The elementary schools, or Volkschulen, are free, and attendance is compulsory from six to fourteen; in addition, the Fortbildungsschulen, or continuation schools, can also be made compulsory up to eighteen years of age. There are some 61,000 free public elementary schools with over 10,000,000 pupils, and over 600 private elementary schools with 42,000 pupils who pay fees. Under a regulation of the Department of Trade and Industry, towns with more than twenty thousand inhabitants are empowered to make their own rules compelling commercial employees under eighteen to attend the continuation schools a certain number of hours monthly, and fining employers who interfere with such attendance. It has even been suggested that this law be extended to include girls. In Berlin this has already been put into operation, and this year some 30,000 girls will be compelled to attend continuation schools, where they will be taught cooking, dress-making, laundry work, house-keeping economy, and for those who wish it, office work. It will require some training even to pronounce the name of this new institution, which requires something more than the number of letters in the alphabet to spell it, for it has this terrifying title: Maedchenpflicht-fortbildungsschule. The work in these Pflichtfortbildungsschulen, or compulsory continuation schools, is practical and thorough. The boys are from fourteen to eighteen years of age, and are obliged to attend three hours twice a week. Shopkeepers and others, employing lads coming under the provisions of the law, are obliged by threat of heavy fines to send them. The boys pay nothing. There are some 34,000 of such pupils under one jurisdiction in Berlin, and the cost to the city is $300,000 annually. The curriculum includes letter-writing, book- keeping, exchange, bank-credits, checks and bills, the duty of the business man to his home, to the city, and to his fellow business men, his legal rights and duties, and, in great detail, all questions of citizenship. Methods of the banks, stock exchange, and insurance companies are explained. The business man's relations in detail to the post-office, the railways, the customs, canals, shipping agencies are dealt with. The investigation of credits and the general management from cellar to attic of what we call a "store" are taught, and lectures are given upon business ethics and family relations and morals. In towns where factories are more common than shops there are schools similar in kind, as at Dortmund, for example, where you may begin with horse-shoeing in the cellar, and go up through the work of carpenter, mason, plumber, sign-painter, poster-designer, to the designing of stained-glass windows and the modelling of animals and men.