For shipbuilding purposes men trained in the building trades offer little advantage over intelligent untrained men, as the character of work in the shipbuilding industry is so different from that in the building trades.
However, industrial and trade schools can give preliminary and thorough instruction to ship-fitters and loftsmen. The course for the latter should include ship-drafting. More limited instruction can be given in other ironworkers' trades and in the shipwright trades.
Trained instructors are needed. Instructors may be employed in the plant and, if so, should have full power to instruct and should not be employed on production, as the best results in instruction can only be obtained by having the instructor concentrate his mind on his work.
Shipbuilding in the United States has been one of our smaller industries. If the present crisis is to be adequately met, the industry will be one of our most important ones.
Of the large amount of money to be spent in shipbuilding, practically one half will be expended on labor in the shipyard; the remainder is for material purchased from outside parties, but which at the works of such subcontractors is again largely labor. Of the labor expended in the shipyard about one third is for ironworkers, and it is in this trade that the greatest shortage occurs, as there is only a small percentage of men for the ironworkers' trade now to be found in this country.
In the past very little instruction in the specialized shipbuilding trades has been given in the United States, and the number of men who have served apprenticeship in these trades is small, a great supply of skilled men in these trades coming from Great Britain. There is an imperative need for a supply of men in the ironworkers' trade.
Some instruction must always be given in the shipbuilding plant, but it is possible to give a great deal in the industrial schools, and, as the wages are good, men should be readily attracted to the shipbuilding trades.
While ironworkers' trades consisting of loftsmen, ship-fitters, riveters, chippers, calkers, reamers, bolters, packers, and some others are peculiar to shipbuilding as well as the shipwright's trade, the trades of plumber, pipe fitter, coppersmith, etc. are very materially different in the shipbuilding trades from what they are in the building trades.
On the other hand, it is possible to send instructors from the factories to the school. In several instances in England the manufacturers supplied the schools with instructors and all the necessary material in order to teach women and boys the identical operations which they would be called upon to carry out in the factory. In this way a number of schools combining manufacturing with training were able to supply local factories with boys and women trained in the special operations involved. This plan is also significant and has an important bearing upon the administration of public vocational training.
The question whether industrial schools should make ammunition or equipment pertaining to war service will come up. Having substantial amounts of available equipment, they will doubtless at times be tempted to use their organized day and evening classes for purposes of emergency productive work. In machine-shop schools, for example, the teachers being skilled machinists and the pupils capable of turning out a substantial amount of productive work, inducements to subordinate educational ends to those of an economic nature may be expected. It is therefore suggested that industrial-school authorities resolutely resist all attempts to subordinate their rightful purpose of giving industrial education. It is clear that a certain amount of production is necessary for purposes of education, but it is important that this should never be made a primary purpose in any industrial school. A letter from Director W. C. Smith of the Troy (New York) Central School illustrates the productive work of one school which retains educational value.
A Troy corporation is engaged on a large contract with the government for uniforms. Its shops are taxed to the limit, and it has found it necessary to utilize every available shop in town for making various machines used in cutting cloth for this contract. It has entered into an arrangement whereby our complete machine-shop equipment is turned over to its use under the supervision of our own instructor. Our graduate boys are employed in the shop and are now at work perfecting twelve machines for use in different parts of the country on this contract.
The public vocational schools must face, sooner or later, the question of shop production on a commercial basis. They exist, primarily, to train producers and not to make products. Are the two inconsistent? Perhaps the war service of these schools will bring this debatable issue to a head.
Obviously the industries engaged in the making of automobiles, aëroplanes, machinery, and ammunition have for some time past absorbed the available supply of skilled help. With the emergency of war preparation upon us, we must find ways of pressing thousands of workers into lines of work with which they are almost altogether unfamiliar. Except with boys who are fourteen to sixteen years old, it will be of little avail to think of giving all-round trade training. The labor supply which we now need must be trained immediately and intensively. From what has already been stated it is clear that workers may be trained in three ways: first, in day industrial or technical schools; second, in industrial plants such as have been mentioned in the case of the Westinghouse Company; third, through part-time employment in industry, with part-time attendance in industrial or technical schools.
The industrial-school authorities should send into the factories capable instructors who have had trade experience, in order to learn the needs for trained help and to analyze the trade processes for which men need to be trained. In this way the school may determine whether it can best meet the situation by training the youth in its day schools to go to work in industrial plants upon leaving school—although this is not a very immediate way of meeting the emergency—or whether it would be better to move the classes, so to speak, over to the plant and have the instructors teach a group of unskilled workers on the group-instruction plan. Perhaps the school could perform its best service by giving trade extension courses to those already engaged in productive work. Anyhow, these alternatives must be fully considered.
These instructors or trained experts, when visiting typical yards or plants in a specific industry to learn of the needs for trained help, must be able to reanalyze the trade processes in terms of training as distinct from terms of production, and out of this analysis to draw up suitable schemes for giving such training. The question of whether this training should be given entirely in the school or entirely in the plant or partly in the plant and partly in the school should be left to experts, who know best the possibilities of each of these schemes.
This is no time for industrial schools to stand on their dignity and claim that they can do all that is necessary in their day schools without coöperation with those who employ. It is readily granted that, generally speaking, directors of industrial schools know their job quite well when it comes to giving trade-preparatory training to youth before it enters industry; but at a time when the country needs thousands of workmen we are quite sure that the better plan for training operators and semiskilled workers is directly in the plant itself. In a time of great emergency this intensive, immediate training must be given in large part by the industries themselves within their own plants. They have the equipment, they have the men who need the training; all they lack is the proper instructing force, as they cannot take men away from production for instruction purposes. It follows that the instructors of our schools must give their instruction in the plants or must have the unskilled operatives and helpers come to the school for part-time work.
The present all-day industrial schools, even in normal times, need this direct contact with industry to save themselves from shop methods which savor of manual-training schools.