The Laboring Classes

This is almost true, but gets some key things mixed up. I do think it was a common sentiment among native born white Americans that industrial wage labor was degrading and beneath them (see Orestes Brownson's The Laboring Classes for an example), I do think that the school system was shaped to make people more docile and less entrepreneurial, and I do think that many reformers intended for most kids going through it to end up doing industrial wage labor, but I don't think it was done to solve a labor shortage. The waves of mass immigration that occurred between 1830 and 1920 meant that despite the common view that wage labor was antithetical to the American way of life embodied by the autonomous farmer, American industry was never in short supply of labor.