The CHAIRMAN. Approximately how many industries have you there that could cooperate in a plan like this? Mr. CALDWELL. We have 10 mills, I believe, sir. The CHAIRMAN. What type of mills? Mr. CALDWELL. All of them are textile mills. Some are rug mills, some are yarn mills, some are something else, but it all has to do with the cotton business. Mr. DOUGLASS. The high school in your locality does not teach the subjects you teach. Mr. CALDWELL. No, sir. Mr. DOUGLASS. Why not? Mr. CALDWELL. It has been discussed for a long time. I do not believe we want to see it done, but I am not sure. the answer I can give you. Mr. KVALE. You do not teach people under 14? That is about all Mr. SCHAFER. Even if the high schools did teach those vocations, the people who come to your school would not have the opportunity of going to high school. Mr. CALDWELL. That is the fact; yes, sir. When we have less than a hundred graduating and more than 500 hundred going in in a year, we have not scratched the surface; and you know when they get out rubbing up against the world they find out they are deficient. Mr. DOUGLASS. I am wondering why the State of Georgia does not do that work in the high schools. Mr. CALDWELL. Others better qualified to answer that question than I am will follow me, and I think I will leave it to them to answer. I do not think there are many high schools in Georgia that do it. Mr. DOUGLASS. Under your contention, you are asking the Government to do what the State should do. Mr. CALDWELL. This would apply to those who have not been able to complete high school. Mr. KVALE. Mr. Caldwell, in your work do you feel any specific beneficial effects resulting from administrative help or suggestions or proposals for extending your work coming directly from the Federal Vocational Board? Mr. CALDWELL. I think every one of us who has gone to school has benefited. I do not know whether that is the answer you see, or not. Mr. KVALE. No. I want to know if you do not feel inspiration to work toward higher standards when you have a central organization to coordinate work and extend a little assistance. Mr. CALDWELL. Certainly we do. Mr. KVALE. It encourages you generally. Mr. CALDWELL. It does. The CHAIRMAN. When you are confronted with a problem that you want assistance in solving, you can appeal to the Federal board which has collected information throughout the country on various problems and get help in solving yours; is not that true? Mr. CALDWELL. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. It gives you the stimulus to keep on going because you have some place you can turn for help. Mr. CALDWELL. Absolutely. The Chairman. That is what you wanted, is it not, Mr. Kvale? Mr. KVALE. That is all. We thank you very much. (Mr. Caldwell submitted the following document:) Report of Opportunity School at La Grange, Ga. Pupils enrolled: 1927. 1928. 1929 1930__ Total Most of undergraduates are working, about 175. Number of pupils who are working, "self-supporting," 57. GRADUATES AND WHERE EMPLOYED Miss Cooper, Penn Studio. Mrs. Scully; Macy's, New York. Miss Priester, general office. Miss Brown, Dalton, Ga. Miss Batty, California. Mrs. Spearman, Penn Studio. Mr. Stanfield, A. B. C. Railroad, Atlanta. Mrs. Nimmons, public schools. Mrs. Park, welfare association. Miss Hudgins, Gulf Oil Co. Miss Tally, Troup County office. Miss Arlington, Metropolitan Insurance Co. Miss Lane, Pan American College, Miami. Miss Carter, Doctor Eason. Miss Johnson, Mr. Forest Johnson. Miss Hubbard, Doctor Saltsman. Miss Jones, Atlanta. Miss Chester, La Grange College. Mrs. Forsyth, Mississippi. Miss Loyd, general office. Miss Combs, Dixie Mills. Miss Phillips, Hogansville Mills. Miss Ray, Georgia Cash Credit Co. Miss Davis, Atlanta. Miss Waller, Singer Sewing Machine Co. Miss Phillips, Swift & Co. Mr. Green, Dixie Mills. Miss Phillips, West Virginia. Miss Chipman, general office. Mr. Hollingsworth, general office. Miss Cleaveland, Simril Plumbing Co. Miss Albright, Atlanta. Mrs. Van Houten, Exide Battery Co. Miss Hutchinson, Fairfax Theater. Miss Norton, Buick place. Miss Priester, general office. Miss Alredge, Doctor Callaway. Mrs. Coan, Ledger office, Columbus, Ga. Miss Sutherlin, Newman Lumber Co. Miss Keith, Colonel Cowart. Miss Smith, welfare association. Miss Lester, Doctors Hadaway & Avery. Miss Reed, general office. Miss Floyd, 10-cent store. Miss Hall, Colonel Mooty. Mr. King, King Drug Bro. 68 69 67 70 274 Miss Rakestraw, Colonel Thomasson. Miss Dixon, Mr. Ab Perry. Miss Griggs, V. C. Andrews (Inc.) Miss Morgan, public schools. Miss Edmundson, Five Points, Ala. H. W. CALDWELL, Mr. MILLER. This gentleman raised a question as to why we come back for Federal funds. You will recall that yesterday morning I asked permission to insert in the record a general statement that we did not take time to read. Many of those questions are answered in it. The CHAIRMAN. You may insert that in the record. (Mr. Miller submitted the document at opening of hearing). The CHAIRMAN. Who is your next witness? Mr. MILLER. Our next witness is Dr. Edwin A. Lee, director of the division of vocational education, and professor of education of the University of California. Doctor Lee was the first president of the American Vocational Association. He is now in Washington as chairman of a subcommittee on vocational education of the White House conference on child health and protection. He happens to be in Washington primarily on that mission. He is here to testify for this bill because it is so closely connected with that problem. STATEMENT OF EDWIN A. LEE., PROFESSOR OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Doctor LEE. Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen of the committee, an inalienable right, as well as a duty, in this Nation is the opportunity to work at some occupation at a wage or salary sufficient to enable a man to live decently as an individual, a husband, and a parent. Coordinate with this is the right of society in general, and those who pay the wage or salary in particular, to require an adequate and dependable return in goods or service from him who works. This brings us immediately to the problem of vocational training, with which H. R. 10821 is concerned. It is not necessary to tire you with the story of the decline and virtual disappearance of apprenticeship as a method of vocational training. You already know it. I desire only to emphasize the fact that to-day as never before modern industrial and commercial progress is dependent upon trained workers, and that increasingly those who have need are finding that the only place to turn for such workers is the vocational department of the public school. Coincidentally those who desire to train themselves sufficiently well to be worthy of hire are learning that the best and safest way to become economically independent, by which I mean simply the power to pay one's bills consistently and put aside a little for emergency and old age rather than the amassing of wealth, is, first, to take advantage of the facilities which public education, so far as it is able, provides for Vocational guidance, by which a young man or woman can choose more wisely what vocation he shall try to enter; and, second, to take advantage of the facilities which public education, so far as it is able, provides for vocational education, by which a young man or woman is trained to competency in the vocation he has chosen to follow. 116859-30-6 That was a long sentence, but I desire to call your attention to a phrase twice repeated therein-"so far as it is able." The twelve years which have elapsed since passage of the Smith-Hughes law have shown conclusively the need of that legislation and the vision of those who framed it. But increasingly, and particularly in recent years, those of us with long experience in solving the problem of making men and women self-respecting, economically independent citizens have chafed at our inability to overcome the handicap of that phrase "so far as it is able." I would not have you think we are ashamed of what has been done. Far from it. I am confident that future educational historians will look back upon the record of accomplishment under the Smith-Hughes Law and record as their belief that it was a period of educational development without parallel in American education. And if they are accurate they will indite in the record the beneficent influence exerted by the Congress of the United States in passing the legislation which initiated such an era, indeed without which the era could not have begun. Now, Congress has before it the opportunity to extend this beneficent influence out of all proportion to the amount of money it is asked to appropriate. The original Smith-Hughes Law was called a bill to promote, and many of our early efforts were entirely in terms of promotion. The bill before you is one "to provide for the further development of vocational education." We have evolved defensible procedures in vocational education. We have developed policies which by experience have become sound. We have facts and opinions which point clearly the direction we should follow in the decade immediately ahead. Only the phrase "so far as it is able" retards our progress. It is in the power of the Congress of 1930 to take its historic place with the Congress of 1917. Let me turn your thoughts to another aspect of the problem. We as a Nation are at the present moment in the throes of a period of unemployment. Unemployment may exist for any one of three The first, which is the most easily understood and which when it occurs is a reflection upon the emotional stability of American business, comes about by what we call an economic depression. Business becomes frightened and discharges employees wholesale, in a stupid attempt to bring back prosperity, but prosperity loiters until he who has been discharged is again at work. This cause has nothing to do with our discussion, and I introduce it only for contrast. The second cause is the result of inability of men to do the work for which they have been hired. The first men fired are always those who are least capable-the trained men are held to the last. Many of those unemployed to-day will find it hard to get work again, because there is nothing which they can do well enough to be worth hiring. They have never been trained to do anything. They are continually being hired and fired because society has allowed them to reach adulthood without visible means of support. Whether or not a period of unemployment exists they are unemployed and they will continue to be so until trained to do something which needs to be done. Such a problem is distinctly the task of vocational education; for the workers of to-morrow in the public day and part-time schools, for the adults in the evening, and trade-extension classes. We attempt to solve it now, "so far as we are able," but there is infinitely more that could be done if we had the means to do it. This bill provides the means. The third cause of unemployment is the price we pay for modern science and invention. A Mergenthaler invents a linotype and tens of thousands of typesetters are thrown out of work. The talking motion picture appears and tens of thousands of orchestra musicians are without work. The unskilled laborer no longer digs ditches, a machine digs better, quicker and more economically. Such unemployment is inescapable. The men are capable, they want to work, but their vocation is dead. The only solution is to train for another vocation and here again the kind of education which H. R. 10821 will further develop seems the only sane way to meet the problem. One more aspect of the matter and I am through. Modern industry faces the need of trained workers and there seems no way of meeting the need except through public education. Let me illustrate by the case of the cleaning and dyeing industry in the San Francisco Bay region. The industry was at its wit's end because of its inability to secure or train skillful and dependable workers. Through arrangements with the Board of Education of Oakland there has been set up a cooperative plan by which boys and girls, men and women, may be trained in the afternoon and evening in the various occupations making up the industry. The industry furnishes the plant and equipment. The city of Oakland furnishes the teachers and supervision. The industry has agreed to take for five years all persons whom the director of vocational education certifies as competent in any one of the occupations. Everybody gains by such an arrangement, not the least of whom is the man who sends a suit to be cleaned. Okland is extending this program to other industries "so far as it is able." This bill will help immensely in the further extension. There are industries which need workers for vocations which were unknown only a year or so ago. The Neon light is an example. I was in the office of the principal of the Frank Wiggins Trade School in Los Angeles the day the first manufacturer of the Neon light admitted his inability to move until he had a staff of trained workers. He came, as was his right, to the public school for help, and before he left the first steps had been taken in working out the program. The result was a new industry employing hundreds of workers launched successfully. "So far as it is able" the public school meets such problems. It ought not to be handicapped whenever there is a legitimate demand. In closing permit me to present certain letters from influential Californeans in support of this bill. I have a letter here from the mayor of the city of Los Angeles. May I have time to read certain brief sentences from it? The CHAIRNAM. Yes, indeed. Mr. LEE (reading): We understand that this bill is on the calendar for May 7, and believe that its passage will benefit our city particularly by making possible an enlarged program of vocational education. Los Angeles is finding an opportunity to provide equal chances for its young men and young women through trade training, as a result of past legislation, and our future growth, in order to keep pace with the growth of the city, must develop correspondingly. I, personally, have great faith in the benefits of vocational education in shunting our young men away from delinquency and crime and heading them toward a worthwhile skilled trade, and the resultant decrease of unemployment conditions. If time permitted, I would like to go into the relationship between crime, juvenile delinquency, and lack of training. I refer you simply |