182 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
situation as has been described, is the real danger. The problem is not 
primarily industrial but social. Unskill in the face of a demand for 
skill leads to degeneracy. In this fact lies its greatest menace. In his 
admirable study of “ Misery and its Causes,” Dr. Devine wisely suggests 
that the great cause of misery is maladjustment, and there is strong 
reason to think that his conclusion is correct. But just in so far as it 
is true that economic facts lie back of and condition the progress of 
civilization, to that extent failure to meet the fundamental economic 
facts involved in advancing stages of industry must constitute or lead 
to the greatest social maladjustment and consequent degradation and 
misery. It is maladjustment in respect to the most vital phase of life. 
A great proportion of the young people of our country must enter 
an industrial calling. In what way does this unfitness for it affect 
their lives? The result is best shown by the often-quoted finding of 
the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial and Technical Education, 
for 1906. Out of 25,000 young people of from fourteen to sixteen 
years of age in that state not in school, it is reported that thirty-three 
per cent. were in absolutely unskilled trades and sixty-four per cent. 
in what are called low-grade industries, where the skill of the work- 
ers is very slight. Only less than two per cent. had found their way 
into really skilled industries. What does it mean, humanly speak- 
ing, to have a child employed in an unskilled industry? Simply 
that the child usually has come to the end of its development. 
On the side of industry it means a permanently small production 
and low earning power; on the side of the individual life, it 
means a stagnant mind and the consequences which flow from 
it. For it is not true that children remain in these low-grade oc- 
cupations for a brief time, and from them pass to higher and more 
skilled employment. The nature of industrial and commercial 
technic is such that there is a chasm between unskilled and skilled 
employments. There is no passage from one to the other. ‘The elevator 
boy or messenger boy is not being trained to be a mechanic or a 
telegrapher or any other more or less skilled worker. These and other 
low-paid juvenile employments represent a class of work of a special 
sort from which there is no exit and which rather unfit than fit one for 
better work. In the street trades, in candy-making, in cotton, woolen, 
knitting and other mill work, and in many other places such work is 
found. To a considerable extent it is work which should be done by 
machines and not by growing boys and girls. The child who leaves 
school to enter one of these positions, condemns himself in the majority 
of cases to an unskilled life. He passes from one unskilled position 
to another, becoming more and more discontented as he finds it impos- 
sible to advance in wages and responsibility. Discontent, hopelessness, 
shiftlessness, take the place of ambition and progressive force. The 
