Perhaps the manual-training instructor will coöperate with the teacher of domestic science, as male strength is needed, in providing comforts for the soldiers, such as socks and mufflers made on knitting machines, and in helping with the packing and crating. In this connection there is another quotation on the work of London children:
At the end of the first year of the war we began to organize efforts to provide clothing and other necessities for Belgian and Serbian children. In a few months the schools were able to furnish 10,000 complete kits made to the pattern and color and size supplied by the two embassies. It is reported that the making of these kits was one of the best exercises in planning, cutting, and sewing which the schools ever undertook, and probably nothing has done more to foster the school esprit de corps in the history of municipal schools since their origin, in 1870.
In France a number of schools, when the buildings were turned into hospitals, equipped either the entire hospital or a considerable number of beds at their own expense and by their own work. Hospital service was largely organized by these schools. One school would be responsible for the linen, another for mending, another for table service, another for cooking, and another for sending and receiving packages. A workroom established by the school girls in one of these hospitals had sent to the front in a year and a half 25,330 packages. One little village school of only 30 pupils in a short period collected 2542 eggs for the wounded soldiers and made socks and mufflers in addition. In another small district each of the schools specialized in some kind of work, one making up parcels for war prisoners, another knitting sailors' gloves, another making clothing for refugees, and still another providing candles for troops in trenches.
A small country school in the Midlands of England, in addition to weekly contributions of vegetables to the local hospital for wounded soldiers, has made 26 bed cradles and a dozen crutches, while the youngest boys have made splints.
A report from a northeast-coast district of England mentions manual-training centers where bed tables, toilet tables, bed rests, and clinical-chart carriers are made for the local hospital. Even the girls have made splints and bed tables. Of course hundreds of sand bags have been made in the schools.
The report closes with these significant words: "The effect of all this work has been most remarkable. Even districts where formerly little interest was taken by the children seem suddenly to realize the value of it all." This is what might have been expected, and what we in America may expect when we make our practical-arts work socializing, useful, and contributory to some great cause that the children see is worth while.
CHAPTER VI
THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH
Since August, 1914, there have been presented to us new aspects of the relation of children to industry. Up to that time the only consideration for those who had the welfare of children at heart was the child himself; but with the war, the welfare of the child became tied up with the problem of the welfare of the country and its demands for service on the whole population. The endeavor to adjust these two in nice balance has resulted in experimental legislation or in action without legislation, both of which have often been of no genuine or lasting benefit to either interest concerned.
In America, in the first half of 1917, many of our states appeared to be following the lead of England in abrogating the compulsory-attendance law, urging the same reason for permitting children within school age to work in fields and factories. Everyone is familiar with the facts presented by farmer and industrial employer. In sections whose activity has been stimulated by the production of war products, such as Bridgeport, Connecticut, other industries and mercantile establishments have found it impossible to run as usual owing to the presence of munition plants, which attract an abnormal number of workers.