CONTRIBUTION TO RELIEF OF UNEMPLOYMENT

On occasion of approving the George-Ellzey Act authorizing additional appropriations for vocational education for the years 1935, 1936, and 1937, the President expressed the desire that funds made available to the States by the new act be used for the benefit of the unemployed. With exception of a provision in that act that part-time classes for employed workers operating for less than 144 hours per year might receive Federal aid, the requirements for approval of expenditures in the States for trade and industrial education were the same as those governing expenditures from funds granted to the States by the Smith-Hughes Act.

During the past 18 years definite policies have been established, and interpretations of the Smith-Hughes Act have been made to aid the States in the administration of their program. So far as the standards recommended in these policies were discretionary, and based upon interpretations of the Smith-Hughes Act, they have been reexamined to see what modifications might be made to bring them into conformity with the wish of the President. A conference of State officials was called in Washington in June 1934, and certain modified standards, interpretations, and definitions were agreed upon. These temporarily modified standards, after approval by the Commissioner of Education, were made known to the States in Miscellaneous 1715 and 1599. The evidence is conclusive that the modified rulings and interpretations have functioned as they were intended to function during the year, in making it easier for the States (1) to operate special classes for persons who were in need of vocational training to bring themselves up to date in their trades, and (2) to provide short units of training to meet the specific needs of unemployed persons generally.

It may fairly be stated that the entire program of trade and industrial education, carried on cooperatively between the Federal Government and the States, is one social agency for dealing effectively with the unemployment problem. The record shows that a very large percentage of graduates of full-time day-trade schools have been able to secure employment, even during the depression years. Where there has been a pronounced shortage of trained help locally, and where the school has limited its enrollment to persons in line for available employment, the placement record has been practically 100 percent. This type of school has in fact functioned generally to prevent unemployment in a fundamental way, by removing one of the basic causes of unemployment, namely, lack of training qualifying for employment in an available job.

Service to out-of-school groups, also, including adults who need vocational training to build up or maintain their employability, con

tributes in an important way to solution of the unemployment problem. Many thousands of adults, by taking advantage of opportunities to receive appropriate vocational training, have been able to secure profitable employment during the past year. Adult retraining work has been conspicuously successful.

For home economics education, with its center of interest in the home, unemployment has developed difficult problems. One responsibility assumed by teachers of home economics has been to find out how home conditions were being affected locally by unemployment, and to bring vocational education into the home to meet conditions found, by safeguarding family health and welfare under these conditions. In the emergency situation home economics education has accordingly been developed in courses based upon surveys of individual family needs, and devised to meet these needs. The homemaker has been taught how to conserve and make the most of the meager resources of the family-how to make over old garments, renovate household furnishings, and buy economically.

The Federal staff has advised with State supervisors and school administrators in promoting cooperation with relief agencies. This cooperation has embraced planning courses for adult homemakers from families on relief, and preparing materials for use in such classes. Members of the staff have conducted conferences with teachers on adapting instruction given in regular day-school classes, and in classes organized for adults to meet the needs of unemployed and low-income groups, and of groups on relief. They have conducted conferences, also, on developing instruction to meet the needs of wage-earning girls and women working in homes, and for girls thrown out of employment by minimum age requirements set up under N. R. A. codes. They have prepared material on service jobs in the field of home economics and on consumer education.

In rural communities home economics teachers have cooperated with teachers of vocational agriculture in developing live-at-home programs-budgeting family needs for food, planning and planting home gardens to meet these needs, and preserving surplus fruits, vegetables, and meats for winter consumption.

Among the consequences of unemployment in urban industrial centers has been a back-flow of population into rural areas, a return to the farm of farm youth who had in other years found employment in urban communities, and a closing-up of avenues of employ ment for such youth in other fields than farming.

Vocational agriculture has functioned in this situation to establish in farming these youth, and urban families which in many instances have had little if any practical experience in farming for the market, or in farming or gardening for home consumption.

In the field of vocational agriculture relief of unemployment during the past year in its larger aspects has meant for the Federal staff, for State administrators and supervisors, and for agricultural teachers generally modification of programs and development of new lines of instruction to promote agricultural adjustment, rural rehabilitation, and subsistence homestead programs.

NEW PROBLEMS OF THE ALL-DAY AND PART-TIME SCHOOL VOCATIONAL PROGRAMS UNDER CHILD-LABOR LAWS

As was noted in the annual report for 1934, the elimination of child labor under State laws and N. R. A. codes fixing minimum ages of employment, and under policies adopted by employers, has created a gap in our educational system between the age of leaving school and the age of entering into regular wage-earning employment, and imposed upon our public-school system new and very large responsibilities.

Youth in the ages of 14 to 16 and 18 years, who are as a matter of public policy or industrial expediency excluded from entrance into regular employment, cannot be abandoned to complete idleness by local communities during the most critical habit-forming and character-forming period of adolescence. It follows that educational opportunities adapted to the needs of these youth must be generally provided to bridge the gap which has opened up between the years of school attendance and those of productive employment.

For several years past vocational programs have been in process of expansion and adaptation to meet the needs of these out-ofschool out-of-work youth. In general the all-day and part-time vocational schools have been modifying and developing their programs to meet the needs of older groups-the all-day school to meet the needs of youth in full-time school attendance beyond the age of 14, to the ages of 16 to 18 years, and the part-time school to meet the needs of employed youth in more advanced ages. The problem of providing for the educational needs of these youth is one large phase of our "youth problem."

In this matter of adapting part-time school instruction to meet the needs of older youth, the Office of Education and State vocational staffs have a large responsibility, since one-third of the Federal funds appropriated to the States under the Smith-Hughes and George-Ellzey Acts for trade and industrial education, if used by the States, must be used for part-time schools.

APPRENTICE TRAINING

Apprenticeship was definitely recognized in the Smith-Hughes Act, and the Federal-State cooperative program of vocational education

in the industrial field was planned to meet the need in this country for skilled mechanics. . For many years industries in this country had depended largely upon Europe to train their skilled artisans. The few apprentice training programs which were in operation in this country in 1917 amounted to very little except in a few cases, of which those conducted in railroad shops, navy yards, arsenals, and a few of the larger corporations may be cited as samples.

In the effort to extend employment for adult workers under N. R. A. codes opportunity to develop and operate apprentice training programs in industries and trades covered by the codes was for the time being eliminated. When, however, in 1934 it became apparent that there was an actual and prospective shortage of thoroughly trained skilled workers in these fields of employment, the President issued an Executive order which made it possible to organize apprentice training under the codes through granting certain exemptions from wage and hour provisions. The responsibility for carrying out this Executive order was assigned to the Secretary of Labor, and a Federal Committee on Apprentice Training was appointed. This committee consisted of one member and one alternate each from the N. R. A., the Department of Labor, and the Office of Education. Up to the time that the N. R. A. codes were invalidated by a decision of the Supreme Court, 44 State committees had been formed to administer apprentice training, but the number of apprentices actually indentured under the program was very small, except in the State of Wisconsin where the program was merely a continuation of what that State had been doing for many years.

Reports from the States show that throughout the country the promotion of the program of apprentice training is recognized as a major responsibility of State boards for vocational education in developing the cooperative Federal-State programs of vocational education.

As indicative of the status of apprentice training under the SmithHughes Act, it may be noted that 1,400 apprentices were in attendance during the past year at the Washburne Continuation and Apprentice School in Chicago; and that in Detroit 450 apprentices were in school 4 to 8 hours per week and at work the balance of the time. By adding to this figure for Detroit the number of cooperative students, a total of 948 is found as the number of young workers actually learning trades under an organized system of vocational training in the public vocational schools of the city and on the job. Definite arrangements for extending and developing apprenticeship have been made in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Indiana, Virginia,

Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Colorado, California, Oregon, and a number of other States.

A survey of apprentice training made in 1931 indicated that there were at that time more than 31,000 apprentices or trade-school students receiving the equivalent of apprentice training. While exact data on the present status of apprenticeship under the Smith-Hughes Act are not available at this time, it is believed that for the country as a whole the number of apprentices is well over 50,000.

The need for systematic development of apprentice-training programs is particularly urgent in the field of commercial education. In our larger cities one-sixth of the young workers between the ages of 18 and 24 years are employed in distributive occupations, and at least 100,000 youth in the country as a whole are serving in the lower-level positions in retail stores. Apprentice training would greatly benefit those youth.

OCCUPATIONAL ADJUSTMENT TRAINING

In its report to the President last January, the Committee on Economic Security noted that "education, training, and vocational guidance are of major importance in obtaining economic security for the individual and the Nation." It declared with special emphasis that "the educational and vocational equipment of individuals is a major factor in their economic security ", and added the following statement:

It has become apparent particularly that education cannot be regarded as completed upon leaving school. In a day and age of rapidly changing technics and market demands, many people will find it necessary to make adjustments long after they have first entered industry. Adjustment of our educational content and technic to this situation is a vital need in a longrange program for economic security.

In this sense vocational education, as it has developed under the Vocational Education Act of 1917, is one long-range social program for promoting the economic security of the worker.

It was in recognition of the vital need for adjustment of our educational content and technic to meet the needs of adult workers, that the act of 1917 provided that Federal funds appropriated to the States by the act for vocational education should be available for evening classes organized to give instruction to adult workers, supplementary to their daily employment." Since such instruction must be supplementary to daily employment it is essentially occupational adjustment instruction.

Enrollments in such classes of all types-agricultural, trade and industrial, and home economics-totaled 370,000 in 1934, and there is no reason to expect that reports to the Office of Education from the States for 1935, when these reports become available, will show