in a girl to utilize
her former education in such necessary business processes as belong to
her workroom; (6) to develop a better woman while making a successful
worker; (7) to teach the community at large how best to accomplish such
training, _i. e._, to serve as a model whose advice and help would
facilitate the founding of the best kind of schools for the lowest rank
of women workers.

In other words, the Manhattan Trade School aimed to find a way (1) to
improve the worker, physically, mentally, morally, and financially; (2)
to better the conditions of labor in the workroom; (3) to raise the
character of the industries and the conditions of the homes, and (4) to
show that such education could be practically undertaken by public
instruction. The four aims are really one, for the better workers should
improve the product, make higher wages, react advantageously on the
industrial situation and on the home, and the course of instruction
formulated to accomplish this end would help in the further introduction
of such training.

It was not expected that immature girls of fourteen or fifteen years of
age would, immediately on entering the market, make large salaries or be
broad-minded citizens. The hope was to give them a foundation which
would enable them to adapt themselves to situations best fitted to their
abilities and to make possible a steady advance toward better
occupations, wages, and living. In order to do this, each girl on
entering the school must be regarded as having capacity for some special
occupation. This aptitude must be discovered that she may be placed
where she can attain her highest efficiency as rapidly as possible. She
must be treated individually, not as one of a class. Her own efforts
must be awakened, her handicaps, such as inadequate health and
unadaptable education, must be removed, and her training proceed in a
way to give her possession of her powers.

Conditions among the Workers

The conditions of life among many of the wage-earners of New York City
are, briefly stated, as follows: Thousands of families are so poor that
the children must go to work the moment the compulsory school years are
over. In 1897, 14,900 boys and girls dropped from the fifth school
grade, most of them going to work from necessity more or less pressing.
To rise to important positions in factories, workrooms, or department
stores will require a practical combination of any needed craft with the
ability to util