different lines of box manufacturing. The major portion of time was spent in studying the manufacture of solid boxes. In simple terms a solid box is one which leaves the factory already set up and ready to receive whatever it was designed for without any further adjustment. We visited ten solid box factories, employing 913 employes, 245 males and 668 females. The solid box industry is largely an unskilled industry, females being employed at the ratio of three to one. With the new machines and processes that will be introduced in years to come in the paper box industry more females will be employed and fewer males, and anything said in reference to the elements which are essential in trade education may not hold in the future and will be less essential for female workers on account of new and automatic machines which the manufacturers will install. In other words the industry will be more of an unskilled one than it is today. All the conditions. seem to point to the use of more automatic machines, making it more unskilled rather than less unskilled and this will hold true of all of the five lines I have indicated.

In the manufacture of solid boxes, a typical factory is divided in four different departments; cardboard cutting and scoring for preparing the cardboard blank, the department for cutting the wrapping paper, etc.; the department for erecting the cardboard blank after it is scored by bending, corner staying, etc., and then the department for papering the erected blank.

In the cardboard cutting and scoring department the work is largely done by males and possibly 61 out of every thousand employes in the industry, work in this department. In the paper cutting department 86 out of each thousand are employed and this is limited to males. In the older box factories males are largely employed in the erecting department but with the newer methods females will be employed largely; about 16 per 1000 are here employed. In the paper department the work is largely limited to females, in fact almost exclusively limited to females and there we find the greater bulk employed, the number per thousand being 702. This is where the great bulk of females are employed and this is the portion of the industry that is the most unskilled. Portions of it are to some extent skilled, but defining skill as requir ing knowledge of any of the fundamental sciences including mathe

matics, or physics, or chemistry or any phase of art or selective judgment on the part of the worker, the work in the papering department is unskilled, depending for success upon the acquiring of certain manipulative habits which will result within two or three weeks work within the department.

Q. And it is in that department in which the low wages described by Dr. Woolston this morning occurred? A. Yes, sir. Q. Won't you confine yourself particularly to that department and tell the Commission what the opportunities for vocational training are in that department and to what extent vocational training would contribute to an increase in efficiency and a raising in the wages? A. The detailed report recommends that for those within the cardboard cutting and scoring department that part time short unit courses be offered because there are elements of science and design for which the trade does not make provision. These departments employ males 61 per thousand. Two short unit courses are recommended in the detail report. In the paper cutting department there are certain elements of science required and the courses should include mathametics, elements of computing, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, use of fractions and matters of technical detail. The number of males is 86 per one thousand. In the erecting department there are few elements of knowledge required and elements of skill necessary are adequately provided for in the trade, so no education is recommended.

In the papering department, if I may summarize first and then go into detail, no provision for vocational training is required. According to the present standard of trade, as there are few elements of judgment involved, no elements of rudimentary science, no elements of mathematics, few elements of initiative, and a minimum of anything save endurance and speed to which vocational education, of course, can make no contribution.

Q. Did you inquire with reference to the paper department what proportion of the workers knew how to read and white the English language? A. I made no such investigation. The Commission itself, I believe, has information concerning these facts.

Q. Is it your conclusion then that vocational education would accomplish nothing for the workers in the papering department?

A. In the papering department, in the paper box industry, as the industry is now organized, no scheme of vocational training I think will increase wage earning at all for the great bulk of the workers. For exceptional workers, for women who may become forewomen, the case is somewhat different, but the opportunities for this promotion are relatively few. Perhaps some trained women might achieve promotion in becoming a forelady, but that opportunity is one in a thousand. In the main the foreladies are drawn from an entirely different class of people. They are chosen from among those who have some education rather than from those who have continued long in the ranks, and for obvious reasons. In all probability in the main the women from the ranks are so unfit physically and mentally and of such poor general calibre, as far as their physical and mental equipment is concerned, that they are not stable material for foreladies.

Q. So there is as a practical proposition no opportunity for advancement? A. As the industry is now organized, I see no possibility for advancement for those within the papering department. There is no reason why the industry should be organized as it is. During the investigation we found one or two factories with an entirely different system of organization. In these factories there was opportunity for advancement, but the chances are that for years to come the newer type of organization will not apply in a large way in the industry.

Commissioner DREIER: Do you believe the industry could be so organized as to give greater opportunities for the laborers in it?

Mr. LEONARD: I do.

Q. In what way? A. I will have to describe the typical organization in brief and then indicate how the organization could be changed in order to make these larger opportunities. The typical papering department in a paper box factory is organized into five different grooves and channels and between these different grooves or channels representing departments there are invisible walls. A beginner, purely by chance, enters one of these channels. The superintendent picks the one that is handy regardless of age or adaptability for the kind of work at

hand. Employers, in the main, exhibit no scientific methods in determining who shall go into this work or that. Purely by the elements of chance the worker enters one of these five lines in the department, and the permanent wall, although invisible, surrounds her, and she is able only to reach the terminal point within the line. Now the qualities required for success within these various lines are entirely different.

These departments as factories are now organized, comprise the work of stripping, which includes at first turning in, turning over the paper on the inside of the box, then finally stripping on the stripping machines. Probably 15 per cent. of the women are employed in stripping. Another line is top and bottom labeling, which is merely applying with adhesive, the top or bottom label to the box. Another line is table working, which is a hand operation, applying the laces,, decorative strips or any particular trade label that can not be put on by machines. Another is gum table work, which involves feeding a label through an automatic gum machine and then applying them to the box by hand. Another line is the machine wrapper, the wrapping machine being an invention which takes the places of stripping. The wrapper is cut and run through a gluing machine and then the wrapping machine automatically attaches it to the box and finishes it completely, without any further work on the part of the operator. These are the five lines or channels.

Without consideration being given to the adaptability of individuals, they are placed in one of these lines. Now the qualities conditioning success in any one of these grooves are entirely different. In machine wrapping women are required who can quickly acquire automatic habits. If they can acquire these habits they can earn a decent and respectable wage because they can keep the machine running at maximum speed with no waste. In table working the qualities required are entirely different. Here it is necessary for women to have some judgment, some information as to color, and some knowledge as to rudimentary design, because there are opportunities here for initiative and selection. Now it is altogether possible that there are many table workers who are not earning a living wage who ought to be in the machine wrapping department where perhaps they could

earn a decent wage, whereas they may not have the necessary judgment in order to be a good table worker.

In the typical organizaztion I have just described, a beginner enters the factory as a floor worker and then by chance enters. one of these five departments, regardless of particular fitness. In one unique paper box factory in this State a factory which is on a paying and practical basis, workers are placed in a sample making department. Within most box factories sample boxes have to be made, because on ordering a new style of box a purchaser wishes a sample. Now within this sample making department these various forms of occupations are present in type, and in this paper box factory beginning workers are given the opportunity of selecting and choosing their work and passing from department to department till a well rounded experience in all lines is gained. Then the worker is placed permanently in the line in which she has shown the greatest ability, and in which she can make the highest wage. There you see you have the first element of scientific application in the paper bov industry, in putting the workers in the lines in which there will be some possibility of success.

Nearly every paper box factory could be organized so that beginners could obtain a well rounded experience for purposes of real vocational guidance in determining the appitude of prospective paper box makers and the lines in which they should be placed.

Q. Would that materially help the great mass of unskilled workers in the paper box trades; there is very little opportunity for them elsewhere, isn't there? A. It would place them in the department where their realization would be the greatest, where they could do the best work and obtain the highest wage.

Q. But there is very little opportunity because of the small number of workers in the departments? A. There are these five lines and in New York State there are several thousand people in each one of these five different lines in the paper box industry and the proper placing of the individual is a prime factor, and that is entirely ignored.

Q. We would like to have, if you have completed them, your summaries as to the wage value of any system of vocational