l who must go to
work the moment she can obtain her working papers (about fourteen years
of age) with an enlightened apprenticeship in some productive
occupation. Such training cannot be obtained satisfactorily in the
market. The immature workers are present there in such large numbers
that they complicate the industrial problem by their poverty and
inability, and thus tend to lower the wage. Jane Addams, of Hull House,
Chicago, says these untrained girls "enter industry at its most painful
point, where the trades are already so overcrowded and subdivided that
there remains in them very little education for the worker." The school
purposed to give its help at this very point.

Trade, on its side, is eager to have skilled women directly fitted for
its workrooms, but finds them hard to obtain. The school's duty was to
discover the way to meet this wish of the employers of labor. It is true
that the utilitarian and industrial education offered by public and
private instruction has benefited the home and society, but such
training has not met the problem of adequately fitting for specific
employments the young worker who has but a few months to spare. The lack
in this instruction has been in specific trade application and
flexibility as to method, artistic needs, and mechanical devices. These
points are essential to place the girl in immediate touch with her
workroom.

Therefore the Manhattan Trade School assumed the responsibility of
providing an economic instruction in the practical work of various
trades, thus supplying them with capable assistants. Hence its purpose
differed not only from the more general instruction of the usual
technical institution, but also from those schools which offered
specific training in one trade (such as dressmaking), in that it (1)
offered help to the youngest wage-earners, (2) gave the choice among
many trades, and (3) held the firm conviction that the adequate
preparation of successful workers requires more factors of instruction
than the training for skill alone. The ideals of the school were the
following: (1) to train a girl that she may become self-supporting; (2)
to furnish a training which shall enable the worker to shift from one
occupation to another allied occupation, _i. e._, elasticity; (3) to
train a girl to understand her relation to her employer, to her
fellow-worker, and to her product; (4) to train a girl to value health
and to know how to keep and improve it; (5) to tra