What is this industrial haste which cuts so much of our corn while it is only in tassel, that drives square pegs into round holes, that harnesses trotting stock to heavy drays and draughting stock to gigs, that breaks up the violin to kindle a fire quickly, thoughtless of the music, that takes telescopes for drain pipes and gets commerce—­but not commerce with the stars?  It is the delirium in which strong men seek the standard American testimonial of genius and ability, namely the accumulation of great wealth; and in this delirium they see labor as a commodity and childhood as a commercial factor.  They do not think of people like themselves and of children like their own.

But the minister is the very champion of those higher rights, the defender of idealism, and as such the best friend of an industrial order which is perversely making this expensive blunder and reaping the blight of sullen citizenship and cynical and heartless toil.  How can these thousands who, because of “blind-alley” occupations, come to their majority tradeless and often depleted, having no ability to build and own a home—­how can these who have no stake in the country aid in making the republic what it ought to be?  Partly they become a public care, expense, or nuisance, and largely they constitute the material for bossism and dynamite for the demagogue if he shall come.  The economic breakdown, because of vocational misfit and the exploitation of childhood, usually results in a corresponding moral breakdown.  To be doomed to inadequacy is almost to be elected to crime.

Now the pastor certainly cannot right all this wrong, neither will he be so brash as to charge it all up to malicious employers, ignoring the process through which our vaunted individualism, our free-field-and-no-favor policy, our doctrine for the strong has disported itself.  But is it not reasonable that the minister inform himself of this problem in all its fundamental phases and that he both follow and ardently encourage a public-school policy which aims increasingly to fit the growing generation for productive and stable citizenship?  Our schools are fundamentally religious if we will have them so in terms of character building, elemental self-respect, social service, and accountability to the God of all.

The “godless schools” exist only in the minds of those who for purposes of dispute and sectarianism decree them so.  Furthermore, in every effort toward vocational training and sorting, the employer will be found interested and ready to help.

But to come more closely to the place of this problem in church work it must be recognized that the Sunday schools, clubs, and young people’s societies offer wider opportunity for vocational direction than is now being used.  The curricula in these institutions can be greatly vitalized and enlarged by the inclusion of this very interest, and life can be made to seem more broadly, sanely, and specifically religious than is now the case.