Scope and Methods of Investigation 1 3 



twenty years and upwards, 36 for ten years and upwards, and 

 only 32 for four years or less. 



And if there are some who argue that it is impossible to 

 draw any satisfactory conclusions from a four years' record, 

 I would draw their attention to such statements as the 

 following : 



" Under existing conditions those members of the work- 

 shy class who have never done any regular work, have spent 

 the five precious formative years between 14 and 19, when 

 they were not engaged on casual jobs of no educational value 

 whatever, in hanging about the streets. Scarcely any better 

 system for producing a class of loafers could be devised, and 

 there is little hope of effecting any satisfactory reduction in 

 the number of the work-shy unless strong influences are 

 brought to bear upon them in the critical years after they 

 leave school." * 



" In the return of 1899 it appears that 40 per cent, of boys 

 leaving London schools became errand boys, van-boys, &c. . . * 

 The industrial biographies received show clearly that there is 

 generally a time of transition when boys have to seek new 

 occupations for which they have little or no aptitude. They 

 begin all over again, and may or may not be able to fit them- 

 selves for their new position. The main question is whether 

 their previous years have benefited or deteriorated them ; 

 whether, in fact, they have been improved or worn out and 

 wasted from the standpoint of their own industrial fitness as 

 producers and wage-earners." 2 



Again : " The boys who fail, or partially fail in life, drift 

 almost from the moment they leave school. Perhaps they 

 leave their first place within a few days, should the work be at 

 all difficult or the hours long. Within six months the perma- 

 nent out-of-works of the future are hanging about the play- 

 ground gates, whence they soon remove to the street corners." 3 



1 Rowntree and Lasker, Unemployment (1911), p. 195. 



2 Cyril Jackson, Report on Boy Labour (Report of Commission on the Poor Laws, 

 Appendix, vol, xx., 1909), pp. 4, 7, 3 lbid. % p. 11. 



