This study of Mr. Chatfield's shows that not only were very few of the boys between the ages of 16 and 19 receiving vocational experience that would train them to be useful to the state in the maintenance of defense or in the other interests of the state as outlined in the bill, but also boys of these ages are likely to change their work rather frequently. There were 184 of these 750 boys who had been out of school between three and four years when this study was made. Of these 184 boys 41 were still working at the job they first had when they left school, 47 were on the second job, 41 were on the third job, and 13 had made eight or more changes. I know of no study which more clearly points out the "blind alleyness" of the employment of children. However, some of us, including Dr. David Snedden of Columbia University, feel that a better term than "blind-alley occupations" would be "occupations involving juvenile employment." To us the evil of errand-messenger, clerk, or office-boy service is not that boys wander into or are thrust into a line of work which may be a blind alley, but rather that _no provision is made in the public-school system for giving the boys a short preparatory training helpful to them in this temporary service, and that no training which would help them to get out of such work is given them in the office, store, or factory_. If society would frankly recognize that there are juvenile employments and that boys might well work in them while they are juveniles and yet be trained through such work, and apart from such work in continuation schools, to discover themselves and to prepare themselves for other work, we might develop a constructive educational program. This study certainly shows the waste of the boy power of the state and proves conclusively that there is need for the state to grapple consciously with the problem of conserving its youth; and when one reads this summary of an accurate and previously unpublished report, one is led to believe that William James, John Dewey, Liberty Hyde Bailey, and John Finley are right in their contention that there should be a mobilization of the boy force of the state looking toward conservation of the boy power that it may lead into training for skilled work, into citizenship, into sturdy health, and into right living. CHAPTER VIII RED CROSS AND OTHER COMMUNITY WORK