Duxbury High School - Partridge Yearbook (Duxbury, MA)

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There are fields which some people do not even consider. For instance, Bunny Rabbit may be just a character in bedtime stories to some people, but to 10,000 rabbit breeders he is a most important source of income. Los Angeges alone eats more than a million rabbits a year. There may be op- portunities for nearly 100,000 mor-e commercial rabbit raisers if rabbits are popularized as meat. The war has interfered with the supplies of Australian rabbit skins. I have tried to list a specific number of fields which are open to us. Our motto is Life is what you make of it. It has always been true, and still is. If we want to become something in this world, there are more opportun- ities now than ever before. Only the sluggish and lazy see no future, because they do not try. But the alert and active see a happy future of wisdom, wealth, and wit. We must not see only war, worry, and weakness. We must look forward, not backward! This is a world for youth, a world simply bursting with new opportunity! FRANCES BURNS E211

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metal workers, stone masons, structural-iron work-ers hod carriers, and other construction workers, including a growing number of building fore- men and supervisors. Can it be said that this field is limited? The defense program is surely opening a vast field which is much broader than it has been in any previous war. Ship-yard employment is being increased by government spending. It is estimated that more than 150,000 men will be working in private shipyards by the spring of 1942. If the present rate of growth continues, as many as 10,000 young men may have opportunities to become apprentices in some of the skilled shipbuild- ing crafts, although work may be only for the duration of war. But young men will have had experience. Every sailor learns a trade. If he leaves the service, he may be a ma- chinist, metal smith, patternmaker, musician, cook, baker, radio-expert, or a motion-picture operator. New opportunities for pharmacists will also occur in our armed forces. Pharmacists enter such governmental work as the Public Health Service, Bureau of Narcotics, and Veterans Administration. There is employment for pharmaceutical chemists in manufacturing laboratories, hospital dis- pensaries, drug research work, and in production of synthetics. Women also are employed in the defense program. The expanding manufacture of textiles, shoes, and clothing will need women. Women who excel in work requiring the use of light instruments such as gages, microm- eters, vernier calipers, wil. be hired for inspection of castings, machinings, and finished parts of routine powd-er analysis, and of testing electrical equipment. Women are experts in as-semb.ing delicate instruments and machines, loading shells, and filling powder bags. They have been used in operating all types of machin-es wh-ere lifting devices and other machines can do the heavy work. There are also new opportunities for women in biology, architecture, public health. It seems fairly certain that there will be opportunities for employment of girls in industry in the next year greater than at any time since th-e last World War. It is believed and said that all fields of work are overcrowded. This changing world has made that belief wrong. The ne-ed everywhere for trained occupational therapists is far in excess of the number of girls avail- able. The therapist deals with cardiac, tuberculosis, orthopedic, and mental cases. There are also opportunities for youth in radio. With 821 radio sta- tions in the country, all hungry for ideas, there certainly are opportunities for jobs. There are many branches to this work-script writing, dramatic producing or action, news editing and broadcasting, publicity, sound effects, research and interpretation music, sales, and market research. Another expanding field is photography. Pictur-es as a medium of news have greatly grown, and there is no reason to think that the public in- terest will decline. Opportunities in commercial art are rapidly expanding. The artist has a choice of two fields in which to work: the fine arts, and commercial art. People engaged in fine arts at the best make an insecure living, but usually do not find work at all. Commercial art is not overcrowded .ike the fine arts. Department stores engage staffs of artists to make attractive adv-er- tising displays. Newspapers need artists both for their advertising and for their editorial departments. Magazines need talented p-eople to illus- trate articles and stories. The same is true of book publishers. Since the fall of Paris, a talented and aspiring young designer has a chance with a situation full of golden opportunities. i201

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HONOR ESSAY The Historical Background of Present Economic Conditions in South America In order to understand the recent course of events in Latin America, one must bear in mind the past history of these twenty republics south of the Rio Grande and the traits of their peoples. These countries, known collectively as Latin America, are those lands which were under the domin- ation of Spain and Portugal during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. In the first place, Columbus discovered South America. He explored along the coast of what is now Venezuela in 1498. By 1515, the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors were pouring in. The Portuguese settled in what is now Brazil, and the Spaniards occupied the rest of the continent. By 1550, fifty years after Columbus' discovery, the small horde of 100,000 Spaniards and Portuguese that had managed to get over here had accurately surveyed most of the 8 000 000 square miles of South America: had ex- plored the mountain ranges from Mexico to Cape Horng had charted the main river systems, and had found-ed practicaly all of the principal cities of today. To make a comparison, it was as if the entire North American continent had been explored, prospected, and mappedg as if its principal cities like San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, New York, and every other city of over a hundred thousand population had been founded within fifty years of the landing of the Pilgrims. To continue the analogy, it was as if Chi- cago, Denver, and all these new cities were each dumped into a separate pit, the walls of the pit being the gigantic mountain ranges of South America. The reason for this tremendous expansion was that Spain had finally driven the Moors out of the homeland just a few years before, and a new national enthusiasm had swept over the country. The country needed an outlet for its new-found energies, and this new continent provided just such an ideal outlet. This wave of colonization swept through the mountains and then in a few years the tide went out, leaving the people stranded in little puddles here and there. For the people, this developed a localistic attitude which persists to this day and prevents them from cooperating with their neigh- bors. When the Spaniards chose a place to settle, each man did not make a rush to stake claims for land as the Virginia colonists did. They first built a stone fortress and some stone and adobe houses around it. The streets were made narrow so that they could be easily swept by gunfire. The town could be defended from house to house. These towns were replicas of the feudalistic fortress-towns in Spain. These new Spanish settlers were horribly cruel to the natives. The sole function of the Indian was cheap labor. The Spaniards used the slavery system over here in its worst forms. By 1542, 12,000,000 Indians had been exterminated. E221