The community centre movement has a national organization, the National Community Centre Association, which co-ordinates the work in the different cities and keeps each informed of good ideas developed by the others. The federal Bureau of Education is also active in promoting community centres.

8. HOW CITIZENS CAN HELP

Individual citizens can help keep the channels of communication working smoothly and efficiently. One way to do this is by neatly and clearly addressing every piece of mail you wish to post. Much time is lost and much labor is given in our post offices to the work of deciphering badly written addresses, or righting mistaken ones. This service is expensive to taxpayers, for its cost amounts to several million dollars each year. If an address is impossible to read, and if there is no return address on the envelope, the letter must go to the Dead Letter Office, which the government maintains chiefly for its careless and thoughtless citizens. In order to help the post office officials and to ensure the proper delivery of your mail matter write neatly and clearly, and always write the sender's name and address on some part of the piece of mail. This seems to be a small enough thing to do, yet if every one were so careful our postal service would be better, and perhaps even cheaper.

Another agency that needs your co-operation is the telephone service. If possible visit your local exchange, and watch the telephone operators at their work. One thing that will impress you is that they really do concentrate on what they are doing. There is no "loafing" at the switchboards. Of course, these girls have to pass through a training period in order to become expert. Perhaps you have had trouble in getting a number sometimes, because one of the new girls was learning how to handle the board. Anyway, it is always best to be patient and courteous, even though the service is slower at times than we are accustomed to have it. One reason for our impatience at delay is that we are spoiled; we have the best telephone service in the world.

And finally, we must take full advantage of our splendid facilities for finding out what other people and other communities are doing and thinking. We must read the magazines and newspapers, be regular visitors to some good library, and not fail to watch out for interesting government reports and publications.

TOPICS FOR REPORTS AND DEBATES

1. A Visit to a Newspaper Plant.

2. How Paper is Made.

3. A Visit to "Central."

4. Our City Club.

5. A Community Centre and its Work. 6. How the Atlantic Cable Was Laid.

7. What Happens to Dead Letters?

8. What Would Happen if All Our Lines of Communication were Cut? RESOLVED: That all postmasters should be chosen from the ranks of post office employees.

RESOLVED: That the telephone is more useful than the telegraph. RESOLVED: That the telephone and telegraph systems should be owned and operated by the government.

QUESTIONS

1. How does the government arrange to have the mails carried from city to city?

2. What has made the postal service grow so tremendously?

3. Who is postmaster of your city? How was he chosen? For how long a term?

4. Have you ever seen wireless apparatus? If so describe it to the class.

5. What are some of the advantages the wireless has over the telegraph and the cable? What news items and articles do you select when you read a newspaper? Why?

6. Bring a newspaper to class and point out all the items in it that have some relation to your study of Civics.

7. What news service do motion picture producers give? Comment on its value.

8. How far is censorship of news and correspondence justifiable in war time? In time of peace?

9. Suppose newspapers cost fifteen cents a copy. What would be some results?

10. If you wished to make a hurried collection of materials in order to make a report in Civics class, where would you get it?

11. What places are there in your community for public meeting and discussion of community problems?

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

1. Report of your Public Service Commission.

2. “The Principles Underlying Radio Communication." Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C. ($1.00)

3. "Telegraphs and Municipal Electric Fire-Alarm and Police-Patrol Signalling Systems." Published by Bureau of the Census, Washington, D. C. 1919. 4. "Community Centre Activities,” by C. A. Perry. Published by the Russell Sage Foundation.

5. "The City Club Idea," by Henry G. Hodges. Published by the City Club, Cleveland, Ohio.

6. "Telephone and Telegraph," by W. C. Reavis. Published by the U. S. Bureau of Education.

7. "The History of the Telephone," by Herbert N. Casson.

8. "The Wireless Man," by A. F. Collins.

9. "The Making of a Newspaper," by J. L. Given.

10. "The United States Post Office," by David C. Roper.

11. "History of Journalism in the United States," by S. H. Payne.

CHAPTER XVI

PUBLIC REGULATION OF INDUSTRY

INTRODUCTORY LESSON PLAN

Visit some manufacturing plant and report to the class:

a. What is manufactured.

b. If children are employed, how old they are and what work they do.

c. If women are employed, what sort of work they do. Night work, if any.

d. How many hours the employees work.

e. The minimum wage.

f. Provision for lighting and ventilation.

g. Safeguards for machinery. Safety rules of the plant.

h. Rest rooms and other welfare provisions.

i. Strikes or labor troubles within the last five years.

j. Your personal impressions of the plant.

1. ALL JUNIOR CITIZENS LOOK FORWARD TO USEFUL
EMPLOYMENT

Every student who reads these pages indulges, now and then, in day-dreaming, and pictures what may be in the future in the way of a useful occupation. "What are you going to do when you graduate?" is a familiar question. Perhaps the answer is, "Go to college." If so the question is merely postponed for four more years. What lies ahead in that strange life into which the workers of the family plunge every day, and from which they emerge every night?

The world to-day is a working world. In school the boy begins to think and plan for the work that he will begin when he leaves his school days behind. Girls, too, have almost as many opportunities open to them as boys have.

School life is a protected life. You do your work in welllighted, sanitary buildings. There is always a teacher to keep

an eye on your welfare, to see that you are not over-tired. In many large schools there is a resident nurse, or even a school doctor to keep watch over your physical welfare. How is it out in the work-a-day world?

Many boys and girls of high school age and even younger are employed in industry to-day while you are studying your lessons in school. Some of these young workers will not make as strong and healthy men and women as you-who are fortunate enough to stay in school until a later age and receive the many advantages of education.

2. THE PROBLEMS OF LABOR

Child Labor. While the laws safeguarding our child workers have grown steadily better and wiser, yet we still have far too

Courtesy National Child Labor Committee
A CHILD WORKER

This eleven-year-old boy ought to be in school,
instead of picking tobacco on a Connecticut
farm.

many children at work in mills and factories, or in trades that keep them in the city streets. In 1910 nearly two million children from ten to fifteen years old were in "gainful occupations." Some of these child workers were in the cotton mills of the south. A boy or a girl worker in the cotton mill has just half as much chance to live to be twenty years old as other boys and girls. The tuberculosis rate among them, too, is

very high. Many states allow the employment of boys under

fourteen in the printing trade. Owing to danger from lead