Courses of Study
As the changes about to occur in the market must be recognized and inserted in the curriculum in time for the students to be prepared for the new work when they are placed, set courses of study cannot be followed without endangering the practical value of the teaching. Furthermore, the pupils must be advanced as they show ability, and their different characteristics should have consideration; hence the work must be sufficiently flexible and adaptable to allow for increasing one kind of training and decreasing another, in order to develop a girl's best ability. It is not the trade courses only which should be fitted to the need, but the trade-art, trade-academic, and physical education must also shift and introduce needed material as quickly as would the market grasp at new plans for the workrooms. Nor is it sufficient that the curriculum should adapt itself merely to training girls for trade positions. It is never to be forgotten that these students are to be made into higher grade workers and citizens, and that the greater number of them will marry. In general, it can be said that woman's entrance into industry is more or less temporary in that it is apt to precede or to follow marriage, and, as a rule, is not continuous. Good citizenship for these young wage-earners should mean the better home as well as the broader views of industrial life. The inserting into an already too brief training the important factors for making the better home-keeper requires study of the ethics and economics of home and social life in addition to the study of the industrial situation, and places continuous problems before the faculty.
Investigations
In order to be in vital touch with the practical needs and changes of the market, special investigations of trade have been and are continually conducted by the faculty of the school. Effort is made by them also to keep in close contact with industrial and social organizations of workers in settlements, clubs, societies, and unions, that all phases of the wage-earner's life, pleasures, aims, and needs, may be appreciated. The pupils in attendance are studied to know their conditions of health, their tendencies, their needs, their improvement. After their entry into trade they are kept in touch with the school through the Placement Bureau, clubs, graduate associations, and also by visits from the school's investigator, in order to note the effect of their training on their self-support, their workrooms, and their homes. Groups of trained and untrained girls are compared, that differences and benefits may be noted and the true situation may be clearly understood.
That the essentials of this class of education might be grasped as far as possible, the director of the school made a six months' investigation of the professional schools for girls on the continent of Europe. This study was made after the Manhattan Trade School had been organized and was running successfully. The problems were then well in hand, and advantage could be taken the better of differing standpoints. In some European countries such practical instruction has been established for half a century. Each country has organized the work according to its own view of woman's position in industrial and domestic life. Many aspects of the problem can therefore be studied and various courses of instruction consulted. This investigation covered three interesting fields. First, the organization of the schools, including the equipment; the teachers and their training; the budget; the order work; the relation of the school to employers; the placing of the girls in positions; the wages; the schemes for financial aid, and the work of the alumnæ associations. Second, the trades taught and the courses of instruction; the general education required at entrance and that given as an integral part of trade; the trade-art courses; the housekeeping and training of servants; the development of ideas of better living and the training for responsibility in home and trade life. Third, the visiting of workrooms employing women; the obtaining information on the effect of trade schools; the students' usefulness and ability to advance, and a survey of the crafts conducted in the homes of the people.
Trade Order Administration
A trade school must do its skilled handwork in the fashion of the day and on correct materials, yet the students are too poor to work for themselves. A school budget cannot supply such large quantities of valuable materials unless it can get some return for them. The school shop in each department, where orders both private and custom are taken, has proved advantageous, but involves great problems of administration: (1) the actual business methods and management connected with the invoices, sales, and delivery of goods; (2) the obtaining of orders needed and of the quantity desirable; (3) the taking of custom orders, fitting the customer, and delivery of orders on time; (4) a satisfactory apportionment of the order work so that the students may profit by it and not be expected to continue it after they have had sufficient experience of one kind, or if they are not yet able to do the elaborate work involved; (5) the finding of operatives who will do what the students cannot or should not do; (6) the expense involved in employing workers at trade prices and for shorter hours; (7) the cost of articles, and other details which are involved in entering into competition with trade. It may be stated that no trade school should underbid the market, but should charge the full prices and expect to give equivalent returns. A trade school cannot afford to be an amateur supported by a philanthropic public, but must have a recognized business standard.
Placement
Problems of varied kinds meet the school in placing its students. Each new enactment of child labor or industrial laws has its influence. Even a good law will sometimes have a temporary serious effect in lowering wages or turning capable girls out of satisfactory positions. Care must be exercised that students are not placed where there is a possibility of running counter to the best interests of labor. The desire to place each pupil where she can develop to her highest condition requires continual knowledge of the market needs and of the characteristics of the many girls. Records of students entering, studying, and placed, the kinds of positions open, and industrial and labor information must be kept up to date, yet such data are often hard to secure.