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The leading examples of this type of school are at Lyons, France, and Dusseldorf, Germany. The former has been already described. The latter serves the men under treatment at fifty hospitals in the city of Dusseldorf or resident there after military discharge.

In analyzing the past experience and employment possibilities of an individual disabled man, the need for an extremely large number of instruction subjects is indicated. A recent listing of the subjects being taught to returned soldiers in Canada showed a total of two hundred. When we proceed on the assumption that the individual is to receive training in the line for which he is best fitted, the variety of classes called for is beyond the range of any vocational school to provide. The question is then: How is instruction in the unusual subjects to be provided?

This necessity has given rise to the re-establishment of the apprentice system. More and more dependence is coming to be placed on training in factories and industrial establishments. Under this system the range of subjects is almost unlimited.

The employer must be willing to undertake very definitely the instruction of the soldiers, and detail one or more of his best men to this end. There must be regular supervision of the work and inspection of the progress made by the apprentice in order to guard against the employer using the men for routine production processes with little or no progress or educational value. He must not be allowed to regard their time as possible labor obtained free or at small cost.

On the other hand, properly regarded, the system confers real benefits on the employer. In the first place it affords him a source of supply for skilled labor which may be very scarce and difficult to obtain; for most of the men trained in a factory stay on in the same place as employees after their instruction period is over. Being familiar with the shop's practice they are worth more to it than to another establishment and, conversely, being more valuable as workers the employer can afford to pay them more wages than they could ordinarily earn elsewhere. In the second place, the employer can train the men in his own methods and to his own standards, and prepare workmen made as it were to order. For these two advantages employers are frequently willing to operate apprentice schools and pay the pupils wages during their non-productive period.

In Great Britain no fees are paid to the employer for such training, and he is expected to pay the disabled men wages which will represent the net value -- if any -- of the men's labor in his establishment. The wages thus paid are deducted from the training allowance paid by the Ministry of Pensions. In Canada, in view of the very generous scale of pay and allowances, it is thought best that the man should not be paid wages. If the employer gives him anything, it is regarded in the light of a bonus and does not prejudice his remittances from the government.

A modification of the system of training men by placement in factories consists in starting the course of re-education in a vocational school and completing it in an industrial establishment. Subjects of training fall within classifications as to elementary preparation, and most of them are represented to some degree in the industrial schools. For example, a man who requires training as a silver-plater may learn the general principles of electricity in a school classroom and laboratory and then go out to a plating shop for training in the application of these principles in plating practice.

It is this combination of school and factory training which promises the widest development in the future.

One great advantage of having part or all of the training done in a factory is that the work is practical in the highest degree, taking place as it does under actual production conditions. All that is purely theoretical or extraneous is eliminated.

This training on the apprentice system has reached its highest development in Canada, where the executive officer of the vocational work has been enthusiastic regarding its merits and has secured exceptionally successful results. The range of training possibilities is well exemplified by some selections from the list of occupations for which disabled soldiers of the Canadian forces are now being re-educated: armature winding, harness fitting, tinsmithing, saxophone playing, pneumatic tool repairing, inspection of castings, watch-making, fur work, dental mechanics, storage battery repairing, tailoring, telegraphy, meat cutting, bronze finishing, linotype or monotype operation, piano tuning, milling and assaying, bronze finishing, lense grinding, ornamental ironwork, precious stone cutting, lead glazing, photography, and so forth.

A typical school of re-education is the National Institute for War Invalids, at Saint-Maurice, near Paris. This is a combination of an orthopedic hospital and a training center. It is under the joint control of the Ministries of War and of the Interior, the former administering the medical activities, and the latter the re-educational work.