CHART I. Percentage of Farm Boys School (14-21 Years old) Reached by All-Day Classes in Vocational Agriculture by Years from 1923 to 1927, Inclusive. CHART III Percentage of Rural High Schools in the United Total Number of Total Number of Vocational 3.339 or 29% CHART IV. Total Financial Return from Supervised Practice Total Labor Income from Supervised Practice in Vocational Agriculture, 1923-1927, Inclusive. $23,637,924.25 Total Federal Funds Spent in States $10,413,460.00 Ratio For every dollar of Federal Funds FROM THE PRESS NEW JERSEY'S BASIC INDUSTRY (Mrs. Iris Prouty O'Leary) [Journal of Industry and Finance, December, 1927] New Jersey is a manufacturing State, proud of her industries. Her capital shows the sign, "Trenton Makes The World Rakes." Depression or unfavorable conditions in industry are a cause for concern, yet in her chief industry there has been long continued depression, unrest, and instability. This industry is the oldest in the State. It is older than Paterson's silk mills, Trenton's potteries, Franklin's zinc mines, or Newark's tanneries. No other business in the State employes so many workers and there is no other industry which annually absorbs so much unskilled labor. It is, in fact, the only industry which takes an untrained, inexperienced worker and puts her at once on a skilled job. So much for the workers. The industry itself is unorganized. There are few, if any, recognized standards of speed, technique, or quality of product. The workers for the most part are handicapped by ignorance, tradition, and rule of thumb methods. Working conditions in this industry are not good. The hours are not good. The hours are long, for the plants run seven days a week, and night work is not prohibited. Factory inspection is unknown. Many of the shops are unsanitary from the standpoint of light, ventilation, and overcrowding. This, more than any other industry in the State, has suffered from increase in operating costs. Overhead charges have soared, the price of all raw material has increased with no compensating opportunity to realize on the product. The seriousness of these conditions can not be ignored. Home making in New Jersey is a basic industry. Its influence is far reaching. The home is not only the source of the labor supply but is also a prime factor in the efficiency of the worker. The home writes it failures on the production sheets of all New Jersey's other industries, for no worker is at his best whose home life is such as to keep him either physically or mentally uncomfortable. If all the women employed in home making in New Jersey were trained to competence on their job, the effect on the prosperity of the State would be beyond calculation. Competence in the business of home making would mean a reduction in the thousands of dollars annually lost through sickness and ill health of the workers. We have it on unquestionable authority that "The chief factor responsible for human deterioration in recent times is the unwise choice of food and that more can be attained through dietary reform than through any other agency." The chief factors in this reform must be the home and the active agent the woman who feeds the family. From better conditions in home making came increased thrift and higher standards of home comfort and this means stability of labor and industry. The man who has a comfortable home is seldom a migratory worker. homes give industry its steadiest market. Such Another benefit which industry will derive from trained workers on the home making job will be in the less tangible field of human relationships. The home is responsible not only for the irritability and consequent friction which are the aftermath of many a poor breakfast, but for the unsocial attitude which lack of proper home life may foster in its members. Human relationships in industry and the community are family relationships on a larger scale, and the controlling influence in developing in the young worker during his years of adaptability a consciousness of these wider responsibilities to the social order is the home. More important than all other benefits will be the effect which better home making would have on New Jersey's labor supply at its source. The palliative measures which we are attempting to apply to industry in this generation are a more or less surface remedy for evils which have their root in the home. Without the incentive of the home, we can not expect to train workers for selfsupport or self-respect. To expect the home to improve its own conditions is like asking a man "to pull himself up by his boot straps." Help must come from the outside and the public schools are the agencies to which we must look for much of our home betterment. The organization of home-economics instruction is the first step which has been taken in this field. The continuance and improvement of this instruction is a matter of vital importance to an industrial State. |