The industrial aid society of a certain community one year found 269 permanent and 158 temporary positions for handicapped persons. One day a large city newspaper contained the following advertisement :

Wanted. World War veteran with only one leg or arm. Steady position and good pay. Address B. P. O.

The man who inserted this was a prominent business man who believed that he had a duty toward the handicapped. A large manufacturing concern in New Jersey employs scores of blind, lame, and otherwise disabled persons. This is not done to get cheap help, but to give help. The owner of the factory believes that he has a duty to perform.

25. Some of the Ways in which Government helps the People find Work. There are certain helps in finding work that people can get by means of government. These are

1. Help in preparing for work, through schools and libraries.

2. Information about work conditions and work opportunities through vocational advisers and placement bureaus connected with schools.

3. Assistance in finding work through state employment agencies and state and national departments of agriculture and labor.

Of course in hundreds of ways the government is helping provide work. Every time it issues a new patent, every time it passes a law placing a tariff on foreign goods or removing the tariff from some class of goods, every time it builds or repairs a road, it is affecting the amount and kind of work. The patents dealing with radio apparatus were the first step in opening up new positions for many persons. The tariff on German dyes made the employment of many thousands of additional workers possible in the American dye industry. An act of Congress like the Reclamation Act, which made it possible to irrigate arid lands, created farms for unestimated hundreds. In many such ways the people have turned over to the government the means of increasing the opportunities for work.

26. Some of the Special Problems of All Workers. Every worker, whether doctor, teacher, or housekeeper, needs to talk over the problems of his work with others engaged in the same tasks. When the poet Longfellow was fourteen years old he formed a literary interchange and partnership with a friend,

William Browne, a bright youth a little older than himself. This was invaluable to Longfellow, for the boys discussed ideas and criticized each other's work freely. What these two did in an informal way most persons now do through larger organizations. The doctors have a medical association, the dentists a similar association. Teachers' clubs are found in many sections, and in addition there are associations of geography teachers, English teachers, etc. Methods of work, new helps, special

problems, are talked over at the meetings. Usually there is also a magazine issued by such associations, which keeps the members informed of what is taking place.

In addition to associations of workers like those just mentioned others are made necessary by the special problems of

To find work for the unfortunate and handicapped is one of the opportunities for wide-awake Americans. These men are convicts employed on a stone crusher. What kind of work do the inmates of your prisons do?

modern industrial conditions, where large numbers of workers are brought together. These are connected with a person's relations to other workers and to his employer.

27. Workers' Associations. In many kinds of work there are associations of the employees to help them get just wages and good working hours from the owners of the business. These associations are usually known as labor unions and are strongest in the kinds of work that have to be done in factories, in the construction of buildings, on railroads, and in mines. If the

worker belongs to a union, it is the officers of the union who act for him in dealing with his employer. This means that workers must see to it that they choose the right kind of officials. To choose the wrong kind might be as disastrous as to choose the wrong president of the United States-an impatient, fire-eating president could plunge the United States into war. Impatient work officials could plunge workers into serious trouble.

An increasingly large number of business firms have formed organizations of managers, superintendents, and employees to meet to talk matters over. There are factories in which all questions of wages, hours, and general working conditions are decided by such organizations. Unless employers offer good surroundings, fair wages, and a square deal in every way they cannot have loyal employees; and unless employees show an appreciation of good surroundings, fair wages, and a square deal by giving a full equivalent of the best work of which they are capable, they will wreck their employers and bring disaster to themselves.

28. Understanding the Problems connected with One's Work. Every young person does, or should, begin his working years as an employee. This means that he must do certain things that are laid out for him to do. Often all that the employer wants is quickness, neatness, and accuracy. If the employee finds additional ways of being helpful or better ways of doing the old tasks, he is usually eager to have these appreciated. Sometimes they are not, however, and the worker begins to wonder if the working world is not a pleasant place only for the employers. Sometimes the first difficulty encountered is not the lack of appreciation on the employer's part but distrust and interference on the part of fellow workers. In every place of work there are clock watchers and half-trained or otherwise incompetent persons who have failed to make the most of their opportunities and never lose a chance to hold others back.

Because in the United States the man who is an employee today often is an employer tomorrow, each worker needs to understand the problem of the employer and study to make

himself competent to become one. Both employees and employers need to understand these facts about the work:

I. On what national resources it is directly or indirectly dependent for its raw materials and where these materials come from.

2. On what resources outside the United States it is dependent and where these come from.

3. How the product is marketed.

4. What factors help make good times and hard times.

5. How money is obtained to finance business.

6. How factories, stores, railroads, are usually owned not by one or two persons but by many hundreds.

7. How an employee can often own a part of a big industry.

8. How tariff laws and rulings of the Interstate Commerce Commission affect workers.

9. How tariff laws of foreign nations affect the work of Americans. 10. How inadequate wages and bad working conditions result in poor work and distrust.

II. How poor work results in smaller profits, reduced wages, and periods of idleness.

12. That insufficient wages and too long hours ruin the home and affect work unfavorably.

13. That ignorance of conditions outlined in 1-11 makes it impossible for the worker to do his best work or to have the most contented home. 14. That men and women with ideas and the ability to organize have been indispensable to the success of the work.

29. Making Big Plans. In Chapters I and II we spoke of the vast work undertakings of the American people, while most of this chapter has been taken up in discussing such little things as getting a start, being contented with an occupation that is not congenial, understanding one's employer. These are all necessary details in one's success in earning a living, but in giving attention to these no pupil should for a moment let himself be content with little ambitions, little plans. The advice that one of America's most successful architects gave to young people ought to be written over the doors of every schoolhouse and college: "Make no little plans. . . . Make big plans. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us."