Into the trades, however, Miss Davis finds it possible to steer many a boy who is obviously unfitted for the career of lawyer, bank clerk, or, vaguely, “business man.”  And she is able to place others in the coveted office jobs, with their time-honored requirement:  “only the neat, honest, intelligent boy need apply.”

Often, given the honesty and intelligence, she must manufacture a child to fit the description.  Sometimes all that is necessary is a hint about soap and water and a clean collar.  Sometimes the big cupboard in her office must yield up a half-worn suit or a pair of shoes that some luckier boy has outgrown.  Occasionally, hers is the delicate task of suggesting to a prematurely sophisticated little girl that some employers have an unreasonable prejudice against rouge and earrings; or that even the poorest people can wash their underwear.  Manners frequently come in for attention.

When the boys or girls are placed, the Bureau, unlike most employment agencies, does not wash its hands of them.  Its work has only begun.  Each child is asked to report concerning his progress from time to time; and if he does not show up, a vocational supervisor keeps track of him by visits to home or office, or by letters, written quarterly.  The Job Lady is able to observe by this method, whether or not the work is suitable for the child, or whether it offers him the best available chance; and she is often able to check the habit of “shifting” in its incipient stages.  She is continually arbitrating and making adjustments, always ready to listen to childish woes and to allay them when she can.

Not long ago, I went to a conference on Vocational Guidance.  There I heard, from the mouths of various men, what hope the work being done by the Bureau held for the future.  One showed how it had infused new blood into the veins of an anemic educational system, how it was making the schools a more efficient preparation for life—­the life of factory and shop and office—­than they ever had been before.

Another man pointed out that the Bureau, through the schools, would strike at one of the deep roots of poverty—­incompetency.  More people are poor for lack of proper equipment to earn a living and proper direction in choosing a vocation, he said, than for any other one reason.

A third man saw in the Vocational Bureau a means of keeping a control over employing interests.  “You treat our children well, and you pay them well,” the schools of the future, he declared, would be able to say to the employer, as the Bureau was already saying, “or we won’t permit our children to work for you.”  A fourth had a vision of what the Bureau and the new education it heralded could do toward educating the men and women of the future to a knowledge of their rights as workers.

And then there came a man with a plea.  “All of these things,” he said, “the Bureau can accomplish—­must accomplish.  But let us not forget, in our pursuance of great ends, that it is the essential humanness of the Bureau that has made it what it is.”