We come back to the position from which we started in the introduction—the need of securing for the youth of the country adequate supervision up to the age of at least eighteen, appropriate training during that period, and at its conclusion the provision of an opening in some occupation for which special preparation has been given. We have seen that for at any rate a large section of the people these conditions were satisfied during the best days of the gilds, and that they were satisfied in direct proportion to the extent to which the gilds stood for the common interests. With the decay and disappearance of the gilds the training of the youth became a matter of individual bargaining between parent and employer. No authority, standing for the common good, superintended the process. Apprenticeship might be enforced; its efficiency could not be guaranteed. Further, the existence of apprenticeship tended to create a privileged class who resented the intrusion of those who entered a trade by other means. With the coming of the industrial revolution, training itself became more difficult. The large workshop and the division of labour were unfavourable to apprenticeship. Employers wanted to use boys, and not to train them. Rapid progress of invention continually discounted the value of acquired manual skill, and parents could not see at the conclusion of the apprenticeship any prospect of a favourable opening in a skilled trade; while the gradual break-up of the system of supervision bred a spirit of independence among boys which rendered them disinclined to bind themselves for a period of years. Finally, competition, with the urgent need of surviving the struggle of to-day, made it hard for employers to prepare for the future by providing for the training of the future workmen. The industrial system gave no guarantee for the efficiency of the next generation of workers. The old apprenticeship system had broken down.
But in the period of general disintegration there was slowly developing—at first unconsciously, and later with more clearly directed effort—an organization which made for constructive reform. It was called into being as a last resort, and to save the country from the ruin which was threatened by the exploitation of children. Competition demanded the sacrifice of to-morrow to-day; the State, whose interests belong to all time, was driven to forbid the sacrifice. Competition demanded that children of tender years should labour in the mines and the factories, and under conditions that made all health a mockery; the State insisted on a minimum standard of health and safety for its children. The standard, low at first, has steadily been raised. Thus has grown up the regulation of child labour and the Acts relating to factories and workshops. Competition cared nothing for the education of the children; it wanted to use them up and cast them on the waste-heap. The State, recognizing the dangers of an uneducated people, established by slow degrees a system of universal education. So the struggle between the two has gone on, the State only interfering as a last resort and in despair of other means to stop the evil. Throughout its action has been generally beneficial, but the benefits have been limited because that action has been partial and patchy. Much of the expenditure, for example, on education has been wasted just because the education came to an end too soon. The time had come for a more comprehensive study of the situation that should indicate the faults of the existing system.
Such a study has been attempted in the present volume. The task has been comparatively easy, because the evils are generally admitted. What has not hitherto been recognized sufficiently is the fact that these evils are growing, and not in course of removal. The various factors in the process have been examined, and, ignoring the State, they are clearly inadequate, and progressively inadequate, to the task of solving the problem. As a last resort the State remains. If the principles underlying the training of youth are admitted, if out of the various possible forces concerned all with one exception have been proved defective, then we must put our hopes in the one exception. We must enlarge the sphere of influence of the State. How this should be done has been shown in the present chapter.
The principles underlying the proposals have all been drawn from experience, and are founded on the apprenticeship system, but applied with modifications suitable to changed conditions. Under the gild system there were three interests concerned and conjoined—the interests of the master, the interest of journeyman and apprentice, and the interest of the community. Since the gilds have gone these interests have become separate and increasingly antagonistic. For the successful training of the youth of the country the claims of these clashing interests must again be brought together and reconciled. Ultimately and in the long-run they are identical; it is only competition, with its dimmed and narrow vision, that made the cleavage. It is hoped that the proposals outlined in this chapter will point the road towards a final peace. Let us, in conclusion, bring them to the test of the three essentials for which a true apprenticeship system must make adequate provision.
There must be supervision—supervision of conduct, supervision of health. Under the new apprenticeship system the State will be the ultimate authority for the supervision of conduct. Till the age of fifteen the boy will remain subject to the control of the schools. Long experience has demonstrated the beneficent influence exercised by the teachers over the children even under present conditions, when the school career is brought to an end at the age of thirteen or fourteen. There is, therefore, nothing wild in the expectation that, with compulsory attendance extended to the age of fifteen, we shall receive richer and more lasting fruits. For the next three years, the critical period of a boy’s life, with its first experience of the workshop and the sense of independence which comes with earning wages, the supervision of the State will only in part be withdrawn. During these years he will be compelled to attend the half-time school, and so continue under the control of the education authority. Nor is this all. The advisory committee of the Labour Exchange will advise him in the choice of employment, assist him to obtain it, and generally watch over his career. Thus, helped on his journey and surrounded with wise and friendly influences, he will approach the threshold of manhood with such promise of success as good habits and an ordered life may bring.
The State, likewise, will be responsible for the supervision of the boy’s health. Periodic medical inspection will watch and aid his physical development. We have not yet learned to appreciate the full value of this periodic inspection; it is, however, destined to become the most powerful instrument of reform. The ill-nourished child, the delicate child, the child in the early stages of phthisis, the child of negligent parents, the child from the overcrowded or insanitary home—all these, the future weaklings of the nation, we know them now only when the evil has too often outrun the possibility of a cure and it is too late. Under the new conditions we shall detect the evil in its first beginning, while there is yet hope. Medical inspection is also the key to the situation after the boy goes out to work, and for three years he will remain under its control. At the present time we only dimly realize the disastrous effects that come to a boy from the choice of an occupation ill-suited to his strength. We forbid a few forms of work, attempt for the most part ineffectively to limit the hours of employment in a few others, but in our clumsy fashion legislate as a rule for the normal child, and it is the abnormal child that suffers most. Under the new conditions there will be no work for children under the age of fifteen, while for the three following years medical inspection will enable us to legislate for the individual boy, taking into account his physical characteristics. Not only shall we be able to help a boy to avoid making a wrong choice, but we shall be able to remove him as soon as medical inspection shows him unfit for the work. Thus, to the age of eighteen the State has its finger on the pulse of the youth.
Secondly, there must be an adequate provision of training, special and general, accessible to all. Here, again, we are building on the firm rock of solid experience. The elementary schools have proved themselves to be schools for the cultivation of intelligence. With a year or two added to the school life; with the relief from that distracting influence which comes from wage-earning while at school; with the improved methods of teaching and a clearer differentiation of types of school to suit varying types of mind—reforms already under way—we may fairly hope for a general rise in the intelligence of the boys. The half-time school, with its three years’ course, will supply the more specialized training required in the different trades and occupations, while committees of employers will provide the expert criticism essential to success.
Finally, there must be the provision of an opening in some form of employment for which special preparation has been given. The Labour Exchange, the juvenile branch worked in close co-operation with the adult section, will supply the opening, while the technical training will give good guarantee for the adequacy of the preparation. The Elementary School, the Half-time School, the Education Authority, and the Advisory Committee, all acting together, will insure a safe passage from youth to manhood.
The new apprenticeship system is more complex than the old—it lacks something of the picturesqueness of the Middle Ages—but it finds its compensation in an organization at once more flexible and more comprehensive, and therefore better suited to stand the shock of those huge changes in methods of production and methods of living which have been the ungainly offspring of the industrial revolution.