The report of the American Federation of Labor itself, includes a digest of the United States Bureau of Labor’s report, and was published as Senate Document No. 936.  It is called “The Report of the Committee on Industrial Education of the American Federation of Labor, compiled and edited by Charles H. Winslow.”

Whatever narrowness and inconsistency individual trade unionists may be charged with regarding industrial education, the leaders of the labor movement give it their endorsement in the clearest terms.  For instance, this very report, comments those international unions which have already established supplemental trade courses, such as the Typographical Union, the Printing Pressmen’s Union, and the Photo Engravers’ Union, and other local efforts, such as the School for Carpenters and Bricklayers in Chicago and the School for Carriage, Wagon, and Automobile Workers of New York City.  All trade unions which have not adopted a scheme of technical education are advised to take the matter up.

On the question of public-school training, the American Federation of Labor is no less explicit and emphatic, favoring the establishment of schools in connection with the public-school system in which pupils between fourteen and sixteen may be taught the principles of the trades, with local advisory boards, on which both employers and organized labor should have seats.  But by far the most fundamental proposal is the following.  After outlining the general instruction on accepted lines, they proceed as follows: 

“The shop instruction for particular trades, and for each trade represented, the drawing, mathematics, mechanics, physical and biological science applicable to the trade, the history of that trade, and a sound system of economics, including and emphasizing the philosophy of collective bargaining.”

The general introduction of such a plan of training would mean that the young worker would start out on his wage-earning career with an intelligent understanding of the modern world, and of his relations to his employer and to his fellow-laborers, instead of, as at present, setting forth with no knowledge of the world he is entering, and moreover, with his mind clogged with a number of utterly out-of-date ideas, as to his individual power of control over wages and working conditions.[A]

[Footnote A:  History, as it is usually taught, is not considered from the industrial viewpoint, nor in the giving of a history lesson are there inferences drawn from it that would throw light upon the practical problems that are with us today, or that are fast advancing to meet us.  When a teacher gives a lesson on the history of the United States, there is great stress laid upon the part played by individual effort.  All through personal achievements are emphasized.  The instructor ends here, on the high note that personal exertion is the supreme factor of success in life, failing unfortunately to point out how circumstances