Boy life & labour : the manufacture of inefficiency / by Arnold Freeman.

  • Arnold Freeman
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Boy life & labour : the manufacture of inefficiency / by Arnold Freeman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    24/276 (page 4)
    not sufficiently utilised, and without educative work, is shaped during these years directly towards evil.” 1 In the opening paragraph of their Introduction, the Consultative Committee reporting to the Board of Edu- cation, say :— “ The Committee find that at the most critical period of their lives a very large majority of the boys and girls of England and Wales are left without any sufficient guidance and care. This neglect results in great waste of early promise, in injury to character, and in the lowering of ideals of personal and civic duty.” 2 A final quotation is from the most recent work on the subject of Boy Labour :— “ He (the boy) loses the results of his training in the Ele- mentary School ; the habits of obedience, regularity and in- dustry are dead ; the bright intelligence is dulled, and with the coming of dulness goes the power of learning. He loses his prospects ; his future is the future of the unskilled labourer —the unskilled labourer robbed of that grit and alertness which alone secure for unskilled labour the adequate reward of permanent employment at a steady wage. “ And in thinking of this deterioration and of that hope- less future which that deterioration involves, we must never forget that it is not a mere handful of lads who suffer in this way, but that half the boys who leave the Elementary School start on this dreary journey, and so starting, bid fair to reach that dreary end.” 3 In this study, accordingly, special attention has been paid to aspects of the problem that have been altogether or partially neglected by previous inquiries. The question is considered from the standpoint of the boy, as well as from that of industry ; and a careful analysis has been attempted of the boy’s personality and of the educational and social influences that condition his 1 Majority Report of the Poor Laws Commission, Part VI. Chap. I. (13), § 136. 2 Report of the Consultative Committee to the Board of Education, p. 16. 3 R. A. Bray, “ Boy Life and Labour,” p. 129.