362 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



These children are receptive, imitative and obedient. They are giving 

 nothing; receiving everything. There are some sixty millions of older 

 people outside these schools who are the burden bearers, in whom rests 

 every whit of the fear and the hope and the accomplishment of the 

 present day. There must be schools for this larger number. After the 

 European practise, we must have day schools and night schools wherein 

 our workers will develop their varied abilities in and through their 

 occupations and adapt themselves to the changing requirements of in- 

 vention and fancy. Nothing will more vitally better our national life 

 and nothing will more contribute to the betterment of our foreign trade 

 relations. In some parts of the country these industrial schools have 

 been established by force of law, and all children out of school and at 

 work under sixteen years of age are required to attend not less than a 

 half day a week, there to be instructed in the employment in which they 

 are engaged or, when that employment is unfortunate, instructed in a 

 better occupation. Similar schools are opened for the voluntary at- 

 tendance of adults in the evening, and in the daytime when unem- 

 ployed. The working people are taking great advantage of this new 

 opportunity, new to us but hundreds of years old in European countries. 

 There is no doubt but these schools will be established generally in the 

 near future and Congress is now considering extensive federal aid and 

 guidance for such schools. 



Our Present Foreign Trade. — A study of our present exports of so- 

 called manufactured products is illuminating. I quote from a report 

 of the National Association of Manufacturers which I vras privileged to 

 write in 1913. 



In 1911 we exported $1,189,536,724 of manufactured products, but of this, 

 56 per cent., or $666,582,970, were of crude and semi-crude materials, including 

 such food stuffs as flour, meat, cottonseed, cake, etc., $282,016,883; copper in 

 bars, wire, etc., $104,000,000; iron and steel in bars, billets, rails, etc., $71,- 

 000,000; petroleum and other mineral oils, $92,000,000; wood in its crude forms, 

 $72,000,000; leather, furs, and fur-skins, $45,000,000, etc. Such exports carry 

 only from 3 to 15 per cent, of factory labor. German, French and English ex- 

 ports carry 40 to 80 per cent. This left exports of only $523,000,000 of more 

 highly finished manufactures. According to the Bureau of Statistics this 

 equaled only one sixtieth of our total product of farm and factory, and one 

 fortieth of our manufactured products. 



As a people we are ignorant of foreign trade. America has been likened to 

 a huge stevedore bearing down to the ships of the sea crude and semi-crude 

 material for the use of the capital, labor and intelligence of foreign nations. 

 Such exportation is a depletion of our natural resources, the heritage of the ages, 

 and irreplaceable. Until a few years ago we were always speaking of our 

 "limitless natural resources." We now see that under present processes those 

 resources will be exhausted within a period that to the far-sighted is as a day. 

 We have been proud of our agricultural exports; the scientists now tell us that 

 every bushel of wheat exported carries with it 27c. worth of phosphorus; every 

 bushel of corn, 13c.; every pound of cotton, 3c. These figures equal the sup- 

 posed profits in the transaction. As President Wallace said at the recent Con- 



