lks of the poor
and has no education or next to none. For this society is much to blame.
Sometimes he is obliged to go to work too soon, but often he cannot
learn at school. This is not entirely the fault of the boy's heredity;
it is largely the fault of the school. A certain course of study has
been laid out. With only slight changes this course has come down from
the past and is fixed and formal. Much of it might be of value to a
professional man, but most of it is of no value to the man in other
walks of life. Because a boy cannot learn arithmetic, grammar or
geography, or not even learn to read and write, it does not follow that
he cannot learn at all. He may possibly have marked mechanical ability;
he may have more than the ordinary powers of adaptation to many kinds of
work. These he could be taught to do and often to do well. Under proper
instruction he might become greatly interested in some kind of work, and
in the study to prepare him for the work. Then too it is more or less
misleading to say that an uneducated man commits crime because he is
uneducated. Often his lack of education as well as his crime comes from
poverty. Crime and poverty may come from something else. All come
because he had a poor make-up or an insufficient chance.

After all, the great majority of men must do some kind of manual labor.
Until the time shall come when this kind of work is as easy and as well
paid as other employment, no one will do manual labor if he can do any
other kind. Perhaps the time may come when the hardest and most
disagreeable work will be the best paid. There are too many unskilled
workers in proportion to the population to make this seem very near. In
the meantime--and that is doubtless a long time--some one must do this
work. Much of it is done under supervision and requires no great skill
and need not be very disagreeable or hard. In a complex civilization
there is room for everyone to contribute to the whole. If our schools
are some day what they should be, a large part of their time, in some
cases all of it, will be devoted to manual training and will be given to
producing skilled workmen. This sort of school work can be made
attractive to thousands of boys who can do nothing else. And if easier
conditions of life under fairer social surroundings could be added to
this kind of education, most boys who now drift into crime would
doubtless find the conventional life more profitable and attractive.

VIII