14 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



Limited Appeal of Cultural Education. 



Everybody has noticed the enormous falHng oflf in school atten- 

 dance at the fourteenth birthday. Employers have noticed, too, 

 that those who have presented themselves for work have neither 

 been prepared for good work nor possessed of such mental ability 

 as they have thought public school education ought to have given. 

 A result of observations such as these was the appointment in 

 1905 of the so-called Douglas Commission on Industrial Education, 

 of which the late Carroll D. Wright was made Chairman, and 

 which undertook for the Legislature a careful study of the condi- 

 tions with a view to their improvement. 



Twenty-five thousand boys and girls were found, fourteen to 

 sixteen years of age, who were not in school and who were not 

 at work, or who, if at work, were engaged in temporary or "dead 

 end" occupations. 



Asked why they were not in school, they replied with astonish- 

 ing unanimity that there was "nothing doing" in school for them. 

 They had a feeling that the school had nothing to give them which 

 would help them to earn a living, and that, in general, the schools 

 were being run for the benefit of those who were to follow clerical 

 or professional careers, not for those who were to enter industrial 

 or agricultural life. Their parents agreed with them, and added 

 that it cost a great deal to keep children in school; that out of 

 school there was a saving on clothing and carfares ; that work, even 

 at odd jobs with very little pay, still yielded some income toward 

 the support of the family. 



The Douglas Commission, therefore, recommended that a per- 

 manent Commission on industrial education, including agricul- 

 ture, or at least such a Commission to serve for a period of years, 

 be appointed for studying the matter further, with power to aid 

 in the establishment of industrial schools for the express benefit 

 of boys and girls fourteen years of age or older who, in the absence 

 of such schools, as experience had shown, would not be in school 

 at all. The Legislature appointed another Commission and pro- 

 vided State aid for those communities which should establish 

 independent industrial or agricultural schools to the amount of 



