“The chief cause of the ‘lumping’ system is that, owing to the disappearance of apprentices, a good workman in any trade is becoming a rarity. This leads to the lumping system in two ways: first, there are few workmen who know how to do more than one or two things; second, a vast army of inferior workmen are drifting about who cannot command good wages, and consequently have to work upon the cheapest class of work, and these are the only men whom the sub-contractor can afford to employ. According to old master-carpenters and masons, the disappearance of apprentices accounts for the new state of affairs. One of the best carpenters in the city, who owns a shop and does a large business, said: ‘It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the race of good workmen is dying out, and that were it not for the immigration of foreign workmen we should be at a loss for men to do even the commonest jobs. The best foreign workmen do not come here at all, finding enough to do at home, so that those we do find are not such workmen as we had twenty years ago; but at least they are better than the men who have failed to learn a trade here. The newspapers say that men do not know their trades nowadays because there is no such thing as apprenticeship. There is no such thing as a legal apprenticeship bond between a boy more than sixteen years of age and an employer; consequently a boy who is taught something useful in a shop, will learn where he can get half a dollar more a week in some other place. A boy will not stay in a shop more than a year without pay; we have to pay them for allowing themselves to be taught a trade. As boys are usually not worth their salt in a carpenter shop, we do without them. The consequence is that boys pick up a trade in a superficial way instead of learning it.’”
[9] “Heredity: A Psychological Study of its Phenomena, Laws, Causes and Consequences,” p. 1. Th. Ribot, 1875.
[10] Quoted by Ribot.
[11] “Illustrations of Heredity,” by J. R. Dunlap.
[12] Quoted by Ribot.
[13] Ribot on “Heredity,” pp. 86, 87.
[14] Journal of Mental Science, January, 1881.
[15] Dr. McGraw, “Address on Heredity and Marriage,” pp. 12 and 15, quoted by Dr. Miles.
[16] Quoted from “Diseases of Modern Life,” by B. W. Richardson, M.D. D. Appleton & Co., 1877, pp. 213 and 214.
[17] “A Sober View of Temperance,” by Rev. Daniel Merriam, Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct., 1831.