The How and Why Library/Industries

by Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson

TYPICAL INDUSTRIES

Editors' Note to Mother and Teacher

And children coming home from school

Look in at the open door;

They love to see the flaming forge,

And hear the bellows roar.

In writing that verse into The Village Blacksmith, Longfellow expressed a profound truth. Children have a natural interest in the work of the grown-up world. They love to watch the blacksmith, the carpenter, the mason, the miller, the shoemaker. Boys, too young to work, follow the threshing machine from farm to farm. Village boys hang about the railway station to watch the locomotive and the grain elevator. They want to know how things are made, and what makes the wheels go 'round.

The experience of industry a boy can get in this way is considerable. Unfortunately, the workman doesn't want a boy around. He is in the way; often he is in danger. In any case, the industries near him are limited in kind, number and function. A flour mill is only one step in a long series of connected processes that produce the world's bread. Understanding of how any one man's work is bound to all the other work of the world, broadens the mind of the child wonderfully, and teaches him respect for every sort of labor.

To supply the lack of real objects of study, the following sketches were written. Children are nearest, in experience and interests, to primitive peoples. It is a curious thing that the very earliest occupations of supplying food, clothing, shelter and tools are still the fundamental industries, and must always remain so. Moreover, they are the most highly developed, and employ the large majority of workers everywhere. These facts have governed our choice of wheat and rice, iron, cotton, wood-working, pottery and glass-making as typical industries. The making of watches was added to satisfy the child's natural curiosity about machinery; and matches to set him thinking of the wonders of cheap, everyday necessities. We have connected all these varied industries with the school studies of geography, history, mathematics, drawing, chemistry, physics and astronomy, showing their practical use. A voyage into the World-at-Work opens a new and fascinating wonderland to the children.