§ 10. #Training in the trades#. Free elementary and secondary education has become the all but unquestioned public policy in the American commonwealths. The main motive for it has been the belief that education in books is a necessity for good citizenship in a republic. At the same time it has been thought that the training of the school would help the child to earn a living. This appears to have been true so long and so far as it was combined with, or supplemented by, industrial training on the farm, in the home, and through apprenticeship in the manual trades, as once was so prevalent. But industrial conditions have changed. Most of the old-time education of the schools has now little relation to the industrial life of the great majority of the children, for few enter clerical or professional callings. Germany was the first nation to recognize the new educational need (in fact, never as urgent there as here) and to provide for systematic and efficient training in all the industrial arts. Since the beginning of the century the American public has been awaking to the needs of the situation. We appear to be on the eve of a great development in industrial training that will equip youth for more efficient life in business and in the home, either in rural or in urban conditions. § 11. #Prevalence of unemployment.# Many other forms of social legislation on behalf of the common man might well deserve, did time and space permit, a larger measure of the economic student's attention. However, excepting the subjects treated in the next two chapters, the one remaining that is most important at this time is the problem of unemployment.