| Workers | Time required |
| Grinding machine operators Lathe hands Planer hands Gear cutter operators Turret lathe operators Screw machine operators Bench hands Milling machine operators Drilling machine operators | 12 to 15 months 6 to 9 months 6 months 6 months 4 to 6 months 3 to 6 months 3 to 6 months 2 to 4 months 2 weeks to 4 months |
The weakness of specialization, with its constant tendency towards the substitution of semi-skilled operatives for trained workmen, lies in its failure to provide a body of workers from whom to recruit the large directive force needed in any scheme of production based on semi-skilled labor. This condition is regarded by many employers with grave concern, and in a few plants apprentice schools designed primarily to train future foremen have been established.
Practically all the foremen in the shops visited had received an all-round training as machinists, and there are few opportunities for promotion open to men who have not a general knowledge of the trade. On the other hand, such general knowledge is only one of the requisites for advancement. Others are initiative, resourcefulness, tact, self-control, ability to get along with men, and a disposition to subordinate personal interests to the interests of the business. To these should be added the quality of patience, for there must be vacancies before there can be promotions, and vacancies among the better positions are not frequent. Ten of the establishments visited, employing a total working force of over 5,000 men, reported but eight vacancies among foremen's positions over a period of one year. These same establishments had in their employ a total of 618 all-round machinists and tool makers. Assuming that only the machinists and tool makers were eligible for promotion, the mathematical chance per man of becoming a foreman during the year was about one in 77.
Other occupations studied in detail were pattern making, molding, core making, blacksmithing, and boiler making. Pattern making offers the most interesting work and the highest wages among the metal trades, but the total number of American born pattern makers in the city does not exceed seven or eight hundred, so the field of employment is relatively limited. Molding and core making, in which between 4,000 and 5,000 men are engaged, have practically become foreign trades. Less than 20 per cent of the molders in the city were born in this country. These trades offer few opportunities for employment to boys of native birth. Somewhat similar conditions exist in the blacksmithing trade. Changed methods of production have largely done away with the old-time blacksmith, who survives only in horse-shoeing and repair shops. The proportion of native blacksmiths is steadily declining, and it is unlikely that any considerable number of boys from the public schools will enter the trade. The boiler making trade employs relatively few men, the total number of native born boiler makers at the time of the last census being less than 600. The trade seems to be at a standstill. The increase during the previous decade was less than five per cent against a total population increase of 46 per cent. The average earnings per hour for these trades in the establishments visited by members of the Survey Staff are shown in Table 21.
TABLE 21.—AVERAGE EARNINGS PER HOUR IN PATTERN MAKING, MOLDING,
CORE MAKING, BLACKSMITHING, AND BOILER MAKING[TableList]
| Workers | Average earnings Per Hour |
| Pattern makers Skilled molders Semi-skilled molders Skilled core makers Semi-skilled core makers Blacksmiths Boiler makers | .44 .39 .27 .39 .27 .33 .32 |
The findings and recommendations as to training emphasize the fact that the vast majority of boys who become workers in the metal trades leave school by the time they are 15 with at most a common school education, so that any vocational training before they go to work must be given between the ages of 12 and 15 and before the end of the eighth grade. The report points out the impossibility of effective vocational instruction in elementary schools on account of the prohibitive cost per pupil for both equipment and teaching, and endorses the recently adopted junior high school plan. This form of organization has the great advantage of concentrating in large groups the boys who are old enough to make a beginning in prevocational training, and through the departmental system of teaching offers facilities for differentiation of courses to meet their varying needs.
Whatever their cultural value, the present manual training courses in woodwork have little relation to the requirements of any metal working trade, except pattern making, in which some of the same tools are used. No manual training work in metal is offered in the elementary and junior high schools.
The course recommended for the junior high school lays especial emphasis on applied mathematics, mechanical drawings, practice in assembling and taking apart machines, and the utilization of the shop as a laboratory for teaching industrial science. The report maintains that the object of such a course should be the development of industrial intelligence through the application of mathematical and mechanical principles to the solution of concrete problems, rather than the teaching of specific operations and skill in the use of tools. In mechanical drawing the ability to understand and interpret drawings should be given more importance than the ability to make drawings. Few workmen are ever called on to draw, while the ability to read plans and sketches is always in demand. It is also recommended that boys who do not expect to take a full high school course or who intend to leave at the end of the compulsory period should devote at least a period each week to the study of economic and working conditions in industrial and commercial occupations.