"A Child more than all else brings forward-looking thoughts." I. Theme: The Child in Industry.

(a) Industrial Revolution in England.

i. Value set upon the child.

(Illustration: Taken by the cart loads to the cotton mills. One sub-normal child thrown in. Age of these children.) ii. Reform movement in England.

iii.

Struggle in Massachusetts to secure child labor laws.

iv. Present struggle in the South in cotton manufacturing districts.

V.

Child under sixteen, employed in industrial world is a liability.

Place the child from earliest years in industry, make a machine out of the child, we get economic values, it is true, but what becomes of the HOME? What would have become of Silas Marner, incidentally? What becomes of the child?

(Illustration: The child is more skilful, he is more deft with his fingers. The constant, continued gaze in one direction extending over long hours for one so young has been known to destroy the eyesight of the child. We can buy cotton goods at a reduced rate at a sale, but I ask you, boys, where does that cotton come from? Some cotton that has been bought at a low price is literally red with the life blood of child labor.) II. Theme: The Child in the Home.

What made it possible for Eppie to remain at home? Answer: Silas had a trade.

(A) Value of a trade.

(Talmud.)

i. "Teach a boy a trade or you teach him to steal."

ii. Every Athenian citizen was obliged to teach his boy a trade and to teach him how to swim. Value of learning a specific trade: in this case (Trade of Silas Marner.) (a) Cloth of Florence

iii. weaving cloth.

(b) Florin of Florence

Principle: Florence, first free city to make good, was founded upon respect for manual toil. This made possible the art, literature of the Renaissance.

(c)

Contrast Athens, founded upon slave labor. The Age of Pericles.

(B) Waste caused by failure to learn a trade, to acquire knowledge, skill, social understanding:

i. Will Wimble, the youngest son of an English Lord (cited by Addison).

ii. Dunsie Cass, who simply grew up without

learning a trade.

iii.

Godfrey Cass GOOD but GOOD FOR NOTHING. (Illustration: One half the criminals in the prisons of Massachusetts, as boys, never took up the study of occupations, trades, never selected one trade, never prepared for it, never entered upon trade. Many of them were lounging around the street corners. Many of them went to the school for a time. You say they were "taking no thought for the morrow." I can prove to you by the life careers of Will Wimble and Dunsie Cass that they were deliberately taking thought for a wasted life.

(C) In view of the facts of the case are we warranted in fixing 18 as compulsory school age, given the right kind of subject matter and the right kind of teachers in the schools?

I want the class to come prepared next time to give reasons pro and con, in view of all the facts in Silas Marner and to be ready to vote on this question. You can get at it better through discussion among yourselves. Get the views of those at home. Discuss out of class as law students do. III. Theme: Right Use of Leisure.

A. Silas had only two strings to his bow. These were: (1) Work (2) Church. One of these strings broke. As a result Silas lost faith in man and in God. Silas became a iniser.

"Boys, has this question nothing to do with life conditions

today? Bring in your answers tomorrow after glancing over the headlines of any morning paper. In what respect was Silas absolutely deficient vocationally?

(a)

How about the care of the body?

(b) How about active participation in citizenship?

(c) How about reading? study?

(d)

How about the right use of leisure?

(e) Is that boy any better off than Silas when he attends certain kinds of movies, reads certain kinds of light literature or wastes his time in playing certain rag time music?

B. Lack of the right use of leisure was the real reason why Silas became a miser.

i. What finally brought Silas to his senses? The minister failed to accomplish this. The neighbors called at the home of Silas. They met with no success. It was Eppie, the little child, that called Silas back to a normal life.

We are not to lose sight of this central thought, its vocational aspects, in the study of style or questions of grammar. IV. Silas and Eppie: Principle: Co-operation. Through actual participation in a HOME PROJECT, in taking care of Eppie, Silas came to himself. The lack of any home project in the life of Dunsie Cass was his ruin. There was little co-operation in that home. Dunsie missed the influence of his mother. Squire Cass was too preoccupied to give much attention to his boy. We have no evidence that he ever learned a trade. He was another Will Wimble. His end was tragic, a fitting illustration of the enormous waste both in time and in lives that is produced by the LACK OF THE RIGHT KIND OF VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE.

What Social Workers Should Demand of

Education

ELLEN TORELLE NAGLER, MADISON, WIS.

T will not be necessary to give an extended review of conditions which indicate why specific demands upon education must be made. Nearly all thoughtful persons are aware of the tragic situation in which society finds itself at the present time, a situation which many observers think almost if not quite hopeless. However, in considering the thesis laid down in the caption of this article, it will be helpful to bear in mind a few facts like the following:

In Wisconsin, the state superintendent of public instruction recently stated, in an interview reported by the press, that "over one-half of the school children are known to be so defective as to be incapable of normal development." A report of the Wisconsin State Board of Health under date of June, 1923, announced the examination of four thousand four hundred children under five years of age. Of these, only six hundred and nineteen, or about one-seventh, were normal; the other six-sevenths suffered from some defect, which if neglected would lead to permanent disability. Another report states that there are from sixteen thousand to eighteen thousand feeble-minded individuals in the state, many of whom are children. Other thousands are insane, psychopathic, epileptic, or otherwise mentally diseased.

Over forty thousand school children are in need of special care and training. For two children making rapid progress in school, there are three who are abnormally slow. Less than forty per cent of the children who enter the first grade continue into the high school and only ten per cent graduate from the high school.

Reports dealing with criminality are not easily interpreted. Over the country at large, only individuals convicted of crimes and misdemeanors and sentenced to prisons and reformatories are counted in the criminal class, and in order to be convicted one must be like the famous Mary with the curl in her forehead-either very, very good or very horrid. Not only innocent, but highly altruistic individuals are often found in prison, while many prisoners have been driven to crime by poverty. Balzac wittily expressed the relation between crime and poverty in a formula: "A young man is to crime as a hundred sous is to x." A large percentage of prisoners are known to be mentally defective and are therefore irresponsible. But for the nation at large, more men and women come out of prison every year than graduate from all the colleges.

Another factor worthy of note is the character of amusements demanded by the people. As much money has been spent in recent years in this country on football, baseball, and prize-fighting as would be needed to support all the colleges. There may be some relation between this and the fact that we lead the world in murders and lynchings. The corruption which exists in official places, not only in Washington, but in small communities throughout the country, reveals a shocking lowering of the moral tone of our people, an emergence of the coarser, more brutal qualities at the expense of those which are finer and more distinctly human.

Why are we as a people apparently retrogressing mentally and physically, instead of maintaining past gains or progressing to higher levels? What can be done to arrest the downward trend and initiate a movement toward normal, upward progress in civilization?

Many causes for a retrogression can be seen, all of which may be reduced to two general causes. Of the greatest importance is the lack of appreciation of the value of human life for the production of the immaterial essentials called happiness, beauty, and truth, with a consequent exaggeration of