Childpower

U.S. childhood and U.S. education were last week facing a growing wartime problem: the flight of high-school children to the pied piping of wartime jobs. A New York State educators' committee called this "a national hazard" which would create a great postwar "problem of educational rehabilitation." The Children's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor has been getting reports from here & there. Baltimore samples of what is typical of many war-industry centers:

> Helen, 13, makes coffee, serves in a lunchroom 28 1/2 hours a week; her school-plus-work hours total 56.

> Frank, 12, has a full school program, does 37 1/2 hours a week setting up pins in a bowling alley.

> Tony, 16, puts in 63 1/2 hours a week at school and at a grocery.

> John, 16, is in school 27 1/2 hours a week, works an additional 42 1/2 hours as an usher.

In Providence, R.I., about 40% of all the high-school students hold jobs. In Connecticut cities (Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport, New Britain) 4,748 out of 17,295 students work outside school hours--apart from those in street trades and domestic jobs. Half of 10,213 Seattle high-school students are working part time. Over 60% of the upper graders in a Pennsylvania school had jobs, as did 92% of the seniors in a Midwestern boys' technical school. In 1940 there were about 1,000,000 14-17-year-olds at work; now there are about 4,000,000.

Some of this employment is in line with War Manpower Commission approval of regulated part-time youth employment where manpower is short. But not all. The Bureau's bulletin, The Child, declares: ". . . The flooding of school children into the employment market . . . is . . . characteristic of many . . . localities where available adult labor has not been fully utilized. It is distressingly evident, moreover, that for the most part the work of school youth is uncontrolled and unregulated and is carried on under conditions detrimental to [its] health, education and general welfare . . . hours of work are frequently so long as to make the term 'part-time employment' a misnomer . . . employment at night, particularly in unsuitable occupations, may be a factor in the current rise in juvenile delinquency [TIME, Dec. 14]. [Educators] complain that . . . many [employed children] fail to attend school regularly and those who do attend fall asleep . . . many ... become discouraged and drop out of school."

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