We are just about completing the erection of a building at a cost of $4,000,000 to take care of the problems of the several thousandat the present time 9,800-employed young people under the age of 18 years, who come to us. The question has been asked here a number of times to tell how this functions. I will tell you how it functions. Primarily, it is a fostering agency. A man said to me the other day, "A city can not live unto itself alone, a State can not live unto itself alone, and we are never going to cash in on the investment we have made on this thing until it spreads more or less uniformly over the United States. It is a very fundamental thing, and just so long as we people in Wisconsin are putting millions of dollars in this thing with the amount we get from the Federal Government relatively insignificant, we still are interested that the fostering and promoting influence shall go on, because we do not want to set up a stove on the outside and try to heat the universe.

Mr. HOLADAY. I want to know just what this thing is you all agree on out there. What is it? I do not want to be abrupt but I want information.

Mr. COOLEY. This thing is this, that there are just two ways, among other things, of getting the training for positions in which people need to be trained before they can fill them efficiently, either for business or for themselves. There are only two ways. One is to take young people in and establish for them a trade school that they can go to just as they go to a high school, and the other is for these young people to go out on a job and learn while they earn. There are no other ways. It is one process or the other, or a slight modification of one or the other.

What are the facts? The facts are that the full-time trade-school proposition has been tried out and has been found inherently and hopelessly inadequate. To be concrete, we established a full-time trade school in the city of Milwaukee 20 years ago, and put millions of dollars in it, and expected it to solve this problem, but it did not. Later on, we put on a school for plumbers, and afterwards we could go through the city and find only three plumbers who were trained in it; and we had a machine shop, and you could go to the machine shop, but there is only a limited number you can get to go there, and you can not train them there. So those who do go to the trade school would be only those who would go to the high school.

Mr. BLACK. What about correspondence schools?

Mr. COOLEY. They are fine things. The only trouble is the tremendous number of fatalities among those who sign up and do not go through. The only thing that has approximated giving us the journeymen in the various lines that we need, to keep this country up and to run its business to be prosperous, the only method that has approximated it, or at all approached it, is the learn-while-youearn method.

Now, then, we come back to apprenticeship. Why did apprenticeship in the old Elizabethan age fall? It did not fall. It failed because of the abuse that grew in with it, and because no attention was paid to it. What is the essence of an apprenticeship? It is that some system, or order, or administration be put into the period that the young fellows spend while learning while earning. That is all there is to it. I do not care how else you define it, that is the essence of it.

Now, we realize that while we have been making efforts to get people to go into full-time trade schools and by the natural process of elimination because of the economic stations of the young people who went in, the sons of the people who could go to high school went there and took these trade courses and then went out and took positions as salesmen. A very good thing for them, but in the last analysis you can not go through this country and in the line of trade journeymen find an output of the trade schools. But in the parttime school it is different. Here you will find the fellow who is learning is the fellow who learns on the job. The proportion of people who have reached the point of efficiency in this country is too limited. So the effort here in dealing with these 28,000 young people is to put some system and order into their education while they are learning, but the training is as varied in a community as its needs. The CHAIRMAN. May I ask you how many of those 28,000 out in employment you have in your part-time schools in Milwaukee?

Mr. COOLEY. At the present time we have only 9,000 employed young people that are coming weekly to this school, and many of them more than weekly. I do not care for the manufacturers in the sense that I am talking now, whether they make a dollar out of it or whether they do not, we have to guide our movements by the needs of the young people who come to us. I find the men standing up and taking that view, and there has never been a movement that has been so distinctly free from evil influences as this movement. We find that employers and these men get together and discuss their problems and they find that they are all human and there is honesty on either side. That is one thing that has enabled us to have such success as we have in Milwaukee.

Mr. HOLADAY. You call them part-time schools?

Mr. COOLEY. Yes. I wish they never had been called anything else. What is our guide? The needs of these young people who come to us. If you ask a physician to tell beforehand what he is going to prescribe to a man going to his office, he will tell you he is going to prescribe with regard to the needs of his patient after a study of the

case.

The CHAIRMAN. How much Federal money would you say is being used in Milwaukee?

Mr. COOLEY. Very little. But I want to call your attention to a certain fact, that when the city of Milwaukee was considering enlarging its facilities along this line-was considering enlarging our State law, it was said that if we stand on our State rights we would be liable to not get the subsidy, and we would be liable to get the State law defeated. So they passed a law giving the other places in the State a dollar for dollar reimbursement, but we permitted and did not object to the setting of this limitation, so the law was passed limiting Milwaukee to $10,000. That is from the State. I am following up on this. That has been somewhat increased, although Milwaukee is not urging this on any standpoint of the money it gets there in the State. We are urging it because we want the money spent in Alabama and Georgia and South Dakota, and Kentucky, and North Carolina, and places of that kind, for the reason we can not cash in on this thing and have the benefits that are to come until the thing spreads over the

Nation, and that is the function of this Federal board, and it is what we are here for.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you know how much Milwaukee is spending? Mr. COOLEY. $2,500,000. Milwaukee spent this last year about $1,600,000. It is a fact that the Federal aid is largely distributed outside of Milwaukee. We did not go after it.

The CHAIRMAN. How much did you get?

Mr. COOLEY. Not much more than $30,000.

The CHAIRMAN. As I understand it, you got about $10,000 from the State.

Mr. COOLEY. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. And about $20,000 from the Federal Government.

Mr. COOLEY. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. And you spent $1,500,000 yourself.

Mr. COOLEY. Yes, sir. That is, in the city of Milwaukee. That is absolutely a correct proportion.

The CHAIRMAN. You received $10,000 from the state and $20,000 from the Federal Government-that is money allotted to the State, or $30,000 from the outside?

Mr. COOLEY. Yes sir.

The CHAIRMAN. And you appropriated over $1,500,000?

Mr. COOLEY. Yes, that is true.

Mr. BLACK. Did you pay for any buildings out of that?

Mr. COOLEY. A portion of our buildings we bonded and are using the bonds.

Mr. HOLADAY. Do you use other school buildings, or are your buildings entirely separate?

Mr. COOLEY. Our main building is entirely separate. In the buildings we require only a room and heat and light, and an instructor in the evenings. We have the school away from the central schools, and it happens to be so situated in Milwaukee from a standpoint of facility of transportation that we think it advisable to establish a central school for the purpose of centralizing the training they get and the learning they can get on the outside of the school.

Mr. HOLADAY. Probably the time will not permit. I am interested to know the kind of work you are doing and how you are doing it. Have you any publications bearing on that?

Mr. COOLEY. I will be glad to give them to you. Briefly, I will come to this, if you were to go now. I could take you into a factoryI could take you into a place where we are equipped for turning out 300 pairs of shoes a day. Some one might ask you how many shoes are you making. I would say all the shoes we find necessary to train our boys, because boys are our products-shoes are not our products. I can take you into a printing shop with probably $75,000 worth of equipment. I could take you up to the watch repair shop, or up to the foundry where they said we could not get the boys to go into the moulding business because to-day the theory is that boys are striving for white collar jobs and will not go to work; and it is the biggest rot I ever heard. And I just want to call your attention to that. If you will notice those 9,000 young people in school and less than four thousand are boys, and all the clerical work and all that sort of thing, and out here we have 14,000 boys doing dirty work, we have not any great proportion but are doing

what we are doing well. As Mr. Harold Falk said, we have been bringing these young people in to try to make citizens of them. We break their backs the first week, we break their spirits the second week, and the third week we fire them. He got religion. We want to get religion because it makes us do things. He said, Here, we are going to be square with these young fellows. We want to try this thing all over. He said, work out a system that is fair to the boys, fix up so that the boy that comes out of the elementary grade at 16 and goes in here will have a trade when he comes out and an education equivalent to what he gets in high school.

We will take that and go out and sell it like the correspondence schools would and the result is he has got 54 bona fide, honest-togoodness apprentices in his factory. He sent them down to our school. We put them in there for a full three months' preliminary trainingship, not to shorten the apprenticeship but as a prelude to the work in the training school and he solved the problem of getting young people to go into the so-called dirty work. It has been solved with others. Last Monday night I sat down to dinner with 1,000 apprentice boys and 40 employers at the same table—young huskies, right out of the dirty work of the city.

Oh, it is succeeding. It is working. It is winning the political support back home. It is working out in such a way as it is untangling and making reasonable the working. We are tearing the difficulties up and it is gaining the support of the people.

The same thing is true in our State government and the same thing is true of our Federal Government and gentlemen, it is too good a thing to be disturbed. You have a thing that works. Have you got too many things that work very well down here in Washington that you have got to monkey with one of the things that is making for better citizens? Let a thing that works well enough alone.

The CHAIRMAN. I understand from your last remark that you think the Vocational Board, as it stands, works well enough and should not be disturbed.

Mr. COOLEY. Absolutely.

The CHAIRMAN. And should not be placed under a department of education if it is created, or a department of public welfare? Mr. COOLEY. Absolutely.

Mr. WRIGHT. Owing to the expiration of our time no more speakers will be called, and unless, Mr. Chairman, you wish to extend the courtesy to others who may be present to speak, we are ready to close.

The CHAIRMAN. If you will, give the reporter anything you want inserted in the record.

(Mr. Wright presented a valume of letters, telegrams, and other papers, which are attached hereto as Exhibit No. 1.)

(Thereupon, at 12.10 o'clock, p. m. the committee adjourned subject to the call of the chairman.)

Mr. J. C. WRIGHT,

EXHIBIT No. 1

AMERICAN FARM BUREAU FEDERATION,
Washington, D. C., May 14, 1924.

Director Federal Board for Vocational Education,

Washington, D. C.

DEAR MR. WRIGHT: For some time the American Farm Bureau Federation has been vitally interested in the nation-wide movement for the promotion of vocational education in agriculture. At the last annual meeting of the Federation it adopted the following resolution:

"We recommend that State farm bureau officials of the States in cooperation with the counties actively participate in the promotion of a comprehensive program of vocational education in agriculture adapted to the needs of rural communities with proper committees in each county which shall cooperate with teachers of vocational agriculture."

As a further statement of the position of the American Farm Bureau Federation in connection with the above resolution, the bureau strongly supports the administration and control of vocational education in agriculture by an independent board on which the farmers of the country have direct representation and opposes any change that would deprive them of such representation.

Very truly yours,

AMERICAN FARM BUREAU FEDERATION,
GRAY SILVER, Washington Representative.

MAY 13, 1924.

Hon. FRED W. DALLINGER,

Chairman Committee on Education,

House of Representatives, Washington, D. C.

It is the opinion of the leading vocational-education authorities in this State and also the opinion of many business men that the functions and activities of the Federal Board for Vocational Education would be severely handicapped if the board were transferred to the present Bureau of Education, as proposed in House bill 6582. The success of this movement depends in a large measure upon having its policies determined by a lay board made up of representatives of employers and employees. Transferring the functions of the Federal board to the present Bureau of Education would seriously handicap the vocationaleducation program. The personnel of the present Federal board has been an important factor in bringing to it the support of industry, commerce, and labor. L. A. WILSON, State Director for Educational Education.

STATEMENT BY TELEGRAM FROM W. P. CARROLL, EXECUTIVE MANAGER, BUILDING TRADES EMPLOYERS ASSOCIATION, CLEVELAND, OHIO

Cleveland carpenter and bricklayer apprentice schools outstanding of country receiving valuable assistance and hearty cooperation from Federal board. Urge retention present form.

STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY MR. GERHARDT F. MEYNE, BUILDING CONTRACTOR AND VICE PRESIDENT ASSOCIATED BUILDING CONTRACTORS OF ILLINOIS, CHICAGO, ILL.

The hearing called by the Committee on Education of the House of Representatives for May 14, for the purpose of enabling the committee to ascertain the views of persons interested in the progress of vocational education and of civilian vocational rehabilitation, with respect to the advisability of incorporating the work of the Federal Board for Vocational Education within the bureau of Department of Education, as provided in bills already introduced in this session of the congress, warrants the most serious consideration of the business men of the country.