FUNDAMENTALS OF APPRENTICESHIP

Revival of Apprenticeship in all Industries

Industrial education is today the principal educational theme in this country. Employers, business managers, superintendents, thoughtful craftsmen, educators, economists, social workers, men and women in a hundred walks of life, have focused their attention, with growing earnestness, upon the problem. Discussions, proposals, and theoretical and practical experiments are gradually leavening the great mass of our industrial life. Through it all runs a common conviction that something should be done-must be done-to educate the coming workers in a specific and direct way for the work they are to do. It is agreed by all that the time has arrived for the development of a genuine industrial intelligence in the manhood and womanhood of America, that industrial training is a paramount economic demand of our time.

Raise the standard of skill in the workman. Improve the tone of industrial morality. Give the greatest number of individuals the opportunity to "live a full and ample life."

Before our modern factory system came into vogue most workmen were artisans, masters of their craft; they knew how to perform and could perform the successive stages in the production of a given article. The old labor guilds fostered the apprenticeship system, and it was difficult for anyone to become a member of a guild who had not passed through all stages of development. In fact, the laws and customs of Western Europe especially required that any person desiring to exercise certain branches of skilled labor must serve an apprenticeship. The invention of labor-saving machinery and the introduction of the modern factory system wrought a great change in craftsmanship, and the laws and trade customs formerly governing the apprentice became largely inoperative and obsolete.

The new industrial system developed the specialist, he who could do but one thing and must perform this one operation day after day and year after year.

Copyright. Conference Board on Training of Apprentices

Personal Interest of Employer

No apprenticeship system nor any scheme of industrial training can be successful without the active interest of the employer. "The employer is the key to the situation." And note that it says "active interest," because the problem of creating an industrial intelligence in the workers who shall man the employers' shops is essentially an employer's problem and cannot be wholly left to pedagogic guidance. There must be a point of live contact between employer and apprentice.

Many employers flatter themselves that they are too busy to assume any responsibility for apprentice training, and defer their attention to suit their convenience. On the other hand, employees seek to restrict the number of apprentices in order that they may control the situation. Also many employers have practically no apprentices, depending upon "the market" for their labor supply. They seek the men whom some one else has trained. This method of obtaining a competent worker is akin to stealing him from another employer who, in turn, will do likewise.

The interest of the employer in his apprentices will foster and develop a spirit of loyalty and integrity possible in no other way. It will assure the young worker of a "square deal" and prevent favoritism or other unhappy circumstances standing in the way of his advancement. It will do much to dissipate the feeling that the only interest an employer has in his workers is the money gained from their labor. It will develop a wholesome spirit of productive rivalry and build up a type of efficiency which cannot be obtained otherwise.

Apprentice Training Under Competent Supervision

Apprenticeship instruction as applied to modern conditions seeks to train for higher efficiency, not simply to train raw recruits to perform the operations now being done by the average workman. To obtain this higher efficiency apprentice instructors must be specially selected for—

(a) knowledge of the trade, including its historical, theoretical, and practical aspects;

(b) ability to teach;

(c) interest in teaching by constant study to add to their

knowledge;

(d) moral character.

Inefficient workmen, who have to deal with inanimate materials, are never retained in a shop. Therefore how much more important it is that those selected to deal with a material vastly more precious than wood, metal, leather, or stone, namely, the human material, be chosen for their proven capabilities!

Practical Trade Training and Applied Technical Instruction

Nearly all the larger concerns which have a modern apprenticeship system provide academic work to supplement the work in the shop. It is recognized that the object of an apprenticeship system is to teach the boy a trade, and that the trade cannot be properly learned unless the boy knows the mathematics, mechanics, theories, and business methods which accompany the trade. This instruction is given generally in a schoolroom connected with the factory or shop.

The great mass of industrial workers have only a certain amount of manipulative skill; the work which they perform is often meaningless to them. Modern apprentice instruction, by a proper co-relation of practical trade training and applied technical instruction, seeks to impart a thorough all-round knowledge, not only of the actual manufacturing processes but the reasons that lie behind. Technical education as combined with apprentice instruction is simply the education necessary to enable a boy to become an intelligent workman-one who can see the principles underlying the methods of work-one who can give a reason for doing a thing in a certain way and who does not blindly follow a certain rule. Technical education is the mental training of the apprentice so that his understanding may be fully awakened.

Be that as it may, the employer is confronted with the task of securing his supply of beginners and junior workers from an untrained host, and if the findings in the published report of the Commission on Vocational Education appointed by the Sixty-third Congress are correct, or even approximately correct, that 85 per cent of all the children that enter the public schools

of the country leave the schools before they reach the age of 16; that not over 8 per cent of those who enter the high school ever get through and take the diploma; that not over 3 per cent of those who are graduated from the high schools ever enter the college or university, and that hardly 1 per cent of the 14,250,000 persons engaged in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits have had or at the present time have any chance to secure adequate training in their chosen industry, is not the necessity of supplementing practical trade training with applied technical instruction imperative?

Class-Room Work on Employer's Time

No employer should begrudge the time spent by his apprentices in class-room work, whether this time be spent in his own class-room or in the class-room of continuation schools.

It is essential in a proper system of apprentice training that adequate instruction be given to the apprentice along every line, cultural, technical, and practical, and as the cultural and technical are only parts of the required instruction, and as all the instruction given is for the purpose of developing the apprentice into an economical producer, a profit maker for the employer as well as a good wage earner, the paid-for time spent in class-room work which awakens and develops the intelligence and thereby creates a much higher degree of operative or manipulative skill, eventually becomes a profitable investment.

No Financial Obligation of Apprentice

The old-world custom of the payment of a premium by the apprentice to the master or employer was transplanted to this country, and although not practiced to the extent that it was abroad, was, nevertheless, a recognized custom for many years -in fact is even to-day practiced by not a few employers who exact a premium from the apprentice under one of three general plans, namely,

(a) by cash bonus;

(b) by deferred wage payment, forfeited for reason;

(c) by tuition fee.

Regardless of the reasons which might properly have been

set up for such charges in the past, no reason, aside from longtime custom, can be given for such charges to-day. A cash bonus, or lump sum payment, for the privilege of learning a trade, or the assessment of a tuition fee, has no place in modern apprenticeship system. Private trade schools, conducted for profit, or endowed industrial schools may properly charge a fee for their instruction.

In reference to a deferred wage payment, this also should not be countenanced by employers. It has been the custom, and it still prevails in many places, of holding back a certain portion of the apprentice's rightful wage until he has successfully completed his apprenticeship and then presenting it to him in the form of a bonus. While this Conference Board recommends the payment of a bonus under proper conditions, it does not believe it to be permissible in these modern times that any part of an apprentice's rightful wage should be held back as a coverage for lost or damaged tools, or other possible wastage; nor as a possible penalty for slackness or slothfulness; nor as a means of preventing the apprentice leaving before the expiration of his full time; nor as an installment deposit to assure faithful performance and good conduct; nor for any other cause.

If the apprentice fails to keep his part of the contract either through carelessness, inherent ignorance, or wilfulness, the employer has but to dismiss him, thereby applying a condition of the indenture.

Hourly Wage Rate With Periodical Increases

The question of apprentice wage is an important one. Investigations have shown a wide variation in the amounts paid to apprentices, not only during the first year, but for the succeeding apprentice years; also that these variations were as great in a given industry as among industries in general, and, what is even more interesting, the wage differences were as great in the same locality in a given industry as they were throughout the country.

In discussing the question of apprentice pay the Conference Board was presented with a considerable number of "customs" and "rules" that prevail among American industries and a