be tided over this period if he
is put into one of these occupations. The experience in every boys'
club can furnish illustrations of this.
A factory boy who had been brought into the Juvenile Court many times
because of his persistent habit of borrowing the vehicles of
physicians as they stood in front of houses of patients, always
meaning to "get back before the doctor came out," led a contented and
orderly life after a place had been found for him as a stable boy in
a large livery establishment where his love for horses could be
legitimately gratified.
Still another boy made the readjustment for himself in spite of the
great physical suffering involved. He had lost both legs at the age of
seven, "flipping cars." When he went to work at fourteen with two good
cork legs, which he vainly imagined disguised his disability, his
employer kindly placed him where he might sit throughout the entire
day, and his task was to keep tally on the boxes constantly hoisted
from the warehouse into cars. The boy found this work so dull that he
insisted upon working in the yards, where the cars were being loaded
and switched. He would come home at night utterly exhausted, more from
the extreme nervous tension involved in avoiding accidents than from
the tremendous exertion, and although he would weep bitterly from
sheer fatigue, nothing could induce him to go back to the duller and
safer job. Fortunately he belonged to a less passionate race than the
poor little Italian girl in the Hull-House neighborhood who recently
battered her head against the wall so long and so vigorously that she
had to be taken to a hospital because of her serious injuries. So
nearly as dull "grown-ups" could understand, it had been an hysterical
revolt against factory work by day and "no fun in the evening."
America perhaps more than any other country in the world can
demonstrate what applied science has accomplished for industry; it has
not only made possible the utilization of all sorts of unpromising raw
material, but it has tremendously increased the invention and
elaboration of machinery. The time must come, however, if indeed the
moment has not already arrived, when applied science will have done
all that it can do for the development of machinery. It may be that
machines cannot be speeded up any further without putting unwarranted
strain upon the nervous system of the worker; it may be that further
elaboration will so sacrifice the workman who fee
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