they are establishing it because
they have economic value in the world outside of home as well as in
it.

The industrial schools and the old type of schools are both adult
schemes of getting children ready for adult life, not by experiencing
it, but by doing certain things well so that they can be entrusted to
do later on, what adults in their wisdom have decided that they are to
do. But they fail to prepare children for the future as they fail to
supply the children's present urgent needs. They use the period for
ulterior purposes; purposes ulterior to the period of growth with
which they are dealing. As they use this period for another time than
its own, in effect they exploit it. Without consciousness of the fact
so far as the children are concerned, the schools exploit this period
of growth as effectively as the employers reap the profits of child
labor. Employers as beneficiaries have more reason than the schools
for diverting youth from its own purposes, as they are under the
necessity of a price system which is competitive. The schools as
well as industry use up the placticity of youth; they kill off the
eagerness of children to explore and plan, and cast it aside for more
consequential ends.

The consequential ends in America, we have seen, have been less
clearly defined than in Germany. Within a year, the United States has
become conscious as a nation of place and power, conscious that it is
to play a part with the other states of the world. In playing this
part, will it retain its role of servant of the people, or will it
assume with its new world dignity the role, if not of master, then of
leadership? If still servant, will it serve more efficiently than it
has our dominant institution, industry? If the silent partnership
between business and the state is strengthened, will not the promoters
of industry be in a better position than before to appeal through the
state, through the patriotism intensified by our newly acquired world
position, for a more universal and a systematized adaptation of
workers in industry? The schools in their disinterested capacity,
disinterested, that is, in the profits of production, it would seem
could be used most effectively toward this end. German manufacture
made that clear to American manufacture before the war. It also must
be remembered that it was Prussian pride for imperial position that
inspired the complete and efficient surrender of the German schools to
the needs of