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attitude toward manual training. The demand is made on the part of some that there should be at least a thorough secondary training before there is any specializing along industrial lines.
I agree fully with those who stand for the importance of technical educa- tion in the South, whether it be along agricultural, mechanical, commercial, scientific, or pedagogical lines. But I submit that in order to get the practical benefit of the scientific instruction offered by the colleges there must be a certain mental preparedness which cannot be gained short of a high-school course."
Further, the position is held by others that, while perfection of production is desirable, this should be accompanied by greater attention to the problem of proper distribution, if education is to develop all the members in a democratic society and thus make for social progress.
There remains one other phase of the industrial development the relation of the cotton-mill to the school problem. Where- ever the factory system, with its various processes, many of them adapted to slight strength and requiring little more than a guiding power, has grown up, there has arisen the question of the labor of little children. The South faces this problem, and speaks for itself as to its conditions through one of its representative men, Mr. J. Y. Joyner: 26
Reports from twenty-three counties in which cotton-mills are located show, in the cotton-mill districts, a total white school population of 33,280, a total enrolment of 14,449 white children in the schools of these districts, and a total average daily attendance of 9,014. Only about two-fifths of these children, then, ever attend school, and only about one-fourth of the children of the factory districts in the schools, three-fourths of them out of school. This is the average. In many districts the attendance was much lower than this.
The time for action has arrived. In the face of these facts, legislation upon this question should be delayed no longer. No human-hearted man can longer turn a deaf ear to the cry of the factory children. The strong arm of law must intervene. I earnestly recommend, therefore, the enactment of a law that shall accomplish the following purposes :
I. That no child under twelve years of age shall be employed or allowed to work in any cotton-mill or factory of any sort.
- P. H. SAUNDERS, University of Mississippi, in School Review, February,
1903.
"Superintendent of public instruction, North Carolina.
