Retail dealers 4
Draymen, teamsters, etc. 4
Bookkeepers 3
Carpenters 3
Commercial travelers 2
Manufacturers 2
----
41

This simple list at once calls into question all the standard
assumptions about the extension of industrial education depending on
greatly increasing the number of carpenter shops and machine shops in
the public schools. The figures show that among each 100 American born
men in Cleveland only seven are machinists and only three are
carpenters. Clearly we should not be justified in training all the
boys in our public schools to enter the machinist's trade or the
carpenter's trade when nine out of each 10 will in all probability
engage in entirely different sorts of future work. The more the
figures of the little table given above are studied, the clearer it
appears that our conventional ideas about industrial education need
critical scrutiny and careful challenge. These 10 leading occupations
include only 41 out of each 100 American born men. Moreover, more than
half of these 41 are engaged in mental work rather than in manual
work.

From these considerations one definite conclusion inevitably emerges.
It is that the safest guide for thinking and planning for industrial
education is to be found in a study of the occupational distribution
of the present adults. From the very outset such a study indicates
that the most difficult and important problems which must be met and