ield to advantage for those who,
not wishing to enter the regular high school course, would be glad to
avail themselves of further practical education. Such occupations for
women as cooking, sewing, garment and dressmaking, millinery, laundry
work, home nursing, household administration, care of children, novelty
work, electric power operating, salesmanship, and other interesting
activities can well be offered in Vocational Education. As the student
in her chosen field plans, considers expenses, and contrives to utilize
her material she gains skill, adaptability, judgment, and the true basis
of criticism. The world's work interests her as its meaning becomes
clear through her own experiences, and she begins to see ways to better
her condition and to be a factor in the improvement of her home. She
appreciates the value of her early education, and finds it worth while
to think clearly and to act wisely; she listens to instructions, asks
sensible directions, and goes to work without waste of time. The
elementary and intermediate training just described, which the school
found it must give preparatory to its real trade instruction, has proved
advantageous as an introduction, for the student can now quickly adapt
herself to the work in the school shops, as she possesses the foundation
qualities needed to make the best worker. She has to begin at the
simplest trade work, to be sure, but can rise as rapidly as she shows
ability. She has been carefully watched by her instructors and turned
gradually in the direction best fitted to her.

Trade Shops

Offering courses in many varieties of trade work exactly as they are
found in a city like New York has many recurring difficulties, as has
been before stated. The constant and rapid adaptations to fashion, the
new mechanical devices introduced, and the labor situations are factors
to be considered. The management must be ready at a moment's notice to
change, increase, or drop work according to the demands of a fickle
market. It would seem, therefore, that at present the problems of the
school trade shops are of too serious and unsettled a character for
adequate solution by public instruction as at present organized, for (1)
it would be difficult to persuade the mass of taxpayers that added tax
rates are advisable for beginning a continually altering form of
education which has not yet commended itself to all employers or to all
wage-earners, and which must be more or less expensi