Mr. FITZPATRICK. But they cannot hire them after they have reached the age of 55, so there you are.

Mr. LEAVY. In your research in preparing that chart did you find that mechanical devices are in any way supplanting painters, glaziers, and varnishers?

Mr. CUSHMAN. Not to any great extent. However, they do some painting with spray guns, such as automobiles, freight cars, and wicker furniture.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. Are those who do that work skilled mechanics? Mr. CUSHMAN. In some cases where labor is highly organized, a man has to be a painter before he can use an air brush or spray gun. In other cases, they pick up an unskilled man, and in a short time teach him how to use a spray gun.

Mr. LEAVY. Have they not perfected mechanical devices that take the place of glaziers?

Mr. CUSHMAN. Generally speaking, no. I think the craft status of that trade has been pretty well preserved. It may be of interest to you gentlemen to know that in making our study of the painting and decorating trade one of the best informed mechanics from whom we secured data, learned his trade in Denmark. I have never met a man connected with that trade who knew it more thoroughly than that man who served his apprenticeship in Denmark. We are not developing skilled men of that type in this country in sufficient numbers. Mr. RICH. Proceed Mr. Cushman.

Mr. CUSHMAN (referring to another chart). In our opinion we have two jobs to do in the field of trade and industrial education. First we should provide preemployment training in the vocational or trade school which will enable young men (or young women) to go out into industry and secure jobs which have some degree of stability. In other words, we should train them to meet the employment demands of jobs which actually exist and which are within their reach. Our second responsibility is to provide vocational training opportunities for adults in order that they may maintain their employability. Changing economic conditions and technological progress tend to make workers out-of-date and to push them down toward the level of unemployability.

Now, as to the adult workers, who are fortunate enough to be on this level [indicating on chart] of stable employment, they are tending to slip downward toward the lower levels of employment because of scientific progress and technological changes in industry.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. Have you any number of people in the country that belong to this group [indicating]?

Mr. CUSHMAN. I hope so.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. What is the number of them?

Mr. CUSHMAN. I do not know who could say with any degree of assurance just how many are on that level, but it is probably true that persons employed in most occupations are tending to become out of date on their jobs. To avoid slipping, a person must keep up to date with respect to his work. New tools, new methods, new materials, and improved processes must be learned or the supposedly competent worker soon becomes a back number with obsolete vocational equip ment. We regard the procedure by means of which men maintain or regain their employability as an important phase of vocational edu

cation.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. Do you have figures and statistics on other occupations? I was wondering if you had those.

Mr. CUSHMAN. This chart is intended to show that a man who does not continually add to his vocational preparation is likely to slide down hill toward the level of unemployability.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. Which group is suffering most today?

Mr. CUSHMAN. I think the group down here [indicating] is suffering

most.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. I know, but they start up above, and they start to go down and down and down?

Mr. CUSHMAN. Yes. Another job vocational education has is to help the men who have dropped down one or two levels, to give them the training they need in order that they may be able to get a good job and make good on it.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. You have not any idea of the number of people in the country that are in that class?

Mr. CUSHMAN. No, I do not know how many there are. I know there are a lot of unemployed people who are supposed to be unemployable, and there are others who are said to be employable.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. A lot of them on relief now, I understand, are said to be employable.

Mr. WRIGHT. Mr. Fitzpatrick, may I insert this: Plumbers today need to know many things that were neither required nor expected of first-class journeymen plumbers 20 years ago. Welding is an example. In many cities a plumber who cannot weld is unable to bid on all classes of work.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. That is just what I wanted to develop in this line of questioning.

Dr. WRIGHT. When I was in Chattanooga a week or two ago, I was told there that the plumbers came to the vocational school and said, "There is a new building going up. We are out of a job, so far as the plumbing and steam fitting in that building is concerned, because we do not know how to weld." I think they wanted to learn welding by the gas or electrical process. A class was formed, and the necessary training was given. Later, the statement was made to me that they had saved the community $16,000 in wages by their action.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. Now, that chart shows that a greater number of skilled mechanics are working between the ages of 60 and 65 than between the ages of 18 and 20. Did you include those skilled mechanics in what you are showing there now? Who do you include in that group?

Mr. CUSHMAN. Everybody that has a job.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. Skilled mechanics and all?

Mr. CUSHMAN. Yes. The trade knowledge of a skilled mechanic can become more or less obsolete if he doesn't keep up to date.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. Then your table of skilled mechanics including the men between the ages of 60 and 65 years was incorrect if your other tables are true.

Mr. CUSHMAN. But the tendency is, Mr. Fitzpatrick

Mr. FITZPATRICK. The other table you showed about the increase in the age making no difference in skilled mechanics indicates that they could not be included in that group provided the other statement

was true.

Mr. RICH. A man at the age of 60 or 65 would become more skilled in his trade or occupation than a boy 18 or 20 years old, would he not? Mr. CUSHMAN. Perhaps. I should answer that question by pointing out that 20 years ago a man may have been a first-class Ford mechanic on the old Model T car. Now, if he had not made any effort to secure any additional knowledge of the more improved automobiles, he would not get very much employment today, would he?

Mr. FITZPATRICK. Was he a skilled mechanic?

Mr. CUSHMAN. Yes; 20 years ago he was, but he closed his eyes to all of the changes that were taking place and did not learn anything about the later models of cars.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. But on your other table there, you showed where, as the years went on, the skilled mechanic

Mr. CUSHMAN. The men who have retained the status of skilled mechanics have necessarily secured, in some way, the technical training required to keep up to date concerning their work. That, however secured, was vocational training.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. What I was trying to bring out was that that would mean men without a trade were mostly included in that group there?

Mr. CUSHMAN. As Dr. Wright has said, a plumber who is not alive to the technical changes in his occupation, and who for example does not learn welding, or who does not learn the methods of installing copper tubing instead of lead pipe, is going to be relatively unemployable in his trade eventually.

NUMBER OF HIGH SCHOOL PUPILS TAKING VOCATIONAL TRAINING

Mr. LEAVY. How many youths in the high schools are taking vocational training now?

Mr. CUSHMAN. May I refer you to Dr. Wright on that?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. You mean vocational training sponsored by the Federal Government?

Mr. LEAVY. Federal and the States.

Dr. WRIGHT. 1,381,701.

Mr. SCRUGHAM. What does that figure represent?

Dr. WRIGHT. The total number enrolled for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1936.

Mr. LEAVY. The youth in secondary schools taking vocational education.

I am referring now to this pamphlet put out by the Department of Education, the survey that is on the second page of the chart. It is shown that now there are 5,000,000 of our youth between the ages of 16 and 24 that are unemployed.

Mr. CUSHMAN. Those are not graduates of vocational schools.

Mr. LEAVY. I want to follow that up with one more question. Are those as a group, as shown from any survey that you have made, individuals who have no special training?

Mr. CUSHMAN. Yes, sir. They have had no special training in vocational work so far as I know.

Dr. STUDEBAKER. The chart, Congressman, that we showed on Connecticut, will help in a measure to answer that. He was dealing there with young people. I don't think Mr. Cushman gave quite the correct answer to Congressman Leavy's question. He was asking

about the number of youth in high schools taking vocational training. He gave an answer which includes the total number of people in allday schools and part-time schools and evening schools, including many who are in the process of being retrained to go back. So I don't think it is fair to say that this figure represents the youth in the high schools.

Dr. WRIGHT. No. Probably I should change that to the number in the all-day schools, which would be 656,020.

Mr. LEAVY. Or about 10 percent of the present high-school student body, day-school body, who are now taking vocational training? Dr. WRIGHT. That is right.

Mr. LEAVY. But there are in the United States now 5,000,000 of our youth between the ages of 16 and 24 who are unemployed. Dr. STUDEBAKER. That is a rough estimate.

Mr. LEAVY. I am quoting from this chart.

Dr. STUDEBAKER. Yes.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. Between what ages?

Mr. LEAVY. 16 and 24.

What portion of them are going to college?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. They are out of school and unemployed. Of course, this figure that we gave you would be over 18.

Mr. LEAVY. And under 24?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. Yes. Many of them are high-school graduates. Mr. CUSHMAN. This, gentlemen [referring to a chart], is just intended to show the relative amount of money that is spent for vocational education for pupils of high-school age in this country as compared with the portion spent for general education in schools of the same grade. Out of a total expenditure in 1935 of approximately $358,435,000 for salaries of junior and senior high school teachers' salaries, only $29,290,000 was spent for the salaries of teachers in all fields of vocational education.

NUMBER OF ADULTS WITHOUT HIGH OR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

EDUCATION

Mr. FITZPATRICK. I want to ask you one question. You told about the number of adults that did not graduate from high school. Can you give us an idea of the number of adults that reached 22 years of age that did not graduate from high school or elementary school? Dr. STUDEBAKER. That number is increasing constantly now with more years of schooling for all.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. It is increasing?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. The percentage arriving at 22 who are high school graduates is increasing.

But of the 76 million adults who now live in the United States 64 million of them did not finish high school.

Mr. RICH. Doctor, this is very interesting, and I don't think you will have to convince us that we need more education.

Mr. JOHNSON. Doctor, I want to ask you a question. I was very much interested in your last general statement.

There is one thing that has impressed itself on me, and that is that young boys, say, early in their teens, are quitting high school and going out to see the world and get rich and make a living. A great many quit high school who could continue in school if they were interested.

I get many, many letters from these youngsters; and they think that nobody appreciates them. They think that they are not getting in school all that they ought to have. They don't hesitate to say so.

NEED FOR VOCATIONAL EDUCATION IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS

Now, I am wondering whether if vocational training were established in these high schools earlier than 16 or 17 or 18, if it were established about the time of 13 or 14, at the time when they start to go up Fool's Hill, as somebody said, when they think that nobody appreciates them, when they want to quit school-if they had vocational training, it occurs to me that it might keep thousands of the millions of youngsters in school, where they ought to be today, who are now running away from school and otherwise leaving school.

Dr. STUDEBAKER. Congressman, we are all thoroughly convinced that your general theory is sound.

We must not overlook the fact that a part of one's so-called general education, which cannot be wholly separated from vocational education, is secured, in the process of learning a vocation.

One of the problems in family life is to keep the boy on the track, we say. All those problems are present in a well-organized school. We don't have football in the high schools of this country primarily for the purpose of giving physical stamina to our people. It is a morale builder largely.

We resort in organized education to many of the devices that we use in our families to intrigue and challenge and thrill, even, our young people in order that we may bring them closer to those activities of greater value than the things that they see immediately ahead of them.

Therefore, from the kindergarten right on through, education is developing rapidly what we call craft work-industrial arts; not necessarily vocational work, at the age 11 or 12 or 13, but arts and crafts-all sorts of things to attract these young people to the school and keep them in school long enough so that when they once have found themselves they can then begin at different levels, at different ages, I mean, to take more highly specialized vocational courses with this background of general education, in which arts and crafts have played an important part.

And I for one am willing to defend the policy of opening up vocational education opportunities to boys and girls of our high schools for the purpose of keeping them there, if for nothing else, if that is the thing that we find is sufficiently concrete and offers them opportunity for the manipulation of materials and all those other activities that some people respond to much more readily than others.

William Lyon Phelps spoke before our forum here in Washington last night. He said that he had read all of Shakespeare's works before he was 12 years of age. How many of the men around this table did that? I didn't do it.

Mr. Ricн. How many ever read them?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. He is exceptional. Most people don't want to spend all of their high-school days reading Shakespeare or Virgil. Vasay, many boys and girls will stay in high school if they can have Que sports or some other physical or manipulative activity that will ascie them to bridge the gap and cover those precarious years of

et scelescence.