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meet the great mass of consumers for some time to come. There are those who will not be reached by an appeal based either on the danger of contagion or on the advantages to accrue to the workers. They are compelled to buy in the cheapest market, and at present those goods are cheapest which are made at the expense of long hours and low wages to the workers. This may not hold good when the factory has come in with the invention of new appliances. It is hardly probable that the Consumers' League will be responsible for all the advances, yet all are willing and anxious that it shall do all in its power, whether in the way of arousing public opinion or of encour- aging the manufacture of goods under clean and healthful con- ditions.
There is still another way of helping to bring about better conditions among the workers in the garment trades. This is by the education and assimilation of the foreign element. The first thing that is needed to effect this is to increase the number of public schools to the needs of the city. There are thousands of children in Chicago who cannot go to school because there is no room for them. If the school tax is not sufficient to provide buildings, it must be raised, or the funds must be more carefully managed. In any case every child has a right to a place in the schoolroom. The next step will be to enforce the compulsory- education law as if it really were a law, and not a flexible rule to be followed or not as meets the parents' convenience.
In the public schools the foreign children are usually brought more or less closely into touch with American children, and have an opportunity to learn American ideas and ideals. It can hardly be hoped that the older generation will be thoroughly assimilated ; but, with proper school advantages and with due attention paid to training in patriotism and institutions, there is no reason why the children may not be. If manual training can be more generally introduced into the schools, so that the chil- dren can gain a technical as well as an intellectual training for life, it is hardly probable that they will enter the class of unskilled workers on leaving school.
After this consideration of the facts as they have been in
