Board for Vocational Education. He desires to present certain facts in regard to the position of that board in reference to this whole matter of the relation of the Federal Government to education. We shall be glad to hear what Mr. Wright or any of the witnesses who are present may have to say.

STATEMENT OF MR. J. C. WRIGHT, DIRECTOR FEDERAL BOARD FOR VOCATIONAL EDUCATION

Mr. WRIGHT. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the Committee on Education, I shall submit a very brief introductory statement to you, and then call upon those who have come here to-day for the purpose of making known to you their viewpoint on the question to be discussed. I shall then submit to you, with your permission, a number of telegrams, letters, and statements which have been received from a number of persons who found it impossible to attend the hearing.

These statements were prepared in response to the request contained in the following letter from the chairman of the committee. (The letter referred to is as follows:)

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION,

Washington, D. C., May 3, 1924. DEAR MR. WRIGHT: As you are probably aware, the Committee on Education has been considering for some time past the bills known as H. R. 3923, H. R. 5795, and H. R. 6582. All of these measures affect, in one way or another, the Federal Board for Vocational Education, of which you are director.

Before reaching any conclusion as to the best course to adopt the committee has deemed it advisable to hear the views of all available persons qualified to testify as to the merits of the measure in hand, and also the persons whose boards or departments are affected by the measures.

Therefore the committee would be glad if you and such other persons as you may designate would find it convenient to appear before the committee on May 14, at 10 o'clock in the morning, for the purpose of giving the committee your views as to the advisability of incorporating the work of the Federal Board for Vocational Education within the Bureau or Department of Education in the foregoing bills.

Very sincerely yours,

FRED W. DALLINGER, Chairman.

Mr. WRIGHT. It will be noted in the last paragraph of the above letter that no questions are raised as to the desirability of vocational education or civilian rehabilitation, of Federal aid for both purposes, of the establishment of a department of education and welfare, or a department of education, or of the providing of additional funds for the use of the Bureau of Education, or other changes or modifications which are proposed in the bills referred to in the letter. It has been understood that the request of the committee, as stated in the letter, refers solely to the question as to whether the work of vocational education and civilian rehabilitation could be carried on in ways which could be of greater service to the country under the present organization of an independent representative board, or through the abolishment of such a board and the incorporation of its activities into some Government department, or through some other plan which would change the present organization.

In accordance with the invitation contained in the last paragraph of the letter from the chairman that "the committee would be glad if you and such other persons as you may designate would find it

convenient to appear before the committee on May 14 * * * for the purpose of giving the committee your views as to the advisability of incorporating the work of the Federal Board for Vocational Education within the bureau or department of education provided in the foregoing bills," copies of the chairman's letter were sent to all directors of State boards of vocational education and to a limited number of other people who, by virtue of their contact with vocational education or with the work of the Federal Board for Vocational Education, would be particularly interested in the subject of the hearing and would be particularly well qualified to give the committee suggestions and information.

Since it seems probable that the time of the committee will be fully occupied with those who desire to express their views in person, and especially since some of them have come a long distance and have limited time at their disposal, with the permission of the chairman a more formal statement will be filled for the records of the committee instead of being read at this hearing.

In the preparation of this statement it has been assumed that the Committee would be essentially interested in securing suggestions and expressions of opinion with regard to (1) the validity of the reasons which led Congress to establish the present organization as incorporated in the vocational education act, (2) the degree to which the functioning of that organization has shown that the principles on which the action of Congress was based have been shown to be correct in actual practice since the date of the passage of the vocational education act, and (3) the degree to which, at the present time, those reasons still exist, and the further development of vocational education would be retarded (or promoted) by the abolishment of the present independent representative board and the transfer of the responsibilities discharged by that board to a Government depart

ment.

I will read to you one statement received from one who could not be present, as indicating the character of the responses which, with your permission, will be inserted in the record. This statement was submitted by Mr. George W. Reavis, State director for vocational education, Jefferson City, Mo.

(The statement referred to is as follows:)

STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY GEORGE W. REAVIS, STATE DIRECTOR FOR VOCATIONAL EDUCATION, JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.

I am not one of those who believe the interest of vocational education and civilian vocational rehabilitation would be better served by abolishing the present Federal Board for Vocational Education and transferring the administration of these to the Bureau of Education or a department of education as contemplated in House bills 3923, 5796, and 6582.

My reasons for assuming this position are as follows:

1. The Federal board as at present organized has as its members men representing the different groups served by the Federal subsidy.

2. This fact, it seems to me, places the work in a close and intimate relation with the people served.

3. Agriculture, labor, manufacture, and commerce, and education are each represented on the board and it is natural to presume that each member holds a vital relation with the group he represents and can plan, devise, and execute policies looking to the practical expansion of the big program much more effectively than could an organization not so composed.

4. The work is still new and the program should be allowed to continue as at present, in my opinion, until it has been more firmly fixed and grounded in the

minds of the groups benefited. Any radical change at this time in the administration of this work would naturally retard the program and we can ill afford such retardation now.

5. If more funds could be appropriated for this work by the Congress than at present, it could be as economically expended by the present Federal board as any other organization.

Mr. WRIGHT. We have with us to-day Mr. George Hambrecht, director of the State Board for Vocational Education, Madison, Wis., whom I shall ask to present his statement at this time.

STATEMENT OF MR. GEORGE P. HAMBRECHT, DIRECTOR STATE BOARD FOR VOCATIONAL EDUCATION, MADISON, WIS.

Mr. HAMBRECHT. Mr. Chairman, as a rule, gentlemen, when we seriously contemplate abolishing any department or board or agency, it is because they have failed to do the thing for which they were organized. I have followed quite carefully the literature

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). Just a moment; that is not necessarily so. Can you not conceive of a condition where the board has been satisfactory, but on the ground of economy of administration it might be thought better to consolidate it with another project? Mr. HAMBRECHT. If the same work might be done by consolidation, yes. I think I am safe in saying that those who would like to consolidate have not made the suggestion even that the Federal board has failed to do the thing for which they are organized, and that is, to bring educational opportuinity and advantages into the great group of people who are wage earners of the adolescent period. We have based our whole educational system on a theory that schools are free and open to all who may attend, and to some extent we get rather chesty over what we have done, both in the State and Federal Governments, for the schools of the Nation, priding ourselves that, no matter how poor a child may be, he may go to the school.

I think Congressman Brown, in 1917, made a survey and on the floor of the House made the statement, based on the statistics of 1910, that fewer than one-tenth of the children who entered the first grade of our public-school system of America reached the high school. Yet we all know that the grade-school education is not the best basis on which to form intelligent earning power as the children grow older.

We have provided agencies for attending schools free. In many cases we have furnished the texts, and all we ask is that the parents support the child during that period.

That was not always so. Time was when we had to have tutors, and at that time the well-to-do only were those who were able to engage tutors. But we have permitted to grow up in this country a system by which the wage earners, the children of the poor if you please, are the ones that are now forced to engage tutors, unless an agency like the Federal board may give specific, individual attention to the problem of the wage earner. All I have to do is to call your attention to this.

Coming over on the train I had a copy of Popular Mechanics. I have here, not the content of Popular Mechanics, but the tutorial temptation, the tutorial advantages offered to the working children of America, where the schools fail to reach them.

The schools will reach these children if they attend, but in Wisconsin, which stands, perhaps, a little higher in the number that are attending than was found by Congressman Brown for the country at large, only one-third of the children reach and attend high school. Two-thirds of them are wage earners, and we, in the State and the Federal Government, thought that that problem was so important that a specific agency might well give its entire time to the development of the thing that those children might need, to the end, speaking for our own State, that we have some 26,000 wage earners, child laborers, if you please, between 14 and 18 years of age, and as a condition precedent to earning a livelihood they must attend school part of the time.

That is not considered the woodshed of an educational system. It is not considered an adjunct of something else, but a problem of its own, so important, the group being as large as any group to which economic attention may be given, that it is worth while for an independent agency to handle that problem, according to the genius of its problem. So we in Wisconsin have a board and we have received from the Federal Board for Vocational Education inspirational help, administrative policies that have assisted us in our work, and in saying this I am subordinating the financial assistance we have received, while, of course, we have received our proportion, according to the distribution among States according to their population.

Yet in Wisconsin we only pay 7 per cent from Federal funds for all the work that is done for these child workers. Ninety-three per cent is paid out of local and State taxes. We do get some aid, but this is rather the negligible side of the problem for which I am arguing, because if Federal aid were discontinued, I am sure the State of Wisconsin would go on doing for its wage earners that which we can do, to make them more intelligent wage earners and give them specific attention during the period of adolescent childhood. Doing this not as an adjunct to school but as a specific, industrial problem confronting our State and which also confronts the Nation.

We went through quite recently a rather disturbing economic proposition in which I concede that there are two sides of the argument; that is, child labor legislation.

Two attempts were made by Congress to pass a law to regulate child labor, and yet the most visionary, or, I might say, the most practical suggestion, and for which so much criticism was lodged on the decision of the Supreme Court which set aside those laws, was the one requiring children to go to school until they are 14 years of

age.

That idea was considered drastic, and, in some cases, rather unthinkable. Most of the States of the Union, however, have already child labor laws, up to that point. Even if that law had been considered constitutional, we would not have yet solved the child labor problem, because, gentlemen, child labor without child opportunity is unjust, either as a national or as a State policy.

Child opportunity means that a child between 14 and 18, the most critical period in a child's life, should have some contact that will increase that child's efficiency, earning power, and economic position in the community.

Consequently, the part-time school, as a vocational school, is an agency that must develop, according to the genius of its problem.

The moment a boy takes a dinner pail in his hand, becomes a wage earner and goes into a factory, that moment he becomes a different psychological subject with which to deal, than the child who is supported by his father and mother, getting his meals and his clothes, and going to school preparing for his life work. It is a situation that must be treated as an entity, as a specific industrial problem.

The amount of expenses involved in the administration is negligible unless that agency is doing something, that as the chairman has said, can just as well be done by an existing agency. But we have noticed that where existing agencies are given a certain fund with which to handle school problems, that when it gets to the problem of the working boy and girl, as a rule, there is not money enough left over so that they can get the full measure of public subsidy of which they are deserving.

Consequently, the tutorial system has come into vogue in our (public) school system in America, by which, for a consideration, they will teach you to do everything from shaving to playing a musical instrument.

I am not going to take your time to read these [indicating magazine pages], but I would suggest that members of this committee, at your leisure, buy a copy of Popular Mechanics, which is a sample of one of several magazines that get into the hands of the children, and particularly the working children.

They tell you how you can become expert as an auto mechanic, how you can become a carpenter, how you can acquire increased earning power, how you may learn to engrave, how you may learn to write cards, how you may develop physically, how you may do any one of the many things that spell successful vocational careers in life.

But we are asking the working children through the system that has been permitted throughout this country quite generally, to pay for that out of their own earnings, and to hire a tutor in order that they may upgrade themselves, in order that they may have some educational advantages, because of the influence of poverty that has compelled them to carry a dinner pail.

So, very briefly, I want to make a plea on behalf of the working children in this country, that the specific agency which has been set in motion by the Federal Government to give exclusive attention to these people should not be abolished lightly, or that we may trust that through some other place they may be equally well reached and served.

Gentlemen, they have not been reached in 150 years.

Our good old American, Abraham Lincoln, speaking in the city of Milwaukee, Wis., in 1859, said that there was a serious problem confronting this Nation, and in connection with that, if I may read just a page from an extract of an address that he gave to the State fair, I should like to do so. He said:

The great majority must labor at something productive. From these premises the problem springs, "How can labor and education be the most satisfactorily combined?"

Up to the present time that has not been solved, except as your Federal board has gone out into the fields of labor and brought