Boy Labour and Apprenticeship

by Reginald A. Bray

Table III., with its percentage of 51 parents and 42 boys engaged in trades and industries, presents a pleasing appearance, but the bulk of the trades concerned belong to the tailoring and other industries where sweating is rife, where the skill required is of a low order, and the wages small and often below the level of bare subsistence. The boys learn something, are frequently employed with their fathers, and have a more or less permanent outlook, though within the horizon of that outlook is seldom included the vision of a living wage. They in general do not form part of the class which finds its way into the ranks of that miscellaneous unskilled labour whose chief characteristic is casual employment.

Ignoring this table, and taking the table for all London, we find again the great disproportion of boys and parents. There are two ways in which the boys may learn. They may become indentured apprentices, or, engaged only by the week, though sometimes still termed apprentices, they may enter the workshop, and take what chance is afforded them of “picking up” the mysteries of the trade.

(a) Indentured Apprenticeship.—Apprenticeship is of little importance in London; the system is rapidly becoming obsolete. Whether this is desirable is a matter of opinion; that it is a fact cannot be gainsaid. All evidence is unanimous in support of this conclusion. In 1906 a special committee was appointed by the London County Council to make inquiries into the question, and, after careful investigation, reported that “in London the old system of indentured apprenticeship has for many years been falling into decay. In the majority of the industries it has almost entirely disappeared; in others it is occasionally found existing in a haphazard and highly unsatisfactory manner; while in only a few trades can it be said to be the commonly recognized way of entering the profession.”[135] There are in London various charities, with an income of about £24,000 a year, which, in accordance with the terms of their trusts, might be used for purposes of apprenticeship; “but not more than a third of the income has been devoted to this purpose.” “The fact that so small a fraction of the income has been devoted to apprenticeship indicates that the trustees have not found it an easy task to find candidates anxious to be indentured to one of the skilled trades.”[136] “The recurring note,” says Mr. Charles Booth, “throughout the whole of the industrial volumes of the present inquiry is that the system of apprenticeship is either dead or dying.”[137] The numerous letters to the Press, the wealth of speeches on the matter, the sundry public meetings presided over by all manner of persons, from the Lord Mayor downwards, all voice the same opinion. It is needless to labour the question; we may take it as an accepted fact that in London indentured apprenticeship is obsolescent, and the system itself of negligible value as a factor in the training of youths in the process of skilled trades.

(b) Picking up a Trade.—Here a boy enters a workshop, and takes his chance of learning the trade from watching and assisting the men. The employer is under no agreement to give him instruction—least of all, to make an all-round craftsman of him. The boy rarely acquires more than a certain dexterity in the performance of a single operation; and, however proficient he may become in that operation, his general intelligence and skill suffer from a narrow and exclusive specialization. The system and consequences are dealt with at length in the Report of the London County Council already mentioned. The importance of the problem must be the justification for a long quotation:

“The high wages a lad can earn as an errand-boy ... are more attractive than the low wages associated with an industrial training. Earning looms larger in his imagination than the laborious and less remunerative learning.... Even if, on leaving school, he obtains employment in a workshop, his prospects may not be materially improved. As an errand-boy running in and out of the workshop, if possessed of aptitude and sharpness, he may in a haphazard fashion pick up a smattering of the trade. If he is taken into the shop as a learner, he has little chance of getting an all-round training. He is frequently out of work, and even when employed seldom learns more than a single operation. The Advisory Committee of the London County Council Shoreditch Technical Institute[138] recently held an exhaustive inquiry on the subject, and some of the conclusions are so germane to the present question that they merit quotation. ‘It is thus possible,’ they write, ‘for a boy to be at one branch of a trade for a few months only, and when bad trade intervenes he is thrown out of employment, and frequently finds himself at twenty years of age without a definite knowledge of any craft whatever, and he swells the ranks of the unemployed. We have it on the authority of foremen, employers, apprentices, and parents, that very little opportunity exists, even in big houses, for a boy to learn his trade thoroughly; indeed, we have had students who have been in a workshop as apprentices for three or four years who could not make a small drawer, and in many cases who could not square up true or make the usual joints; and in the woodworking trade their knowledge of drawing when they come to us is practically nil. It is a rare thing to find a young workman who can attack any branch of his trade successfully. It frequently occurs that, in consequence of extensive subdivision of labour and excessive competition, a man or boy is set to do one thing—e.g., music-stools, overmantels, chair-legs, sideboards—all the time. It is true the man or boy becomes skilled in one direction, but correspondingly narrow in a true appreciation of his trade. It is also a frequent occurrence that a master who has a job on hand which is slightly out of the usual run finds it impossible to put it in the hands of his usual staff. Moreover, when work of delicate design and construction has to be made from specified drawings, it is extremely difficult to obtain men who can proceed with the work on their own responsibility. Not only do these remarks apply to the woodcrafts generally, but they apply with equal force to such work as upholstery (both stuffing and drapery), to metal-work, and to carving. In connection with the latter subject, it is a rare thing indeed for carvers to design a carcass in the rough, and then to see whether the proposed carved portion is in harmony with the whole—whether the said carving be too much in relief, too flat, too expansive, or altogether out of character with the general work. It is notorious that good polishers and furniture decorators are exceedingly rare, and many a high-class manufacturer has his goods spoiled on account of bad polish and decorative treatment.’”[139] It must be remembered that this last quoted opinion is not the opinion of the amateur, but the informed opinion of representative employers.

The woodwork and furniture trades are not peculiar in the characteristic of inadequate training. “We have reason to believe,” continues the Report, “that if a similar inquiry were made into other trades, the same unsatisfactory picture would be disclosed. Either the training is one-sided, or there is no training at all. The consequences are sufficiently obvious. The skilled trades are, we fear, recruited in the main by immigrants outside London. In many trades the Londoner is at a discount. Acquainted as he is with but one or two operations of his industry, if he loses his situation, it is only with the greatest of difficulty that he can find another. Mr. Charles Booth states that ‘with carpenters and joiners, brick-layers, carriage builders, engineers, smiths, and saddlers, the percentages of heads of families born out of London range from 51 to 59,’ An inquiry made of the Technical Board of the London County Council on the Building Trades in 1858 showed that ‘41 typical firms in various branches of the building trades having 12,000 employés had only 80 apprentices and 143 learners, instead of 1,600, which would have been the normal proportion.’ The same Report mentions that ‘among the foremen and operatives who have come before us, not one stated that he was born or trained in London.’ In these trades the better positions go inevitably to the country-bred man, with his all-round training. In the docks alone does the Londoner hold his own. An inquiry there showed that among the dock-labourers proper more than 72 per cent. were born in London—a result not calculated to excite any very solid satisfaction. These facts should arouse serious apprehension concerning the future of the London-bred citizen. We cannot view with equanimity his relegation to lower positions, while the better places are given to better-trained immigrants. We are not prepared to admit that the Londoner is, on the average, inherently inferior either in intelligence or manual dexterity to his country-born neighbour.”[140]

These quotations indicate clearly the general aspects of the situation. They show the small prospects boys enjoy who enter a skilled trade in London. Parents are not blind to the condition of affairs, and it is not unnatural on their part to allow the boys to go out as errand-boys, where at least the immediate earnings are larger and the hope of advancement not much more discouraging.

2. Clerical and Commercial Occupations.—Including under this head commercial and professional occupations, and general or local government, we find in Table I., the type of a working-class district, 6½ per cent. of parents and 8 per cent. of boys; in Table II., the type of the suburbs, 30 per cent. of parents, and 16½ per cent. of boys; in Table III., typical of the East End, 4 per cent. of parents, and 6 per cent. of boys; in Table IV., typical of London as a whole, 13 per cent. of parents, and 10 per cent. of boys. In the school returns no boy was placed under these headings unless he appeared in the column “Skilled Work.” In judging of these results it must be borne in mind that the better positions fall to those who have had at least a secondary education. Nevertheless, clever boys, who attend evening schools, have some prospects of advancement. One feature in the returns was the large number of boys who were apparently employed with their fathers. In many instances boys obtain their positions as the result of examination. This is true of several banks, assurance companies, railway companies, and is becoming the general practice in the Civil and Municipal Service. Many of these examinations are within the standard of attainment reached by the cleverer boys in the elementary schools. The boys at their place of employment are taught sufficient to enable them to do the work allotted them. This is often of a specialized character; and without further education they cannot expect to escape from the lowest ranks of clerks. If well conducted, they can probably obtain a permanent position when manhood is reached, or, at any rate, are not discharged because they have become men. Change in the methods of business, or failure of the concern, may entail dismissal; and after dismissal a new position is not easily obtained. But the lower ranks of the clerical profession are ill paid, and the need to present a good appearance makes serious inroads on the meagre stipend. Unless the boy continues his education and means to rise, his outlook is not very encouraging. He has, however, the advantage of supervision, of relatively short hours, and enjoys the possibilities of attendance at evening schools. In spite of what is often said to the contrary, taking things as they are, he has the best prospects of those included in the returns. The fact that so large a proportion of boys coming from the suburbs is found in this class would seem to indicate that the more thoughtful parents share this opinion.

(c) The Passage to Manhood.

The tables quoted on pp. 115-118, and founded on school returns, refer only to the first occupations of boys as they leave school. It is unfortunate that no figures exist which trace year by year the later careers of the boys. All persons, however, who have any intimate knowledge of the subject agree that the boys repeatedly move in an almost aimless fashion from one situation to another.