Local Industries
As a Basis for an Introductory Course in Economics
BY ALEXANDER L. PUGH, CHAIRMAN DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS, HIGH SCHOOL OF COMMERCE, NEW YORK CITY.
One of the things that makes the course of study of the High School of Commerce unique is the emphasis laid upon the preparation of the boy for the economic and civic environment in which he will live. Two courses are given solely with this end in view. The first is the course in city industries which has as its object the realization of the economic environment; and the other is the course in municipal activities, which in a similar way prepares the boy for his civic environment. These are both two-hour courses given for one term or one-half year. Like most New York City high schools, Commerce has about one-half of its boys in the first year, so these courses are given then, when both will be taken by nearly every boy. The course in industries is given first, as it deals more with the boys’ immediate surroundings than does the other.
Shortly after the school was organized, Dr. John L. Tildsley, at that time chairman of the Economics Department, now the principal of the De Witt Clinton High School, proposed to the principal, James J. Sheppard, that a course of one hour a week be given to all boys in the first year on local commercial geography and government. He contended that there was much that was complex in the surroundings of the boy in the greatest commercial city in America, yet the schools were doing very little to make this understandable. The work would have also an immediate value to the boys who would leave to take the minor positions of the business world before completing the course. Mr. Sheppard recognized the value of the course, and it was put into effect at once. The importance of the work demanded more time, and when history was taken out of the first year, two hours a week were allotted in the first term to industries, and two hours in the second term to city government.
The material of the course was gathered by Dr. Tildsley, the teachers in his department, and by the boys taking the course. Dr. Tildsley is a strong advocate of the problem question as a means of making the boy think. At first memorandum books were given to the pupils in which they noted definitions, local statistical tables and the problems, the written answers to which they brought into the next recitation. At present mimeographed sets of notes are given to the pupils containing this matter. The course was revised from time to time, and two years ago, on account of the accumulation of material, Dr. Tildsley and the author decided on a thorough revision of the course. The course had come to be grouped around two main ideas which furnished a basis for the division of the work into two parts to be given in each half term of ten weeks into which the school work is divided at Commerce. During the first half New York was considered as a manufacturing city, and in the second half as a commercial city. A sentence from De Garmo to the effect that commercial geography should be taught to furnish the concrete background for economics, gave us the touchstone. We reviewed the material and rejected all topics that did not illustrate any economic principle, law, or problem. A few topics were rejected because they were too difficult for first-year pupils. Then the standard secondary economic texts were gone over rapidly to see if we had omitted anything that could be used. Seager and Seligman were found to be the most helpful in this respect. The material selected was divided into two groups, as already indicated. As a result of our efforts we have now in Commerce a course in elementary economics that we believe to be unique.
The subject is begun with a report on the occupations of the boy’s family, his friends, and neighbors, and a study of the industrial life on his block. The boy is given the problem of classifying these occupations and grouping the workers according to his classification. He is then given as standards the figures from the United States and State census for gainful occupations in the United States, New York State, New York City, Manhattan and Bronx Boroughs, which he must express graphically. Then he combines the figures collected by the boys of his section (some forty) and his class (some five hundred). The results show, of course, that the manufacturing and mechanical pursuits and trade and transportation are the great groups of city industries.
We take manufacturing first as being nearer the boy, and we begin the study of the problem of the manufacturer, from a table specially prepared by us from the census report on the concentration of important manufactures in forty-seven cities. The problem is formulated as being the assembling of raw material, power, labor and capital at a place most convenient to its market. Each of these factors is studied in detail. The following are some of the topics discussed under labor: population; its composition, its growth from immigration, from migration and from excess of births over deaths; the effect of an increase from each source upon the efficiency of the workers of the city; the location and distribution of the labor force throughout the city; the effect of the sanitary regulations of the Board of Health and housing regulations of the Tenement House Department, etc.; the systems of employment; why the help, handicraft and the domestic systems still survive in this city; the important manufactures of this city, together with the kind of labor they use; and how the labor supply has affected them; what manufactures are leaving the city on account of the labor; what manufactures are coming in because of an abundant supply of cheap labor; the distribution of manufactures throughout Manhattan and the greater city; and how this distribution is related to the distribution of labor; how transportation improvements modify this distribution, etc. In a similar way are treated the problem of a supply of power, of a supply of capital, of a supply of raw material and of access to a market. The natural advantages New York has for commerce, its harbors, its inland water-ways, its situation, and its hinterland, with its products, is the first topic taken up in the second half-term. The improvements of these natural advantages and the sharing of the work of improvement on the high seas, throughout the hinterland and in the harbor by the national, State and city governments respectively is the second topic. The general idea of a great seaport that the boys formulate from a study of the great ports of the world, is that it is favorably situated on the coast, where it can draw unto itself the products of the near hinterland and distribute them over the world, and that it gathers together the products of the lands beyond the seas, and distributes them over the near and far hinterland. These topics are worked out in detail like that of the labor supply, already described. The course is concluded with a simple outline of the works of banks, trust companies and stock exchanges in supplying the necessary capital for manufacture and for trade.
The boy has now secured a generalised and systematic view of the trade and manufactures of his city and has obtained a lot of detailed and specific information about the part he and his neighborhood play in making New York a great city. The boy is studying an economic unity, the metropolitan district, and he is comparing it whenever possible with the United States and the world. He has learned to use statistics compiled by others, and he has helped compile some of his own. His generalizations are economic generalizations, he has learned to formulate economic principles, and he has observed the operation of economic laws. We believe that this study has supplied him for his future study of economics with a concrete background which will be filled out in the later years of the course, by the study of his civic environment and his more formal study of commercial geography of the United States and of the world.
This method of beginning economics can be applied in almost every school. The local economic unit will furnish all the material that the teacher can utilize. It means work for the teacher, but the trained and enthusiastic teacher will find the work full of interest to himself and to the pupils.