WHERE THE YOUNGSTERS WORK IN PHILADELPHIA
The figures and percentages refer to parts of the whole 13,740 boys and girls found in the lines of work named. The drawings show roughly the ratio of boys to girls in each line. “Housework” means housework in own home.
The following conclusions are drawn by the association as a result of its study:
“1. That the problem of the working child is not an immigrant problem, since over 50 per cent of those reported as at work are of the second generation of American birth.
“2. That this is not the problem of the boy alone, since over 49 per cent of the workers are girls.
“3. That the vast majority of children who leave school at fourteen to enter industry go into those kinds of employment which offer a large initial wage for simple mechanical processes, but which hold out little or no opportunity for improvement and no competence at maturity.
“4. That wages received are so low as to force a parasitic life.
“5. That but slight advancement is offered the fifteen-year-old over the fourteen-year-old child worker.”
ILLITERACY AND THE RURAL SCHOOL
Hardly are we given time to grasp the Census Bureau’s new facts about illiteracy in the United States before the Bureau of Education gives us its own interpretation of some of them. Illiteracy, as viewed by the Census Bureau, means inability to write on the part of those ten years old and over. As a nation the number of illiterates among us decreased from 10.7 per cent of the population in 1900 to 7.7 per cent in 1910. In spite of this decrease a bulletin by A. C. Monahan of the Bureau of Education refers to the “relatively high rate of illiteracy” in the country and says that this rate is due not to immigration but to the lack of educational opportunities in rural districts. The percentage of rural illiteracy is twice that of urban, although approximately three-fourths of the immigrants are in the cities. Still more significant is a comparison between children born in this country of foreign parents with those born of native parents. Illiteracy among the latter is more than three times as great as that among the former, “largely,” says Mr. Monahan, “on account of the lack of opportunities for education in rural America.”
The decrease in national illiteracy during the decade 1900–1910 was not only relative but absolute, despite the growth of the population. In 1900 the figure was 6,180,069. In 1910 it was 5,516,163. But while illiteracy among the total population was decreasing, that among the foreign born whites remained almost stationary. In 1900 the percentage was 12.9, in 1910 12.7. Among the whites born in this country the decrease during the decade was from 4.6 to 3 per cent. Illiteracy among the Negroes showed a decrease of almost one-third. In 1900 44.5 of the whole Negro population could not write; in 1910 the percentage was 30.4.