Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

The money for the Placement Bureau had to be raised last year by the Girls’ Trade Education League, the Women’s Municipal League and the employers. “For next year we do not speak,” writes the League, “for some of us hope that that magic date—1915—is going to mean for the Boston Placement Bureau a complete official connection with the school, supported in part by the Boston School Committee.”

The Vocation Bureau of Boston was the first to be established, to our knowledge, and the men and women who together founded it were moved by the double conviction that children required a longer period in school and the employment of that period in vocational education. At the Civic Service House in the North End of Boston in 1907 a meeting was called to place this work on its feet and in two years’ time a strong organization had been built up with the Boston school committee interested and anxious for coöperation. Very soon the superintendent of schools, the school board and the Vocation Bureau were working together. Meyer Bloomfield was made director of this work and his very able assistants were, many of them, women. Laura F. Wentworth is secretary of the Vocational Information Department of the Boston Public Schools and Eleanor Colleton has done valuable work in this direction among the Italian and other children in the North End of Boston.

In the autumn of 1906 the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union of Boston established three “Trade School Shops” to supplement the work of the Boston Trade School for Girls. The object of these shops, according to May Ayres, who recently described them in the Boston Common, is “to give the girls who have finished their course in the Trade School an extra year of training in order to fit them more fully for the work of the business world. They are paid for what they do and each girl is carefully watched and guided to the end that her individual possibilities may be developed. Special emphasis is laid on the relation of employer to employee, the problems which the employer has to face are explained, and the young workers are given some insight into the general theory of business. Here also is an opportunity for the woman who wishes to become a teacher of industrial branches to acquire a practical knowledge of her subject, through an arrangement with Simmons College.

“A school of salesmanship was next brought about and the leading stores set the stamp of their approval upon the work of the Union. Experience has shown that such training as the girls receive at this school makes them worth much more to the stores which employ them. This idea spread quickly throughout the country and a demand arose for women trained in the art of salesmanship to conduct schools similar to that in Boston. For this reason there has recently been established in connection with Simmons College, a normal course for the training of teachers in this work. Simmons gives the theoretical training; the Salesmanship School the actual experience. For the next few years this will be distinctly pioneer work and women who have been graduated from this course should be sure to obtain interesting and lucrative employment.”

Miss Diana Herschler taught salesmanship in Boston for years. Then the Boston Board of Education introduced the teaching of salesmanship for girls into the public schools. Miss Herschler traveled from coast to coast teaching and then came to New York where she taught in stores and soon organized classes in salesmanship in the evening high schools for women. In New York, a class has been opened in one of the department stores at the instigation of women, and is taught by a teacher supplied by the Board of Education. A Department Store Education Association is now a national project which women are promoting.

The Research Department of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union has made a series of studies of trades and occupations to afford a background of information for those interested in vocational education and guidance. Two books on Vocations for the Trained Woman have already been published. “Millinery as a Trade for Women” has also been announced. The study for last year on “Office Service as an Occupation for Women” was published by the Boston School Committee during 1914. Two studies, “Dressmaking as a Trade for Women,” and “Women in the Manufacture of Boots and Shoes,” were advertised by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics for the summer of 1914.

In Connecticut the Child Labor Committee and the Consumers’ League made possible a vocational counselor in schools and planned his work from a previous study of vocational guidance in other countries. In New York City, Mrs. Henry Ollesheimer and Miss Virginia Potter were leaders in the establishment of the Manhattan Trade School for Girls. In 1910 the Board of Education assumed control of the school. The previous year, however, the Board of Education had established a vocational school for boys. In that city the Federation of Women’s Clubs repeatedly urged the Board of Education to appoint a committee on Vocational Schools, and finally the committee was established with Mrs. Samuel Kramer as chairman.

A vocational guidance bureau is to be established in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A committee of fifteen from women’s clubs and other associations are to act as advisors to the Board of Education to help young people to select their life occupation on leaving school. Meyer Bloomfield, of the Boston bureau, gave a series of lectures in Minneapolis recently on vocational guidance and crystallized a strong sentiment already existing in favor of such work.

Vocational Education

One of the most constructive pieces of work recently done on vocational education was the survey of the problem made by Alice Barrows Fernandez under the auspices of the Public Education Association of New York. The portion of the report of this Survey, presented to the subcommittee on vocational guidance of the Committee on High Schools and Training Schools of the Board of Education and submitted at the public hearing of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of New York City, June 16, 1914, shows with what clear analysis of social conditions and forces the chairman and her committee have studied this question.