Vocational Evening Classes
NEWS AND COMMENT.
In Philadelphia, where the day continuation class has not as yet been developed, a movement has recently been set on foot to broaden and standardize the work in the evening schools, so as to make them more useful to the workers and the work. Through the Industrial and Technical Conference of the Public Education Association, which unites a number of the larger schools giving evening technical instruction, posters have been placed in all of the large manufacturing establishments and libraries in the city, calling attention to the value of further training for workers, and announcing the courses offered by the various schools. A folder giving more detailed facts about these courses has been distributed in large numbers among the same business firms, and combined advertising in the newspapers is another feature of the work of the Conference. The office of the Public Education Association acts as a clearing house for information in regard to evening school work throughout the city. The Industrial and Technical Conference of the Association was formed in the spring of 1913, as a result of an effort to bring together educators and business men in an endeavor to get the schools better acquainted with each other’s work, and to gain the cooperation of the employers of labor. It consists of representatives from the Y. M. C. A., Drexel Institute, Spring Garden Institute, Temple University, Wagner Institute, the Philadelphia Trades School, the public schools of Philadelphia and Camden, and the Public Education Association.
During last winter a series of luncheons was held under the auspices of the Conference, at which representatives of typical industries?engineering, the building trades, the metal trades, etc.,?met with prominent schoolmen and told them what the schools could do to help them in training men for their respective lines of work. A similar program has been planned for the coming winter to include a series of meetings, at which the various aspects of the training of the child for and in industry will be considered from the standpoint of the employer and the school. “Leaving school and entering industry”, “Industrial opportunities for girls”, “The high school graduate in relation to business”, are among the topics to be discussed. At first the Conference limited itself to opportunities for men and boys, but this year it has enlarged its field to include the work for girls as well. A detailed survey of the opportunities offered in the various trades, and the qualifications necessary to enter them, with a study of how and where the desired training can be secured, is planned by the association to be undertaken in the near future.
Surgeon General Gorgas and the Nation’s Greatest Need.
Under this caption Dr Seale Harris in an editorial in the Southern Medical Journal for September warmly urges the creation of a national department of health with Gorgas as head,?a progressive movement for public hygiene which is being enthusiastically supported by health officers, sanitarians, and social service workers, as well as by physicians. “His work as Chief Sanitarian of the Canal
Zone having been completed,” says Dr Harris, “Surgeon General Gorgas has returned to Washington to assume his duties as Chief of the Medical Corps of the United States Army, to which he was recently appointed by President Wilson… “The greatest triumphs of medicine in the knowledge of men have been the elimination of yellow fever and the practical eradication of malaria from Havana and the Canal Zone, thus proving that those life-destroying and energysapping diseases, the most dreaded enemies to man in tropical and subtropical countries, can and will be conquered everywhere. These triumphs mean that millions will live in health, happiness, and unbounded prosperity in regions that are now sparsely inhabited and undeveloped because of the presence of these tropical diseases. Nothing in history is more inspiring than Gorgas’ conquest over disease, and the good that he has done will rest like a benediction upon the inhabitants of temperate and tropical countries throughout the world… . “It is estimated that several million people in the United States have malaria every year, and the annual economic loss is considered to be not less than $100,000,000 from that disease. Yet if the same practical methods of malarial prevention, which were successfully carried out in Havana and the Canal Zone, were put into effect and continued for five years in our own country, malaria would become a rare disease in the United States.
“The American Medical Association, the Southern Medical Association, and practically every state, county, and city medical society in the entire United States have endorsed legislation for the creation of a Department of Public Health with a cabinet officer at its head. Efforts were made to enact such legislation during the administrations of Presidents Roosevelt and Taft, and though success seemed assured, the bills were defeated. The next session of Congress seems the most propitious time to present this most important measure to our national legislators… . During the interim of the sessions of Congress physicians should make the opportunity to inform their friends among the congressmen and senators of the needs for such legislation. If the medical profession will stand united on this question there can be no doubt that before another year Congress will have enacted the greatest possible piece of constructive legislation for the good of the whole people by providing for an adequate Department of Health… .
“Our government owes it to Gorgas to create a position of greater honor than has ever been filled by a sanitarian, or byany ot her member of the medical corps of the United States Army.” Dr Harris refers to the honors given Admiral Dewey after the battle of Manila Bay, and concludes, “Are not the achievements of Gorgas of greater service to our country and more far reaching in their effect in increasing national prosperity and happiness than any naval victory ever won? If so, Congress should show the gratitude of the people whom it represents by first making Gorgas a major-general in the United States Army that he may retire with that rank. Then it should perform the greatest possible service for the nation by creating a Department of Health, and the sincere desire to appoint the man who can give the best service in the position may be depended upon to lead President Wilson to select Gorgas as Secretary of Health.”
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