Speaking of proof—in your proof under each subdivision you must set down the facts you expect to use to support your contentions. For example, under II. 2. A. b. it would not be sufficient to say in your brief “instances” or “illustrations” but:
“The report of Massachusetts Board of Education says: ‘The fact that 41.3 per cent. of those employed in the textile industry [speaking of a group out of school six years] receive less than $8 a week accounts, in large part, for the idleness among boys from eighteen to twenty-one years of age. There is no system of training in the mill which fits those on low paid, unskilled work, for the skilled work of the mill. Only 21 per cent. of the textile workers who have been in the business six years earn $10 or more, and a negligible percentage of those who work in candy factories earn this amount. Only 21 per cent. of the shoe workers earn less than $10 a week at six years out.... Monotonous work, especially that which requires great speed and uses up nervous energy, should not be done for any long period by young people under eighteen years of age, and the years up to this time should be spent in physical and mental upbuilding in preparation for the years of industrial life to come.’”
“A recent investigation of the Federal Bureau of Labor declares of a certain number of children under sixteen years who left school to work, that 90 per cent. entered industries in which the wages of adults were $10 a week or less. A vocational survey in New York exhibits in one group one hundred and one boys between fourteen and sixteen years and an analysis of the work they are doing. In only five cases was there any opportunity for them to advance or improve; ninety-six were in dead end occupations.”
“One woman, in Georgia, thirty-four years of age, but looking fifty, told me she had gone to the mill when she was nine years of age, and had been there ever since. She hated the very thought of working in the mill and from all appearances was ready for the scrap heap. She said when she was nine years old nothing could have kept her out of the mill and for two or three years after that she said she always listened for the whistle to blow so that she could go to work and it never blew too early for her. She said she wished she could get now where she could never hear the whistle blow. She makes about ninety cents per day when she works.”
“The boys [in Beverly, Massachusetts, where vocational education is provided] come from the common schools. Reports show that they are sons of clerks, shopkeepers, shoemakers, tailors, chauffeurs, laborers, machinists and other workmen. A boy’s earning capacity in Beverly is liberally estimated at $6 a week, which capitalized on a 5 per cent. a year basis represents a working capital value of $6,000 a year. The wage earning capacity of boys, after two and a half or three years of this public schooling, is $15 to $18 a week. Capitalized on a 5 per cent. basis, this shows the marvelous increase from $6,000 to $15,000 to $18,000 a year working capital.
“But the boy here is only on the threshold. Another set of figures is interesting. Professor James M. Dodge, president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, in his notable and elaborate formula, finds that the average untrained worker in this country reaches his maximum of earning at twenty-three years of age, the average then being $15 a week. The future of the untrained beyond this becomes precarious. They are in ‘blind alleys’ and ‘no-thoroughfare’ work. Only 5 per cent. rise above the level, 35 per cent. remain in employ, 20 per cent. leave the work of their own accord, and 40 per cent. are dismissed. Here at seventeen and a half years or eighteen, the vocationally educated pupil of the Beverly school has a capitalized value of $15,000 to $18,000.”
I will now illustrate what I have said by briefing the question before us. Such a brief would read something like this:
Resolved: that no children below the age of sixteen should be allowed to work in factories.
I. It is unnecessary, for
There is an ample supply of adult labor entirely adequate to the demands of factory work.