EDUCATION
If a man about town should drop into the Harvard psychological laboratory and see an operator in rough clothes slowly turning a small crank and calling off disconnected letters of the alphabet while a changing panorama of squares and digits passed by beneath a glass plate, he might think that this was the university’s day off and that here was a new game for the amusement of the employes. But if he should ask “What’s the ante?” and want to sit in, he would soon discover his mistake. He would learn that he was looking at one of the few experiments yet contrived for picking the right man for the right job. He might even be told that this was one of the wee beginnings of a new science which, by systematically placing the psychological experiment at the service of education and industry, may some day prevent the tragic waste of misfit starts in life and go far toward solving the problem of vocational guidance for the schools. The observer would probably be warned, however, against construing what he saw as any endorsement of the social desirability of guiding children into this vocation or that.
The device of the changing panorama is designed to test a man’s fitness to be a motorman on an electric street car. Worked out under the direction of Prof. Hugo Munsterberg,[5]it is calculated to discover powers of attention, discrimination and adjustment with respect to rapidly moving objects, some going at different rates of speed parallel to the line of vision, others crossing it from side to side. While Professor Munsterberg undertook to transplant the activity of the motorman into laboratory processes, he did not try to reproduce a miniature of the exact conditions under which the motorman works. As the crank is turned, a series of cards slips by under a glass plate, each card having two heavy lines down its center to represent a street car track. Along the sides of this track, between it and the curbstone at the edge of the card, are scattered various digits which have arbitrarily fixed movements, like the pieces on a chess board, though not so complex. The job of the person being tested is to pick out, as the cards slip by, the precise points on the track which are threatened by the moveable digits in the street. Some of these numbers represent pedestrians, some horses and some automobiles.
5. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, by Hugo Munsterberg. Houghton, Mifflin Co. 320 pp. Price $1.50: by mail ofThe Survey$1.62.
5. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, by Hugo Munsterberg. Houghton, Mifflin Co. 320 pp. Price $1.50: by mail ofThe Survey$1.62.
Tried motormen, says Professor Munsterberg, agree that they really pass through this experiment with the feeling they have on the car. Though the test is not regarded as yet perfected, its results are thought to be fairly satisfactory when compared with actual efficiency in service. Efficiency, in this connection, means chiefly ability to avoid accidents. Some electric railroad companies have as many as 50,000 accident indemnity cases per year which involve an expense amounting in some instances to 13 per cent of the annual gross earnings. Professor Munsterberg believes that it may be quite advantageous later on to subject applicants for the position of motorman to tests based on the principle involved in the one here described. Even in this inadequate form, he thinks, the test would be sufficient to exclude perhaps one-fourth of those who are nowadays accepted for service.
In a public address recently Leonard P. Ayres, director of the Division of Education of the Russell Sage Foundation, brought together all the psychological tests in vocational guidance which, so far as he has been able to discover, are being used in any completed form. Besides the simpler tests for vision, hearing and color discrimination to which pilots, ship officers and railroad employes are usually subjected, there are only three, he said, which have for their object the more difficult task of selecting from among all the applicants those best fitted to perform the work. One of these is Professor Munsterberg’s test for motormen.
Another is a test used in a bicycle ball factory, where girls inspect the small polished steel balls for flaws by rolling them over and over on one hand with the fingers of the other and examining them under a strong light. S. E. Thompson, the employer, soon recognized that the quality most necessary in the girls, besides endurance and industry, was a quick power of perception accompanied by quick responsive action. He therefore subjected his girls to the laboratory test which measures in thousandths of a second the time needed to react on an impression with the quickest possible movement. The final outcome was that thirty-five girls did the work formerly done by 120; the accuracy of the work was increased by 66 per cent; the wages of the girls were doubled; the working day decreased from 10½ to 8½ hours; and the profits of the factory were increased.
The third example which Mr. Ayres found of the application of psychological tests to the selection of employes in industry is a series of testsfor telephone operators. These also were conducted by Professor Munsterberg at Harvard. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company employs 23,000 operators. Applicants for positions are given a preliminary training of three months in the company’s schools. During this time they receive salaries. So many eventually prove unfitted for the work that more than a third leave within six months. Not only does this involve financial loss to the company but it is a heavy handicap to young girls who are trying to fit successfully into the industrial life of the day.
The object of the tests was to develop methods whereby the unfit girls could be eliminated before instead of after entering the service. The girls were examined with reference to memory, attention, general intelligence, space perception, rapidity of movement, accuracy of movement, and association. The results showed in general that those who came out best in the tests were most efficient in practical service, while those who stood at the foot of the list failed later and left the company’s employ.
“It seems fair to conclude,” says Mr. Ayres, “that when such tests are perfected, short examinations of a few minutes each will prevent thousands of applicants from wasting months of study and training in preparing for a vocation in which they cannot succeed.”
While these three tests have been used only on actual applicants for positions, a fourth test has been applied to beginning students in stenography and typewriting to determine which ones possess the abilities likely to bring success. This has been worked out under the direction of Prof. James E. Lough of New York University and consists chiefly of putting the subject through slight movements with a view to measuring his ability in habit formation.
In addition to actual tests Mr. Ayres found that experimentation is going on with regard to other occupations. Munsterberg is experimenting on tests for marine officers. Ricker of Harvard has constructed apparatus for testing chauffeurs. Whipple of Cornell has done some work with tests for motormen. Seashore of Iowa has published a careful study of tests of the ability of a singer. So far as is known, no work in this field is being done in Europe.
By the extension and amplification of such means as these Professor Munsterberg deems it not at all unlikely that we may some day have a real science of vocational guidance. That there is need for a far more adequate way of linking up young people to their work in life he has no doubt. “Society relies instinctively,” he says, “on the hope that the natural wishes and interests will push every one to the place for which his dispositions, talents and psychophysical gifts prepare him.” But this confidence he regards as unfounded. To quote further:
“In the first place, young people know very little about themselves and their abilities. When the day comes on which they discover their real strong points and their weaknesses, it is often too late. They have usually been drawn into the current of a particular vocation, and have given too much energy to the preparation for a specific achievement to change the whole life-plan once more. The entire scheme of education gives to the individual little chance to find himself. A mere interest for one or another subject is influenced by many accidental circumstances, by the personality of the teacher or the methods of instruction, by suggestions of the surroundings and by home traditions, and accordingly even such a preference gives rather a slight final indication of the individual qualities.”
On the other hand, Professor Munsterberg recognizes that a valuable start toward enabling young people to make wiser selection of their work has been made by the agencies for vocational guidance already existing in Boston and elsewhere. But he says that most counselors engaged in studying the qualities of boys and girls about to enter industry seem to “feel instinctively that the core of the whole matter lies in the psychological examination,” and that for this they must wait until the laboratories can furnish them with really reliable means and schemes. They may then, he thinks, become the appropriate agencies for applying the methods of psychology. He instances the long list of questions which the late Professor Parsons, usually referred to as the father of vocational guidance, employed with the idea of finding out something definite about the mental traits of young people. Replies to questions of this kind says Professor Munsterberg,
“can be of psychological value only when the questioner knows beforehand the mind of the youth, and can accordingly judge with what degree of understanding, sincerity, and ability the circular blanks have been filled out. But as the questions are put for the very purpose of revealing the personality, the entire effort tends to move in a circle.”
Of course Professor Munsterberg does not undertake to pass judgment on the social desirability of vocational guidance of any sort. That, he declares, is not the business of the psychologist. His concern is with means solely, not with ends. If the laboratory develops a way of telling who are fit for stenography and who are not, that does not mean that all the fit should be urged to become stenographers. The vocation may be overcrowded. Again, if a test be devised for discovering what qualities are essential to the successful operative in a particular industry, it does not follow that all who want to enter that industry and have the needed qualities should be advised to do so. Conditions as to health, wages, hours, and a score of other things may suggest that another trade ought to be chosen. So that vocational guidance, if it shall ever be a closed and perfected system, will yet demand the supplementary services of the labor investigator, the sanitary expert, the industrial technician and whoever else can contribute to any phase of the problem of why this calling should be followed instead of that.
THE WINTER’S FIGHT OVER VOCATIONAL TRAINING
The past winter has been perhaps the stormiest season which the incipient movement for vocational education has had to weather in this country. Before state legislatures and national Congress the battle has been fought. In Washington, D. C. the Page and Lever bills granting federal aid to industrial education in the states inflicted mutual slaughter on each other and died in conference. In Illinois a fight has waged over two measures, one providing for the “dual” system of administration and the other for the “unit,” and the probability is that neither will pass at this session.
But in spite of these casualties the war has not been without its fruits. Indiana enacted practically without opposition what is perhaps the most comprehensive statute on this subject yet passed. The Indiana Commission on Industrial and Agricultural Education, appointed in 1911, published during the closing days of 1912 a vigorous report on the whole subject of vocational training for youth. The reasons why boys and girls need such training were put by the commission as follows:
“The larger part of the boys and girls leave school before the completion of the elementary course, unprepared in anything which will aid them in their immediate problem of earning a living with their hands. From statistics available in other states it is safe to estimate that there are fully 25,000 boys and girls in this state between fourteen and sixteen who have not secured adequate preparation for life work in the schools and who are now working in “dead end” or “blind alley” jobs, or in other words, jobs which hold no promise of future competence or advancement. The investigations in Massachusetts and New York city show that not more than one out of five of the pupils leaving school at fourteen do so because it is necessary to help make a living. The conditions are doubtless even better in Indiana. The remainder, four out of five, leave school for a variety of reasons, chief among which is the feeling among pupils and parents that the schools do not offer the kind of instruction which they need for the work they expect to do and which would justify them in foregoing wage earning for a time in order to get it.”
The commission found no organized effort in Indiana to put pupils in touch with the opportunities for life work. The pupils are in the main, it declares, left to their own resources in choosing a vocation except where enterprising teachers have been able to give personal advice. It believes that every city and town should survey the vocational opportunities within its borders and place the information, together with all information available on vocational work, within reach of the pupil at the proper age.
Contrary to the claims of some of those who are administering industrial education in other states the commission found that the largest problem in carrying out such training is the lack of teachers competent to do the work. “If the vocational subjects are to find and hold the place that is due them in the common schools of the state,” says the commission, “the teachers must be educated to handle them more effectively than they have been able to handle such subjects in the past.”
The Indiana statute, which was signed by the governor in March, established a state system of vocational education and gave state aid for training in industries, agriculture and domestic science, through all-day, part-time, continuation and evening schools. This work is to be carried on either in separate schools or in special departments of regular high schools. In every case, the local control is vested in the regular board of education for the community and the laws are to be administered as a whole by the State Board of Education. The state board has been reorganized so that seven of its members must be professional educators. The remaining five may be laymen. Two of the laymen must be citizens of prominence and three of them shall be actively interested in vocational education. One of these last three shall be a representative of employes and one of employers. Attendance upon day or part-time classes is restricted to persons over fourteen and under twenty-five years of age; and upon evening classes to persons over seventeen years of age. The state superintendent of public instruction is made the executive officer and a deputy superintendent is to be placed under him in charge of industrial and domestic science education. The agricultural work is carried on by another deputy.
Local communities are required to supply the plant and equipment for carrying on the work. When this has been approved by the State Board of Education, the community is to be reimbursed out of the state treasury to the amount of two-thirds the salary of each teacher giving instruction either in vocational or technical subjects.
In order to secure the benefit of the knowledge and co-operation of the layman, local school authorities are required to appoint, subject to the approval of the State Board of Education, advisory committees composed of members representing local trades and industries, whose duty it shall be to counsel with the board and other officials in the conduct of the affairs of the school.
In both Pennsylvania and New Jersey bills creating state systems of vocational education are likely to pass soon. The Pennsylvania measure has already gone through the House by a vote of 182 to 2. This latter bill is very similar to the Indiana act. The State Board of Education administers the act, with the state superintendent of public instruction as the executive officer.
The regular board of education is in charge of the local schools. They are required to appoint advisory committees composed of membersrepresenting local trades, industries and occupations, to aid them in making the work practical and effective.
In general the New Jersey measure is similar to those of Indiana and Pennsylvania. There also the work is to be administered by the State Board of Education and local boards of education, and may be carried on either in approved schools or departments; these departments must consist of separate courses, pupils and teachers. Advisory committees are not provided for in the act, but it is expected that these will be required by the board of education under authority conferred by previous legislation.
In Connecticut and New York, which have already made some provision for vocational education, laws are pending which considerably extend the scope of the systems. In Washington a measure establishing a “dual” system of vocational schools is regarded as unlikely of passage. In Massachusetts a pending amendment to a former act authorizes school committees, with the approval of the State Board of Education, to require every child between fourteen and sixteen years of age who is regularly employed not less than six hours a day, to attend school at the rate of not less than four hours per week, during the school year. Another measure which will probably become a law raises the compulsory school age from fourteen to fifteen, for all children, and for illiterates from sixteen to seventeen. Attendance on a vocational school of children fourteen years of age is accepted as school attendance.
A twentieth century verification of the scriptural truth that “to him who hath shall be given” is put forward by the Public Education Association of Philadelphia, which recently completed a study of the children in that city who leave school at fourteen or fifteen to go to work.
There are in the Philadelphia public high schools, says a pamphlet issued by James S. Hiatt, secretary of the association, 13,039 boys and girls. At the same time there is a like number, 13,740, who have been allowed to drop out of school at fourteen and to fight their industrial battle alone. For the former group, who are really more able to take care of themselves, the city pays $1,532,000 a year for further training in citizenship and preparation for life. For the latter group it pays nothing.
“Is this a square deal?” asks the association. “Is it economy on the part of the city to permit these child workers to go out untrained into industry, to give their lives before they are mature and then to become a burden upon the community?”
With regard to these 13,740 between the ages of fourteen and sixteen whom the school census of June, 1912, found to be at work, the study undertook to answer two questions: first, are the occupations in which the boys and girls are employed of such a nature that they will train for a competence in later life? Second, is the immediate wage received of sufficient importance to counterbalance the tremendous loss of power in those who face mature life unprepared? As a continuation of this investigation the Compulsory Education Bureau has followed up since September of last year and will continue to do so, every child who leaves school to go to work. The kind of job taken, the exact nature of the work done, and the wage received will be learned. About 1,700 labor certificates are issued in Philadelphia every month.
At the outset it was discovered that the problem is not one of the immigrant child chiefly. The percentage of American parentage was 50.2; of foreign parentage, 48.1; of Negro parentage, 1.7 Nor is it a problem of boys chiefly, for 6,849, or 49.85 per cent of the total, were girls.
The Surveyhas already told how the Vocational Guidance Survey of New York followed a group of boys and girls from the day they received their labor certificates through all the different jobs which they held during the next four or five months. The study emphasized the hit-or-miss jumping from one line of work to another which untrained youths are sure to resort to, acquiring no training and achieving no advance. The Philadelphia study furnishes a cross section of the positions held by this much larger group at a given moment. Forty-three per cent of both boys and girls were in the factory, where, says the report,
“the positions are largely mechanical and require but short time in learning, little responsibility, and great specialization of processes. These positions offer an initial wage which is alluringly high, but hold out little incentive for growth and but slightly advanced wages for the experienced operative.”
Twenty-nine per cent were in the store and the office, “where a few may advance to higher places, but it is evident that a majority must hold low-grade positions which require little preparation or skill.”
A comparison of the employments of both sexes showed that there is no kind of work which both boys and girls will not do. While boys predominate in the store, the office, in messenger service, street trades and skilled trades, girls have the largest number in the factory, in service and in house work. Yet twenty-five girls were exposed to the dangers of street trades and 118 boys were taken out of school to do house work in their own homes without pay. The diagram on the next page shows the percentages and numbers of the total engaged in the various lines of work, and the relative proportion of boys and girls in each.
When it came to tabulating wages the surprising discovery was made that with respect to 35.3 per cent of the total either no wage was received or the amount of it was entirely unknownto the family. Twenty-two per cent received between $2 and $4 a week, and 37 per cent between $4 and $6. Smaller wage divisions are shown here:
Split up by sexes these figures show that 42.2 per cent of the girls were found in the group whose wages were unknown or zero, while only 28.4 per cent of the boys were in that group. For both boys and girls the largest number of those whose wages is known is found in the group which receive $4.00 to $4.50. The detailed comparison is here given:
The average wage for all boys who receive between $2 and $6 is $4.26; that for girls $4.19, the large number of girls who receive a comparatively high wage in factories bringing their average up.
The average increase, between fourteen and fifteen years of age, of the workers noted is thirty-seven cents. It is much less in some of the industries. “Does such a slight return and such a meager raise,” asks the report, “pay for all the loss of mature power, as well as for that efficiency which might be gained by longer continuing in the proper kind of training?”
WHERE THE YOUNGSTERS WORK IN PHILADELPHIAThe figures and percentages refer to parts of the whole 13,740 boys and girls found in the lines of work named. The drawings show roughly the ratio of boys to girls in each line. “Housework” means housework in own home.
WHERE THE YOUNGSTERS WORK IN PHILADELPHIAThe figures and percentages refer to parts of the whole 13,740 boys and girls found in the lines of work named. The drawings show roughly the ratio of boys to girls in each line. “Housework” means housework in own home.
WHERE THE YOUNGSTERS WORK IN PHILADELPHIAThe figures and percentages refer to parts of the whole 13,740 boys and girls found in the lines of work named. The drawings show roughly the ratio of boys to girls in each line. “Housework” means housework in own home.
The following conclusions are drawn by the association as a result of its study:
“1. That the problem of the working child is not an immigrant problem, since over 50 per cent of those reported as at work are of the second generation of American birth.
“2. That this is not the problem of the boy alone, since over 49 per cent of the workers are girls.
“3. That the vast majority of children who leave school at fourteen to enter industry go into those kinds of employment which offer a large initial wage for simple mechanical processes, but which hold out little or no opportunity for improvement and no competence at maturity.
“4. That wages received are so low as to force a parasitic life.
“5. That but slight advancement is offered the fifteen-year-old over the fourteen-year-old child worker.”
Hardly are we given time to grasp the Census Bureau’s new facts about illiteracy in the United States before the Bureau of Education gives us its own interpretation of some of them. Illiteracy, as viewed by the Census Bureau, means inability to write on the part of those ten years old and over. As a nation the number of illiterates among us decreased from 10.7 per cent of the population in 1900 to 7.7 per cent in 1910. In spite of this decrease a bulletin by A. C. Monahan of the Bureau of Education refers to the “relatively high rate of illiteracy” in the country and says that this rate is due not to immigration but to the lack of educational opportunities in rural districts. The percentage of rural illiteracy is twice that of urban, although approximately three-fourths of the immigrants are in the cities. Still more significant is a comparison between children born in this country of foreign parents with those born of native parents. Illiteracy among the latter is more than three times as great as that among the former, “largely,” says Mr. Monahan, “on account of the lack of opportunities for education in rural America.”
The decrease in national illiteracy during the decade 1900–1910 was not only relative but absolute, despite the growth of the population. In 1900 the figure was 6,180,069. In 1910 it was 5,516,163. But while illiteracy among the total population was decreasing, that among the foreign born whites remained almost stationary. In 1900 the percentage was 12.9, in 1910 12.7. Among the whites born in this country the decrease during the decade was from 4.6 to 3 per cent. Illiteracy among the Negroes showed a decrease of almost one-third. In 1900 44.5 of the whole Negro population could not write; in 1910 the percentage was 30.4.
The distribution of illiteracy between the sexes was very even. Among males it amounted 7.6 of the total, among females to 7.8. There was less of it among white females, however, than among white males, the percentage for the former being 4.9, for the latter 5. White girls and women born outside of this country show more illiteracy than men and boys of the same class, but those born in the United States show less than native males, as follows:
The New England and the Middle Atlantic groups of states changed places in the illiteracy column between 1900 and 1910. At the former period New England was fifth and the Middle Atlantic states, comprising New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, fourth, but by 1910 New England had displaced the latter group. In both years the West North Central, comprising Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas, showed the least illiteracy of any of the geographical divisions, while the East South Central, comprising Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, had the worst record,
The section known as the West almost caught up with the North during the decade, the respective percentages being 4.4 and 4.3.
Mr. Monahan’s bulletin goes briefly into the whole rural school problem. The author found 226,000 one-teacher schoolhouses in the United States, of which 5,000 are log buildings still in active use. Although more than 60 per cent of the children in the United States are enrolled in country schools, the rural aggregate attendance is only 51 per cent.
With the help of recent appropriations made by Congress the Bureau of Education has undertaken to make a careful study of the needs of the rural schools, and the bulletin just issued is one of the first definite results of the work.
How women have advanced from the educational ranks to the highest administrative positions in the public schools is revealed in figures just compiled by the United States Bureau of Education. Four states, Colorado, Idaho, Washington, and Wyoming, have women at the head of their state school systems, and there are now 495 women county superintendents in the United States, nearly double the number of ten years ago.
In some states women appear to have almost a monopoly of the higher positions in the public-school system. In Wyoming, besides a woman state superintendent and deputy superintendent, all but one of the fourteen counties are directed educationally by women. In Montana, where there are thirty counties, only one man is reported as holding the position of county superintendent.
The increase in the number of women county superintendents is most conspicuous in the West, but is not confined to that section. New York reports forty-two women “district superintendents,” as against twelve “school commissioners” in 1900.
MOTHERHOOD AND TEACHING
Motherhood and teaching collided in New York three weeks ago when the Board of Education refused to grant a year’s leave of absence without pay to Katherine C. Edgell, a high school teacher, who wanted to bear and rear a child. The board recorded its opposition by a vote of thirty-two to five. By a vote of twenty-eight to nine it shut off discussion because “too much had been published about this affair already.”
Mrs. Edgell is still on the payroll of the schools, although she has not been in attendance since February first. Inasmuch as it is the custom of the board to punish unexcused absence by dismissal for neglect of duty, it seems to have no alternative but to proceed to that extremity against Mrs. Edgell. This is just what was done recently in the case of Lily R. Weeks, who was absent some time on account of the birth of a child, though the board did not know the nature of her illness. Mrs. Weeks appealed her case to the state commissioner of education, before whom it is now pending.
This demand of Mrs. Edgell that she be allowed to continue in her profession though a mother is, of course, only a symptom of the world-wide movement of women into the gainful occupations of life. It reveals how acute has grown the feeling on this subject among some of the women teachers of New York. Heretofore any married woman teacher who wanted leave of absence to bear a child carefully concealed the nature of her illness from the Board of Education. At length, one woman stood out and asked that, as a matter of right, her position be kept open for her while she brought a new life into the world. Instantly scores of her colleagues came to her defense. Women lawyers passed resolutions in sympathy with her and physicians publicly approved her stand.
The case of Mrs. Edgell is not the first time that the New York Board of Education has expressed its opinion with regard to married women teachers. Until 1904 a by-law of the board provided that the marriage of a woman teacher should automatically cause her instant dismissal without further action. But the Court of Appeals decided in 1903 that a teacher could not be dismissed for marrying and the by-law was changed. Since then the board has apparently not been altogether friendly toward the married women in its employ. During the discussion that has attended the Edgell case it has been repeatedly asserted by principals and teachers that there are hundreds of women in the schools who have kept their marriages secret because of the well-known policy of the board to make it almost impossible for married women to secure promotion or increase in salary.
A physician who is a member of the school board and a member of the board of superintendents are authorities for the sweeping statement, that if this ruling is adhered to the board of education is quite likely to be responsible for 300 cases of deliberate abortion among the public school teachers of New York every year.
When the board, by its vote of twenty-eight to nine, shut off discussion because “too much has been published about this affair already,” it did what was destined to provoke hotter and longer discussion than ever. But underlying that there is a very general feeling that this subject presents many phases which should be given profound consideration, not a snap verdict. Would the distraction of a baby interfere with class room work, or the absence of the mother and teacher handicap her own children; or would having children of her own add something to a woman’s educative powers? What effect would the widespread continuance of married women in the schools have on men’s salaries? What is there in the practice and experience of other cities to help New York in deciding so big a question as the interaction of motherhood and teaching?
What protection should be thrown around the prospective mother is a question that is only beginning to be raised among professional and salaried classes. Up to the present nearly all women in these groups have resigned their positions, if not at marriage then at childbirth. No general policy of dealing with them seems to have been adopted either by public or private employers.
With women in the wage-earning class the case is different. In at least twenty countries or parts of countries in Europe legal protection is thrown around the working woman who bears a child. In Berne, Switzerland, all women “employed for purposes of gain” are prohibited from working for from four to eight weeks after confinement. In Ticino, Italy, no woman can work for six months after confinement. The conception underlying this legislation is not that mothers are not efficient workers, but that earning a livelihood must be made easier for those who want also to fulfill the other functions of womanhood. In England the period of prohibition is four weeks after, and in Germany six weeks. In Servia no woman can work for six weeks before nor six weeks after. In several of these places the position must be kept open for the woman while she is bearing her child.
Examples of such protection nearer at home are not lacking. Both Massachusetts and New York have laws declaring that specified periods of absence shall be allowed to women in industrial establishments at time of confinement.
A notable exception to the rule that no such policy has been adopted toward salaried or professional women is to be had in France. There boards of education are not permitted to refuse leave of absence to teachers who want to bear children. Three years ago the government made imperative the granting of at least two months’ vacation, together with full treatment, to teachers expecting confinement. And in the following year this protection was extended to the female staff of the department of posts, telegraphs and telephones.