and draughting stock to gigs,
that breaks up the violin to kindle a fire quickly, thoughtless of the
music, that takes telescopes for drain pipes and gets commerce--but not
commerce with the stars? It is the delirium in which strong men seek the
standard American testimonial of genius and ability, namely the
accumulation of great wealth; and in this delirium they see labor as a
commodity and childhood as a commercial factor. They do not think of
people like themselves and of children like their own.

But the minister is the very champion of those higher rights, the
defender of idealism, and as such the best friend of an industrial order
which is perversely making this expensive blunder and reaping the blight
of sullen citizenship and cynical and heartless toil. How can these
thousands who, because of "blind-alley" occupations, come to their
majority tradeless and often depleted, having no ability to build and
own a home--how can these who have no stake in the country aid in making
the republic what it ought to be? Partly they become a public care,
expense, or nuisance, and largely they constitute the material for
bossism and dynamite for the demagogue if he shall come. The economic
breakdown, because of vocational misfit and the exploitation of
childhood, usually results in a corresponding moral breakdown. To be
doomed to inadequacy is almost to be elected to crime.

Now the pastor certainly cannot right all this wrong, neither
will he be so brash as to charge it all up to malicious employers,
ignoring the process through which our vaunted individualism, our
free-field-and-no-favor policy, our doctrine for the strong has
disported itself. But is it not reasonable that the minister inform
himself of this problem in all its fundamental phases and that he both
follow and ardently encourage a public-school policy which aims
increasingly to fit the growing generation for productive and stable
citizenship? Our schools are fundamentally religious if we will have
them so in terms of character building, elemental self-respect, social
service, and accountability to the God of all.

The "godless schools" exist only in the minds of those who for purposes
of dispute and sectarianism decree them so. Furthermore, in every effort
toward vocational training and sorting, the employer will be found
interested and ready to help.

But to come more closely to the place of this problem in church work it
must be recognized that the Sunday