Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/139

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THE PROJECTION OF MOVEMENT
113

done. But when it is done the worker is set free in some new way. What the whole meaning of this deliverance may be we cannot say. Our school doctors have not told us yet.

Two things, however, strike one very forcibly in regard to these pupils of the new order of schools.

We have seen that the health of the message-boys and child wage-earners fails suddenly, in a way that cannot be accounted for entirely by mere hardship or hunger.

We also saw that they lost ambition.

Well, the pupils of the Technical College of Chicago, and similar schools, were remarkable, first, because of their splendid physique at the end of the course.

And secondly, because of the great and growing ambition of every pupil.

Of the boys in the forging room Ham says: "They are manly-looking, animated, erect, and show the pride of conscious strength." In the smithy "their faces are aglow with the flush of health. …" Of the young men in the machine tool shop: "They are now from seventeen to twenty years old. They are robust, hearty-looking. Their bearing is very resolute. Their attitude erect. They are full-chested, muscular-armed."