The department, wishing to coöperate to this end, makes the following determination, effective until November 1, 1917:
The time of study requirements for admission to the Regents' examinations, in January and June, 1918, may be waived in the case of any pupil who presents evidence that
_a._ He was regularly registered in school at or near the beginning of the term in September, 1917. (Boys already at work at a distance from the school may, with the permission of the local principal, register by mail.)
_b._ He was released by the principal from school for agricultural service.
_c._ He was actually and satisfactorily engaged in needed agricultural service while absent from school.
This privilege should be interpreted conservatively. School authorities should excuse pupils from this service only where the need is urgent and where it is possible to maintain such supervision that certificate of the facts can be made from certain knowledge.
During the summer and fall of 1917, schoolboys from Maine to California responded to the nation's call for increased food production. Other seasons of scarcity of labor, with the shortage of farm and garden products and resultant high prices, are doubtless before us. Indeed, we are told that for five years at least we are to continue to feel the stress of labor shortage due to war and other conditions. The United States Boys' Working Reserve, through state councils of defense and state and national departments of labor and agriculture, will continue to issue proclamations calling upon youth to serve the nation. Legislatures will pass or amend laws permitting absences from school for industrial and farm service. State educational officials will issue edicts interpreting legislative action. Schools will devise methods of giving school credit for useful service. Boys will again leave school to earn and serve. Parents will continue to speak with pride of the earning of their lads or complain about their treatment. Farmers will recall their first experiences with city boys. Everything will center about products, laws, rules, school credits, and dollars.
Few of us will think of the deeper significance of what is behind. We shall hardly realize that the law-makers have thought only of a possible increase of acreage under cultivation, or increased production in factories; that the farmers and the manufacturers had visions merely of good labor at a low figure; that the parents saw only an opportunity for a "change for the boy"; that the boy had in mind only a spending account and release from school.