Note. Year round work, in general, includes a holiday of longer or shorter duration, usually without pay.
Entrance Plans
The school is open throughout the year in order to train girls whenever they come—the summer months being slack in most trades are especially desirable for instruction. The tuition is free, and in cases of extreme necessity a committee gives Students' Aid, in proportion to the need. Entrance to day classes for girls who are from fourteen to seventeen years of age and who can show their working papers or be able to produce documentary evidence of age, if under sixteen, can occur any week.
Each girl who enters, after selecting her trade, is given a typewritten paper showing the possible steps of advance in her chosen course. She takes this home in order that the family may know what is before her. She can by special effort or by outside study lessen the length of her training. The first month in the school is a test time. If the girl shows the needed qualities she is allowed to continue.
During the month of trial her instructors decide what she needs and if her chosen trade is the best for her. The right is reserved to make a complete change if her health will not stand the one she desires, if she has no ability for it, or if she gives evidence of special talent in another direction.
Industrial Intelligence
Every student has, as a part of her trade education, such academic work, art, and physical training as seems necessary; when she passes certain standards she is then allowed to devote full time to her selected occupation. It is not possible for a worker who has skill with the hand and no education to back it up to rise far in her trade. There is many a tragedy in the market of the woman whose poor early education prevented her from getting ahead. Accurate expression, whether oral or written, the use of arithmetic in simple trade transactions or detailed accounts, the ability to grasp the important factors in any situation and then to go to work without waste of time or motion, are required for positions of trust and for supervision in any workroom. It was soon discovered that the girls entering the school know arithmetic in an abstract way, but are at sea when asked to meet the ordinary trade problems. They are inaccurate in reading and copying; they cannot write a letter of application, conduct correspondence, make out checks, or keep simple accounts. They are ignorant of the laws already made which concern them and of their own relation to future laws. They have no ideals in their trade life. They need to see the relation of their chosen trade to the country, of their work to their employer's success, the effect they may have in bringing about a better feeling between the employer and the wage-earner. A practical, immediately available business education is absolutely essential to make workwomen of executive ability. Therefore specific trade instruction in arithmetic, English, history, geography, and civics was planned to supplement and enrich the trade courses.
Steady progress has been made in determining the kind of cultural trade instruction which will best assist such young wage-earners. A new field in practical education had to be opened, and subject matter which could be of service in the workrooms selected from it. The many trades of the school had to be studied in order to know their needs. The work has grown more valuable each year and has proved itself to be a truly necessary part of the curriculum. A concrete evidence of its worth is the fact that many of the girls in slack seasons have taken clerical positions and have been complimented on their grasp of the subject, their orderliness, their ability to think, and their reliability. Naturally all departments unite to develop character in the students, but the Academic Department feels this to be a special aim. Pleasure in the subject of instruction, followed by mental and moral improvement, has indicated clearly that the academic dullness which is shown at entrance comes frequently from lack of motive in former studies. The interest is all the more encouraging as there are many handicaps in the teaching, for the students enter at any time, are graded by the trades they select, and are placed in the market as quickly as possible; hence the work cannot be uniform in its advance. Nor is the academic work a help to the girls in their business life only, for such subjects as the keeping of accounts, the consideration of the cost of living, and the value and price of materials are of direct use also in home life.
Trade Art Instruction
Courses in Trade Art were also organized as a fundamental part of the instruction. Each trade has its own art, and the school has tried to adapt the work in the studios to each different occupation. It recognizes that the art applied in dressmaking differs from that in millinery, and this again from that required for decorating jewelry boxes and calendars. It consequently offers each student the kind of elementary art training needed in her trade. The time is too short to develop designers, but it does help a girl to be more exact, resourceful, and useful in her workroom, and often enables her to make a higher wage. A worker who can place trimming, adapt designs to new purposes, stamp patterns, draw copies of garments, and combine color attractively is especially desirable in her chosen employment.