Let us now try to summarize our conclusions on this intricate question. The first effects of the introduction of labor-saving machinery is to displace particular laborers; these suffer real injury, though they are often reabsorbed in the industrial organism. The social gain is undoubted, for the improved methods lead to lower prices and thus to an increase in the real wages of labor. To the improvement and wider use of machinery we must indeed look for the ultimate relief of the human race from exhausting toil. Says a socialist writer: “On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.... All unintellectual labor, all monotonous, dull labor, all labor that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery. Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or distressing.” If labor today has a complaint to make against the use of machinery, it is that labor has not shared sufficiently in the improvements thus far effected. But the evil here is connected with the inequitable distribution of wealth, not with the methods of its production. In justice labor should share in the technical improvements which characterized the nineteenth century and will revolutionize to a still greater extent the industries of the twentieth. The practical question in this connection is as to the best method for labor to secure its claim to a share in the increased production. One answer, to which we will turn next, is by increasing its efficiency through better industrial education and training.
The subject of industrial education has recently been receiving considerable attention in the United States and the needs and shortcomings of our country in this regard
have been described. Under modern methods of production, with their extreme specialization of labor and extended use of machinery, it is practically impossible for a worker to secure an adequate knowledge of a trade in the actual practice of it. In former days boys acquired training in their trades by the system of apprenticeship under the immediate charge of a master of the craft. The system of apprenticeship has today almost disappeared; boys are taken into shops as helpers, not as apprentices, and receive practically no systematic instruction in their trade, especially in a modern large establishment. In consequence of these facts it is insisted that school instruction should be given to make good the absence of shop practice; that a general system of industrial education should be developed to give our workingmen systematic training in the various trades. The superiority of the opportunities for industrial education on the continent of Europe, especially in Germany, have been frequently emphasized, and their industrial advance has been credited in large measure to this fact. We can probably not approach the subject better than by explaining the systems in these other countries and then comparing them with that of the United States.
Beginning with Germany as the country in which industrial education has received the greatest attention, we find there three different kinds of schools, which we may call the lower, middle, and higher. The lower group includes artisan and specialized trade schools, and is intended to be a substitute for the apprenticeship system. While they have an important influence on the general industrial efficiency of the nation, they concern chiefly the small handicrafts. The middle group comprises the trade schools (gewerbeschulen), of which the most famous are the weaving and dyeing schools at Chemnitz; other branches taught are soap-boiling, milling, building, pottery, etc. These are the schools that provide technical instruction for
the large manufacturing industries, and are consequently of great importance; they train the foremen, superintendents, managers, and heads of establishments rather than the workingmen. The higher group is formed of the technical high schools or technological institutes, where are trained the scientific experts. The importance of the German system lies in the development of the last two groups rather than in provision for the training of the workmen. Germany’s recent industrial advance must be credited to the training of the officers, not the rank and file, in the industrial army, to the development of managerial ability rather than of manual skill.
In England the last twenty years have seen a marvelous development in industrial education, brought about in part by the “made in Germany” agitation. The English system differs from the German in educating working-class boys, while at work in the mill or at the forge, into foremen, managers, etc., mainly by means of evening classes in trade or technical schools. The German system, on the other hand, trained men who already had a superior general education. These schools are regarded as stepping stones for the more ambitious and intelligent young workingmen. They give a practical grasp of the subjects, but do not teach actual processes of manufacture, owing to trade union objections. They thus come between the lower and middle schools in Germany. The higher technical schools also exist and have recently been greatly expanded.
The system of industrial education in the United States may be said to resemble that of Germany more than England in that it supplies industries from above rather than from below, but it is in a very chaotic state as yet. The most important schools are institutes of technology and the technical departments of the universities, but these train men only for the highest positions. Provision for the industrial training of the workingman is almost lacking
except in a few manufacturing centers. Thus there are a few trade schools resembling somewhat those in the Middle German group, as the textile schools at Philadelphia, Lowell, and a few other cities. Lower trade schools are found in New York City, but hardly anywhere else. That there is a distinct need of and demand for instruction of this character is shown by the enormous expansion of correspondence schools, a peculiarly American institution, which endeavor to give the training afforded by the English schools to the more ambitious young artisans.
So far in their industrial development the people of the United States have been immensely aided by two factors: the rich natural resources of the country, and the high quality of the labor. But as we have already seen, the natural resources are being either rapidly exhausted or monopolized. As to the character of the second factor, we may quote from the testimony of a recent careful observer, Dr. A. Shadwell[33] : “The American method of work in the industrial sphere is distinguished by the following features: enterprise, audacity, push, restlessness, eagerness for novelty, inventiveness, emulation, and cupidity. Employers and employed have exhibited the same qualities in their degree.”... But they suffer “from the national defect of want of thoroughness, which arises from the craving for short cuts.” Now that American industries are entering the markets of the world in international competition, it becomes important to correct any faults that will cause us to fall behind. So far the movement for better industrial education through the establishment of trade schools has met two obstacles in this country. The first is the hostility of the trade unions, which fear to see their control of the labor market disturbed by the annual turning out of hundreds or thousands of workers from the trade schools without any especial sympathy with trade union methods or policies. The
other difficulty lies in the satisfaction with prevailing methods, the belief that the American workman without training possesses skill superior to that of his European competitors, and a naïve national self-conceit in all things American. Now that we are for almost the first time in a hundred years measuring our industrial efficiency in foreign markets against our European competitors, we shall be compelled to take stock of all the items that make for industrial supremacy. There seems to be little doubt that when once this is fairly done, the need of a better system of industrial education will be recognized and met.