At the age of fourteen nine-tenths of British children go
to work. There are about 3,000,000 young people between the ages of 14 and 20, of whom 500,000 are attending some form of full-time education. This leaves us with 11 million boys and ri million girls. If for the moment the girls are excluded from our calculations there remain 250,000 boys in each age-group. They are working as messengers, clerks, in offices and shops, in factories of every description and to a small extent on farms. In spite of a network of voluntary societies like Scouts, clubs and Brigades often attached to churches, Army, Navy and Air Force Cadets, evening classes and Old Scholars' Associations, sixty per cent. of these young people between the ages of 14 and 20 succeed in avoiding any form of social and physical training. Here, then, is the problem.
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