Chapter V: Apprenticeship of To-Day (3)

The most striking feature in the table is the marked difference in the distribution of occupations at the age of fourteen to fifteen, and at other ages. The third column, which includes persons between the ages of twenty and forty-five, covers the period of a man's greatest vigour, and may be regarded as the normal or stable distribution. Comparing the first and the third column, it becomes obvious that the first year, at least, after leaving school is a year of uncertainty and aimless wandering. The boys have not definitely chosen any particular occupation as their life's work. How long is spent in this state of unprofitable drifting the census returns do not show as the following years are not separated. But the fact that the distribution in the second column differs materially from the normal distribution of the third column would seem to indicate that this period stretches some distance into the years that lie between the ages of fifteen and twenty.

In default of this general information, we must fall back on special investigations; and here the facts are drawn from too narrow a circle of inquiry to be regarded as altogether typical. In his report to the Poor Law Commission, Mr. Cyril Jackson gives an instructive table[142] (see p. 145). It is founded on biographies of boys obtained from boys' clubs, schoolmasters, and managers of schools.

I have omitted the ages that follow, as the number of boys concerned was too few to justify any conclusions. The rapid diminution in the number of boys when the age of eighteen is reached impairs the value of the last two columns. In general, the districts from which the boys are drawn are poor; but the fact that the boys come into relation with various organizations, and were no doubt assisted by them, should lead us to believe that the picture presented errs, if anything, by being too favourable. The steady increase in the trades, and the equally steady decrease in the number of van-boys, Post Office boys, errand and shop boys during the first three years is instructive. Trades, skilled and low-skilled, reckoned in percentages, have risen from 39.4 to 50.9, while the messenger class has fallen from 40.1 to 23.8. The changes in the earlier years are the most significant, and little stability of occupation is reached before the age of eighteen. The age of fourteen evidently represents the year of greatest indecision and maximum drift.

PERCENTAGE OF BOYS IN VARIOUS GROUPS OF OCCUPATIONS AT EACH AGE.

+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Occupations. |Age 14.|Age 15.|Age 16.|Age 17.|Age 18.|Age 19.|
|-----------------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|
|Skilled trades | 11.2 | 14.0 | 16.8 | 17.8 | 18.0 | 16.3 |
|Clerks | 14.6 | 15.0 | 16.4 | 15.2 | 15.4 | 14.3 |
|Low-skilled | 28.2 | 32.8 | 34.1 | 33.9 | 32.5 | 34.1 |
|Carmen | 0.6 | 0.2 | 0.6 | 2.6 | 4.5 | 5.1 |
|Van-boys | 8.2 | 6.6 | 5.2 | 4.9 | 2.8 | 1.2 |
|Post Office | 1.4 | 1.4 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.3 | 1.2 |
|Errand and shop | | | | | | |
| boys | 30.5 | 22.0 | 18.4 | 15.0 | 12.6 | 10.3 |
|General and | | | | | | |
| casual labour | 5.3 | 7.0 | 6.7 | 6.9 | 6.4 | 8.7 |
|Army | -- | 0.6 | 0.6 | 1.1 | 3.6 | 4.0 |
|At sea | 0.2 | 0.4 | 0.8 | 1.5 | 2.8 | 3.5 |
|Emigrants | -- | -- | 0.2 | 0.4 | 0.8 | 1.2 |
|-----------------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|
|Total No. of boys| 485 | 500 | 474 | 448 | 356 | 252 |
|Unemployed | 1 | 2 | 1 | 13 | 22 | 22 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

In other parts of his report Mr. Jackson has endeavoured to follow the history of boys who have begun life as errand-boys or as van-boys. "From the forms returned," he writes, "it seems clear that the theory that boys can become errand-boys for a year or two, and then enter skilled trades, cannot be maintained. Very few boys can pick up skill after a year or two of merely errand-boy work." [143] Or again: "The chart prepared from the forms filled in by boys who entered life as errand-boys shows the small proportion who find any steady and skilled employment afterwards, and those have ceased to be errand-boys very early. The vast majority become workers in low-skilled trades or general and casual labourers." [144] Of all the "blind-alley" occupations, that of the van-boy appears the most deplorable. "The life of the van-boy is a rough and somewhat lazy one. They have long hours, spells of idleness, and considerable opportunities of pilfering and drinking." [145] "The chart shows that it is a very low grade of occupation, and that very few boys who begin as van-boys get into skilled trades--a far lower percentage, in fact, than errand-boys." [146]

The second point to be noted in the table founded on the census returns is the large number--nearly 40 per cent.--of boys of the age of fourteen returned as without specified occupation or unoccupied (including boys at school). There are in the elementary schools about 5,000 boys between the age of fourteen and fifteen, and probably about the same number in secondary schools. Converted into percentages, this 40 per cent. would be broken up into 24 per cent. at school and 16 per cent. without specified occupation. The last figure is high, and justifies the conclusion, not only that the boys of fourteen wander from occupation to occupation, but that they also are frequently doing nothing. The habit of shifting from situation to situation necessarily involves considerable periods of unemployment. Thus early in their career the boys become accustomed to the evils of casual labour.

We can arrive at the same conclusion by approaching the problem from a somewhat different point of view. If in some trades we discover an excess of boys, and in others an excess of men, it is clear that there must be shocks and shiftings in the passage from youth to manhood. In London the number of lads between the ages of fourteen and twenty is 17.5 per cent. of the number of males between the ages of fourteen and sixty-five. If, therefore, we find the proportion of lads to total males engaged in any trade, reckoned in percentages, differs much from 17.5, either lads must at some time pass out of the trade or men come in. On the other hand, in a trade where this percentage is approximately 17.5 boys who enter have, at any rate, the chance of finding employment as men. In this sense we may regard the distribution of lads and men in a trade as normal when this percentage lies between 15 and 20; less than normal when it drops below 15; more than normal when it rises above 20. The following table may be taken as an example of trades in which considerable numbers of persons are engaged:

+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| | Number in | Number in | |
| Trade. |1,000 of Males|1,000 of Males|Percentage.|
| | Aged 14-20. | Aged 14-65. | |
|---------------------------|--------------|--------------|-----------|
|LESS THAN NORMAL: | | | |
| Building trades | 13.2 | 144.2 | 9.1 |
| Skin, leather, etc. | 2.6 | 8.5 | 14.1 |
| Food, tobacco, drink, | | | |
| and lodging | 19.9 | 135.2 | 14.8 |
| General labour | 15.0 | 111.1 | 13.5 |
| General or local | | | |
| government | 6.5 | 45.8 | 14.3 |
| Professional | 4.8 | 62.2 | 7.8 |
|NORMAL: | | | |
| Domestic services | 7.8 | 51.7 | 15.1 |
| Commercial occupations | 25.9 | 131.1 | 19.8 |
| Metals, machines, etc. | 14.4 | 92.7 | 15.5 |
| Precious metals | 6.6 | 36.5 | 18.2 |
| Furniture, etc. | 9.3 | 59.5 | 15.7 |
| Textile fabrics | 4.1 | 23.5 | 17.3 |
|MORE THAN NORMAL: | | | |
| National Government | | | |
| (messengers, etc.) | 3.9 | 13.5 | 29.2 |
| Clerks, office-boys, etc.| 23.1 | 83.0 | 27.8 |
| Transport, errand-boys, | | | |
| etc. | 52.3 | 236.3 | 22.1 |
| Printers | 7.1 | 34.1 | 20.7 |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+

If we could have taken the period fourteen to eighteen instead of fourteen to twenty, these tables would have been even more striking than they are. But, even as they are, they are sufficient to enforce the lesson that between the occupation of the boy and the occupation of the man there is a gulf fixed. The one does not lead naturally to the other. When the boy becomes a man he does not find provided for him a natural opening; with more or less pains, he is driven to force a way in trades for which he has received no definite preparation, and in which diligence and good character do not afford any guarantee of success.

_(d) Summary._

Before proceeding to examine the conditions of boy labour in other parts of the country, it will be desirable to summarize the results for London, and so to determine how far the essentials of a true apprenticeship system are found in that city.

_Supervision._--The boy should be under adequate supervision until he reaches the age of at least eighteen. In London, so far as the majority are concerned, all State supervision ends at fourteen. When the boy goes out to work what measure of supervision was previously found in the home comes to an end; it is beyond the power of parents to exert any real control over the boy. He is his own master, finds his employment for himself, and leaves it when he thinks fit. Philanthropic enterprise touches a fringe, and a fringe only, of the boys; their growing sense of independence resents restraint. The story of the workshop points the same moral. Personal relations between boy and employer are seldom possible; and where the demand for the services of boys is unlimited and unsatisfied, attempts to enforce discipline fail, because, sooner than submit, the boy seeks another situation.

_Training._--For the unskilled labourer of the future London provides no training. The schools do, indeed, turn out in the boys ready made and completely finished articles for boy-work and "blind-alley" occupations, and three or four years of such employment destroy the most-marked results of elementary education. The skilled workman of the future finds in the workshop small chance of gaining that all-round training which will make of him a man, and not a machine. Technical education for the minority is successful, but without power to compel attendance and limit the hours of boy-labour it is only the few who can avail themselves of the opportunities offered.

_Opening._--Boys' work is separated from man's work, and there is no broad highway leading from the one to the other. The lad of eighteen is compelled to make a new beginning just when new beginnings are most difficult. His power of learning is gone from him, and in the unskilled labour market alone does he see any prospect of earning immediate wages. The State Labour Exchange is an infant which has yet to justify its creation.

In London the provision of supervision, of training, of an opening, is alike defective, and beyond the age of fourteen for the majority of boys can hardly be said to exist at all; and, what is most serious, we are face to face with a state of affairs where there is no sign of improvement, and where all tendencies indicate for the future an accelerated rate of progressive failure. In short, London cannot claim even the beginnings of a real apprenticeship system.

Sec. 2. OTHER TOWNS.

Among the cities London does not stand alone in its conditions of boy labour. It may indeed be regarded as the most extreme example of urbanization, but it is nothing more; it is a normal type, not an exception or monstrous exaggeration. As the capital of the Empire and the seat of government, it has its own characteristics, but so likewise has every other town. But dominating all these local variations and giving uniformity to the conditions of boy labour in our cities, remain the common features of the industrial development of to-day. This, at any rate, is the unanimous testimony of all those investigators--and they have been many--who have studied the problem.

I shall not, therefore, make any attempt to apply to other towns the detailed method of investigation I have endeavoured to employ in the case of London. It will be enough to show that the general conditions are the same. What differences exist are differences of degree, and not differences of kind.

_(a) The Employment of School-Children._

The investigations of the Interdepartmental Committee has proved beyond doubt that throughout the country it is common for children, while still attending school, to work long hours for wages. One or two quotations will be sufficient to justify this statement. The Report declares "that, as the door has been closed to their employment in factories and workshops and during school-hours, there has been a tendency, which many witnesses believe to be an increasing one, towards their employment in other occupations before morning school, between school-hours, in the evening, and on Saturdays and Sundays. Provided they make eight or ten attendances every week, they may be employed (with a few exceptions, and these little enforced) in the streets, in the fields, in shops, or at home, for the longest possible hours, and on the hardest and most irksome work, without any limit or regulation." [147] Evidence abounded to show that such possibilities of overwork were frequently realized. Examples have already been quoted in the case of London, and it is unnecessary here to go over the same ground again.

That legislation, as at present enforced, has done little to cure the evil of overwork may be seen from the reports of school medical officers. Some of these are quoted in the Annual Report for 1909 of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education. The school medical officers were not asked to report specially on the problem, but their inspection of school-children revealed the magnitude of the evil.

"Several school medical officers report on the question of child labour during 1909. Dr. Thresh (school medical officer, Essex) places on record the serious extent to which children are employed out of school-hours in the Grays and Tilbury districts, and gives many individual examples. Dr. Forbes (school medical officer, Brighton) gives some interesting particulars from a statement prepared by the Inspector under the Employment of and Cruelty to Children Acts. In this area the head-teachers furnish regularly lists of children known by them to be employed out of school-hours. Among these children it was found that 39, 25, and 22 per cent. were illegally employed during 1907, 1908, and 1909 respectively. Dr. Clarke (school medical officer, Walthamstow) found that 19 per cent. of the boys examined were employed out of school-hours, of whom 19 per cent. worked an average of eleven hours per week; 32 per cent. worked ten hours and over on Saturdays; 20 per cent. worked twenty hours or over during school-days. A full analysis of all children known to be employed out of school-hours at Yeovil is made by Dr. Page (school medical officer), who found that 22 per cent. of all children eight years of age and upwards were so employed, and of these 40 per cent. worked for twenty hours and upwards per week. Dr. Hope (school medical officer of Liverpool) produces evidence to show how usefully medical inspection may be linked up with the arrangements made to put into force by-laws relating to the employment of children. Thus, all cases where there was reason to suppose that the by-laws were being infringed were reported to the Sanitary Department. These children cases numbered 308 during the year, and a table is given showing in what manner they were dealt with. At Leamington, 119 boys and 30 girls were reported by Dr. Burnet as employed in a wage-earning capacity either before or after school-hours, and 90 boys and 11 girls both before and after school-hours. Of these, 63 children were of subnormal nutrition, 22 were suffering from anaemia, 2 from phthisis, 8 from heart disease, and 25 had enlarged tonsils. Several of these children were quite unfit for such employment, and the subject is deserving of a thorough investigation with a view to adopting protective measures where necessary. At Southport, 131 leaving boys (32.7 per cent.) were found to be doing unskilled or casual work, and in Oldham 179 of the children inspected were similarly engaged." [148]

As in London, so in other parts of the country, school-children work for long hours, and no adequate means exist at present to prevent the evil. As in London, so in other parts of the country, signs of serious physical weakness are the common accompaniments of this employment, and the health of the rising generation is injured. As in London, so in other parts of the country, the forms of employment in which children are engaged are uneducational, and tend to lead children, when school-days are over, into the "blind-alley" occupations.

Besides these children, there are about 38,000 "half-timers." [149] It is needless here to dilate on the evils of the half-time system, which allows children who have reached the age of twelve to spend half the day in the factory and workshop. It is condemned by all qualified to pass on it an impartial judgment. Its continuance reflects little credit on the humanity of those employers and those trade unions who have repeatedly opposed its abolition.

_(b) The Entry to a Trade._

The survey of conditions of juvenile employment in London made clear certain facts. There was the growing demand for boys in what has been called "blind-alley" occupations, and the demoralizing effect of such work. There was the difficulty of obtaining adequate training for those who had entered a skilled trade. There was a general lack of supervision in the workshop. And, finally, there was no easy passage from youth to manhood. It is impossible to read the Report of the Poor Law Commission and the volumes of evidence, or to study the various investigations into the conditions of sundry towns, without being convinced that London is in no way peculiar. The chief difficulty in approaching the problem lies in the selection of the all too numerous witnesses.

The Report of the Poor Law Commission probably provides the best summary of the mass of evidence on the subject. Both Reports--Majority and Minority--alike realize the gravity of the problem, not for London alone, but for the whole of the country. "The problem," says the Majority Report, "owes its rise in the main to the enormous growth of cities as distributive centres, giving innumerable openings for errand-boys, milk-boys, office and shop boys, bookstall-boys, van, lorry, and trace boys, street-sellers, etc. In nearly all these occupations the training received leads to nothing; and the occupations themselves are, in most cases, destructive to healthy development, owing to long hours, long periods of standing, walking, or mere waiting, and, morally, are wholly demoralizing." [150] Or, again: "The almost universal experience is that in large towns boys, owing to carelessness or selfishness on the part of the parents, or their own want of knowledge and thought--for the parents very often have little voice in the matter--plunge haphazard, immediately on leaving school, into occupations in which there is no future, where they earn wages sufficiently high to make them independent of parental control and disinclined for the lower wages of apprenticeship, and whence, if they remain, they are extruded when they grow to manhood." [151] Or, to go to the Minority Report: "There are the rivet-boys in shipyards and boiler shops, the 'oil-cans' in the nut and bolt department, the 'boy-minders' of automatic machines, the 'drawers-off' of sawmills, and the 'layers-on' of printing works, and scores of other varieties of boys whose occupations presently come to an end." [152] Or, again: "In towns like Glasgow, Liverpool, Bristol, Newcastle, the proportions of van-boys, etc., are as large as in London." [153] Employers do not always conceal the fact: "In the words of a frank employer, they (the boys) are not taught; they are made to work continuously at their own little temporary trades." [154] If we desire actual figures of those engaged in one class of the "blind-alley" occupations--messengers--Mr. Jackson tells us that "under fourteen years of age there are no less than 32,536 (23.5 per cent. of those occupied under that age), while there are 41,659 aged fourteen, and 54,592 from fifteen to nineteen years of age inclusive, of which it is probable that the bulk are under seventeen years of age." [155] Writing of Norwich, the same writer says: "There seems little doubt that the boy labour is used up for industrial purposes, and that they are left less capable members of the community, with little prospect of good work when they become adults." [156]

Apart from the Report of the Poor Law Commission, individual writers of wide and varied experience outside London have voiced the same view. "It has never been so easy," writes Dr. Sadler, "as it is in England to-day, for a boy of thirteen or fourteen to find some kind of virtually unskilled work, involving long hours of deteriorating routine, in which there is little mental or moral discipline, but for which are offered wages that for the time seem high, and flatter his sense of being independent of school discipline and of home restraint." [157] And the same writer continues: "Certain forms of industry, which make large use of boys and girls who have recently left the elementary schools, are in part (except where the employers make special efforts to meet their responsibility) parasitic in character, and get more than they ought, and more than their promoters realize that they are getting, of the physical and moral capital of the rising generation." [158]

The Rev. Spencer J. Gibb, who has devoted special attention to the problem, writes: "The characteristic evils of boy work invade office work in a peculiarly subtle and dangerous form. In every city small offices are to be found in which the whole of the business, such as it is, is carried on by the master himself, who has frequently to be absent from his one-roomed office. The office-boy, who constitutes the entire staff, is meanwhile left in charge. He has probably nothing to do, and spends his time either in vacancy, in mischievous expeditions along the corridor, or in reading trash of a bloodthirsty nature." [159] Under such conditions supervision and control are negligible factors in the training of the workshop. It seems unnecessary to multiply examples; all persons of experience lament the increasing employment of boys in "blind-alley" occupations, and deplore the general lack of supervision.

The question of the skilled trades has received less attention, and there is much need of such a careful inquiry in various towns as had been made by Mr. Tawney in the case of Glasgow. Writing of the woodwork trades in that town, he says: "There is no regular training system; a boy learns incidentally, and is only shifted from one machine to another when the shop needs it.... One of its employes was the best producer of wooden rings in his town, but could not make a wage at turning a table-leg," and adds that, "with the exception of a few old men who were trained under the apprenticeship system, the foremen are the only men with all-round skill." [160] While of the engineering trades he says: "On entering the works the lad who is going to be a fitter goes straight to the fitting shop and learns nothing else; a lad who is going to be a turner goes to the machine shop and does not learn fitting." [161] Specialization is pushed even farther, and lads are kept to a single machine. Drilling, milling, slotting, punching, band-sawing, or screwing machines can be used after a few days' training, and this is all the experience a boy gets. And, speaking generally of Glasgow firms, Mr. Tawney says: "Boys are kept, as a rule, in their own departments. They are not taught; they are made to work." These facts were obtained as the result of a careful inquiry among 100 firms in Glasgow.

Glasgow, then, repeats the story of London; and there is good reason to believe that other towns, if submitted to a similar examination, would demonstrate the fact of the inadequacy of the workshop training of to-day. Apprenticeship, according to numerous witnesses, is everywhere decaying, and there is nothing except the technical school rising to take its place; and under existing conditions the technical school can touch only a fringe of the problem.

_(c) The Passage to Manhood._

The evidence of the last few pages, relating to the increase in the number of "blind-alley" occupations and to the inadequate training of the workshop, would show that, as in London, so likewise in other towns, there is no easy passage from the work of the youth to the work of the man. There is a break in the continuity of the service somewhere about the age of eighteen. New openings have then to be searched for, and new beginnings made, when the habits of learning have disappeared, even if the opportunities for it presented themselves.

It would seem superfluous to repeat for other towns the statistical evidence in support of this statement which was given in the case of London. "Blind-alley" occupations and troubled passage to manhood necessarily go together. Mr. Tawney's researches in Glasgow indicate clearly the difficulties of this transition period. A single quotation must suffice: "A district secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers says of a world-famous firm which employs several thousand men making a particular kind of domestic machine: 'It is a reception home for young bakers and grocers. Boys go to it from other occupations to do one small part of the machine.... When they leave they are not competent engineers, and find it difficult to get work elsewhere.'" [162] Detailed figures for the country as a whole in respect of certain trades may be found in Mr. Jackson's Report on Boy Labour. All evidence, from wheresoever collected, goes to show the existence of the break between the work of the boy and the work of the man.

* * * * *

It is trusted that sufficient evidence has been produced to prove conclusively that the conditions of boy labour in London do not differ essentially from the conditions of boy labour in other towns. The evidence could have been multiplied indefinitely and, what is most striking, among the mass of witnesses forthcoming there is none found to venture a contrary opinion. We may take it, then, as a well-established fact that in other towns besides London, supervision, training, and the provision of an opening are alike gravely and progressively defective. In other words, among the urban districts of the country no true apprenticeship system exists or is in course of creation.

Sec. 3. RURAL DISTRICTS.

No comprehensive inquiry has been made into the conditions of boy labour in rural districts and small towns. A few studies of individual villages exist--as, for example, "Life in an English Village," by Miss Maude Davies--but these are not sufficiently numerous to justify any general conclusions. The return on Children Working for Wages, made to the House of Commons in 1899, gives certain statistics. From the returns on pages 21 and 23 we see that for England and Wales some 5.2 per cent. of children above Standard I. were working for wages. The percentage for boys alone would be 8.5 per cent., or for boys eleven years and upwards about 17 per cent., compared with 24 per cent. for London alone. These figures would seem to show that, while common, work among school-children over the country as a whole does not quite reach the London level. So far as can be gathered from the returns, it is in towns that the employment of school-children is most frequent, though in rural districts it is frequent enough to constitute a grave evil.

The same return gives the occupation of children as they leave school. On page 163 is the summary.

The table is incomplete: "In London the proportion of children is no less than 94 per cent.; in the group of large urban districts, 72 per cent.; while in the rest of England and Wales, including the rural districts and small towns, the percentage sinks to 47." [163] Without a careful analysis, such as only local knowledge could supply, it would be dangerous to give much weight to the return. It does, however, appear from the summary that "blind-alley" occupations bear a close relation to urbanization, and that the two increase together. Or looking at the question from another point of view, a boy in rural districts enjoys greater opportunities of continuity of employment in the passage from youth to manhood than he does in the towns.

OCCUPATIONS OF BOYS ON LEAVING SCHOOL IN (1) LONDON, (2) LARGE URBAN AND MANUFACTURING DISTRICTS, AND (3) RURAL AND SMALL URBAN DISTRICTS OF ENGLAND AND WALES.[164]

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| | |Large Urban and| Rural and |
| Occupation. | London. | Manufacturing | Small Urban |
| | | Districts. | Districts. |
|----------------------|---------------|---------------|---------------|
| | No. | % | No. | % | No. | % |
|Agriculture | 101 | -- | 730 | 2 | 17,950 | 26 |
|Building | 787 | 3 | 1,973 | 4 | 3,744 | 5 |
|Woodworking | 905 | 4 | 591 | 1 | 661 | 1 |
|Metal, engineering, | | | | | | |
| and shipbuilding | 949 | 4 | 4,090 | 8 | 3,119 | 4 |
|Mining and quarrying | -- | -- | 1,584 | 3 | 6,510 | 9 |
|Textile | 49 | -- | 6,046 | 13 | 5,522 | 8 |
|Clothing | 665 | 3 | 1,634 | 3 | 1,612 | 2 |
|Printing and allied | | | | | | |
| trades | 1,121 | 4 | 868 | 2 | 680 | 1 |
|Clerical | 2,060 | 8 | 5,666 | 12 | 2,727 | 4 |
|In shops | 3,584 | 14 | 6,084 | 13 | 7,045 | 10 |
|Errand, cart, boat, | | | | | | |
| etc., boy | 10,283 | 40 | 10,496 | 22 | 9,917 | 14 |
|Newsboy and street | | | | | | |
| vendor | 964 | 4 | 1,472 | 3 | 1,223 | 2 |
|Teaching | 120 | -- | 430 | 1 | 557 | 1 |
|Domestic service | 301 | 1 | 173 | -- | 1,090 | 2 |
|Miscellaneous and | | | | | | |
| indefinite | 2,256 | 9 | 4,159 | 9 | 4,817 | 7 |
|----------------------+--------|------|--------|------|--------|------|
| Total occupied | 24,145 | 94 | 45,996 | 96 | 67,174 | 96 |
|No reported occupation| 1,623 | 6 | 2,097 | 4 | 2,765 | 4 |
|----------------------|--------|------|--------|------|--------|------|
| Grand total | 25,768 | 100 | 48,093 | 100 | 69,939 | 100 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+

There is good reason to believe that the prospects of an all-round training are more favourable in a village than in a town. The fact, already mentioned, that immigrants from rural districts obtain the better positions in London trades, especially in the building trades, would seem to justify this conclusion. There is also the general consideration that rural districts are always nearly a century behind the industrial development of the towns, and represent therefore an older condition of affairs. Workshops are smaller, the gulf between man and employer less impassable, and the old paternal relation between boy and master more possible of attainment. We may therefore assume, without much risk of error, that training is better in rural districts than in towns.

On the other hand, while it is true that in industrial progress the villages lag behind the towns, they still follow them, though at an interval. Machine-made goods, especially in the woodwork trades, are in villages replacing the hand-made goods, and the demand for manual dexterity is to this extent decreasing. It would also seem to be true that the old indentured apprenticeship is falling into disuse. In the Wiltshire village of Corsley, for example, while apprenticeship occupied a prominent position in the past, in the story of to-day it passes almost without mention. In Miss Davies's[165] study of the occupations of the inhabitants of that village, only one apprentice is mentioned. It is also a fact that those who are concerned with the administration of local charities for apprenticeship are finding increasing difficulty in discovering masters who are willing to take boys as indentured apprentices, even for a premium, and boys who are desirous of being indentured.

We may, perhaps, therefore assume that, while the conditions of boy labour are more favourable in rural districts than they are in towns, the old machinery of training is falling into disuse, and no adequate substitute is taking its place.

V.

THE BREAK-UP OF APPRENTICESHIP.

The survey of the elements that make up the apprenticeship of to-day is now complete. Each of the factors which contribute to the result--the State, Philanthropy, the Home, the Workshop--has been examined, and their influence appraised. It is therefore possible to pass judgment on the system, and, by realizing the present situation in all its relations, to understand clearly the nature and the extent of the problems which call for solution in the immediate future.

The period of apprenticeship has been shown to divide itself naturally into two parts. There are the years during which the boy is at school, ending somewhere about the age of fourteen. For the right use of these years we have seen that the State is beginning to accept full responsibility. Whether we have been concerned with the conduct, the physical welfare, or the training of the child, we have found collective enterprise assuming new duties, and carrying them out with a growing enthusiasm. Nor can we have remained blind to the large measure of success achieved. If defects here and there mar the result, they are clearly the defects that belong to all experiments in the early stages, and are obviously not the ineradicable faults of a worn-out system. In short, so far as regards the earlier years of the apprenticeship of to-day, there is no cause for despondency. Progress is the distinguishing characteristic of this first period; the boy is the centre of influences increasing in number, and deliberately planned to promote his well-being. One disquieting phenomenon that calls for attention is the large mass of school-children working long hours. Health is undermined, the effect of education impaired; while the occupations, essentially of the "blind-alley" type, encourage an unfortunate taste for this form of employment. Further, the various local authorities, especially in rural districts, have been very lax in using the powers conferred by the Employment of Children Act.

The second stage of apprenticeship covers the years between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. In our survey of this period we have been unable to find much cause for satisfaction. The State no longer recognizes its responsibility for the well-being of all its youth; it is content to offer opportunities of training to those who are able and willing to avail themselves of these advantages, and these last form only a small minority of the whole. The success of evening schools, technical institutes, and other places of higher education, so far as concerns those who come within that sphere of influence, only adds to our regret that that sphere of influence is so narrowly restricted. The majority, at least two-thirds, of the boys pass out of the control of the State, and for the completion of their apprenticeship we must look in other directions. Our search in these other directions has met with little reward; we have found everywhere failure, and, what is worse, failure that is rapidly progressive. Nowhere on a large scale can we discover provision made for the supervision and training of juveniles; from all sides we receive a tumult of complaint that things have gone astray. Philanthropic enterprise, whether represented by the religious bodies or lads' clubs, laments the lack of control over the boys, and frankly confesses its inability to deal satisfactorily with more than a small minority. The testimony of the home is the same; parents complain of the growing independence of their children, and to a large extent have ceased to attempt to exert any restraint over the conduct of their sons. Under the stress of modern industrial conditions and accentuated urbanization, the old patriarchal system of the family has broken down; the home represents an association of equals, in which, perhaps, the young can claim a predominant influence.

When we pass to the workshop, in the hope of reaching law and order and constructive thought, it is only to be confronted with the most signal example of an organization which defies every principle of a true apprenticeship system. That the boy of to-day is the workman of to-morrow is a thought that suggests itself to only a few of the most enlightened employers. To the many he is merely a cheap instrument of production to be used up, and then scrapped as waste machinery. He is kept at "his own little temporary task"; and, to make things worse, he is in so much demand that discipline cannot keep him very steadily even to this, or his services will be withdrawn. With the separation of man's work from boy's work there is no easy passage from youth to manhood. With the minute subdivision of operations, there is small chance of a lad in a skilled trade becoming a master of his craft.

Apart from the small amount of medical inspection required by the Factory and Workshop Act, no attempt is made to insure that the growing lad is physically fit for the work in which he is engaged. His health is the concern of no one till its breakdown brings him under the Poor Law or thrusts him into the ranks of the unemployable. Undisciplined, with health and training neglected, the lad of eighteen tends to find himself more and more left without prospects, and a person for whom no one in particular has any particular use. In short, our survey of the problem of the apprenticeship of to-day shows conclusively that we have, in the true sense of the word, no apprenticeship system. The old apprenticeship system has broken up, and there is nothing come to take its place.

It would be incredible if serious consequences did not accompany this complete break-up of the apprenticeship system; and it needs but little search to discover evils of far-reaching significance. There is first the evil of an uncontrolled youth. A child at the age of fourteen is not fitted to enjoy the independence of an adult. This statement is a truism, but there is tragedy in the fact that society of to-day confers, as we have seen, this irresponsible freedom, in a more or less unqualified form, on the majority of boys when they leave the elementary schools. In the hooligan of the streets or in the youthful criminal we have the most striking example of the fruits of an undisciplined boy. The report of the Commissioners of Prisons for the year ending March 31, 1908, makes this clear. Writing of the Borstal Association, they say: "In this admirable report" (the report, that is, of the Borstal Association), "which should be studied by all who are interested in the causes of crime, after specifying many circumstances which induce the criminal habit, they refer in particular to the absence of any system of control or organization for the employment of the young, as one of the principal causes of wrong-doing. 'When a boy leaves school the hands of organization and compulsion are lifted from his shoulders. If he is the son of very poor parents, his father has no influence, nor, indeed, a spare hour, to find work for him; he must find it for himself; generally he does find a job, and if it does not land him into a dead alley at eighteen he is fortunate, or he drifts, and the tidy scholar becomes a ragged and defiant corner loafer. Over 80 per cent. of our charges admit that they were not at work when they got into trouble,'" [166] The Poor Law Commission calls attention to the evil effects of certain forms of employment which the boys choose because of the freedom they give."'Street-selling, for example,' says the Chief Constable of Sheffield, 'makes the boys thieves.' 'News-boys and street-sellers,' says Mr. Cyril Jackson, 'are practically all gamblers.' 'Of 1,454 youths between fourteen and twenty-one charged in Glasgow during 1906 with theft and other offences inferring dishonesty, 1,208, or 83.7 per cent., came from the class of messengers, street-traders, etc.,' says Mr. Tawney." [167] And it would be easy to multiply indefinitely examples of this kind. It must not, of course, be assumed that all boys become hooligans or criminals, but all do suffer from the want of control and the need of a more disciplined life. Hooliganism is merely an extreme type of a disease which in a milder form fastens upon the boys who are allowed unrestrained liberty. The disease is the disease of restlessness--the restlessness of the town, the dislike of regularity, the joy in change for change's sake, and the habit of roving from place to place.

This disease, with the lack of proper technical training, leads on to unemployment when the age of manhood is reached. Unemployment is not the fate of the old only; it is becoming common among the young. "The percentage of men under thirty years of age qualified for assistance under the Unemployed Workmen Act, 1905, was:[168]

+------------------------------------------------------------+
| |Up to March 31, 1906.|Twelve Months ending|
| | | March 31, 1907. |
|-----------------|---------------------|--------------------|
| London | 23.9 | 27.4 |
| Whole of England| 27.3 | 30.2" |
+------------------------------------------------------------+

"It has become clear," says a manager of boys' clubs with a very wide experience, "to all students of the labour problem that a wrong choice of their first work--or, rather, no choice at all, but a drift into it--is responsible for the presence of considerable numbers of young men amongst the unemployed." [169] The Reports of the Poor Law Commission, Majority and Minority alike, repeatedly voice the same opinion. "The great prominence given to boy labour, not only in our evidence, but in the various reports of our special investigators, leads us to the opinion that this is perhaps the most serious of the phenomena which we have encountered in our study of unemployment. The difficulty of getting boys absorbed, through gradual and systematic training, in the skilled trades is great enough; but when to this are added the temptations, outside the organized industries, to enter at an early age into occupations which are not themselves skilled and give no opportunity for acquiring skill, it seems clear that we are faced by a far greater problem than that of finding employment for adults who have fallen behind in the race for efficiency--namely, that the growth of large cities has brought with it an enormous increase in occupations that are making directly for unemployment in the future." [170] The Minority Report is equally emphatic. "There is no subject," it says, "as to which we have received so much and such conclusive evidence as upon the extent to which thousands of boys, from lack of any sort of training for industrial occupations, grow up, almost inevitably, so as to become chronically unemployed or under-employed, and presently to recruit the ranks of the unemployable. In Glasgow nearly 20 per cent. of the labourers in distress are under twenty-five, and one-half of them are under thirty-five." [171] Or again: "It has been demonstrated beyond dispute that one of the features of the manner in which we have chosen to let the nation's industry be organized is that an increasing number of boys are employed in occupations which are either uneducative (in the sense of producing no increase of efficiency and intelligence) or unpromising (in the sense of leading to no permanent occupation during adult life); secondly, that there is a constant tendency for certain industrial functions to be transferred from men to boys, especially when changes in the processes of manufacture or in the organization of industry are taking place rapidly. The resulting difficulty is the double one of the over-employment of boys and the under-employment of men." [172]

It is hoped that the present chapter may have made clear the various steps in this unfortunate process of industrial development. First, we have the qualities which are the result of the school training--qualities of regularity, obedience, and intelligence--qualities required, indeed, in all forms of work, but supplying a complete technical outfit alone for the "blind-alley" occupations. The boys leave school, having had expended on them in each case a capital sum of public money of about one hundred pounds. They are valuable assets, and employers have discovered the fact, and adjusted their methods of production or distribution to make full use of this new and valuable supply. High wages attract the boy, who makes his own choice, and earning is regarded as more attractive than the laborious and less remunerative learning.

This leads on to the second stage, the "blind-alley" occupation or the skilled trade where there is no real training. Four years of this kind of work dissipate the effects of elementary education. Too often weakened physically by long hours of employment, demoralized by the life of freedom and the fatal facility in obtaining a second job when fancy has made him throw up the first, robbed by disuse of the power to learn even if the inclination were present, he is, at the age of eighteen, a distinctly less valuable asset in the labour market than he was four years before. The hundred pounds investment of public money intended for life has been squandered in youth; the employer has possessed himself of it; and when the boy asks the wages of a man, he is informed that his services are no longer wanted, and told to transfer them elsewhere.

Then comes the final stage of degeneration--unemployment or under-employment. The habit, acquired through four years of constant practice, of throwing up a job on the smallest pretext, remains with the lad of eighteen, but the facility of finding another is no longer his. The intensity of the demand for men varies almost inversely with the intensity of the demand for boys; the two are competitors in the same labour market, and of the two the boy is the cheaper and the more efficient instrument of production. Further, habits of boyhood have too often bred a liking for casual employment, with its frequent holidays. Here, also, the employers are willing to oblige him; they find it convenient to have at their beck and call a reserve of labour which can be drawn upon when business is brisk, and discharged in times of slackness. Finally, if he desires regular employment, it is none too easy to discover a suitable opening. The sphere of his usefulness is small; he has for sale a certain amount of animal strength, none too well developed, but has little else to offer. He can push and he can pull indifferently well, but in the world of industry there is not, as is supposed sometimes, an unlimited demand for pulling and pushing. And all the time he is faced with the fact that recruits to the army of pushing and pulling are coming from all sides. Men skilled in the performance of a single operation, and robbed of their well-paid employment by a new invention; men from decaying trades and incapable through lack of training of adapting themselves to fresh conditions; men a little past the vigour of manhood; men discharged for misconduct; men who have lost their work through the bankruptcy of a company or the death of a master--all alike, when everything fails them, turn in desperation to pulling and pushing; and meanwhile machines of novel design decrease year by year the demand for pulling and pushing.

All these effects, with innumerable variations, are the result of a wrong start, and of the neglect during the years that lie between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. Want of supervision, want of technical training, want of an opening for which special preparation has been given--these are the three great and characteristic evils of the present industrial situation. Taken together, they are a negation of all apprenticeship in the true sense of the word. During the course of the last few years we have at least learned to know the cause of our suffering, and to know the cause is at least the first step in the path of prevention. And, further, we have begun to see rising from the ruins of the old stabilities of life and the ancient order of industrial organization an edifice--small, indeed, at the moment, but bearing the mark of constructive thought, because reared by the growing power of collective enterprise; and, knowing this, we can turn in a spirit of hope to the task of creating a new apprenticeship system.