unit schools; 315 were parttime schools, and 2,116 were evening schools. The total enrollment in all these schools devoted to training in vocational education for agriculture approximated 200,000 of our farm boys and girls and of our adult farmers.

Since the objective in vocational education in agriculture is to reach all groups of men and boys on the farm with a type of education to be of immediate use in solving the daily problems of the farm, the significant value of this training must be at once apparent, espe cially at a time when the Nation has been compelled as never before to regard the agricultural problem as worthy the attention of the best minds of the Nation. America is no longer confronted with the problem of making two blades of grass grow where but one grew before. This may now be regarded as elementary in the problem. Conservation of fertility, utilization of waste and by-products, diversification of crops, transportation and marketing, are all among the fundamentals of agriculture with which the farmer of to-morrow must be intimately familiar. And these are principles in the science of agriculture which affect every citizen in the Republic, for upon their successful solution depends in large part the prosperity of the Nation as a whole.

Whatever significance attaches to training in agriculture afforded by means of the all-day school, a far greater significance attaches to evening schools for adult farmers, for here indeed is manifest not only an increasing popularity of this type of school, but the value which the adult farmer places upon it as a means of developing himself in his chosen vocation.

When it is recognized that persons living in cities have in the past been able to avail themselves of evening schools of many types, and that until the intervention of the Federal Government, the adult farmer was denied every opportunity of developing himself by means of such instrumentality, the value of the work now being conducted in evening schools for adult farmers gainfully employed during the day can not be overestimated.

During the year 1930 more than 64,000 persons were enrolled in these schools, exceeding in some States the enrollment of the all-day departments.

Among the activities developed by the Federal Board for Vocational Education, which are reflected in specific benefit to the Nation as a whole has been: (1) The development of a program carried on cooperatively with the National Live Stock and Meat Board of Chicago and the United States Department of Agriculture, involving the judging and identifying of the different cuts of meat; (2) cooperation with the Federal Farm Board in the development of an educational program