Boy Labour and Apprenticeship

by Reginald A. Bray

§ 3. SUMMARY.

We are now in a position to summarize the achievements and the defects of the contribution of the State towards the creation of a true apprenticeship system. Its machinery of regulation has removed the worst abuses of child labour, and in certain departments of industry protects, with some degree of success, the health of the young persons engaged. Its enterprise in the field of education is providing supervision over the health and conduct of the boy till he reaches the age of fourteen, while for the young person it offers opportunities of longer supervision and technical training.

If much has been done, much more remains undone. Regulation still leaves rampant many of the evils of child labour. Some two-thirds of the boys as they leave school enter occupations where regulation hardly exists. State enterprise for all practical purposes exerts no supervision over lads between the ages of fourteen and eighteen—the most important epoch of their lives. Technical training, and even the continuance of general education, are possible only for a favoured few, and for the present there is no State provision of an opening.

These are grave defects, and apprenticeship of to-day stands condemned unless it can be shown that one or other of the remaining factors supply what the State has failed to give.

II.

The Contribution of Philanthropy.

The second of the general forces, as distinguished from the individual and special influences of the home and the workshop, which may make some contribution towards the apprenticeship of to-day must be sought among the varied religious and philanthropic associations. While we could not expect from these bodies any assistance in the work of technical training, we might hope to find in their midst conditions which make for the better supervision and control of the lads who have left school.

Beginning with the more distinctly religious associations, we find among them practical unanimity of opinion. One and all confess sadly that they are unable to keep in touch with the boys after they have gone out to work. For the tens of thousands of schoolboys who attend Sunday-school there are only hundreds of lads on the roll of Bible-classes. The sudden change from the status of schoolboy to the status of wage-earner, which for the majority severed all connection with the education authority, has even more decisively brought to an end the supervision of church and chapel.

The miscellaneous associations represented by clubs, lads’ brigades, boy scouts, and the like, have all been called into existence for the express purpose of exerting some measure of control over that transition period of life which separates the boy from the man. How many lads between the ages of fourteen and eighteen come within the sphere of influence it is not possible to say with any exactness. The Twentieth Century League estimated in 1903 that in London about 27,780 boys were connected with institutions of this character, and we shall see later that there are in London about 120,000 boys between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.

It would be no less difficult to weigh the value of the work done. Existing as they do on a voluntary basis, and free from all element of compulsion, such supervision as they exert must take the form of tactful guidance. Their success or failure depends less on the machinery and more on the personal qualities of the manager. The wide and admirable influence of the best clubs is the triumph, not of the system, but of the exceptional individual. Exceptional individuals are, it must be remembered, exceptional, and an organization which depends on their presence is necessarily limited in the extent of its operations. We cannot therefore look to these associations to meet adequately the call for supervision.