Age: 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

FIG. 6.

Charting the value of education to the factory worker. (See

also Fig. 5.)

times as valuable as the laborer, approximately three times as valuable as the shop-trained apprentice, and 72 per cent more valuble than the trade-school graduate surely a good return for four years spent in preparation.1

Mr. Dodge found that even in the lowest grades of factory work the uneducated laborer was often unsuccessful. Only 35 per cent of the unskilled remained in the factory even in unskilled work, 5 per cent went somewhat higher, while 40 per cent had to be dismissed and 20 per cent left of their own accord for one cause or another.

It has been objected to this study that the factories under Mr. Dodge's supervision were not typical ones, but that in them a value was placed upon education above that allowed in other factories. That this is not true is shown by the fact that the salaries reported for the trade-school graduates in the Dodge factories are actually lower than those received in various other factories by the graduates of three widely separated trade schools reported by O'Leary.2

The educated fail less often.-Another study of the actual performance of educated men in the business world was made by H. J. Hapgood. Mr. Hapgood's results were similar to those of Dodge and brought out especially the large per cent of successes among college-bred men in responsible, high-salaried positions, and the comparatively small per cent of successes on the part of the noncollege-bred men. He says:

A notable instance of the value of college men is furnished by the Western Electric Co., which began employing college men about 10 years ago, and has found that 90 per cent of them make good, as compared with 10 per cent of the men who enter business on leaving the high or grammar school.3

Statistics based on data gathered from the experience of 100 business houses and covering a period of three or four years show that about 90 per cent of the college men were successful in rising to large salaries and responsible positions, as compared with 25 per cent of the noncollege men.

There is no doubt that college graduates are the chief and best source of supply for the reserve force which every progressive firm should be accumulating.*

Factory workers' salaries and education in Massachusetts.-The Massachusetts committee on industrial education made a study of 799 workers who had left school at either 14 or 18 years of age and traced the actual average salaries received by these workers from

1 In a private letter to Prof. Person, of Dartmouth College, Mr. Dodge gives this additional information:

"The data of my address on the money value of training were obtained by investigating the records of the Link Belt Engineering Co. and the Dodge Coal Storage Co., the records covering a period of about 14 years. I then had the figures compared with such records as I could obtain from my friends in somewhat similar lines of business, and, for fear of being in error, made a reduction of about 10 per cent from what the actual statistics show."-Quoted by W. A. O'Leary in his report on "The Wage Value of Vocational Training," Appendix VI of the Fourth Report of the New York State Factory Investigating Commission, p. 1420.

2 O'Leary, W. A. The Wage Value of Vocational Training, p. 1423.

3 Annals Amer. Acad. Pol. and Soc. Sci., July-December, 1906, pp. 62-63. Ibid., p. 64.

95620°-17-Bull. 22- 4

The figures were taken from the Report of the Commission on Industrial and Technical Education, submitted to the Massachusetts Legislature in 1906.

year to year. They found that boys who had remained four years longer in school in order to take a technical course soon caught up in salary with their brothers who stopped at 14, and went ahead of them so rapidly that by the time they were 22 years old the sum of the four years' salary of the better-educated boys was equal to that of the eight years' salary of those who had quit school at 14. At the age of 25 the boys who had taken four years' extra schooling were on the average getting $900 per year more than those who left school at 14.

From the twenty-fifth year on, the boys who had quit school at 14 would secure practically no promotion, whereas those who had remained in school till 18, and had therefore entered the higher-grade industries and positions, would continue to receive promotion and increase in salary for many years.1

If, however, it is assumed that each boy continues for the remainder of his normal working life to receive the same salary that he was paid at 25 years of age, the boy who quit school at 14 would receive a total life income of $26,667, while the boy that remained till 18 would receive $58,900. It thus appears that four years of technical education, from 14 to 18 years of age, more than doubles the earning capacity of the average Massachusetts boy engaged in industry and richly repays both him and the State for the time and money devoted to his education.

It is true that the number of children studied by the commission was small, as was the number of industries inspected. Furthermore, the absolute accuracy of the statements of those studied concerning their wages could not always be proved. It would, therefore, be a mistake to suppose that the above figures are to be taken as exact measures of the value of education in industry even in Massachusetts. On the other hand, this committee was composed of some of the ablest educators and most thoughtful men and women in Massachusetts. It employed trained assistants, visited 354 firms, in 55 different industries, in 43 cities, and personally visited 5,459 employees, out of 9,057, between the ages of 14 and 24 years employed by the firms under observation.

Wages of the trained and untrained.-An illuminating comparison was made by Florence Marshall of the wages received by girls in those occupations demanding no training and those that do demand it. The results are graphically shown in Fig. 8.

An investigation by Miss Anna Hedges of the relation between the education and the wages of a number of women in several factories around New York City showed that education through the fourth

1 The commission found (p. 21) that, out of 9.057 employees studied, 900 of whom were in high-grade industries, only 2 per cent of those who had left school at 14 ever got into high-grade industries.

FIG. 8.