We cannot expect these children, with bodies retarded in development by overwork, and without proper nourishment, to be able to take the same mental food that is pleasing to other children of the same age, who have had all necessary physical care.
The hours when working children, those engaged in gainful occupations, and those who are helping in the homes, are free for recreation, are in the evening and on Sunday. Are we placing our most skilled workers on duty at these times, and are we opening our story hours and reading clubs on Sunday afternoons, when the minds of these children are most receptive of good things, when the children are dressed in their good clothes, their self-respect is high, and they are free from responsibility?
It is a well-known fact that the need of money is not the only cause of the exodus from school that occurs in the grades. An investigation made by the Commissioner of Labor in 1910 (Condition of woman and child wage-earners in the U. S., vol. 7), examining the conditions of white children under 16, in five representative cities, showed that of those children interviewed, 169 left school because earnings were necessary, and 165 because dissatisfied with school. The Chicago Tribune (Nov. 11, 1912) stated that in 1912 there were in Chicago over 23,000 children between 14 and 16 years of age, who were not in school. Over half of these were unemployed, and the remainder had employment half the time at ill-paid jobs, teaching little and leading nowhere. In 1912 there were 34,000 children of Philadelphia not in school, and only 13,000 were employed. (Philadelphia City Club Bulletin, Dec. 27, 1912.)
The curriculum of our public schools is in a transitional stage. The complaint of parents who take their children from school before they have completed the high school course, is that it does not teach them to earn a living. The desire of commercial men is to have such courses introduced as will lessen the need of apprentice training in their establishments. These changes may help boys and girls to earn a living, but those courses which teach them how to live may be sacrificed. Man does not live by bread alone. Mrs. Ella Flagg Young says, "The training must also implant in the mind a desire to become something--I mean by that an ideal.... It must make the boys and girls able to know that they have possibilities of greater development along many lines." This sort of training is within the sphere of the library as well as within that of the schools.