Page 44 - 1913 November - To Dragma

TO DRAG MA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI 49

POSSIBLE USES OF THE SCHOOL PLANT

{Chi Omega Social Service Prize Essay.)

Long, long ago, when the foundations of our school system were
laid, the United States was essentially an agricultural country. The
great mass of the people were farmers. Even professional men,
physicians and lawyers, had their own little plots of ground which
they tilled at the same time that they practised their profession.
The small merchant and skilled artisan eked out their existence with
the proceeds of the gardens surrounding their shops, and the chil-
dren, receiving their practical industrial education at home, were
sent to the little red schoolhouse to be grounded in the three R's
and educational fundamentals.

But there came a change. A long series of inventions brought
about the so-called Industrial Revolution, with its subsequent change
in the arts. Then followed the break-up of the old social soli-
darity. A new industrial era whose chief characteristic was the
elaboration of the division of labor, replaced the old order. The
stages of production became split up into separate operations, each
of which, because repeated continuously, could be performed by a
machine, hence the introduction of machinery on a large scale and
the Consequent horizontal division of labor. A t present our social
stratification is one of groups composed of the same kind of work-
ers. Throughout the years, the groups have been growing farther
and farther apart, and not only this, but the gap between employer
and employee has been growing wider and wider.

The separation of society into sharply defined parts has been
furthered by the inpouring streams of immigrants from foreign civi-
lizations. These people bring with them their hereditary racial an-
tipathies, thus rendering our population still less homogenous by the
presence of the great gulf between those of different nationalities.
The mass of the population now, instead of in the country, is in the
cities, and congested districts have taken the place of spacious farms.
Accompanying these conditions has been the development of prob-
lems of labor and of the unemployed, and of the employment of
women and children in factories. There has been and is still danger
of the loss of individuality in our working population, and danger
that in the future there will be a strengthening instead of weaken-
ing of the lines of demarcation between the social groups.

And what is to be the solution of the present problems? Our
population continues to increase, streams of immigrants are still