The Making of a Trade School Part 3

As trade instruction is new in education, the normal schools have not begun training teachers regularly for these positions, nor, indeed, are they yet prepared to do so. The organizer of a trade school faces, therefore, a serious difficulty in obtaining instructors who are adequate to the task before them.

The following trade teaching staff is needed: supervisors of the various trades; forewomen to direct the school shops; trade instructors to teach the various groups of students the specialized processes; a.s.sistants to attend to minor matters in the workrooms; art teachers, who have had experience in designing for the various trades represented; academic instructors who know the working world practically and can give the students a training which, while helping them in their trades, will broaden their knowledge of and sympathy in the world's work. All of these teachers must not only have had experience in trade, but must continually keep in touch with the methods of the outside market.

Unsuccessful trade workers, who often wish to teach, or teachers who know nothing of the needs of trade workrooms, cannot adequately prepare students for specific trade positions. Trade knows what it wants, is a severe critic and an unsparing judge. The trade school, therefore, cannot afford to rely on instructors who would be themselves unsuccessful in the market, for the result would be certain failure in the students. Such specific training requires exceptional knowledge in its teaching force. The usual teacher of manual training knows too little of the ways of the workrooms and is too theoretical in her instruction to be trusted to train workers who must satisfy trade demands. On the other hand, the trade worker, good as she may be in her specialty, seldom knows how to teach. She can drive her group of workers, but she cannot train the green hands to do more than work quickly at one thing. She can make them work, but she cannot make them better workers. When she has orders to turn out, her lifelong training makes her think of the rapid completion of the articles rather than the careful development of the students who are making them. If she is not watched she will choose the girl to do a piece of work who can do it well and quickly (but who does not need this experience), rather than the one who should do it in order to have practice in it.

The problem is to find a way to unite the good teacher and the successful worker. Such a combination appears at rare intervals. At the present time the teacher who can adequately prepare young workers for trade has to be taught while she is herself teaching. She may be chosen from either the industrial or the educational field, if she has certain qualities of mind and spirit, but she must now make up the points she lacks, be it experience in trade or ability to teach. Supervisors need special insight and capability, as they are called upon to investigate a new and difficult field, to select from it the subjects needed, and after that to organize education of a most practical kind. They combine the duties of school princ.i.p.al, teacher, forewoman, factory superintendent, and business manager. They must be willing to give themselves to the cause, as they are responsible for the conduct of their departments throughout the year, at night as well as during the day, at least until they can train some one to whom they can delegate some of their responsibility. They need a broad, cultural education and, at the same time, interest and knowledge of the industrial problems of the time, as well as experience in their particular trade. They must have sympathy with the working people and their lives. It is evident that such women are hard to find, and when found or when trained are in demand by other inst.i.tutions or in business life, in which places they can command high salaries. All efficient trade teachers also are equally in demand in workrooms, hence the school must compete with good business salaries in place of the usual underpay of educational inst.i.tutions.

In addition to the trade teachers, practical instructors in healthful living and special secretaries needing social knowledge of various kinds are also essential in the modern trade school for girls. Their training adds to the director's responsibilities, for no one at present has the knowledge and experience necessary.

The many problems connected with obtaining an adequate teaching staff seem at present to have but one solution, _i. e._, the school has to be its own training school for its faculty to a greater or less extent. One source of a.s.sistant teachers has been found in students who have made good in trade. Pupils of fair education who show skill and executive ability in their department work and who later succeed in their trade positions have already proved helpful when brought back to the school.

Such girls know the courses of instruction, their needs and difficulties, and also the outside workroom demands. If they are given some hints in methods of teaching, their success is greater. European trade schools for girls have drawn many of the best teachers from the student body and have organized teachers' training cla.s.ses for them. A course of regular training for trade pupil teachers should be given later in American training schools to meet this situation.

Courses of Study

As the changes about to occur in the market must be recognized and inserted in the curriculum in time for the students to be prepared for the new work when they are placed, set courses of study cannot be followed without endangering the practical value of the teaching.

Furthermore, the pupils must be advanced as they show ability, and their different characteristics should have consideration; hence the work must be sufficiently flexible and adaptable to allow for increasing one kind of training and decreasing another, in order to develop a girl's best ability. It is not the trade courses only which should be fitted to the need, but the trade-art, trade-academic, and physical education must also s.h.i.+ft and introduce needed material as quickly as would the market grasp at new plans for the workrooms. Nor is it sufficient that the curriculum should adapt itself merely to training girls for trade positions. It is never to be forgotten that these students are to be made into higher grade workers and citizens, and that the greater number of them will marry. In general, it can be said that woman's entrance into industry is more or less temporary in that it is apt to precede or to follow marriage, and, as a rule, is not continuous. Good citizens.h.i.+p for these young wage-earners should mean the better home as well as the broader views of industrial life. The inserting into an already too brief training the important factors for making the better home-keeper requires study of the ethics and economics of home and social life in addition to the study of the industrial situation, and places continuous problems before the faculty.

Investigations

In order to be in vital touch with the practical needs and changes of the market, special investigations of trade have been and are continually conducted by the faculty of the school. Effort is made by them also to keep in close contact with industrial and social organizations of workers in settlements, clubs, societies, and unions, that all phases of the wage-earner's life, pleasures, aims, and needs, may be appreciated. The pupils in attendance are studied to know their conditions of health, their tendencies, their needs, their improvement.

After their entry into trade they are kept in touch with the school through the Placement Bureau, clubs, graduate a.s.sociations, and also by visits from the school's investigator, in order to note the effect of their training on their self-support, their workrooms, and their homes.

Groups of trained and untrained girls are compared, that differences and benefits may be noted and the true situation may be clearly understood.

That the essentials of this cla.s.s of education might be grasped as far as possible, the director of the school made a six months' investigation of the professional schools for girls on the continent of Europe. This study was made after the Manhattan Trade School had been organized and was running successfully. The problems were then well in hand, and advantage could be taken the better of differing standpoints. In some European countries such practical instruction has been established for half a century. Each country has organized the work according to its own view of woman's position in industrial and domestic life. Many aspects of the problem can therefore be studied and various courses of instruction consulted. This investigation covered three interesting fields. First, the organization of the schools, including the equipment; the teachers and their training; the budget; the order work; the relation of the school to employers; the placing of the girls in positions; the wages; the schemes for financial aid, and the work of the alumnae a.s.sociations. Second, the trades taught and the courses of instruction; the general education required at entrance and that given as an integral part of trade; the trade-art courses; the housekeeping and training of servants; the development of ideas of better living and the training for responsibility in home and trade life. Third, the visiting of workrooms employing women; the obtaining information on the effect of trade schools; the students' usefulness and ability to advance, and a survey of the crafts conducted in the homes of the people.

Trade Order Administration

A trade school must do its skilled handwork in the fas.h.i.+on of the day and on correct materials, yet the students are too poor to work for themselves. A school budget cannot supply such large quant.i.ties of valuable materials unless it can get some return for them. The school shop in each department, where orders both private and custom are taken, has proved advantageous, but involves great problems of administration: (1) the actual business methods and management connected with the invoices, sales, and delivery of goods; (2) the obtaining of orders needed and of the quant.i.ty desirable; (3) the taking of custom orders, fitting the customer, and delivery of orders on time; (4) a satisfactory apportionment of the order work so that the students may profit by it and not be expected to continue it after they have had sufficient experience of one kind, or if they are not yet able to do the elaborate work involved; (5) the finding of operatives who will do what the students cannot or should not do; (6) the expense involved in employing workers at trade prices and for shorter hours; (7) the cost of articles, and other details which are involved in entering into compet.i.tion with trade. It may be stated that no trade school should underbid the market, but should charge the full prices and expect to give equivalent returns.

A trade school cannot afford to be an amateur supported by a philanthropic public, but must have a recognized business standard.

Placement

Problems of varied kinds meet the school in placing its students. Each new enactment of child labor or industrial laws has its influence. Even a good law will sometimes have a temporary serious effect in lowering wages or turning capable girls out of satisfactory positions. Care must be exercised that students are not placed where there is a possibility of running counter to the best interests of labor. The desire to place each pupil where she can develop to her highest condition requires continual knowledge of the market needs and of the characteristics of the many girls. Records of students entering, studying, and placed, the kinds of positions open, and industrial and labor information must be kept up to date, yet such data are often hard to secure.

Trade Union Att.i.tude

An important question that is always before a trade school is the effect the instruction may have on the working people. It is difficult for one not continually in the midst of the pressure of the actual trade to know the many ways that thoughtless advance in trade teaching may react to the disadvantage of the very ones that the school wishes to help.

Injury may be done by preparing too many for certain occupations, filling places where a strike is on, replacing well-paid positions with trade school girls at a less price, placing the girls at too small a wage for their skill, doing order work at too low a price or when a strike is on, considering too closely the fitting of a worker for the employer's benefit rather than for the broadening of her own life, and like thoughtless actions. The difficulties of the situation are great and the solution frequently obscure, but a fair-minded school must be in touch with the effort the working woman herself has inaugurated to better her condition. The apparently unnecessary suspicion with which the laboring cla.s.s regards the organization of trade instruction would have foundation if no thought were given to the trade conditions as the working girl sees them. A trade school for fourteen-year-old girls need not make a point of their immediate entrance into unions, but it should consider the subject simply and wisely in all its bearings, that the students may know the full aims and advantages of cooperation as well as the point of view and many difficulties of the employers.

Contact with Trade

The faculty of a trade school needs the cooperation and a.s.sistance of the working people and the employers of labor. Only through intimate interrelation with them can the best and most practical results be obtained. Auxiliaries and committees of employers and of wage-earners; visits of the staff of the school to trade, and of employers, forewomen, and workers to the school; the carrying out of orders for workrooms and a.s.sisting them at busy seasons, are some of the ways by which the Manhattan Trade School has tried to gain the help of the busy industrial world.

Problems of Financial Aid

The aid given to enable the poorest students to attend the school has brought its own questions, such as: the danger of pauperizing the recipients; the methods of selecting the beneficiaries; the best way to give the weekly aid; the development of a spirit of earnest work and regular attendance in the girls thus aided; the stimulation of a desire to return some equivalent in special helpfulness to the Manhattan Trade School or to its students, and the eliminating of this philanthropic effort from any apparent relation to school work.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] In order to explain these problems, it will be necessary to repeat some of the data in Part I.

PART III

EQUIPMENT AND SUPPORT

Housing and Equipment

The first home of the Manhattan Trade School was a large four-story and bas.e.m.e.nt dwelling house, for which a rental of $2,100 per annum was paid. The initial permanent equipment and first temporary stock provided for one hundred students, and cost $9,500. This amount was utilized princ.i.p.ally for the furnis.h.i.+ng of special rooms for electric power operating; for sewing; for dressmaking; for millinery; for pasting; and for the more general equipment of offices, academic and art rooms, a kitchen, and a lunch room. The following lists show the range of expenses for furnis.h.i.+ng the main workrooms with necessary equipment:

GARMENT OR DRESSMAKING WORKROOM

Sewing machines, each $18.00 to $70.00 Work, cutting, and ironing tables, each 6.00 to 20.00 upward Electric irons, each 7.75 Gas stove (necessary when electric irons are not used), each 2.00 upward Cheval gla.s.s, each 20.00 to 100.00 upward Chairs, each .50 to 3.00 upward Exhibition, stock closets, cabinets, and chests of drawers, each 10.00 to 100.00 upward Fitting stands, each 2.00 to 30.00 upward Fitting room (a curtained alcove), each 10.00 upward Fitting room (a furnished room), each 100.00 upward Dress forms, per dozen 30.00 upward Waist forms, per dozen 6.00 upward Sleeve forms, pair 1.00 to 1.50 upward Lockers, per running foot 3.00 to 8.00 upward

A room for twenty workers may be plainly furnished at a cost of $300 to $500. If a large number of expensive sewing machines are desired, the estimates must be increased by several hundred dollars. The Manhattan Trade School has forty foot-power machines of the kinds most in use in the workrooms of New York.

The equipping of a workroom for electric power operating, including general and special machines, motor, cutting and work tables, cabinets and chairs, will be considerably more expensive than the one for garment making. In the latter, one sewing machine can be used by several workers, but in electric operating each worker must have her own machine. The electric motor adds also to the expense. The minimum cost of equipping a shop for twenty workers would be $1,000 to $1,500. The necessary equipment would be as follows:

ELECTRIC OPERATING WORKROOM

Plain sewing machines in rows, per head $22.50 upward Troughs for work between the rows and tables for the machines (per every two machines) 10.00 Special machines (two needle, embroidery, lace st.i.tch, b.u.t.tonhole, straw sewing, and the like), each according to kind 35.00 to 125.00 Motor, each 140.00 upward Electric cutter, each 25.00 upward Cabinets, tables, chairs, and irons, see above

The Manhattan Trade School has fifty-five plain electric sewing machines and thirty-two special machines, as follows: three b.u.t.tonhole, one two-needle, one binding, one zigzag, five hemst.i.tching, five tucker, four Bonnaz, one braider, one hand embroidery, one scalloping, nine straw sewing.

In workrooms conducting trades which use paste, gum, and glue, the following special equipment is required:

Glue pots, gas, each $7.50 upward Glue pots, electric, each 21.75 upward Hand cutter, each 50.00 upward Cabinets, tables, chairs, see above

The cost of equipping a shop would be from $200 to $400.

Special machines for perforating designs or for pleating materials are often needed in teaching the garment trades. Wholesale prices can usually be obtained when the order is large. Dealers have also shown themselves willing to sell their machines at low prices, to loan them, and even to give them to a school which has proved its ability to train good workers.

When it was appreciated that the original quarters of the school were too limited, the Board of Administrators went to work with great enthusiasm and in a few months collected the requisite money and bought a large business loft building at 209-213 East 23d Street, at an expense of $175,000. To put it in order for work cost $5,000 in addition. The former equipment was used and $5,000 more was spent for such needed items as: machines, $3,200; motor, $352; perforating machine, $38; additional master clocks, $233; chairs and tables, $850. The school is furnished in a simple, businesslike manner, the equipment merely reproducing good workroom requirements, _i. e._, essentials only.

The budget for the first year, 1902-1903, was $22,094.16, of which the salaries for teachers took about one-half and the rent and maintenance covered the other half. During this year there were 113 students admitted. In 1908-1909, after six years of rapid growth, the educational budget is $49,000, or more than double the original, of which the salaries are $38,806; the supplies, $1,710; printing and publis.h.i.+ng, $600; maintenance, $9,900. At the beginning of 1908 there were 254 students in the school; 689 were registered during the year, making a total of 943 girls, being almost nine times the number in attendance during the first year.

The Support