The Spirit of Youth and the City StreetsAddams, Jane
General
The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets
Addams, Jane
Child rearing; Urban youth
A young girl of fourteen whose family had for years displayed a
certain artistic aptitude, the mother having been a singer and the
grandmother, with whom the young girl lived, a clever worker in
artificial flowers, had her first experience of wage earning in a box
factory. She endured it only for three months, and then gave up her
increasing wage in exchange for $1.50 a week which she earns by making
sketches of dresses, cloaks and hats for the advertisements of a
large department store.
A young Russian girl of my acquaintance starves on the irregular pay
which she receives for her occasional contributions to the Sunday
newspapers--meanwhile writing her novel--rather than return to the
comparatively prosperous wages of a necktie factory which she regards
with horror. Another girl washes dishes every evening in a cheap
boarding house in order to secure the leisure in which to practise her
singing lessons, rather than to give them up and return to her former
twelve-dollar-a-week job in an electrical factory.
The artistic expression in all these cases is crude, but the young
people are still conscious of that old sacrifice of material interest
which art has ever demanded of those who serve her and which doubtless
brings its own reward. That the sacrifice is in vain makes it all the
more touching and is an indictment of the educator who has failed to
utilize the art instinct in industry.
Something of the same sort takes place among many lads who find little
opportunity in the ordinary factories to utilize the "instinct for
workmanship"; or, among those more prosperous young people who
establish "studios" and "art shops," in which, with a vast expenditure
of energy, they manufacture luxurious articles.
The educational system in Germany is deliberately planned to sift out
and to retain in the service of industry, all such promising young
people. The method is as yet experimental, and open to many
objections, but it is so far successful that "Made in Germany" means
made by a trained artisan and in many cases by a man working with the
freed impulse of the artist.
The London County Council is constantly urging plans which may secure
for the gifted children in the Board Schools support in Technological
institutes. Educators are thus gradually developing the courage and
initiative to conserve for industry the young worker himself so that
his mind, his power of variation, his art instinct, his intelligent
skill, may ultimately be reflected in the industrial product. That
would imply that industry must be seized upon and conquered by those
educators, who now either avoid it altogether by taking refuge in the
caves of classic learning or beg the question by teaching the tool
industry advocated by Ruskin and Morris in their first reaction
against the present industrial system. It would mean that educators
must bring industry into "the kingdom of the mind"; and pervade it
with the human spirit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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