The schools will reach these children if they attend, but in Wisconsin, which stands, perhaps, a little higher in the number that are attending than was found by Congressman Brown for the country at large, only one-third of the children reach and attend high school. Two-thirds of them are wage earners, and we, in the State and the Federal Government, thought that that problem was so important that a specific agency might well give its entire time to the development of the thing that those children might need, to the end, speaking for our own State, that we have some 26,000 wage earners, child laborers, if you please, between 14 and 18 years of age, and as a condition precedent to earning a livelihood they must attend school part of the time.

That is not considered the woodshed of an educational system. It is not considered an adjunct of something else, but a problem of its own, so important, the group being as large as any group to which, economic attention may be given, that it is worth while for an independent agency to handle that problem, according to the genius of its problem. So we in Wisconsin have a board and we have received from the Federal Board for Vocational Education inspirational help, administrative policies that have assisted us in our work, and in saying this I am subordinating the financial assistance we have received, while, of course, we have received our proportion, according to the distribution among States according to their population.

Yet in Wisconsin we only pay 7 per cent from Federal funds for all the work that is done for these child workers. Ninety-three per cent is paid out of local and State taxes. We do get some aid, but this is rather the negligible side of the problem for which I am arguing, because if Federal aid were discontinued, I am sure the State of Wisconsin would go on doing for its wage earners that which we can do, to make them more intelligent wage earners and give them specific attention during the period of adolescent childhood. Doing this not as an adjunct to school but as a specific, industrial problem confronting our State and which also confronts the Nation.

We went through quite recently a rather disturbing economic proposition in which I concede that there are two sides of the argument; that is, child labor legislation.

Two attempts were made by Congress to pass a law to regulate child labor, and yet the most visionary, or, I might say, the most practical suggestion, and for which so much criticism was lodged on the decision of the Supreme Court which set aside those laws, was the one requiring children to go to school until they are 14 years of

age.

That idea was considered drastic, and, in some cases, rather unthinkable. Most of the States of the Union, however, have already child labor laws, up to that point. Even if that law had been considered constitutional, we would not have yet solved the child labor problem, because, gentlemen, child labor without child opportunity is unjust, either as a national or as a State policy.

Child opportunity means that a child between 14 and 18, the most critical period in a child's life, should have some contact that will increase that child's efficiency, earning power, and economic position in the community.

Consequently, the part-time school, as a vocational school, is an agency that must develop, according to the genius of its problem.

The moment a boy takes a dinner pail in his hand, becomes a wage earner and goes into a factory, that moment he becomes a different psychological subject with which to deal, than the child who is supported by his father and mother, getting his meals and his clothes, and going to school preparing for his life work. It is a situation that must be treated as an entity, as a specific industrial problem.

The amount of expenses involved in the administration is negligible unless that agency is doing something, that as the chairman has said, can just as well be done by an existing agency. But we have noticed that where existing agencies are given a certain fund with which to handle school problems, that when it gets to the problem of the working boy and girl, as a rule, there is not money enough left over so that they can get the full measure of public subsidy of which they are deserving.

Consequently, the tutorial system has come into vogue in our (public) school system in America, by which, for a consideration, they will teach you to do everything from shaving to playing a musical instrument.

I am not going to take your time to read these [indicating magazine pages], but I would suggest that members of this committee, at your leisure, buy a copy of Popular Mechanics, which is a sample of one of several magazines that get into the hands of the children, and particularly the working children.

They tell you how you can become expert as an auto mechanic, how you can become a carpenter, how you can acquire increased earning power, how you may learn to engrave, how you may learn to write cards, how you may develop physically, how you may do any one of the many things that spell successful vocational careers in life.

But we are asking the working children through the system that has been permitted throughout this country quite generally, to pay for that out of their own earnings, and to hire a tutor in order that they may upgrade themselves, in order that they may have some educational advantages, because of the influence of poverty that has compelled them to carry a dinner pail.

So, very briefly, I want to make a plea on behalf of the working children in this country, that the specific agency which has been set in motion by the Federal Government to give exclusive attention to these people should not be abolished lightly, or that we may trust that through some other place they may be equally well reached and served.

Gentlemen, they have not been reached in 150 years.

Our good old American, Abraham Lincoln, speaking in the city of Milwaukee, Wis., in 1859, said that there was a serious problem confronting this Nation, and in connection with that, if I may read just a page from an extract of an address that he gave to the State fair, I should like to do so. He said:

The great majority must labor at something productive. From these premises the problem springs, "How can labor and education be the most satisfactorily combined?"

Up to the present time that has not been solved, except as your Federal board has gone out into the fields of labor and brought

educational opportunity, inspiration and contact into the lives of the workers.

Mr. Lincoln realized what we realize here to-day, and I do not doubt you may have those same theories presented here that we have had back home.

He said there were two theories in handling that question, one the Mud-Sill theory. On that, he says as follows:

By the Mud-Sill theory, it is assumed that labor and education are incompatible, and any practical combination of them impossible. According to that theory, a blind horse upon a treadmill is a perfect illustration of what a laborer should be all the better for being blind, that he could not kick understandingly. According to that theory, the education of laborers is not only useless, but pernicious and dangerous. In fact, it is, in some sort, deemed a misfortune that laborers should have heads at all. Those same heads are regarded as explosive materials, only to be safely kept in damp places, as far as possible from that peculiar sort of fire which ignites them. A Yankee who could invent a stronghanded man, without a head, would receive the everlasting gratitude of the Mud-Sill advocates.

But free labor says, "No." Free labor argues that as the Author of Man makes every individual with one head and one pair of hands, it was probably intended that head and hands should cooperate as friends, and that that particular head should direct and control that particular pair of hands. As each man has one mouth to be fed, and one pair of hands to furnish food, it was probably intended that that particular pair of hands should feed that particular mouth, that each head is the natural guardian, director, and protector of the hands and mouth inseparably connected with it; and that being so, every head should be cultivated and improved by whatever will add to its capacity for performing its charge. In one word, free labor insists on universal education. I suppose, however, I shall not be mistaken in assuming as a fact that the people of Wisconsin prefer free labor with its natural companion, education.

A problem springs from that, as he says, how can labor and education be satisfactorily combined? Your Federal board, our board back home, other boards similarly organized, not in any way to interfere or to dominate a school system, but organized only for one purpose, a great proclamation crew in the educational field, to pick up and do for those who have dropped out of the system, does such admirable work for those with whom they come in contact.

Our problems in force of numbers are larger than the problems before those to whom you would delegate this responsibility, if these bills prevail. It is large and it is important and we have only scratched the surface, gentlemen, in the solution of it.

If America is to rise to economic importance, it is necessary that the workers of this country-and if we are going to reach them, it means the adolescent workers of this country-receive educational opportunity, inspiration and contact during the formative years of their character, and that is, broadly speaking, between fourteen and eighteen years of age.

In the State of Wisconsin two-thirds of the children are out of school instead of in school. In the Nation, I think it would be perhaps somewhat larger.

You know that the question you are discussing to-day, or considering to-day, whichever way you may decide it, I believe is one of the most important questions confronting the American people, and in your final analysis I hope that you will safeguard the matter so that the workers of this country who can only attend school parttime have the same attention given to them, absolutely the same attention, that is given to those who are preparing to become workers and devoting all of their time to school.

Any system that looks well to this kind of education adds to the economic wealth of our country. As Roger Babson has said in his book, The Future Working Classes, the taxation wisely spent on education is the only taxation that brings back direct economic return to the investor. It is in the nature of an investment.

I hope that Congress when it finally determines a policy will make an investment, and I believe that the investment that is now made in the Federal Board is a wise investment, because it upgrades the mass of the American people.

They are out of school very largely, and that agency if it is important and is doing the work well, should not be lightly set aside. unless you are assured fundamentally that these problems are not going to be neglected in any consolidation of departments.

I have here, and I am going to leave with you, an argument by Mr. Charles E. Whelan, a national lecturer for the Modern Woodmen of America, when this same question was up for general discussion, on the extent to which we should go in Wisconsin.

Mr. Whelan wrote a short monograph, writing a thesis and a plea for the working children of America.

We do not need to argue before this committee, or any intelligent body, the need of the children in the public schools. You and I send our children to the public schools. We send them through the grades and we send them to the high schools. We would fight if any one for one moment would take away those privileges from your child or mine. We send them on to the technical schools and the university, all of which, I believe, should be subsidized as they are. But it is not necessary to argue that to you.

But we have neglected altogether too long the great problem of the workers of America, and particularly the child workers. So Mr. Whelan wrote a brief in behalf of the child workers of America as a plea for an agency to carry on that work.

The Modern Woodmen thought so well of it that they had 15,000 copies printed and distributed to all the camps in America, and another edition is now in preparation.

The executive board assured me that they were going to get behind that movement for "A chance for every child."

It is futile to say you have a chance, if the child can not go, and that period of childhood passes but once.

I thank you.

Mr. WRIGHT. The next statement will be by Mr. Frank C. Page, manager of the resolutions and referendum department, United States Chamber of Commerce.

STATEMENT OF MR. FRANK C. PAGE, MANAGER RESOLUTIONS AND REFERENDUM DEPARTMENT, UNITED STATES CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

Mr. PAGE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I have already appeared in behalf of the chamber of commerce, and made its position clear in opposition to the Sterling-Reed bill, the establishment of a department of education.

This particular phase of the hearing to-day regarding vocational education is covered by an entirely separate referendum of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States. It was referendum No. 14, taken in 1916.

The results of this referendum were found or had before the establishment of the Vocational Educational Board. The Vocational Educational Board has carried out in its organization and in its work the program and policy and set-up as favored by the chamber of commerce at that time.

There has at no time since then been any question arising in the chamber of commerce among our members to intimate that anyone would wish any change in the subject.

The CHAIRMAN. What was the vote on that?

Mr. PAGE. I have that here, Mr. Chairman. The four questions were as follows:

1. The committee recommends liberal Federal appropriations for promotion of vocational education in the United States.

The vote on that was 831 votes in favor and 109 against.

2. The committee recommends that Federal appropriations should be allotted among the States upon a uniform basis and should bear a uniform relation to appropriations made by the States for like purposes.

The vote on that question was 828 votes in favor and 95 votes against.

3. The committee recommends the creation of a Federal board to be representative of the interests vitally concerned and to be compensated sufficiently to command great ability.

The vote on that question was 788 votes in favor and 1431 votes against.

4. The committee recommends that the Federal board should be required to appoint advisory committees of five members each, representing industry, commerce, labor, agriculture, home making, and general or vocational education.

The vote on that was 783 votes in favor and 136 votes against. Of course, the set-up of the board does not exactly line up with the four recommendations, but the representation is there on the board. The chamber is opposed to a department of education with a secretary in the Cabinet and to the appropriation of money for general education on an equal basis with the States.

It opposes any move to place this Federal vocational training under the Bureau of Education.

It believes, and it is borne out by this referendum, that vocational education is important enough to stand as a separate entity by itself.

If there was a department of education and the question came up whether the vocational board should be under the Department of Education, to get a position on the question, the chamber would either have to come back to its membership at an annual meeting, or, through a referendum, have the board of directors interpret the application of whether a separate vocational board would be equivalent to a separate bureau in a department.

But there is no question that the chamber in its attitude as expressed here would oppose placing this organization under the Bureau of Education, it being too important to be placed as a subsidiary organization to that.

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I ask leave to put the first page of this vote in the record as it is. The CHAIRMAN. Very well.