vast army of boys who quit school for keeps at the eighth or ninth grade
or thereabouts. Several weeks before school closed the office had more
than enough boy "jobs" to go around. With the coming of vacation time
the ratio was reversed. The boy applicants were a hundred or two hundred
daily. For the two hundred on the day mentioned there were fifty places.

Says Mr. Deady, who has charge of the department for male minors:
"Ranging from fourteen to nineteen years of age, of all nationalities
and beliefs, fresh from the influence of questionable home environment,
boisterous and brimful of animation, without ideas and thoughtless to a
marked degree--this is the picture of the ordinary boy who is in search
of employment. He is without a care and his only thought, if he has one,
is to obtain as high a wage as possible. It is safe to say that of the
thousands of boys who apply annually at the employment office,
two-thirds are between sixteen and eighteen years of age. Before going
further, we can safely say that twenty per cent of the youngest lads
have left school only a few weeks before applying for work.
Approximately sixty per cent have not completed a course in the
elementary grammar schools."

The boy of foreign parentage seems to be more in earnest, more
ambitious, than the American boy (not to quibble over the definition of
the adjective "American"). Walter L. Sears, superintendent of the office
in Kneeland street, tells this story:

An American youngster came in.

"Gotta job?" he asked.

"Yes, here is one"--referring to the card records--"in a printing