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EXCHANGE

STUDIES IN ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE

Edited by the Hon. W. PEMBER REEVES,

Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

No. 39 in the Series of Monographs by Writers connected
with the London School of Economics and Political Science.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING

NDUSTRIAL TRAINING,

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE
CONDITIONS PREVAILING IN LONDON

N. B. DEARLE, M.A.,

Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford j Shaw

Research Student of the London School

of Economics and Political Science,

1 907-9*

LONDON

P.S. KING & SON

ORCHARD HOUSE
WESTMINSTER

1914

PREFACE

THIS book has gradually grown to its present
scope out of an enquiry into which I originally entered
as Shaw Student of the London School of Economics.
A previous investigation into the problems of unem-
ployment in the London Building Trades had im-
pressed upon me the great importance of the ques-
tion of training, and led me to start to examine it
in relation to this industry. It soon became obvious,
however, that the investigation required to cover a
far wider field, and, as its subject-matter broadened,
its title — mercifully — narrowed, till what began as
Modern Methods of Industrial Training in the Lon-
don Building Trades took final shape as Industrial

I have attempted to describe in my opening
chapter the actual methods of enquiry which I
adopted ; but there is one point that requires to be
emphasized here. This is that the book is mainly
a description of the methods and conditions prevail-
ing in London. I have tried, indeed, to compare and
contrast them with those of other cities ; but in the
main it is an investigation of London, or rather of
what is known nowadays as Greater London.

vi PREFACE

This includes not only the County Area, but those
surrounding districts which really combine with it
to form a single whole. Its total population is just
over 7,250,000, or rather more than one-fifth of
the whole population of England and Wales.

In applying to other places, however, the results
of an enquiry into London conditions, there are
two questions which have to be answered. First,
are the trades of London sufficiently varied and
representative for the purpose ? Here, with certain
reservations, an affirmative reply can be given.
It is true that a few large industries, notably coal-
mining, the conversion of metals and the textiles
are almost non-existent ; but apart from them,
London practises a very large number of trades, and,
even in proportion to its size, has a greater variety
of employments than almost any other English
city with the possible exception of Birmingham.
On this point, therefore, a satisfactory answer is
possible.

Secondly, do the methods of London fairly repre-
sent those which generally prevail ? To a great
extent, as I have found it necessary to emphasize
more than once, the special acuteness of London
problems is not due so much to causes that are in
operation there and nowhere else as to the fact that
they are found in it in a more extreme form and to a
more marked degree. Thus what has been said of
the decline of Formal Apprenticeship in the Capital,
by no means holds good of other places. The mix-

PREFACE vii

ture of methods, again, is in few other towns so
extreme as it is in London. Still it is equally true
that similar tendencies are in existence almost every-
where, though they have not been carried so far.
London, therefore, appears to exhibit not the aver-
age, but the extreme, form of modern conditions,
and this, in addition to its size and the variety of its
industries, gives its methods of Industrial Training
their very great importance. Modern problems
have been developed most fully there, and their
complications are the greatest. Consequently the
difficulties of other places are the same, only less
formidable, the remedies similar, but more simple.
In conclusion, I wish to thank most heartily all
those whose generous help and assistance has been
most ungrudgingly given to me. To specify them
individually would be impossible, for their name
veritably would be legion ; but there are a few to
whom I wish to accord individual mention. First
of all, I would express very sincere gratitude to
Professor Lees-Smith, M.P., under whom I have
worked at the London School of Economics in the
preparation and writing of this book, and to whose
guidance and supervision I owe much ; and to Mr.
L. L. Price, Treasurer of Oriel College, Oxford, who
has helped me in ways too numerous to mention,
and not least as a ready listener to many, and, I fear,
long-winded discourses. I have also to thank most
cordially those who have read and criticized in manu-
script various parts of the proofs : Dr. Lilian Knowles,

viii PREFACE

Reader in Economic History in the University of
London, who has in many other ways also given
most kind help and interest ; Mr. Cyril Jackson,
L.C.C. ; Mr. W. H. Beveridge, Director of Labour
Exchanges and Unemployment Insurance ; and Mr.
R. H. Tawney. Nor must I omit to mention and
acknowledge the help of others, of Mr. B. M. Headi-
car, Librarian of the London School of Economics,
for much assistance in getting the book through the
press ; of Mr. Kenneth Cotton, who prepared the index ;
and of Miss Marion Meadowcroft, who converted a
particularly vile and involved manuscript into some
of the clearest typing it has been my pleasure to use.
To them and to all the others, who have so fully and
freely helped me, I desire to express, however
faultily, the gratitude that I feel, and to express also
the hope that the results may be not altogether
unworthy of their kindness.

Finally, great as is my debt to them, I feel it is
equalled and even surpassed by that which I owe
to the London School of Economics and to All Souls
College, Oxford. From the former I received the
gift of a Shaw Research Studentship, founded by
Mrs. Bernard Shaw, to whom also I wish to acknow-
ledge my debt, for the purpose of encouraging
enquiries such as I have tried to make this. I can
safely say that this book could not have come into
existence at all but for the School, and it now honours
me by including it in its series of studies in Economics
and Political Science. To it I am indebted for a

PREFACE ix

great deal in this connection and for still more in
other ways.

To All Souls I owe more than I think I shall ever
be able to express, and more certainly than I can
venture to try to express here. It is only of the
present book, therefore, that I wish to speak now.
For certainly, were it not for the Fellowship in
Economics, to which I was elected in 1909, it could
never have reached the dimensions it has done. It
is through the College, therefore, that I was able to
obtain the time and the leisure to treat the matter
even as fully as I have done.

It only remains for me to leave this book, now
that it at last sees the light, to the kindness of
its readers. Its appearance is only after too many
delays, and I can but acknowledge the patience
and forbearance of those concerned. I can only
hope that it may prove to have justified them.

NORMAN DEARLE.

THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS,
June, 1914.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

PREFACE ....... v

I THE PROBLEM STATED . . i

I. Scope of the Problem.
II. Trades and Industries of London.

II DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION . 18

III EXISTING CONDITIONS IN LONDON . . 33

IV REGULAR SERVICE ...... 56

V LEARNING BY MIGRATION .... 90

VI FOLLOWING-UP, OR LEARNING FOLLOWING UPON

LABOURING . . . . . . .116

VII THE PICKING-UP OF SEMI-SKILLED WORK . 141

VIII VALUE OF DIFFERENT METHODS . . . 165

IX THE START IN A TRADE ..... 191

X CONDITIONS OF ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 214

XI AT WORK IN THE SHOP ..... 256

XII THE SCHOOL AND THE SHOP .... 279

XIII TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON . 301

XIV SOME PROBLEMS OF RECRUITING . , . 344

xii CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

XV THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR . . . 369

(a) The Blind Alley. (b) The Partial Blind Alley.

(d] Conclusion.

XVI INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT . 414

I. The Influence of Industrial Training upon Un-
employment.

II. The Influence of Unemployment upon Industrial
Training.

(a) The Influence of the Long Period Demand for
Labour : (i) On the Other Causes of Unemploy-
ment, (ii) On Boy Labour and Industrial Training.

(b) The Existing State of Employment : (i)
Among Men, (ii) Among Boys.

III. Concluding Summary.

XVII EXISTING AGENCIES AND CURRENT PROPOSALS . 453

XVIII THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE AND THEIR SATISFAC-
TION ........ 496

I. The Problems.

II. The Needs of the Situation : (a) The Organization
of Boy Labour, (b) Industrial Education and General
Education in relation thereto.

III. Scheme in Outline and Summary.

IV. Conclusion.

APPENDICES : —

I Forms used and Questions asked in Approaching
Employers, Foremen, Trade Union Officials
and Others 555

II Tables Illustrating in Detail the Trade Distri-
bution of the Population in London and in the
Rest of England and Wales . . . 558

III Tables Illustrating the Attendance at Trade

and Continuation Schools in London . . 563

CONTENTS xiii

APPENDICES, continued — PAGE

IV Tables Illustrating the Changes in the Percent-
ages of Unemployment from 1870-1909 . 568

V The Telegraph Messenger and the Vanboy . 571

VI National Insurance and Boy Labour . . 577

VII By-Laws in Force in London Dealing with the
Employment of Children and with Street

Trading by Young Persons .... 580

VIII The most Important Clauses of the Children (Em-
ployment and School Attendance) Bill of 1914 583

INDEX ......... 589

CHAPTER I.
THE PROBLEM STATED.

(I) SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM.
(II) TRADES AND INDUSTRIES OF LONDON.

I. Scope of the Problem. — Scope of the Problem of Industrial Train-

ing— Its Meaning — Occupations covered by the Term Indus-
trial— Relation of the Problem to the Apprenticeship Question
— Difficulty of using the phrase Industrial Training — Problem
a Threefold One — First Main Question : How Boys learn trades
— Second Main Question : How Boys are taught trades — Third
Main Question : How Boys do not learn trades — Method of
Treatment to be followed in the rest of the book' — Method of
Enquiry and Assistance received.

II. Trades and Industries of London. — Numbers engaged in the
Chief Industries of London — Difficulties of Making an
Accurate Estimate — How Overcome ? — Size of the Chief In-
dustrial Groups : in London, in Greater London, in the Rest
of England and Wales — Industries which do not exist in London
— -Industries which are unusually large there — Commercial and
Distributive Work — The Different Kinds of Employment and
the Numbers engaged in them — General Features of London
Industry Summarized.

I. SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM.

THE subject of Industrial Training is one which can be
given either a wide or a narrow scope, and therefore it is
necessary to begin by defining clearly the ground which
our treatment of it will cover. For it is one that borders
upon, and frequently overlaps, a variety of others. Training
for a trade involves considerations of the methods by which
it is recruited. Still more does it necessitate enquiry into
the instruction given in Trade or Technical Schools, since
this at present plays an important part in it. Above all,

1 B

IV /

? 5 54 £; ( •' :• ^ INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

it is so inextricably interwoven with the question of Boy
Labour, that the two problems have to be considered
together. For those who deal with Industrial Training are
not unconcerned with its failures and their causes, whether
these occur because the attempt to acquire a trade is unsuc-
cessful or because it is never made at all. The matter, the re-
fore, cannot be limited to its narrowest sense or regarded
simply as a question of how various occupations are actually
taught to the boys who enter them ; for an adequate treat-
ment of it requires that full account shall be taken of its
various antecedents and accompaniments.

In the first place, therefore, the meaning of the term
industrial requires definition. Roughly speaking, it covers
the manual workers generally, and so coincides fairly
closely with the distinction between Industry and Commerce
in the wider sense. For most purposes, therefore, we shall
exclude from the enquiry men and boys engaged in profes-
sional and commercial employments, and in the literary
and artistic professions, in the services — naval, military
and police — and in the mercantile marine. Nor will it deal
directly with the actual training of those who are described
in the census as dealers, shop-keepers, shop-assistants and
the like.

These latter have, nevertheless, an important influence
upon the general problem in so far as they employ as boys
those whom they cannot absorb as men, or so far as they
find openings in adult processes for those who have been
otherwise engaged during boyhood. This is also true of the
lower ranks of commercial occupations, and notably of
office and messenger boys. Another interesting case arises
where, as with bakers, one class of workmen is engaged in
wholesale manufacture and another in retail distribution.
As a whole, however, this book deals primarily with what
may be called the manual workers engaged in industry,
but to the term industry, a wide meaning is given.

Secondly, within the trades concerned, the artisan and
semi-skilled workers must be distinguished, both from those
who fill the higher posts, and from the so-called unskilled

THE PROBLEM STATED. 3

workers. With the former this book is not directly con-
cerned and will not, therefore, cover the training of the
employers themselves, their salaried staff and the various
technical experts engaged in the work, or that of foremen 1
and clerks of the works. To this, however, there are certain
exceptions. There is the question whether the training
given to our artisans in the workshop or Trade School will
enable them to rise to fill, and to fill efficiently, such higher
posts, and how far existing methods provide a sufficiency
of men for the latter.

Again, unskilled labour will receive a less full treat-
ment, since what it requires is not so much training as the
development of good industrial habits, steadiness, regularity
and the like. Much work, however, is loosely referred to
as such, which on examination has to be ranked as semi-
skilled ; and in relation to certain sides of the problem
the question of the recruiting of this type of worker is of
great importance. When we deal, moreover, with the rea-
sons for the presence of unskilled labour and for its presence
in such large and often excessive quantities, we reach one
of the most vital problems of all — namely the causes, extent
and results of the failure of our existing methods. Above
all, holding, as one must, the view that such labour is, and
is likely to remain, an essential part of our industrial system,
it is necessary to enquire carefully how such positions are
filled and by whom, how they actually are fitted to fill them,
and how they can best be so fitted.

Now, in dealing with the matter on these lines, one is
struck by the very significant extent to which the term
apprentice actually survives to-day ; and this suggests
that the frequent and confident assertion that " Apprentice-
ship is dead " may be the result of a too hasty diagnosis.
This matter will be treated more fully later, but at the
present day the term is often used to denote practically all

1 It is necessary to distinguish between the general or " walking"
foreman and the foreman at the head of a department in a large
firm, and the " working " foreman in a small shop who overlooks
the men and works at the bench at the same time.

-1 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

boys who are learning a trade, whether they are working
under an Indenture or not. The problem is thus really
that of Apprenticeship considered in a wider sense, and,
when so defined, covers the extent of its survival and the
alternative devices by which it has been replaced. Hence
it is a sufficient illustration of the extension of the enquiry
to say that it is coincident with what is usually known as
the Apprenticeship Question.

In one respect the title of this book is an unfortunate
one. The word " Training " naturally carries with it the
idea of certain things, and especially that of systematic
regulations for imparting knowledge. To talk of Industrial
Training or its methods, therefore, suggests the careful
organization of teaching. Outside of a few trades, however,
one of the characteristics of modern London is the absence
of any system or uniformity. Usually a trade can be learnt
and taught in a variety of ways, and in individual cases the
work is often very carefully done. But on a more general
view the existing state of affairs is the very reverse of what
the idea of training conveys. The conditions under which
boys are engaged and paid often render systematic methods
impossible ; and so the workman, instead of being taught
his business, may rather be said to " get to know " it, or
in the better-known phrase " he just picks it up."

The use of the expression Industrial Training, therefore,
contains no necessary reference to any systematic teaching.
What will be done, will be to describe how the boy of to-day
starts in life, and how he " gets to know " a trade. In
so doing, it will be necessary to point out the difference
between the results flowing from this " getting to know "
and those that are attained in such trades as possess a
proper system in the true sense. Present conditions involve,
moreover, a further very considerable amount of " not
getting to know," and, therefore, to the main subject of
" how boys learn trades " must be added the scarcely less
important one of " how boys do not learn trades."

The problem, in fact, is threefold. First, there is that
of how boys learn, which covers the different modes in

THE PROBLEM STATED. 5

which they enter an occupation, and the form of industrial
engagement under which they work. This involves ques-
tions such as Regular Service in one firm versus Migration,
the apprentice and the improver, " picking up/' working
as a mate and so on. It also considers the question of
whether any contract to teach is actually entered into, and
if so, what are its conditions, and also whether it still guar-
antees actual teaching or merely gives the " opportunity
to learn."

Secondly, there is the problem of how boys are taught.
The distinction between this and the preceding one may
not be very clear, but it is nevertheless of some importance.
For having discovered the general terms and conditions
under which a boy sets out to acquire a trade, we then
have to consider how these are carried out in detail. The
former are important and will vary in value according as
they are adapted to the trade concerned ; but the way in
which they are actually carried out is of equal moment.
Under this heading, therefore, are included the different
arrangements made for teaching, the part played in them
by the employer, the foreman and the boy's fellow-workmen,
the relation of the shop to the Trade School, and various
questions regarding wages, hours and other conditions.
This second problem, indeed, is very closely allied to the
first and often their results vary together. But this is
not always so. For, on the one hand, the actual teaching
may be excellent where there is no definite system, and
on the other regular Apprenticeship may be used by a
certain type of firm as a means of exploitation.

Moreover, existing methods have to be judged, not only
by their value to the boys who actually do fit themselves
for definite occupations,1 but also by the proportion which
these bear to the whole boyhood of the nation. Hence a
third problem arises, as to how, and why, boys do not learn
trades, and this is what is known as the problem of Boy

1 The term occupation may be used to denote all employments,
of whatever level of skill, which give a permanent livelihood at a
man's wage. \

6 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Labour. It is a necessary part of that of Industrial Train-
ing, because the effectiveness of any system must be judged
by its results as a whole, that is, not only by those it does
train more or less successfully, but by those whom it fails
to train at all. We have to discover, therefore, the extent
to which existing methods cause, or fail to prevent, a portion
of each generation from growing up without either a trade
or a settled occupation of any kind, and the character and
causes of this wastage. This subject, therefore, includes
not only Blind Alley employments which come to an end
after the close of boyhood, but the shifting of boys casually
from one unskilled job to another, the putting of them to
unsuitable employments, and the generally wasteful methods
of recruiting a great number of trades. •

To deal with this threefold problem, therefore, the follow-
ing method will be adopted. After the more important
terms have been defined, the existing state of affairs in
London will be briefly described, with particular reference
to its special peculiarities and difficulties. Each of the
chief methods of learning a trade will then be separately
dealt with, the area which it covers will be considered, and
its value estimated. Coming to the second problem, the
ways of selecting a job and making a start in life will lead
naturally to the actual means of teaching adopted in different
workshops. This again will be followed by the work of
continued education, whether in trade, technical or ordinary
evening schools, and by a brief consideration of the in-
fluence exerted by the increased use of machinery and by
the influx of provincial workmen into London. After this
I shall deal with the problems of Boy Labour. Finally, in
surveying the whole, I shall consider the relation of methods
of training to Unemployment, and summarize both the
work of existing agencies and the chief proposals now before
the public. Future policy can then be considered in refer-
ence to its two main lines of development — the Organization
of Boy Labour and improved Industrial Education.

My enquiry has been confined to the training of boys
and no attempt has been made to deal with that of girls.

THE PROBLEM STATED. 7

For with the latter so many considerations enter which are
not present in the case of the former, and a woman's con-
nexion with industry differs so much from that of a man,
that it seemed wiser to confine oneself to the one sex. The
women's question, I am aware, is no less urgent and equally
needs investigation : but in many respects it is a second
separate problem rather than a branch of the same one ;
and to consider the two together would only create confu-
sion.

In carrying out this enquiry I usually adopted a method
that was somewhat as follows. In each case I took, to
begin with, certain trades or groups of trades, and obtained
interviews with as many members of them as time per-
mitted— employers, foremen, representatives of the work-
men and the boys themselves. It was thus possible to get
at least a fair sample of each and of the method or methods
employed in it. For this purpose I drew up a series of
questions, copies of which are printed in an appendix,
which enabled me to give those from whom I was seeking
information a clearer view of my objective. The Trade
Schools and Technical Institutes gave me my best oppor-
tunity of getting into touch with the boys themselves :
and thanks to the courtesy of Principals and Teachers, I
was able to interview a number who were actually engaged
in learning different industries. I also carried my enquiry
into the side of the subject that is connnected with the work
of the School Care Committees and with the placing of
boys in employment through Labour Exchanges and other
organizations.

In conclusion, I desire to record my most sincere thanks
for the uniform kindness and courtesy with which I have
been received on all sides, and for the immense amount
of trouble that has been taken on my behalf. Above all,
for the way in which I was received by employers of labour
and their foremen, I can never be sufficiently grateful. To
many of them I was practically a complete stranger, yet
only in the very rarest cases was information refused, even
where the giving of it occupied a considerable amount of

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

time. But from all sides the assistance accorded to
me was very great, and officials of Labour Exchanges,
of Trade Unions and of other Societies, and, above all, the
Principals and Instructors of Trade Schools were quite
ungrudging in their help. The only return, beyond these
few feeble words of acknowledgment, which I can make to
all this kindness, is that of using to the best of my ability
the information placed so generously at my disposal.

II. TRADES AND INDUSTRIES OF LONDON.

I shall conclude this chapter by a brief analysis of the
numbers of male persons employed in the chief industries
of London. In attempting to obtain an accurate estimate
of these, much difficulty is caused by the necessity of
including those surrounding areas which are covered by the
name of Outer London. For some time past London has
been extending itself" into suburban districts, which have
come more and more to act as the " dormitories " of those
who are working during the daytime within the county
boundaries, whilst some manufacturers have also removed
their works into them. To the whole area, which includes
both the County and the Outer Ring, the name of Greater
London may be given.

The recent Census in its Preliminary Report and Tables i
gave the following return of the total numbers living in the
Urban and Rural Districts of Outer London : —

County.

Urban
Districts.

Rural
Districts.

Essex
Hertfordshire

839,076

AS 3QO

10,676
Q ^ IQ

Kent

*tj>jy^
148 48=;

23 8^=;

Middlesex

i 078 ^^6

•^O'^JJ

48 1^8

Surrey

438,715

87,592

Total : Outer Ring of London .

2,550,222

179,780

Cd. 5705 of 1911.

THE PROBLEM STATED. 9

So far the matter is fairly simple. The difficulty really
begins with the investigation of the numbers employed in
separate industries, and more particularly in individual
trades, since detailed returns for some of the latter are
not given in all cases. Moreover, the trade distribution of
a County as a whole is not necessarily the same as its London
areas. This is particularly true of Kent, which employs
considerable numbers in certain small trades, such as paper
and cement making, which are practically non-existent in
any part of London. Compared, therefore, with the County
of London, for which actual returns are available, some
of the figures for Outer London * can only represent a rough
approximation. .

In arriving at an estimate I have omitted the very smal]
proportion of the population of the latter that is living
in rural districts. For the urban I have made it on the
following lines.2 Middlesex presents no difficulty, since all
its urban districts are inside the outer boundaries of London.
In the case of Essex, the returns for its five chief urban areas
are taken, since detailed figures are available for them and
not for the others. They are the Boroughs of East and
West Ham and the Districts of Ilford, Leyton and Waltham-
stow. All the urban districts of Surrey are included, and
those of Kent are entirely omitted. For the reasons already
given, the trade distribution of the latter county is different
from that of its London districts, whilst that of Surrey is
likely to be similar : and to omit the one and include the
whole of the other promises to give a more accurate estimate.
The numbers added in the case of Surrey are not very much
larger than those omitted in that of Kent. -Finally, as
the Hertfordshire urban districts are very largely dependent
upon London, even if they are not within its actual boun-
daries, a large proportion of them — two-thirds — has been

1 Except in the case of Middlesex.

2 The method adopted which appears to be the best available
I owe to the kind suggestions of Professor A. L. Bowley, to whom
I wish to express my gratitude for kind help and criticism in connexion
with the statistical subjects of this book.

io INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

taken.1 Where separate returns are given for individual
trades in London and not in the counties, the relative pro-
portions between them have been taken to be the same in
the latter as in the former.

The following table gives the totals of men and boys
over ten years of age engaged in the chief occupation
groups in the County of London, in Outer London, in the
whole of Greater London, and in the Rest of England and
Wales. It also shows the proportional size of every such
group by showing the numbers employed in it for each
10,000 of- the occupied population.

This table illustrates the chief characteristics of London
industry. Natural and other causes have brought about
the almost entire absence of certain occupations — notably
Agriculture, Mining and Quarrying, Fishing and the Textile
Trades. Together these four account for about 2,660,000
male persons out of about 9,289,000 in the rest of England
and Wales. The absence of three of them is due to purely
natural causes which are partly responsible in the case of
the fourth, the Textile Trades.2 Those Londoners shown
to be employed in these groups are mainly occupied in
retail work and in certain small trades like rope and canvas
making, whilst more than two-thirds of those classified under
Agriculture are nursery gardeners, though some living on
the very outskirts are no doubt actual agricultural labourers.
The rest were probably either owners or employers or too
newly arrived in London to have found a new occupation.
Other trades which hardly exist there, include the making
(as distinct from the working) of iron, steel and other metals,
the cutlery and allied trades and the manufacture of bricks,

1 "The net result of this method of estimating is to reduce the
total population of Greater London by some 150,000, or about
6 per cent. The omissions consist of about 1 80,000 in the rural districts,
and 148,000 and 89,000 respectively in the urban districts of Kent
and Essex. In the urban areas of Surrey and Hertfordshire the
numbers included exceed those returned for Greater London by
about 183,000 and 84,000 respectively.

2 Dealers account for 27,663 male workpeople out of a total of 34,523
in the textile trades, and for 3,294 out of 5,947 in mining and quar-
rying.

THE PROBLEM STATED.

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12 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

cement and paper, and, except in one or two branches,
of glass and pottery.1 Again in Engineering and the
Metal Trades generally London employs less than the
normal proportion, except in electrical work and in one or
two smaller branches, such as tinsmithing. In Engineering
proper there is comparatively little new construction, and
this is even more true of Boilermaking and Ship-building
in which London has ceased to be anything more than a
repairing centre.

On the other hand, London shows an enormous preponder-
ance in Commercial, Transport and Distributive Work.
In 1911 the two former employed respectively 1,072 and
1,671 per 10,000 of the population in Greater London as
compared with 466 and 1,117 m the rest of England and
Wales, whilst dealers and shopkeepers reached 1,263 in the
case of the former and only 80 1 in that of the latter. To-
gether this means that these occupations employ in London
more than 350 ,000 persons beyond the normal proportions.2

Nor is London's advantage confined to them ; for it is
almost equally great in some classes of manual labour, and
among these are included some industries in which the level
of skill is highest. This advantage is greatest relatively
in the Paper and Printing trades, in the Precious Metals and
Instruments group, and in Wood, Furniture and Leather
work. It is somewhat less marked, but still very consider-
able, in the Building Trades. Together these five sections
employ in Greater London about 180,000 workers more
than the normal. There is also some excess in certain
other cases in which the level of capacity is on the whole
lower, notably in the Clothing and Boot Trades, in some forms
of food production, and in the manufacture of candles, soap,
glue and similar products.

When the comparison is made between the actual size of
different occupation groups in London, rather than between

1 Also salt, alkali, felt hats, gloves and straw plaits.

2 The proportion per 10,000 of the population for the Rest of
England and Wales is regarded here as the normal proportion, and
not that for the whole of them, including Greater London.

THE PROBLEM STATED. 13

their relative positions there and elsewhere, Conveyance
of Men, Goods and Messages is easily the largest, employing
over 355,000 in Greater London, and Commercial Occupa-
tions (224,846) come next. Of the more purely industrial
sections that of House Building and Works of Construction,
which also includes more than 200,000 workers, is easily
the largest, with the Engineering and Metal Group second
with 173,756, or, exclusive of dealers, 163,246. Other impor-
tant industries are Clothing (107,067), Paper and Printing
(90,748), and Woodworking and Furniture (81,691). The
Precious Metals and Instruments Group employs 39,346,
and the Skins, Leather and Hair Trades 25,400. l

More fully to understand, however, the distribution of
London industry between different classes and grades of
labour, a different subdivision of employments has been
made under the following headings : —

A. Industries almost non-existent in London. These
are Agriculture (except Market Gardening), Mining and
Quarrying, the Textile Trades, the Conversion of Metals
and the Manufacture of Salt and Alkali. Wherever pos-
sible, however, dealers have been excluded and placed in
with the Distributive Trades.

B. Clerical Employments.

C. Higher Branches of Labour, other than Manual and
Clerical — (including the Police, Private Coachmen, Grooms
and Chauffeurs, Cooks and Waiters in Hotels and Restaur-
ants, and so on). They have been classed separately from
skilled manual labour, but appear to possess a similar social
standing.

D. Skilled Manual Labour.

E. Semi-Skilled Manual Labour.

F. Unskilled Manual Labour.

G. Distributive Trades.

1. Dealers and Shopkeepers.2

2. Hotel, Eating House, and Public House, Service.

3. Messengers, Porters and Newsboys.

1 The question of the Distribution of Londoners between trades
and occupations is considered in fuller detail in Appendix II.

2 This Class includes all Dealers in the products of the twenty-

14 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

H. Employers, the higher Professional and Commercial
Employments, and the Higher Ranks of Manual Labour
(Foremen, etc.). These are only taken where classified
under a separate heading, and do not by any means repre-
sent the whole number of employers, as where they are
included in the total of an industry they have not been
estimated.

K. Miscellaneous Employments, difficult to classify else-
where, the most important being the Army and Navy,
the Mercantile Marine and the Teaching Profession.

These classes cover the whole of London industry.
The estimate of the numbers to be included in each of
them was necessarily rough, especially in the case of
the skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers.
Trades were allocated so far as possible to one grade or
other according to the amount of skill which appeared to be
involved. When there were different grades of labour within
a trade, its workers were then divided between them in such
proportion as seemed likely to meet each case, and where
possible, official reports on wages were used to get an
approximate idea of this.

Finally, to sum up the general position of London in-
dustry, its most marked features are the very large amount
of clerical employment it affords and the very great promi-
nence of transport, dealing and distributive work. Altogether,
with the addition of the police force and the domestic ser-
vices, they employ more than half the population. The
manual trades are on the whole in a deficiency, largely owing
to the absence, mainly from natural causes, of certain large
industries, and to a lesser degree to the comparatively
small size of some others. Nevertheless, London has a

two main groups for whom separate figures are given, and also the
following occupations : — Art Dealers : Oil and Colourmen : Ironmon-
gers : Stationers : Booksellers and Newsagents : Drapers and Linen
, Drapers : Clothiers : Hosiers : Milkmen : Cheesemongers : Butchers :
Fishmongers : Poulterers : Corn Merchants : Confectioners and
Bakers in retail work : Grocers : Greengrocers : Fruiterers : Tobac-
conists : General Shopkeepers : Pawnbrokers : Costers and Street
Sellers.

THE PROBLEM STATED.

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16 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

great artisan population spread over a large number of
employments, and in some of them it has obtained a pre-
ponderating share. These last include some of the most
highly skilled occupations of all. In size the most important
of them are Building, Printing and Bookbinding, the Precious
Metals and Implements Group, vand the Woodworking
Trades.

The third of these needs further mention. It is a collection
of comparatively small industries in nearly all of which
London has a marked preponderance. To it should be
added certain other small trades placed by the Census in the
Engineering and Metal Group. It then includes gold and
silver smiths, silver spinners, chasers, engravers, jewellers,
die sinkers, diamond setters and mounters and general
art metal workers. The Precious Metal Trades alone really
form a group of their own, but with them are also
included the various employments devoted to the making
of surgical and scientific instruments and to the manufac-
ture and repair of watches and clocks. Finally, there is
the pianoforte trade, which again is subdivided into an
almost bewildering variety of processes.

Again, in leather work London employed in 1911 an
excess of workers in almost every branch. There is a large
tailoring industry employing various grades of labour, from
the highly skilled workmen of the retail (bespoke) trade
to the sweated women workers. The manufacture of boots
and shoes also employs a large number and is mainly semi-
skilled factory work. It also, however, provides a good deal
of high grade labour in the bespoke trade. Again, in the
Engineering and Metal Group, though the conversion of
the ore into metal is not carried out in London, though
there is comparatively little founding, and though ship-
building is almost entirely confined to repair work, yet in
some of the most important branches there is only a moder-
ate deficiency, and London still appears to be the chief centre
of some of the smaller ones.

Such in brief is the industrial character of London. The
figures given here, it must be repeated, are only a rough

THE PROBLEM STATED. 17

estimate. Apart from the County of London, the Census
did not give the minuter details, and so the numbers engaged
had to be estimated, as had the proportions of skilled and
other workers. The description that has been given, there-
fore, can claim at best only an approximation to accuracy,
though it does profess to give a fair general picture of the
conditions of London Industry.

CHAPTER II
DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION.

Loose popular Use of Terms — Apprentice and Apprenticeship :
Original Meaning — Generic Uses — Regular Service ; Its
Forms : Formal Apprenticeship, Verbal Apprenticeship, Em-
ployment during Good Behaviour, Working and Learning —
The Learner — Possible Use of the Term — Relation to Forms of
Regular Service — The Improver : Original Meaning — The
Migratory Improver ; His Characteristics — Lad, Boy — Follow -
ing-Up : Working in Pairs, Mates ; Working in Squads —
Method of Following-Up — Picking Up : Possible Meaning ;
Limitation to Semi-skilled Labour — Characteristic of New
Classification of Methods — Boy Labour — Its Two Meanings —
Its Three Forms : Blind Alleys ; Partial Blind Alleys ; Waste-
ful Recruiting of Skilled Trades — Real Nature of the Boy
Labour Problem — Skilled, Semi-skilled and Unskilled Labour —
Possible Classification and Definition ; (i) By Wages Received,
(2) By Length and Character of Training — Other Possible
Classifications of Labour.

MANY of the terms in common vogue in connexion with
this subject are used very loosely indeed in popular dis-
course, and their different meanings, therefore, require
careful preliminary consideration. One instance of the
confusion which may arise has already occurred. To the
ordinary observer the phrase Industrial Training implies
some systematic mode of taking boys and imparting know-
ledge to them. But if this, its natural meaning, were to
be rigidly adhered to, it would narrow too much the scope
of the enquiry. For under present conditions a large num-
ber of workers are not trained in the strict sense, but " get
to know " their trades, and therefore the subject is rather
how they do the latter, whether by definite training, by
teaching themselves, or by " picking them up " more or
less haphazard. With most of the terms indeed the diffi-
culty lies in the number of separate shades of meaning

DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION. 19

which attach to them, and it is necessary to state what
these are and then to choose those which correspond most
nearly to the actual facts.

The first which need consideration are those of Appren-
tice and Apprenticeship. It is not necessary to go back to
their etymological origin. But originally Apprenticeship
signified a definite legal agreement by which the boy was
bound to his master for so many years to learn his trade.
Each side strictly contracted with the other, the one to give
service, the other instruction, and the contract was legally
enforceable. Under the Domestic System, this method
was almost universal. Now, however, the legally binding
agreement is only one device among many and in some
trades, notably in London, it is the exception rather
than the rule. Strictly speaking, therefore, the term only
applies to such formal indentures, and sometimes it still
has this meaning attached to it. At others it obtains a
far wider signification.

By many persons, more particularly employers of labour
and their foremen, it is used generically to cover the posi-
tion of all those boys who are learning a trade under what-
ever form of engagement : and therefore, where appren-
tices are said to be taken, a further inquiry is usually neces-
sary to discover the conditions under which they are em-
ployed. To take apprentices does not necessarily involve
the existence of a binding by indenture ; and sometimes
where I was informed that no apprentices were taken,
further inquiry showed that no boys at all were being taught.
Thus the term is applied to practically all who are in a firm
for the purpose of learning, usually with the proviso that
there is some idea or understanding to this effect. For
instance, the boy or youth who is merely spending a cer-
tain time in a workshop and learning what he can before
moving elsewhere, would hardly be included under even
the widest sense in which it is used. But the word would
apply to all boy learners whose engagement and employ-
ment are actually permanent. For, as will appear later, the
most important distinction to-day is not between the bound

20 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

and unbound learner, but between the permanent and non-
permanent engagement, or in other words between Regular
Service in one firm and Migration from one to another.
The generic use of the term Apprentice, therefore, marks
an important practical distinction in present-day conditions.

There are, however, a number of different forms which
such Regular Service or permanent engagement may take ;
and the difference between them is important. Of these
some four may be distinguished. First there is Appren-
ticeship in its original sense with a definite binding agree-
ment. Secondly, there is the unbound apprentice, to
whom the name of learner is sometimes applied. He is
usually employed under an agreement that he shall remain
so many years, receive a certain fixed amount of wages,
rising year by year, and be taught, or given opportunity to
learn, the trade. Neither side is legally bound, but there
is an understanding that the boy shall not be dismissed
except for misconduct, nor leave the firm except for ill-
treatment or failure to teach. This understanding is usually
observed, and in one or two trades this Verbal Apprentice-
ship, as it is often called, is the normal method of engage-
ment. It marks an intermediate use of the term Appren-
ticeship, since some persons utilise it in all cases where
an agreement of any sort exists, but in no others.

The third form of Regular Service may be defined as
Employment during Good Behaviour and resembles in
many ways that just described. There is a tacit under-
standing that the boy shall stay as long as he is satisfactory,
shall get certain rises of wages and, if he shows himself
suitable, be given the chance to learn. But there is no
agreement of any sort, formal or verbal : the boy only
stays as long as the employer cares to keep him and he to
stay ; and he is a worker who may be called upon
to make himself generally useful. Thus many such lads
start as errand boys and are only gradually promoted to
the bench. Others at first will only work at it in their spare
time, being mainly engaged in running errands, or they
will sometimes do the latter in the morning and the former

DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION. 21

in the afternoon. Sometimes the line dividing the second
and third classes is very thin : but the absence of any
actual agreement to teach is important. For one thing,
the employer is not in this case bound to teach and so the
boy may have to wait till opportunity arises. But in many
instances he works as steadily with one firm, even if he does
not learn so quickly, as he would do where an agreement
exists. Decent firms make a point of not dismissing such
boys, and decent boys remain so long as their treatment
is satisfactory.

Finally there is the form of engagement which may best
be described as " working and learning." In such cases,
which are not uncommon, a boy simply gets a job at his
trade at whatever wages he can command and gradually
works his way up, being promoted from one thing to another
within the firm, and his wages rising with the value of what
he does, He is, of course, always liable to dismissal, but
many such boys do get regular employment during the
time that they are learning,

All we can say of these four classes is that dismissals are
more common in the fourth than in the third, in the third
than in the second and in the second than in the first. This
shows further the importance of the actual fact of perman-
ence. If the boy is kept on, his position is one of Regu-
lar Service, if he is compelled to wander from firm to firm,
he falls into another class. The vital distinction rests on
the permanence of the engagement and not on the exist-
ence or non-existence of a contract of service.

Before considering, however, the sense in which the
term Apprenticeship can best be used, it is necessary to
consider the meaning to be attached to the word " Learner."
The term is one of recent growth. Hitherto it has been given
either no very clear meaning, or else one that is so wide as
to be almost valueless. It is more commonly used in refer-
ence to girls. With the various Associations that are deal-
ing with the placing of boys, however, it has obtained a
very definite signification. Those whom they place are
divided into two classes — apprentices formally bound and

22 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

learners under a verbal agreement. The employers also
sometimes use the two terms in a similar sense. Perhaps,
however, the latter can be most usefully employed to signify
all boys engaged under any form of Regular Service other
than Formal Apprenticeship, and in this sense it will be
generally used. Sometimes, on the other hand, it will be
necessary to apply it in its most general sense to cover all
who are actually learning, and to contrast the boy learner
with the boy labourer.

It seems best, therefore, in dealing with the class we have
just described — that is to say, those who learn under a
continuous engagement — to adopt the expression learning
by or under Regular Service. Apprentice and Apprentice-
ship, without qualification, may be confined to the formal
indenture, and the term Verbal Apprenticeship to agree-
ments of the second kind. The term learner will then, as
just described, be useful to distinguish informal service
generally from formal, especially when, as in Chapter X,
it is necessary to contrast the two. The other two forms
of Regular Service may then be denoted in the phrases
already used, as " employment during good behaviour"
and " working and learning,"

Another common expression is that of Improver. Origin-
ally it signified a young worker who had served his Appren-
ticeship and, not yet being a fully competent workman,
was engaged for the time being at a lower rate than the
latter could command, until he had made himself fully
efficient. This is one of the senses in which it is still used :
and where some form of Regular Service is predominant,
such improvers as there are, are of this type. The number
of such improvers is being further increased by the grow-
ing practice in one or two trades of binding for a shorter
period of three or four years, which is found to give a youth
sufficient grounding to make him a *' good improver " and
enable him to work his way up either in his own or another
firm. The demand, for such an engagement, indeed, is
increasing and likely to continue to do so, more particu-
larly where modern conditions render it difficult, if not

DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION. 23

impossible, for any one firm to teach the whole of a trade.

This, indeed, really constitutes a partial modification
of the Regular Service rather than an alternative method.
In some industries, howeVer, the custom of moving about
from firm to firm almost from the very beginning has created
a new and distinct type of improver. For workers may
thus be described who in this way " pick up " their trades
without entering into any engagement for the purpose or
enjoying continuity of employment over an extended period.
The process is as follows. A lad starts in a shop and gets
some slight knowledge of his trade, which he may do in
various ways. Having accomplished this he moves about
to one firm after another, acquiring one thing here, another
there, either as he needs new experience or wants higher
pay or because he has been dismissed from his previous
job. This modern type again resembles the older one both
in the fact that improvement is still needed to make him
a tradesman, and also for the reason that he has already
made some progress ; for no one will rank as an improver
until he has acquired some knowledge of the trade upon
which to improve.

The vital fact in his position, however, is that he is em-
ployed and paid almost entirely as a wage-earner. This
marks the great distinction between him and the first three
forms of Regular Service. The latter give an agreement,
or at least there is an understanding, that the learner shall
either be taught or given the opportunity to teach him-
self.1 If not, there is. a moral, and sometimes a legal,
breach of contract. The Improver, or as he will be called
the Migratory Improver, is simply a wage-earner, paid for
the value of his work, taking his chance of learning and
having to acquire the trade for himself as best he can. The
employers, since they pay the full value of the improver's

1 Even with Regular Service, however, boys are paid wages which
approach more and more nearly to their full value as workers, and so
employers cannot afford to teach them so much as formerly. Still,
in its first three forms there is some agreement or understanding
that the boy shall have the opportunity to learn. The whole subject
will be dealt with more fully in a later chapter.

24 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

work, are under no obligation to teach him and often are
not in a position to do so, though some of them recognize
some kind of obligation to " bring him on." " He (i.e.
the improver)/' I was told, " would simply get a job, and
he would not be supposed to be learning anything, but he
would learn just the same." The extent to which this
method of learning by migration prevails will be considered
later, but at any rate it is of sufficient importance to
be contrasted as a method of learning with that of Regular
Service, and forms the second main division of the subject.

The sense in which the word Lad or Boy is used is also
worth considering. As regards age it is perhaps best to
follow a method similar to that adopted under the Factory
cts and to class all those of School Age (i.e. under 14 in
London) as children, and all those between 14 and 18 as
lads or boys. The term thus corresponds to the " Young
Persons " of the Factory Acts, and may be regarded as
referring to all non-adult male labour.

There is a certain class of boys, however, whose position
has a close connection with the classification we have been
considering. In some trades one or two are employed to
perform certain small offices and make themselves generally
useful about the shop, and where the department is a
large one they can if suitable be easily absorbed in the
business. Thus their position is different from what it is
where boys are engaged in excessive numbers, and it is
often through work of the former kind that they get
that minimum of knowledge which enables them to get
into a trade either as improvers or by some form of Regular
Service. Indeed, many firms are now making it their prac-
tice to start them as errand boys for six months or so,
with' a view to putting them to the trade as learners and a
few will take them in no other way. Others again promote
to the bench any who are sufficiently capable. Instances
may be quoted of the Glue Boys in Joinery Works, the
" little boy " in the East London Cabinet shops and the
Errand Boys in many firms of Silversmiths.

The position of those boys who work as mates or assis-

DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION. 25

tants to a skilled man or squad of men, now requires con-
sideration. The term " mate " is sometimes used of two
skilled men working together, as in the case of two joiners
at a bench, or formerly of two men working a saw. But,
more commonly it denotes the less skilled assistant or
helper who in certain trades serves the mechanic. The
essence of his position is that he is definitely attached to a
single man and not like many labourers engaged generally
about the shop. The plumber or gasfitter forms a pair
with his mate, so do smith and hammerman ; and the
bricklayer's labourer is usually attached to a particular
bricklayer. Similarly in Leather Splitting the skilled man
at the front of the machine has a boy or youth to help him
at the back, and on the circular saw, the sawyer has one to
" pull out " for him. Now in most of these cases a mate's
work is a recognized avenue into the trade. His position
enables him to learn all about it and after a time to get hold
of the tools for himself. The one exception is provided
by the bricklayer's labourer,1 and even with him, though
not officially recognized, the learning is frequently and suc-
cessfully accomplished.

So, too, in certain other cases, the boy who works for a
squad of men can "follow up " a trade. So far as I am aware,
the term is only used in London in the case of a few pro-
cesses, the most important being the Rivetting of Boilers : and
it is in the Ship-yards that the best examples of it are found.
The men engaged work in squads of five, composed of three
skilled men — two rivetters and one holder-up — and two
boys : and the mode of entry, which will be more fully
described later, is that the boy enters the trade at fourteen
as a rivet-heater, and at about sixteen becomes a carrier,
taking the rivets from the fire to the men. Once he has
got to this position he has his chance of " following up "
the trade ; that is to say, by serving the men as carrier,
he first learns how the work is done and then gets hold of

1 In a later chapter reasons are given for not classing the brick-
layer's labourer as a mate of his bricklayer and for not classifying
the method by which he learns this trade as that of Following Up.

26 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

the tools and learns to do it himself. Only a few are appren-
ticed in London, the great majority are not, and after so
many years the boy is given by the Union a further twelve
months within which he must get his full money. A similar
method used to prevail in the allied branch of Tank-Making,
but the development of machinery has largely altered its
character. A boy employed in a " Chair " of Glass Blowers
lias a somewhat analogous position.

The expression Following-up, however, may be aptly
applied to all those trades where a youth works as helper,
assistant or mate, either to a man or a squad of men ; more
particularly as in learning the trade, a similar course is
followed in each case. The lad gives several years' service
to begin with, not as a learner, but as assistant to a skilled
man, and from this proceeds to apply the knowledge he
has thus gained, to enable him to work his way up. Again,
all such trades differ from those in which either of the two
previous methods apply. In them, whether the boy is
taught, or gets opportunity to learn or merely teaches
himself as best he can, he always starts, either at once or
after a few months, to do the actual work which, as a man,
he will have to perform, whilst, where " folio wing-up "
obtains, he first spends a long period serving and helping
the man, but not himself doing the work. rt Following-
up," therefore, constitutes a third, independent method of
entering a trade.

Now these three methods all involve years of training,
and apply to employments which can all be classed as
skilled. When, however, we come to those which can with
more justice be described as semi-skilled, we get a method
of entry which is best designated by the word " Picking-
up." This, again, bears more than one meaning. To
recur to the distinction between " how a boy learns " and
" how a boy is taught/' the expression is used in reference
to both, but more frequently to the second. It will be
said in answer to questions upon the point, that " he just
picks it up." That is to say, no special arrangements are
made, but a boy gradually learns from his work first one

DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION. 27

thing and then another. So understood, the term applies
with particular force to the Migratory Improver or to those
who are " working and learning," whilst more generally,
the modern contract to teach often guarantees merely the
" opportunity to learn," and it depends mainly on the
" grit " of the boy whether he " makes himself a tradesman."

But the expression can, I think, be used to describe the
mode of entry into those occupations which require not
so much to be taught as simply to be " picked up," that
is, into what may be described shortly as the semi-skilled
trades. Thus, where much machinery is used, what was once
a skilled trade is sometimes split up into a number of separate
processes. There is comparatively little to learn, and that
little is not very difficult ; or even if high skill is needed, it is
only in the performance of some single process or in the
use of some one machine. A boy goes to a certain process
and learns it in a few months, and after this has only to
acquire greater experience and rapidity of execution, which
sometimes takes longer than the actual learning. In a Boot
Factory, for instance, a lad keeps his eyes open and gets to
know how some more difficult j ob is being done and, when
opportunity offers, contrives to make a start at it at a rate
of wage lower than that which a man obtains, and quickly
makes himself efficient. The work, therefore, is not such
as to require a long period of training ; but it does need a
certain amount of intelligence and skill and often consider-
able practice before the power to turn it out rapidly can be
obtained. Herice, the method appropriate to this can well
be described as " Picking-up."

Thus, this new classification is based on a regrouping of
the older forms. The distinction is made to depend mainly
on two things, first on the actual permanency or otherwise
of the industrial engagements under which the boys learn,
and secondly on the relation of the boy to the man with
whom he works. Four main groups have emerged. First
there is that of. Regular Service, which covers all boys who
are, in fact, permanently engaged in one firm during their
training ; and, secondly, Migration, where they move about

28 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

from one firm to another. So far, the matter of chief
importance has been the fact of permanence. With the
third method, that of Following Up, the cardinal point
is that, for a long period, the boy is not working at the
trade, but serving the man who is. He afterwards works
himself up, and may do this entirely in one firm or in several.
The fourth method, Picking-Up, applies to the semi-skilled
group.

The next term to be considered, namely, Boy Labour,
is one of which the definition is far more difficult than it
appears to be. Sometimes it is simply used in contrast to
adult male labour, but as a rule, when it is used, there is
always some implied contrast between labouring and learn-
ing. Sometimes it covers only those trades which employ
more boys in adolescence than they can find room for in
manhood, and at others includes all boys' jobs in and about
a factory which may or may not lead to permanent employ-
ment. Thirdly, it may refer to all those who, for whatever
reason, fail to acquire a trade or occupation of any kind.

In considering this question, two important facts emerge
at once. The first is the antithesis between working for
wages and learning. Here, Boy Labour is less appropriate
than either Boy Labourer or Boy Labouring, but the actual
expression is not important, if we keep clearly before our
minds the meaning which is given to it* The second
and more vital fact is the importance to be attached to
failure to learn, whatever its cause. So understood, the
Problem of Boy Labour can be stretched to include all
forms and conditions of employment, to the extent to
which they fail to provide those engaged in them with a
permanent livelihood. Thus it covers not only those
jobs which from their very nature cannot last beyond
adolescence, but those defects of organization or character
which in any trade prevent boys learning those things
which they set out to master. In short, the problem em-
braces every kind of failure to acquire a definite occupation,
and is not confined to those employments which fail to
keep their boys after they reach manhood.

DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION. 29

As thus defined, Boy Labour may be divided into
three classes. The first of these comprises what are
known as the Blind Alley Trades which employ large
numbers from the age of fourteen up to from seven-
teen to twenty, and are compelled to discharge the great
majority of them on the threshold of manhood. They
thus provide few or no openings for them as adults,
and often get rid of their boys at a time when it is
difficult for them to learn anything else. A good example
of this was formerly provided by the conditions of the Boy
Messengers in the employ of the General Post Office. These,
however, have since been practically revolutionized, and
their work is no longer open to this reproach. In short, the
Blind Alleys are " isolated " boys' jobs, that is to say,
they have to be performed by boys, they terminate with
boyhood, and they do not lead directly or indirectly to any
permanent employment.

The second class of Boy Labour consists of trades in
which both boys and men are needed, so that employment in
them as a boy can, and sometimes does, lead to engagement
as a man. The proportion between them, however, is such
that only a fraction of the former can find permanent places
and the rest have earlier or later to betake themselves else-
where. Being usually skilled and highly paid, they require
a long period of training, and those who do enter them are
well provided for. This applies especially to those trades
in which the method of Following-Up obtains ; for work
as an assistant to a man is a recognized avenue into them,
but where each man has one such assistant, some of them
have to go sooner or later to other jobs. Probably,
therefore, the most suitable name for them is that of Partial
Blind Alley.

The third class is composed of all boys who attempt to
enter an occupation, and either fail to do so altogether,
or do not become fully competent at it. Such failures
spring from a variety of causes. Thus, more boys have
to enter a trade than it can find room for, and yet they
will be no more than enough to provide it with a sufficiency

30 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

of skilled men. Boys drift into it and out again ; they
start to learn it, but are unable to do so, or they only learn
a part of it. Hence, many trades require a Reserve of
Boy Labour. Great friction and waste result, and many
who enter one or other of them grow up without any definite
occupation, or at best only reach the casual fringe of one.
These failures, therefore, form a third type of Boy Labour,
and may be referred to as the Wasteful Recruiting of the
Skilled Trades. It is true that similar waste occurs in the
lower grades of labour, but it is in connexion with the
higher that it obtains its greatest importance.

The term Boy Labour, therefore, must be used in two
senses. Its most natural meaning is to signify either those
forms of work that employ boys and boys only, or those
that employ more than they can absorb as men. But in
any kind of trade or job, boys may reach manhood without
possessing a definite occupation,1 for one or other of the
causes just mentioned. Analysing results, therefore, we
find that the problem must be extended to cover the failure
of some boys in all walks of life to fit themselves for the
future. The boy in the Blind Alley may get successfully
into some fresh business, and so it does not prove a Blind
Alley to him, whilst the boy in the skilled trade, by failing
to learn it, may grow up unfitted for anything at all. Thus,
the latter may be the greater difficulty, though the former
runs the greater risk. Hence, whilst in the first place the
term Boy Labour attaches itself naturally to the Total or
Partial Blind Alley, the real problem is a wider one.

Finally, the meaning of the expressions Skilled, Semi-
Skilled and Unskilled Labour must be considered ; and
they require to be used with caution. It is contended,
and rightly, that scarcely any employment is absolutely
unskilled, and for this reason the term low-skilled is some-
times preferred. At the same time variations in the amount
of skill are so great as to justify the ordinary distinction.

1 The term occupation will be used to cover all forms of labour
which do give permanent employment throughout life, whatever
their grade of skill. The word trade, if used without qualification,
will denote skilled manual employment of a permanent character.

DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION. 31

The dividing line between the three grades is, however,
far from clear. Sometimes, as in the Building Trades,
there is a rough division into artisans or tradesmen, and
labourers. Elsewhere, it may be almost accidental, the
result of habit, of a rough calculation from wages, or even
of the particular arrangements of the employers. Such
a practice, however, may result in workmen engaged upon
an identical operation being classed in different grades.
Hence, 'the distinction between them should be based, as
far as possible, on some definite principle, difficult though
this may often prove, and thus a few clear divisions can be
substituted for numerous and minute shades of difference.

One possible course is to rely upon the rates of wages
paid for different kinds of work, but on examination this
proves to be little more than a useful check on other methods.
There do not exist any statistics of wages that are adequate
for the purpose, and a further objection to their use is
found in the many elements, besides the skill involved, which
help to determine them. Thus, great physical strength or
great irregularity of employment will help to raise them,
and low wages may be due to a variety of causes such as
payment in kind, competition of female or child labour, and
above all security of tenure, whilst, lastly, inequality be-
tween trades may merely reflect differences of organization.

On the other hand, measurement by the amount and
length of training is easier and more satisfactory. Varia-
tions in skill within a trade which are brought about by
the use of machinery, by specialization or by other reasons,
can thus be far more adequately classified. The time taken
to learn is likely to be pretty constant between one place
and another, whilst rates of wages vary. The distinction
between skilled and other grades of labour, therefore, will
follow closely the divisions already outlined between the
different forms of training. Thus, Skilled Labour may be
defined as all such as requires a long period of service,
whether under a definite contract or agreement and in a
single firm, or with no such agreement, the learner
moving about from firm to firm. This class, there-

32 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

fore, will include all who are learning by the first three
methods of Regular Service, Migration and Following-
Up. Secondly, Semi-Skilled Labour includes those trades
or processes which can be acquired in a comparatively
short time. Nevertheless, it is distinguished from the third
or unskilled class by the modicum of knowledge, skill
and rapidity of execution which it requires. It is, in
short, the grade whose training is covered by the fourth
method of Picking-Up. Lastly, Unskilled Labour is
such as possesses the minimum of skill and knowledge,
since no labour is absolutely unskilled, and therefore does
not require nor receive any definite period of training. Such
knack as distinguishes a good from an inefficient unskilled
labourer comes by practice, except so far as it depends on
discipline and ordinary common sense. This, at any rate,
seems to be the best way of differentiating these grades,
though it must never be forgotten that no absolutely hard
and fast lines can be drawn between them.

Finally, there are two other ways in which it might be
possible to distinguish them. The semi-skilled class is
largely made up of men who are working and minding
machines. Hence, they might be divided into Artisan
or Mechanic, Machine-Minder and Labourer, but there is
a fatal objection to this, in that some important classes of
workers, such as carmen, are something more than labourers,
are not to be classed as artisans, and yet do not work upon
machines. They are, in fact, of the same grade as the
machine minder, but they are not machine-minders. For
this reason, therefore, the general term semi-skilled is far
more adequate. Another classification, which avoids the
use of the term unskilled, is into Artisans, Skilled Labourers
and Labourers. But though it has this one advantage, it
is clumsy, and to the ordinary man, far from clear. And,
above all other possible classifications the division into
skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled 1 has the merit of being
generally accepted and well understood, and for that reason
can best be retained.

1 The term low-skilled will be used in a general sense to cover
bqth semi-skilled and unskilled labour in contrast with skilled.

CHAPTER III.

EXISTING CONDITIONS IN LONDON.

Industrial Peculiarities of London shared to a lesser degree by other
big towns — London a commercial centre and the seat of govern-
ment— Comparatively small proportion of skilled manual
labour — Other peculiarities intensified by its size.

ist Peculiarity : Absence of Localized Industries — Advan-
tage of them when large — Their disadvantages — Those that
exist in London only partially localised (Ship Repairing) or
small (Art Metal, Scientific Instruments, Pianofortes, Leather)
— Exceptions : Tailoring, Boot-making, Cabinet Making —
Special Defects of Existing Localized Industries.

2nd Peculiarity : London a centre of Repair and Retail work
— Forms and character of such work — -Typical Instances — Its
Disadvantages and Advantages — Growth of Specialization —
Its Two Forms — Specialization of Processes — Its Effect on the
Workman — Tendency to create new forms of Boy Labour — Its
Partial Development in London — Specialization of Product or
Output — A Marked Feature of London in Cabinet Making and
Silversmithing— Increased Difficulty of Learning— Two Parti-
cular Cases of Specialization — Improvers' Work — Specialization
between different localities — Cabinet Making and Furniture.

3rd Peculiarity : Influx of Workmen and Efflux of Work —
Summary of Previous Treatment.

Results of these Peculiarities — Irregularity of Teaching and
Learning — Excessive Supply of Labour — Features of London
Training — Absence of System and Mixture of Methods —
Resulting Evils — Difficulty of Finding Openings — Subordination
of Learning to Earning — Resulting Influence on London
Industry.

IN its relation to the methods of Industrial Training that
are in vogue there, London has characteristics that are either
peculiar to it or else are found in it to a more marked degree
than in other places. A recent investigation drew a dis-
tinction between different towns mainly in reference to
casual labour. First of all came London, where it was
shown to be exceptionally prevalent ; then the other
capitals, as they were called — Manchester, Liverpool, New-

33 D

34 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

castle and so on — which are rather commercial and distri-
butive than manufacturing centres, though with them this
feature is not so marked as in London. Still in them casual
labour is very common. Thirdly, there are the manufactur-
ing towns proper, where it exists, but in more manageable
proportions ; and fourthly, the country towns where it tends
to disappear.1 Now in many other respects the distinction
between London and other big cities is one of degree rather
than of kind ; and many of its special difficulties are not so
much peculiar to it, as rendered unusually great, because of
its exceptional size. The resulting problems, therefore,
fall into two classes, first those of a general character
which arise out of its industrial conditions, and secondly
those tendencies of modern industry which specially affect
its methods of industrial training.

First of all London is less of a manufacturing than of a
commercial city, whilst as the seat of government it is a
great centre of social life. It is likewise the headquarters
of much charitable, religious and philanthropic work. Its
industries therefore are affected by these requirements.
This is one reason why the transport trades are so prominent
and why, except in the case of Railway Service, the numbers
employed in them are far greater relatively to the population
than in other places. Similarly, the proportion of dealers,
as shown by the Census Returns, which covers those engaged
in shops and retail operations generally, is with one or two
exceptions unusually large, as to an even greater extent is
that of clerical labour. The influence of the seat of
government, society and philanthropy is further seen in
the magnitude of three other groups, Building, Wood-
working and Clothing, whilst all these characteristics
combine to give it a very large proportion of the men
engaged in the Printing Trades.

The effect of this distribution is to demand a proportion

1 Report to the Poor Law Commission by Mr. A. D. Steel-
Maitland, M.P., and Miss Rose E. Squire, H. M. Inspector of
Factories, on the Relation of Industrial and Sanitary Conditions to
Pauperism (Appendix XVI., Col. 46535, 1909).

EXISTING CONDITIONS IN LONDON. 35

of low-skilled labour on the one hand, and of clerical
workers on the other that is greater than in the
country as a whole, whilst that of men engaged in skilled
employment is comparatively small. This tendency must
not, however, be exaggerated. The Printing Trades in
London are exceptionally large, and in few industries
is the general level of skill so high. The same is true of the
Precious Metal and Instrument Group, though some of
these latter have a growing element of juvenile, and un-
skilled adult, labour, resulting from subdivision and the
increased use N of machinery. Again, for reasons that will
be dealt with later, the large number of high-class retail
orders that are found in the Furnishing Industry creates
a demand for a very high level of capacity. Still, after
making all allowances, the proportion of low-skilled work-
men is large ; and casual and irregular employment are
very prevalent among all grades of labour. This indeed is
a phenomenon that appears to be inseparable from the
trade of a port and from many kinds of distributive work.
For a similar reason juvenile Blind Alleys are unusually
common since they require more of it than do the bulk of
the manufacturing industries. Hence the problem of
London is complicated and made more difficult from the
very first by the nature of its demand for labour.

Moreover the special characteristics that result from this
industrial character are rendered less capable of treatment
by a matter in which no other city can bear comparison
with it, and that is its immense size. This accentuates and
intensifies every difficulty. Here indeed it differs widely
from other capital cities in that their area is more manage-
able and the distribution of their trades more obvious to
their citizens. This fact, therefore, has always to be borne
in mind in considering its peculiarities.

The first of these is the comparative rarity of large local-

.ized industries. Its trades are extremely varied, in spite

of the almost complete absence of several important ones,

such as the textiles, and perhaps this is the reason why

each of them is usually spread over a wide area. There are

36 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

large industries but, with one or two exceptions, they are
scattered ; and localized industries but they are mostly
small. Further the worker's place of business and his home
are often afar apart, so that even where the factories and
offices are close together, the homes of those who work in
them are not.

Large localized industries have considerable advantages,
especially where, as in manufacturing towns of moderate
size, they provide employment for a considerable part of the
population. They give a natural outlet for the labour of
the rising generation, which in the Potteries betakes itself
to the furnaces, in the Boot Towns to the boot trade and
so on. Some go as apprentices and learners to acquire
the most skilled operations, others take up boys' work and
rise by a sort of natural progression to do more difficult
processes later on, and yet others come in time to do as
men the unskilled jobs. But in each case the provision
of a definite opening is of immense value, even where the
future only promises a position of the latter kind. For
those who can look for nothing better — as under our present
industrial organization is the lot of many — a definite posi-
tion in life counts for much. With all forms of labour the
greatest danger is that of drifting from one thing to another
without mastering any, and this a localized industry helps
to avert.

Sometimes, indeed, localization may, from its very con-
centration, increase certain evils, as when the trade employs
an excessive amount of boy labour. Within it, again, the
organization may be bad, or there may be much casual
employment, but all the same openings or at least places
do naturally present themselves for far more persons than
when it is scattered, and in any case the position of those
who enter it is preferable to the endless drifting from job
to job that is so common in London.

Generally, therefore, those districts, which possess one
or more of such industries, have at least the advantage of
providing natural outlets for their young workers. It is
very different in London. For such openings are seldom

EXISTING CONDITIONS IN LONDON. 37

available in large numbers except in the case of low-skilled
labour ; and some of its largest localized trades are those
which give little opportunity of employment, or at least
of well-paid employment, after adolescence. The great
difficulty, however, arises out of the scattered character of
those which do give real prospects. I n many other towns good
openings present themselves ; here in London it is necessary
to go out and find them, and they are difficult to find, so that
the boy and his parents never really know what is available.
Thus, besides the danger of failing to find anything, they
are often compelled to accept the first place that offers
whether it is suitable or not.

Moreover this difficulty of finding a single thing of a
desirable type is accompanied by the presence of too large a
number of jobs that are better avoided. There are always
plenty of the latter going, and so the tendency for boys to
drift, instead of sticking steadily to their posts, is multiplied.
The suitable ones are scattered among others that are not,
and in the attempt to find the former they either drift into
the latter, or, overwhelmed by the difficulty of their task and
fearful of missing any chance, snatch at whatever turns up
first. Thus the danger that learning will be subordinated to
wage-earning, already present in any case, is considerably
extended by these causes. Finally, even when a good opening
is obtained, prevailing conditions combine with the frequent
absence of a formal contract to render it equally easy to
leave and offer all sorts of temptations to do so to boys
of unsettled disposition.

Moreover even London's few localized industries are
hardly fitted to play the same part as those of other towns :
but their rarity must not be exaggerated. Sometimes the
localization is only partial, as in the case of Engineering
along the south bank of the river, or of Ship-repairing in
Poplar. The latter contains more than one-third of all
male workers in the London Ship-building Trade, and seven
riverside boroughs1 on the south of the Thames employ over

1 These boroughs are Woolwich, Greenwich, Deptford, Bermond-
sey, Southwark, Lambeth, Battersea. The Arsenal accounts for a
considerable proportion of these in the case of Woolwich.

38 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

19,000 men and boys in General Engineering and Machine.
Making, or nearly half of those returned for the whole of the
County of London. Similarly a very large proportion of
those in the Printing Trade are found in six boroughs
which are more or less grouped about its chief centre in the
immediate neighbourhood of Fleet Street, three of them being
on the North, and three on the South, side of the river.1

Nevertheless the areas over which these men are spread
is too wide to allow of any real local concentration, except
perhaps round the Arsenal at Woolwich. Such, however,
is found, especially if we take into account the size of the
trades concerned, in that group of industries which is com-
bined in the Census under the heading of Precious Metals,
Jewels, Watches, Instruments and Games. They may be
referred to shortly as the Precious Metal and Instrument
Trades. Their chief home is in the central and north-central
districts of the County of London, and, as sometimes
happens, the factories are even more localized than the
homes of the men. The whole group was returned at the
recent Census as employing just over 23,000 workers2 in the
County of London, and of these not very far short of one-
half (about 10,600) came from four boroughs— Finsbury,
Islington, Hackney and St. Pancras. Moreover, this localiza-
tion of the actual manufacturing business is more marked
than it appears on paper since in some of these trades a
good many men are employed by retail shops and dealers
all over London to carry out small orders and repairs. This
is particularly true of the clock and watchmakers who are
comparatively scattered.

In Silversmithing the four boroughs just mentioned con-
tained almost exactly half of the workers employed in the
County area. The largest numbers are found in Islington,
though factories and workshops are probably more numer-
ous in Finsbury. There is in the same district a further
concentration of art metal workers, who are manipulating
the base metals, of whom there is no separate return,

1 Finsbury, Hackney, Islington, Camberwell, Lambeth, Southwark.
- Workers 23,067 : Dealers 4,138.

EXISTING CONDITIONS IN LONDON. 39

and it contains between one-half and two-fifths of the men
in the Scientific Instrument Trades. Finally the Pianoforte
Trade is even more narrowly centralized, more than
half of those engaged in it being found in Islington and
St. Pancras, with a smaller aggregation in Hackney. In
some of its branches there appears to be an excess of boy
labour.

The Manufacture of Leather, however, has the reputation
of being the most concentrated in London. So far as the
factories are concerned, the actual making of the leather
is very narrowly localized in Bermondsey and those parts
of Southwark and Camberwell which are contiguous to it.
The trade in this district employs a much larger proportion
of the workers than the Census would lead one to suppose,
since many of the men, and particularly of the more skilled
and better paid, live in other boroughs. Makers of leather
goods are less concentrated, but the trade appears to have
two chief centres, one to the North of the river in Hackney
and Islington, and the other to the South in Southwark and
Camberwell. In neither case, however, is the localization
at all marked. Saddlers and harness makers are spread
fairly evenly over London.

All these trades are comparatively small, but localization
is also found in some of the larger industries, notably in
Tailoring, Bootmaking and the Furniture Trades. In the
two former there is considerable subdivision of labour, and
in certain districts Tailoring is associated with the Sweating
System. At the recent Census Tailoring employed about
33,000 men and boys in Greater London and Boot-
making about 24,000, and both showed great concen-
tration in certain districts, at least so far as the
wholesale trade is concerned. Moreover in them and in
the Furniture Trades the homes of the workers are
situated to a great extent in the same neighbourhood as
their work places. In the Borough of Stepney the number
of male persons engaged in Tailoring was over 14,000, and
in Central London there was also a smaller but still appreci-
able concentration. In Bootmaking, there were over 8,000

40 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

in four of the East London Boroughs — Stepney, Shoreditch,
Bethnal Green and Hackney.

But in some ways the Furniture Trades of East London
are the most important of all, more particularly in the same
four boroughs which in 1911 contained more than two-
fifths of all their members. Taking individual branches,
they domiciled something like five-eighths of the cabinet
makers (of whom there were 3,752 in Bethnal Green and
2,123 in Shoreditch), nearly one-half of the french polishers
and about three-tenths of the upholsterers. The Wood-
working Trades as a whole are not a homogeneous group,
but these three branches of it do form such a one in East
London.1

But if so far they are localized, the trades we have been
considering have characteristics which prevent or hinder
them from performing the services provided by the localized
industries of provincial towns. Many of them are small,
employing in all only a few thousand workers, and however
considerable is the proportion of them working or residing
in one district, it is a very small part of the total population.
Thus the 2,856 men and boys engaged in the Pianoforte
Trade in Islington and St. Pancras are only a drop in the
ocean among the 179,000 male workers in these boroughs,
especially if we compare them with the 15,715 in the Boot
and Shoe Trade at Leicester out of a total of only 71,000.
Indeed two or more of our localized industries sometimes
exist side by side in the same district. They cannot, there-
fore, play the same part that those of other towns do in focus-
sing the demand for juvenile labour. Even in the Furniture
Trades the same thing holds good to a lesser extent, except
perhaps in one or two boroughs.

But further several of these industries suffer from dis-
advantages which render their influence harmful rather

1 Taking these boroughs as a whole the Woodworking Trades
contain between 9 and 10 per cent, of their occupied male population,
but in Bethnal Green and Shoreditch the proportions amount to
19-9 and 16-3 per cent, respectively compared with 22'i per cent,
in the Boot Trade at Leicester.

EXISTING CONDITIONS IN LONDON. 41

than beneficial. One or two of them are decaying and thus
ceasing to provide as many openings as formerly or even full
employment to those who do enter them. The organiza-
tion of others is often loose, especially in the Furniture and
Pianoforte Trades. Sometimes, again, the work is sub-
divided, more or less minutely, between different firms,
and this is also true of parts of the Art Metal Trades. When,
therefore, boys enter such firms, they can at most only learn
a part of the trade. This may indeed form a stepping-
stone to something better, but on the other hand it may give
little of permanent value.

Thirdly, and perhaps of more importance, is the fact that
the Furniture and Pianoforte Industries are honeycombed
with casual labour and have marked seasonal fluctuations.
The latter are increasing in intensity in Art Metal work also.
This casualization, moreover, extends to the juvenile workers
and compels them to drift about from firm to firm, whilst
the recurring periods of unemployment are particularly
baneful to them. Such movement is also becoming neces-
sary, though not as yet to anything like the same extent,
in the Precious Metal and Instrument Group. Finally many
of these trades, partly because of their method of production,
partly from the instability of their labour supply, have to
employ an undue proportion of boy labour : and whilst
in some districts or in some firms there is a deficiency of young
workers, in those boroughs where they are most localized
the excess is often considerable.

The second peculiarity of London springs from the fact
that it is to a great and growing extent a centre of repair
and retail work rather than of new construction. Where
this is so, it possesses an unusually large proportion of firms
of small or moderate size, and even when they are large, the
business varies greatly in character from job to job, and
even on the same job. Thus the huge establishments of
other towns are comparatively rare, and instead of the
specialization of work that is their characteristic, the demand
is mainly, though not entirely, for all-round men. This does
not apply to all trades, and House Building is a notable

42 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

exception. Where it does, however, a further distinction
must be made between repairs and odd jobs generally and
new work done in execution of the retail orders of private
customers.

The former take several forms. First there is repair
work pure and simple, which ranges from very large con-
tracts of Ship-Repairing to a great variety of odd jobs.
Secondly there is a class of work which, though nominally
new construction, is really of the same character. It con-
sists mostly of small orders for purposes such as replacing
breakdowns of machinery and tools, supplying parts and
accessories, making slight additions to plant, and so on.
Thus big contracts are often carried out elsewhere, but these
smaller ones it is often not worth while to send to a distance,
especially if they require to be executed quickly. The
Printing Trade in Central London, for instance, is served
in. this way by a certain number of Printers' Engineers.
Thirdly many large firms have small shops attached to them
with sufficient men to keep their buildings or machinery
in good condition, and in the total these also account for a
considerable number.

The industries in which these circumstances are most
marked are those of Shipbuilding and Engineering. In the
former practically no new construction takes place in Lon-
don, and the men in it and in those branches of engineer-
ing that are dependent upon it are almost entirely engaged
on repair work. In the other sections of the Engineering
Trades the same thing holds good with certain reservations
and the men are mainly employed on these kinds of orders.
Comparatively little new manufacturing on a large scale
is done. With one or two exceptions, the Railway Com-
panies have moved their works away, and other large fac-
tories, if found at all, are situated mostly in suburban dis-
tricts such as Willesden. In South London, however, there
is still some large scale production, but even there the general
statement as to the character of the industry holds good.

These, however, if the most important, are not the only
cases in which such conditions prevail. As already stated,

EXISTING CONDITIONS IN LONDON. 43

Clock and Watch Makers are mostly occupied in this way,
as are many of the mechanics employed in the Cycle and
Motor Trades, and repair work also provides for consider-
able numbers in the making of clothing and boots and in
House Building.

Moreover in London a great deal of new work is carried
out retail, especially in those trades that serve the wealthier
districts. Of this the best example is found in the Furnish-
ing Industry of the West and North- West. Much of its
business is done not for the wholesale market but to the orders
of private individuals. Many such are specially designed
and executed according to the taste of the purchaser. The
work, too, is not only of very high quality, but very varied in
character. Even in a large order, therefore, a very extensive
use of machinery or of machined parts is not profitable, and
the proportion of work that has to be carried out by hand is
unusually large. Thus the men employed are highly skilled
and highly paid and the boys who are taken on get a thor-
ough training. There is and can be little subdivision of
labour, since each contract differs from the previous one
and sometimes almost every piece of furniture does so:
Other instances of such retail work are found in the higher
class of Bespoke Tailoring and Bootmaking. One might
also add that even in production for the wholesale market,
notably in the Furniture Trade of East London and in the
Art Metal group, the number of small firms is very great,
but in them the methods of working are different.

Now with regard to Industrial Training these classes
of work have many peculiarities. The result is on the whole
favourable as regards the actual teaching, but the general
conditions of employment are often far from good. Repairs
and, to a lesser degree, Retail Orders are apt to come in
rushes and at irregular intervals, 'and in woodwork the latter
are frequently seasonal in character. Thus there is irregular
and casual employment of boys as well as of men. For this
reason they are often compelled to move from firm to firm,
and are therefore rendered liable to long spells of unemploy-
ment ; and this is a far greater evil in their case than in

44 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

that of adults. Moreover, small shops sometimes mean
small and inferior work, consisting largely of odd jobs, whilst
some of the smaller masters are not capable of teaching and,
unlike bigger firms, have not in their employ others who are.
This, however, only applies to some, and not to all of the
shops doing repair and retail business, and irregularity of
employment is not nearly so common in the case of those
engaged upon high-class retail orders.

On the other hand, the work, especially in shops above a
certain size, is necessarily varied, and renders minute sub-
division impossible. Where the quality is good, therefore,
no better training can be asked for, since the boy must sooner
or later be put through the whole business. Moreover he
comes into closer and more intimate contact with his em-
ployer than he can do in a very big business. The direct
personal tie is of great value, and small employers of this
type have a special interest in bringing their boys on as
rapidly .as possible. They, therefore, get at least a very
thorough grounding in the elements of their trade.

A third question that is closely allied to that which has
just been considered is the opposite tendency to the growth
of specialization, which is common to the country as a whole
and not peculiar to London. Sometimes it has been carried
as far or even further there than elsewhere, at others not
nearly so far, whilst in certain cases the very incompleteness
of its development has given rise to a special problem. The
tendency operates mainly in two directions. It may consist,
first, of the subdivision among a number of men in the same
firm of processes formerly performed by a single man ; and,
secondly, it may arise because individual firms have a limited
range of output. In other words, the result may be effected
by operating either on the process or on the product.

When the term specialization is used without qualifica-
tion, the first of these alternatives is referred to. The
separation of processes, indeed, was coeval with the birth
of manufacturing industry, and thus the term really implies
the fresh creation of new processes out of the old ones,
carried sufficiently far to effect a definite change in the skill

EXISTING CONDITIONS IN LONDON. 45

or status of the workman. The doing of a little exception-
ally well replaces the doing of a greater amount less per-
fectly, sometimes with a loss on balance. In the Building
Trades, for instance, a man used to be a carpenter and joiner,
as in a small shop he still is ; but now, in a large firm, he is
either one or the other. So too in big engineering works
fitters and turners are two separate classes, and sometimes
a third is added — namely, that of erectors. Here, however,
and to a lesser extent among wood-working machinists,
there is a further specialization of men on to particular
machines, eachfnan working one and one only ; and thus a
class of machine-minders either replaces or supplements the
mechanics. This subdivision, indeed, has been carried so far
in the provincial Boot Trade, that many operatives preform
only a single small process. Speaking generally, however,
the present generation is said to have seen a great growth
in this direction, but more probably causes that have been
in operation for some years past are now for the first time
beginning to have their full effect. Taken as a whole, how-
ever, such specialization has neither been carried so far
nor adopted so frequently in London as it has in other
manufacturing towns.

The effect upon the position of the artisan has varied.
Sometimes it has reduced the numbers required, but only
to a small extent the skill needed by those who are left.
Sometimes, again, it has decreased this or altered its char-
acter. Some of the finest machinery used in Engineering,
for instance, requires a large number of men whose skill
is far less, and a small number to "set up " the machines,
whose skill is greater, than that of the older type of mechanic.
Or, again, it is common for general intelligence to be developed
at the expense of manual dexterity. Thirdly, a fresh class
of labour may be introduced to do the work. Women,
for instance, have replaced men in parts of the textile
trades, and boys, or even girls, work the semi-automatic
and other simple machines that are becoming so com-
mon, especially in metal work. Here, therefore, new Blind-
Alley Employments are created : and what formerly

46 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

lasted a lifetime now ceases on the threshold of manhood.
Specialization, therefore, has three possible results, de-
creased demand, employment of a lower grade of adult men,
and the substitution of female or juvenile workers. Often,
however, the displacement of one class of labour is partly
offset elsewhere. The " stamping-out " of articles of silver-
ware by boys has limited the demand for silversmiths ; but
by cheapening the product, it has provided increased employ-
ment for those engaged in soldering together the stamped-
out parts. Where, moreover, the change is uniform through-
out a trade, the resulting displacement, gr%at though it is,
is, after all, temporary, except so far as fresh juvenile employ-
ments are created ; and the matter adjusts itself sooner or
later. Fresh workers cease to enter the branch affected,
and existing ones get absorbed elsewhere or gradually die
out. Our present industrial organization does, indeed,
involve much temporary hardship, and many skilled workers
have no resource left except low-skilled and often casual
labour ; but even so the effects of the change, if it is complete,
are limited to one generation.

Different conditions prevail where the change is only
partial, as is frequently the case in London. There are
then two competing forms of production in the same in-
dustry, the specialized and the non-specialized, and each
of these requires its own labour supply. This in some
respects intensifies the evil and renders it more permanent,
especially if the number of specializing firms is small, as
in London it often is. A man employed in one of them has
been taught to do only his particular branch of the trade.1
Now where specialized production is normal his skill is in
general demand, since he can perform a service that every
one requires. He is still liable to be thrown out by general
trade depression, but not by slackness in a single workshop.
When, however, only a few firms require his particular
aptitude, there is great danger that he will frequently lose

1 In the case considered the man in question remains a skilled
man with a high level of skill over a narrow range, whilst the bulk
of the firms require all-round workmen with a lower level of skill.

EXISTING CONDITIONS IN LONDON. 47

his employment through slackness in one or two of them,
or even permanently through their failure. He suffers
from the very limited market for his skill, and if, as sometimes
happens, the trade is one in which the business of individual
undertakings continually fluctuates, frequent spells of
unemployment are inevitable. Similarly all-round workers
have been known to fail to keep employment in certain
cases through failure to reach the standard of speed or skill
required in a single branch. In London, therefore, the
difficulties caused by specialization of processes are largely
the result of its incomplete adoption.

The second type of specialization takes the form of sub-
division of output or the limitation of the work of a firm
to certain articles. It is very common in London. In
House Building an increasing number of businesses
confine themselves to certain branches ; but this is
merely the separation of the management of distinct
trades that were formerly controlled by a single head,
and the worker has still to learn as before the whole of
his particular craft. What we are really concerned
with is the case of a trade producing a great variety of
types and patterns of its product, in which firms
specialize on a few of them or even on a single one.
In hardware only a certain article will be produced, and in
joinery only doors or window-frames, and so on. It is in
Cabinet Making, however, that this is most common, espe-
cially among the numerous firms of small and moderate size.
A master confines himself to cabinets or bedroom suites
or cupboards, or even to one or two patterns of them. Thus
he is only in the position to teach, and a boy to learn, a part
of the business, and how much this will be varies with the
character of the article produced. On one he will acquire
considerable knowledge of the tools and processes, on
another the merest smattering ; but in either case his know-
ledge will be incomplete, and he will have to move to other
firms to complete it. A similar subdivision is also common
in Silversmithing, the most frequent distinction being be-
tween large and small work. Few trades, however, escape

48 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

it entirely, and it is far more developed in London than is
specialization of processes. Its influence on Industrial
Training is often enormous.

The result is an increasing difficulty of learning the whole
of a trade in one shop, and the statement that this is impos-
sible is in some cases not far from the truth. Hence migra-
tion from firm to firm is often essential, and the same dangers
are found as appear in connexion with repair work. The
chances of friction and wastage are greatly increased, and
many boys, as a result, grow up half-taught, and others
suffer far too much from spells of unemployment. These
difficulties, indeed, are not insuperable, and could be over-
come by suitable organization, but as yet this does not exist.
They are, moreover, far more serious in London than they
are elsewhere, and the means for overcoming them are still
in, their infancy.

Together these two forms of specialization have created
various dangerous or undesirable forms of Boy Labour.
The growth of Blind Alleys, which are simply labouring
work, has attracted the most attention. The skill required
is that of a labourer, the strength and stamina those of
a boy. His commercial value, therefore, is measured by
the high boy's wage that is paid for the time being. Less
obtrusive, but equally insidious and little less dangerous,
are those forms of juvenile employment that I have just
been considering. Here parts of the work of a trade are
given to boys and young men in every stage of development.
Apart from purely unskilled jobs, there are others that
require young workers, partially taught and of varying
degrees of capacity, for which, in fact, " an improver will
do." In short, " boy labour " is supplemented by " im-
prover labour/' and this has led instinctively to the grading
of work and wages. Each piece of work requires a certain
amount of skill and gives knowledge in proportion. So far
it is educative. The boy or youth after doing it is one step,
but only one step, further on the road towards his goal.
Some, therefore, work their way up from job to job, but
others do not ; and thus many never fully master a trade
who yet learn a good deal about it.

EXISTING CONDITIONS IN LONDON. 49

Finally, before leaving this subject, two peculiar cases
have to be considered. For various reasons the use of im-
proved machinery, and the resulting subdivision of processes,
is carried further in House Building than in other London
trades. The consequent decrease in the range of skill has,
as, for instance, in the case of joiners, been counter-balanced
partly by the higher level now required in the performance
of the work that is left and partly by the increased difficulty
of learning what has still to be learnt. The trade remains
highly skilled. The rougher parts of it are now done in the
machine shop, and this has caused a demand for finer finish
by the joiner. Moreover, what is now done in the machine
room comprises just those easier and simpler processes
that are most suitable for the younger boys to make a start
on. To learn these helps them to master their business
thoroughly, and to get a complete knowledge of it the lad
should work through it from the beginning. By so doing
he obtains a better grasp of its principles. Otherwise
he is apt to be at a disadvantage compared with a boy
taught in a provincial town or in a smaller shop, where
much more has to be done by hand. This difficulty is
experienced more or less acutely by all large cities, and
partly accounts for the preference shown by contractors
for country-trained workpeople.

Secondly, the huge size of London is, among other things,
largely responsible for the concentration of different grades
and forms of work in different localities. An instance has al-
ready been mentioned in the case of Cabinet Making. Here
the wholesale trade in East London is much subdivided,
and employs much casual labour and an excess of juvenile
workers. The smaller industry of West London is mainly
retail, needs highly skilled workmen, takes few boys, and,
except for somewhat marked seasonal variations, enjoys
admirable conditions. Now in their different districts, these
two sections are almost two distinct trades, and there is little
interchange of labour between them. Hence, owing to their
unsuitable training, the surplus boys of the East seldom, if
ever, find employment as men in the shops of the West.

50 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

In other trades also there is a similar division. Sometimes
it consists entirely of a difference in quality, without the dif-
ferent qualities being located in separate areas ; and here too
there is often the same absence of mobility. Thus in
Tailoring and Boot-making, most of the higher-grade
work is found in West London, but in Art Metal Work
all classes of shops are concentrated in the same boroughs.
In any case, however, the feature to be noted is that a
deficient number of young workers in the better class shops
is as a rule filled up, not from other branches of the trade,
but by workers trained outside London.

This fact, therefore, forms the last of those peculiarities of
London industry that specially affect Industrial Training.
It extends far beyond cases of this kind, and it has become a
truism to say that London Trades are largely recruited by
provincial workmen. This feature again London shares with
other large cities, but at the same time it probably draws
more of its labour from elsewhere than they do, and draws
it from a wider area. This influence will receive separate
and fuller treatment later.

Further there is not only an influx but an efflux as well.
The influx of labour is supplemented by an efflux of pro-
duction. Industry, especially manufacturing industry, is
tending to leave London, and more particularly its central
area. Sometimes a trade, or a part of it, merely moves to the
outskirts for the sake of lower rents and rates, sometimes
much further afield. Thus Shipbuilding, as opposed to
Ship-repairing, has been transferred to the North-East
Coast and to the Clyde. In the manufacture of leather, Leeds
is growing, on the whole, more rapidly than Bermondsey.
Closer home, printing and bookbinding works have been
transferred to places like Letchworth, and in districts like
Willesden factories of various kinds are being built to
replace those that are closed down in the more central areas.

The trouble is accentuated by the fact that when the
works are moved, some at least of the workmen whom they
employ are left behind, and the loss to Londoners is even
more considerable when they are gradually displaced by

EXISTING CONDITIONS IN LONDON. 51

provincial competition. Where there is a definite removal,
the more energetic and enterprising follow the trade : but
in the latter case there is for long no palpable sign of the
change. Only the demand for labour grows gradually
less and its employment more casual.

Together therefore the influx and the efflux diminish
the amount of skilled employment available. The demand
for clerical workers and in the transport trades has
increased, but it is doubtful if this increase is sufficient
compensation ; and there are signs that in London there
is some permanent excess of labour.

Such, therefore, are the general industrial peculiarities
of London. First, there is little local concentration. Trades,
as a rule, are scattered all over it and, even when they are
not, are, with one or two exceptions, too small to bear any
marked proportion to the total population of an area.
Secondly, the amount of repair and retail work is very large,
as is the proportion of firms of small or moderate size. The
former often combine the dangers of casual employment
with unusually good opportunities for learning ; the latter
give a good groundwork in the trade, but are frequently
limited in the amount and quality of their business. Thirdly,
specialization has taken forms that are to some extent
peculiar to London. Separation of processes has been
only partial and of such a character as to limit certain
workers to a very few firms. Subdivision of product or
output among different employers has been more common,
rendering necessary continual movement from one „ shop
to another if the training is to be adequate. Finally,
London employers get a very considerable proportion of
their trained labour from elsewhere.

Together these characteristics have had some important
effects. The first consists of the irregularity of the con-
ditions under which a trade is learnt. These have already
been described, together with the difficulty of finding an
opening, and the necessity, in many cases, of frequent change
of shop. Further, they have led to a variety of methods
of teaching, and at the same time require a peculiarly careful

52 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

control of the individual boy and a very strict and well-
regulated organization of the labour market. Secondly,
there is a deficiency of openings, at any rate for skilled
labour. Indeed, the demand for learners not seldom falls
far short of the supply. The statement was frequently made
to me that " We do not want boys, we want men," and in
most cases at least sufficient numbers of the latter were
available. Often, too, such demand for boys as exists is
for them to do such jobs as will not give them any training
for their work as men. Only in the rarest cases is difficulty
experienced in securing not merely sufficient learners but
as many as are required several times over. Taking all
forms of employment together, indeed, opinions vary as to
whether in fact there is or is not an excess of juvenile labour ;
/ but so far as there is a deficiency, it is confined to unskilled
and uneducative occupations.

At this point a short treatment will suffice for the other
peculiarities mentioned at the beginning of this chapter-
namely, those arising out of the existing methods of training.
These have an important mutual influence upon the con-
ditions already considered. Now, stated baldly, the out-
standing feature is absence of system. It is not a matter
of a good system or a bad one, but in the majority of trades
there is a variety of methods, but nothing that can be called
a system at all. Each firm, each parent, each boy does
what he thinks best, and often does it very well, but not in
co-operation with others. The result once more is that the
chances of friction and of abuse are enormously magnified,
and the evil tendencies of industrial conditions are corre-
spondingly encouraged. Moreover, with a few exceptions,
the Trade Unions are seldom able to enforce any definite
policy for improving the teaching of learners, and some-
times they have no policy to enforce. Everything,
therefore, is left to chance, and the wonder is that
abuses are not more prevalent. And as it is with the
entry into a trade, so it is after entry. The contract between
employer and learner very often does not guarantee teach-
ing, but simply the "opportunity to learn." Frequently

EXISTING CONDITIONS IN LONDON. 53

there is not even this. The boy is just employed as a
wage-earner and demands his value as such. His chances
then will and must depend largely upon himself, for, as
stated in an earlier chapter, he is not trained in any scientific
sense, but teaches himself or " gets to know."

It is, indeed, inevitable that under modern conditions there
should be a variety of methods of teaching trades, since no one
device can fit all sorts and conditions of employment. The
trouble, therefore, arises out of the absence of co-ordination
between them. There is not only variety but mixture of
methods ; and often two or more of them are .found side by
side, not merely in the same trade, but even in the same firm.
Of apparently similar employers, one will employ only bound
apprentices, another only improvers, and a third perhaps
will engage both indifferently. The difficulty, therefore, of
describing existing methods is increased. Such description
implies an actual separation and the existence of separate
spheres of influence. There is, in fact, no such thing.

Now this prevalence of chaos, for often it is little less,
produces numerous evils. Advantages vary between one
method and another, each having its own points of superior-
ity, according to the conditions that happen to prevail.
Some, too, have the greater immediate attraction, others
more solid and lasting benefits. But when they are found
side by side indiscriminately, abuses and misconduct are
rendered easier. The absence of any definite standard of
teaching assists the unscrupulous employer to exploit his
apprentices, and sometimes the phenomenon occurs that
bound apprentices are less well treated than boys who
are not bound, and certain employers,who fortunately are not
numerous, bind them for this very reason.1 A definite pre-
dominating system not only acts as a guide to the great
bulk of the masters, but exposes clearly and at once any
malpractices of this minority. Similarly the boy who

1 The obverse of this picture is seen where an employer has gone
to trouble and expense to teach a boy who is not bound to him, and
then the latter leaves his employer just as his services are becoming
valuable.

54 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

misbehaves himself is comparatively safe in London,
and, if dismissed from one job, has at first little difficulty in
finding another. Thus exploitation on the one side, and
drifting or slackness on the other, are liable to be greatly
increased.

Especially is trouble experienced at the time when a boy
first starts to earn wages. The absence of recognized
methods and the other difficulties that beset London in-
dustry, put an undue premium on those forms of employ-
ment that present greatest immediate attraction. This
strengthens the tendency that is latent in most boys,
and in many parents, to set wage-earning before learning.
The difficulty of finding, and getting into, the right occupa-
tion is great for the reasons already given ; and thus the
acceptance of the first thing that offers, good or bad, is felt
to be almost a necessity. The preference for high wages
over future prospects may not be there to begin with ;
but under existing conditions it almost necessarily grows
up sooner or later and, whilst these remain as they are, will
continue to do so.

Thus perhaps the most salient, and certainly the most
dangerous, fact of the present day is the mental attitude of
boys and their parents towards learning and earning. Here
the old position no longer holds good. In the past the boy
was regarded essentially as a learner, and both his employ-
ment and his wages were conditioned by his position as
such. Both he himself, his parents and his employers
looked primarily to this. Nowadays the tendency is to put
the wage-earner before the learner — sometimes deliberately,
sometimes from lack of knowledge, sometimes from failure
in the attempt to get a good opening.

Modern industry not seldom demands, indeed, that a lad
should be a worker first and foremost and get to know his
trade as he works. The employers employ and pay boys
according to their commercial value, and boys, or their
parents for them, come to demand wages in proportion to
this, whilst such a demand on their part may in its turn
compel employers to treat them solely as workers. Some-

EXISTING CONDITIONS IN LONDON. 55

times the initiative comes from one side, sometimes from the
other ;Jbut undeniably^even learners — that is, those who are
definitely employed as such— get wages far more nearly in
proportion to the value of their work than they used to do ;
and thus the power of the employer to teach them is
reduced. For, apart from any preference for uneducative
labour because of its greater immediate returns, many boys
prefer to obtain the highest wages that they can at some
branch of a skilled trade and whilst so doing, take their
chance of " getting to know "it. That is to say, the boy
is regarded, and regards himself, as a wage-earner as well
as a learner, if not as a wage-earner first and a learner only
second.

Thus do many circumstances arising out of its social and
industrial peculiarities combine to produce and accentuate
the absence of any system of Industrial Training in London
at the present day. General conditions, disorder and con-
fusion in the adoption of various methods, and the attitude
towards learning and wage-earning, all exercise a bad
influence upon training. Dangers and difficulties, that are
more than usually serious, are not met by the careful organi-
zation that is specially necessary, and full use is not made
of such advantages as London undeniably possesses. On
the contrary, unfavourable tendencies have been allowed to
grow almost unchecked. Everything has been left to chance.
Alongside of those who do learn, and many do, there is great
loss in the waste or spoiling of much good material, in an
altogether disproportionate number of failures, and in the
growth of various types of half-taught workmen. Thus
has the position of London fallen from one in which it set
the ideal standard of Industrial Education to a state that
is almost chaos ; and thus too the number of those who
from various causes " graduate into unemployment," in the
expressive phrase of the Minority Report, is unusually and
unpleasantly large.

CHAPTER IV.
REGULAR SERVICE.

Four Forms of Regular Service — Formal Apprenticeship by Inden-
ture— Where Predominant : The Printing Trades, Book-
binders, The Watermen, Smaller Trades.

Less Formal Service — By Verbal Agreement : On Good
Behaviour: Working and Learning — Conditions under which
this last exists — Predominance of Verbal Agreements : Engin-
eering—Presence of small amount of Migration — Its Causes —
Difference in this respect between Formal and Informal Service .
The Third Form of Service or the Third and Fourth com-
bined— Optical and Scientific Instruments — Continuity of
Employment during Learning — Existence of a class of Semi-
skilled Workmen — Silversmithing and the Art Metal Trades —
Less marked Prevalence of Service — Considerable Minority
learns by Migration — Objection of many firms to Formal
Apprenticeship — Methods substituted for it.

Position of Service in Industries where it is not Predominant —
Its Adoption by individual firms may be due to chance or
caused by definite reasons — Higher Class Firms utilize when
the rest do not — The Building Trades : Service more frequent
in certain branches — Best firms take fewest boys — Illustra-
tion of the Position in the case of the Joiners — Objections to
Formal Apprenticeship — General Existence of Migration —
Other Branches : Carpenters, Plumbers, Plasterers, Masons,
Bricklayers, Painters — Contrast between Building and Printing
—Typical Character of the Former.

Relation of Service to other methods where they are in com-
petition— Service and Migration — Service and Following-Up —
Service and Picking-Up — Partial Survival almost everywhere
of Regular Service and even of Apprenticeship — Differences of
Method due to : (i) Locality, (2) Quality, (3) Demarcation of
Hand and Machine Work, (4) Adoption of Apprenticeship for
Special Reasons.

Firms continuing Apprenticeship where it is no longer usual —
Large Well-organized Firms : Building — Highly- Specialized
Firms : Silverware — The Good Small Firm — The Premium
Hunter — Influence or Interest — Character of these as Teachers.

Growth of Short Service followed by Migration : Its Value —
Where adopted — Apprenticeship direct to the men — Instances

REGULAR SERVICE.

of Survival — Summary and Conclusion — The Need for Regular
Service.

EXISTING methods of entering a trade in London fall
roughly into four, classes. The first is that in which it
is acquired by Regular Service, involving permanence in
the engagement under which a boy learns. It takes a
variety of forms, namely : Formal Apprenticeship by In-
denture, an Informal or Verbal Agreement (not legally
binding), Employment during Good Behaviour (with usually
a tacit understanding between the parties), and Working
and Learning. In this last a boy gets a job to do a certain
piece of work for a certain wage, and then gradually picks
up the trade bit by bit, staying on in the same firm until
he has done so ; but at no time is there any sort of agree-
ment on its part to teach him anything.

Between these types of Regular Service, therefore, there
are many differences, but they have sufficient common
essentials to form a single class. For the matter of primary
importance is that under any one of them the boy is
learning from beginning to end by continuous and regular
employment in a single firm, though with Working and
Learning, and as a rule with Employment during Good
Behaviour, this is a matter of fact and not of agreement.
But it is in the fact of permanence in one case and of lack
of permanence in the other that the vital distinction lies
between this and the second class — Learning by Migration.

The treatment of Regular Service, however, may best
commence with the consideration of Formal Apprenticeship.
The " mixture of methods " described in the last chapter
has created confusion in the meaning of this term, but at
present it is only with its narrower sense — formal bound
Apprenticeship — that we are concerned. This still sur-
vives in nearly every trade, though sometimes only to a
very small extent, and in a few it remains predominant.

In one important group, the Printing Trades, it is almost
universal : and in their largest branch the Compositors'
Society enforces strictly and successfully a rule of seven
years* service under Indenture, thus confining entrance into

58 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

the business and admission into the Society to those who
have fulfilled this condition.1 Though the provincial
Unions appear to have been far less successful in this respect,
exceptions to the rule in London are unusual, apart from those
who have come there after serving their time elsewhere.
A few small firms bind for five years instead of seven, and
" compositors' improvers " are not unknown, since small
offices which do some very simple work, will teach their
boys just enough for their purpose, and if they are to learn
more they will have to move on. Some of them can do a
little machine work as well as a little compositing, but it
is doubtful if they ever become competent men. They
are, moreover, neither a large nor a growing body. The
success of the system is further evidenced by the general
testimony to the decrease of abuses and of failures to teach.
Partly this is due to strict Trade Union organization, but
partly also to the enforcement of a single definite system.
Similar rules are also insisted upon, if not always so strictly,
in the other branches. The small but growing trade of
electrotypers and stereotypers has a strong Trade Union,
and has been very successful in this matter. Both masters
and men may and do disagree as to the details, but they
accept the principle of Apprenticeship and recognize the
need for restricting entry into the business to qualified men.
Indentures are also usual in the small subsidiary process
of Music Engraving. With warehousemen and cutters, on
the other hand, methods are less regular, since the employ-
ment ranks as a semi-skilled one. In individual cases,

1 This refers only to those who are actually put to the Trade
in London itself. The Society has not been able to exercise the game
control over those who have learnt it elsewhere and afterwards
come into London. Its rules, indeed, admit any one to membership
who can actually obtain employment in a " fair house " in London.
Hence a good portion of the provincial workmen appear not to have
received a regular apprenticeship. On the other hand, it has been
very successful in compelling nearly all who enter it in London to
undergo a full seven years' service by Indenture; and appears recently
to have regulated more strictly the admission of provincial work-
men with a view to excluding those who have not received an ade-
quate training. In insisting upon Apprenticeship, the Union has
had the support of the great bulk of the employers.

REGULAR SERVICE. 59

however, they are being regularized. Finally, with machine-
managers and lithographers Apprenticeship is the general
rule, and is gaining rather than losing ground, though the
latter are [not quite so successful in enforcing it as are the
other branches of their craft. It should be added that
in some cases the influence of the Compositors and the
advantages of adopting an uniform system in all the de-
partments of a business has sometimes assisted the other
Unions to establish or extend it.1

The machine managers insist strictly, and as a rule
successfully, on Apprenticeship, in spite of the fact that
they labour under the special disadvantage, that alter-
native methods of entering their trade are more feasible
than with the compositors. Both the platen hands and
the machine-managers' assistants (printers' labourers)
could, if left free to do so, work their way up to the superior
position, getting first on to an easy machine and then on
to more difficult ones. Cases of this sort have occurred :
but the extension of the practice has been checked. If
such men, therefore, are now to become managers, they
must serve their time in the regular way : and bindings
up to the age of twenty years are definitely recognized by
the Union, so that youths of ability shall not be prevented
from rising. In one instance that was brought to my
notice, an overseer discovered such capacity in the man
who eventually became his assistant overseer, but to enable
him to learn the business he had to get him apprenticed.
That this alternative process is a reality in the case of
machine-managers is evidenced by the fact that even some
Trade Unionists admit its possibility. Nevertheless, the
Society has on the whole insisted successfully on the more
regular method.

Moreover learning, without a definite bond of some sort,
is not only rare, but is becoming more so ; and there

1 It is worth noting, however, that in this trade some firms will be
Society Offices for some branches and non-Society for others. Not
unfrequently they will recognize the conditions of the Compositors'
Union, but not those of the others.

60 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

is even a tendency to displace less regular methods by
a modified form of apprenticeship. For instance, one
employer who brought up his compositors in the ordinary
way, used to adopt the following practice for his machine-
managers.

" Formerly there used to be a good many who started as errand
boys and progressed from that to be platen hands and so on.
This method we ourselves preferred, but have abandoned it for
a modified system under which our errand boys become platen
hands as before, and after they have worked for us for about seven
years we apprentice them as machine- managers and date their
indentures back four years."

The custom of dating back indentures, indeed, is cofnmon
throughout the printing trades, and a fair number are so
bound after working for a year or two as errand boys.

Again with the lithographers, a large proportion of the
members of their Unions appear to have served a formal
Apprenticeship and the majority of the remainder under
an informal agreement. In the larger houses which do
both letterpress work and lithography, the former is adopted
as in other branches, either for the sake of uniformity, or
as a result of the influences of the Compositors' Union.
Other offices, however, show more tendency to abandon it,
especially in the case of the smaller ones. Taking the trade
as a whole, however, there is an appreciable amount of
casual learning or picking-up, as some employers put the
smarter of their " laying-on " boys on to a simple machine,
and, if they prove competent, gradually teach them the
business. The actual length of service, again, varies with
the lithographer from five to seven years, the latter being
insisted upon in theory, the former frequently accepted
in practice.

Finally, the allied trade of Bookbinding occupies a pecu-
liar position. Machine-binding, which carries out practically
all the wholesale work, consists of a number of semi-skilled
processes in which the necessary knowledge is too quickly
acquired for a long Apprenticeship to be necessary or
even desirable. It is required, however, in hand-book-

REGULAR SERVICE. 61

binding, especially in the best class of it in which a very
high level of skill is demanded. Thus, in leather-binding
seven years' Apprenticeship is frequently insisted upon,
whilst in the less skilled jobbing work five years is usual : and
enforcement appears to be strict where high-class bookbind-
ing is carried on as a department of a printing office. Else-
where less regular methods exist, though the Bookbinders'
Society exercises a considerable, if not a complete, con-
trol. Indeed, except where machine production has been
developed, Regular Service and even formal Apprenticeship
have very largely survived.

The Printing Trades are the only large group throughout
which the stricter system is definitely enforced : but formal
Apprenticeship is also insisted upon in a number of smaller
trades. Of these the most important example is provided
by the Lightermen and Watermen of the River Thames.
Among them the old methods that have prevailed from
the early days of the Watermen's Company still continue
in force, though there are a certain number of openings
through which unapprenticed labour can enter the business,
Boys are bound to a Freeman of the Company, and at the
close of their servitude receive the freedom themselves.
The period of Apprenticeship varies from five to seven
years, according to the age at which a lad is bound, the
average age of binding being about sixteen. After two
years the Apprentice undergoes an examination before
the Court of the Company, and if he passes it satisfactorily,
is allowed to have full charge of craft under his master's
supervision. The occupation is largely hereditary, and
many boys are bound to their own parents.1

Again London is an important centre of the industry
of Brushmaking. In this a certain number of processes,
notably " boring," have been taken over almost entirely
by machines worked by juvenile labour : but in the others

1 For fuller details, see Booth, Life and Labour of the People in
London, vol. vii., Part iv., Ch. v., p. 373. He reckoned that at this
time (1892) over 80 per cent, of the Apprentices were sons of those
engaged in the work.

62 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

the Society houses enforce binding for a definite period.
These include nearly all the large firms and some of the
smaller ones : and the practice is upheld by the employers.
Apprenticeship lasts for five years in the general trade with
a shorter period in exceptional cases, and for seven in the
making of paint-brushes. It is the only recognized system
where Trade Union conditions prevail : but in non-society
shops no definite method is adopted, and it is said that
the lads in them seldom become fully competent. Similarly
seven years under Indenture is vigorously advocated by
the journeymen's society in Leather Currying, and seems
to be general, though not universal. In Engineers' Pattern-
Making and in Diamond Mounting there is either an
indenture or an informal agreement, but it is difficult
to say which is the more common.

Another trade in which Apprenticeship is still usual
is that of Saddlery and Harness-Making, but owing to the
substitution of motor for horse traction, very few learners
are being taken at present. The trade has several branches
—the large Retail Saddlers, the Piece-Masters who work
for them, the Wholesale Houses, and the small jobbing
shops. Much of the work, especially that done by the two
former, is very fine, and involves great care and skill, since
heavy loss will often follow from an unskilful treatment of
the leather. In each of these branches the learners are
bound. When trade was more flourishing, and larger num-
bers of boys were taken, the teaching was mainly in the hands
of the Piece-Masters. A few boys refuse to accept the con-
ditions of Apprenticeship, and there is a certain amount of
migration in the wholesale trade. Otherwise, the character of
the trade requires the former, and those who have not served
their time have a difficulty in obtaining work in the better
houses. Indeed the training and remuneration they afford
would give Saddlery and Harness-Making many advantages,
were it not for the existing check to their development . Simi-
larly the small masters in Watchmaking employ few
boys, but usually bind such as they have.

If, however, apart from Printing and the Waterman's

REGULAR SERVICE. 63

Society, Apprenticeship only predominates in a few small
or stagnant trades, this does not set the limit to its
influence. Except where an industry has been revolution-
ized by machinery or subdivision of labour, it will be found
to exist in a part, if only in a small part, of every skilled
craft. But before dealing with this, we may first consider
the trades in which, and the extent to which, the less formal
types of Regular Service prevail. Between the three of
them a clear distinction is frequently impossible in individual
cases ; and many firms give the reality of Apprenticeship,
whilst they refuse the form. Owing to the trouble an
indentured apprentice may cause, they refuse to bind them-
selves to teach and keep in reserve the valuable right of
dismissal. In reality they do train their boys as well as if
there were a formal agreement, and hence that which appears
on the surface to be merely a wage contract— the engage-
ment of a boy to do so much work for so much pay — gives
in practice all that the more formal system does. The
character of this informal service varies in different trades.
In some the verbal agreement is as predominant as is the
indenture in Printing : and in others Employment during
Good Behaviour or the gradual promotion of errand boys
is the usual method.

The least formal of all has been described as " Working
and Learning," where the employment of a boy during his
training is actually regular without the existence of any
sort of agreement. It is often very common where,
as in the Building Trades, Regular Service is not predomin-
ant. This is further confirmed by the fact that some only
of the boys who start in this way stay on to learn a trade.
In some cases, indeed, most of them get the chance of
promotion as in that of the glue boys in joinery works :
but in others only a small proportion do so. Thus, employ-
ment in sawmills is to some extent a Partial Blind-Alley.
Moreover, some of those who stay in these and other occu-
pations have to move from firm to firm in order to learn,
and do not work regularly in a single place throughout.
Hence chance may largely determine whether the trade

64 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

is acquired by Working and Learning or by Migration.

Considering in detail the other types of Service, we find
the strictly interpreted Verbal Agreement to be predominant
in the Engineering Trades, and in some of the smaller
industries attached to them. This is specially true of the
processes of Fitting and Turning, to which in its narrowest
sense the word Engineering is applied.1 In them there has
been some development of subdivision of labour, and of a
class of semi-skilled machine-men for whom the Amalgamated
Society of Engineers has made special rules and arrange-
ment : but owing to its industrial character this class is not
very large in London. Again, the tendency of the bigger
firms to separate Fitting and Turning has produced a con-
centration without a reduction of skill, since apart from
this most of them still require all-round workmen, and over
a very large proportion of the trade men are needed who
can do both.

London Engineering Shops may be divided into those of
the Ship-Repairing Firms, those engaged upon new con-
struction, those occupied with repairs and small orders,
and those attached to other factories or businesses to keep
the machinery in order. The second class is found mainly
in the Outer Suburbs, and to a lesser degree in South London,
and from it comes most of the demand for the more highly-
specialized hands. Neither the third nor the fourth is, as
a rule, on a sufficiently large scale to employ men solely
as fitters or turners, and even in the more extensive Ship-
Repairing Establishments, they have often to turn and
prepare their work first in the shop, and then to go out
on to the ship to fit it.

To train men for their work, therefore, these three branches
need some form of Regular Service for a considerable period,
and this demand on their part is reinforced by the Board

1 When the Engineers' Shop is spoken of, it generally means that
in which the Erecting, Fitting and Turning are done, as opposed to
the Smiths' Shop, the Founders' Shop, the Boiler Shop, and so on.
In Greater London this is the largest homogeneous group in the
Engineering and Metal Trades, containing over 16,000 workers as
against about 13,000 smiths and strikers.

REGULAR SERVICE. 65

of Trade's requirements for the granting of a Sea-going
Engineer's Certificate. Formal Apprenticeship is not
uncommon : but the informal Verbal Agreement pre-
dominates. Under this the power of dismissal is retained
in the last resort by the firm and that of leaving by the boy :
but it is clearly understood that neither shall be exercised
except when there is misconduct of some sort. Sometimes
there is no actual agreement whatever, but the boys are
taken on with the intention of employing them under similar
conditions. One firm, for instance, which refused any
definite responsibility, paid its boys according to a fixed
scale of wages and trained nearly all of them. In Ship-
repairing, indeed, a clearly understood Verbal Agreement
is the rule, though one at least of the most important estab-
lishments adopts a seven years' indenture. Five years, how-
ever, is the usual period of service. The small masters
follow much the same course. One of them said that formal
Apprenticeship was dying out, but that their boys were
carefully selected and treated much as apprentices used
to be.

Again in these sections of the trade employers are not
favourably disposed towards improvers of the type who
learn by moving from firm to firm. Some often declare
themselves to be unable to find room for them, others
regard them as unsuitable or incompetent, and in other
cases they will only engage them during periods of pressure.
In the Shipbuilding Districts, indeed, such Migration is
even less common than elsewhere, and a boy usually serves
at least three years in one place first, whilst in some other
parts of the trade the practice of apprenticing for less than
the full period is on the increase. Still improvers of this
type do exist, though their numbers are comparatively small
and they are not always known by this name. Thus it
has been said of them : " They get a job to work at a certain
wage, and are not supposed to be taught, but they do get
taught just the same."

Improvers are of a variety of types which will be more
fully described in the next chapter. Some are complet-

66 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

ing their education after serving an Apprenticeship. In
Engineering and elsewhere, the existence of Verbal Agree-
ments does, to some extent, increase their numbers, either by
enabling the more restless to move about or the less scrupu-
lous employers to put them off during slackness. Others,
again, are cast adrift through the failure or bankruptcy of
their masters, and some will lose their places through lack
of ability or industry, who could not thus be got rid of if
bound by an indenture. There must, indeed, be a fringe
of such lads in almost any large trade, and in Engineering
their position is usually due to accident or miscon-
duct.

It is only in certain sections of it that Migration even
approaches the position of a definite rival method of learn-
ing, namely, where there is found subdivision either of pro-
cesses or output. The former tends to produce men who
are only skilled in working one or two machines, and the
experience of some smaller employers is that the improvers
who apply to them are the abler of those machine-men,
who seek in this way to better their position. Subdivision
of product, again, especially with the lighter electrical
machinery, tends also to produce what from the employer's
point of view is a type of work " specially suited to im-
provers." It forms therefore an intermediate state between
that of the beginner and that of the competent workman,
and carries the learner a further stage on his journey.
If, however, he is to complete it, he will probably have to
move to other firms and so gradually perfect himself.

Finally, the trade does provide openings, or rather chances,
for an able boy to work his way up after starting in an
inferior position. Small firms, and the small repairing
shops attached to large factories, usually employ a lad
to make himself generally useful to the men. The work,
being chiefly repairs, is necessarily very varied, and the
boy, from seeing it at close quarters, can hardly fail to learn
sufficient to get a start, after which he can work his way
up elsewhere. Not all who are so situated will make use
of the opportunity, but only the smarter ones, Still under

REGULAR SERVICE. 67

the Informal Agreement there is always left a loophole
through which the latter can enter the trade ; and so far
the position in Engineering differs from that found under
formal Apprenticeship in Printing. Both methods have
their advantages, but in any improved organization of In-
dustrial Training some such opportunities of rising will have
to be provided for those capable children who, from poverty
or otherwise, have started in a lowly position. The Printing
Trade itself, for instance, meets the need to some extent
by the dating back of indentures in the case of lads who first
came into an office to work as errand boys.

From all that has been said, therefore, it follows that
whilst the Verbal Agreement can be very markedly the
predominant method of teaching, it cannot be so universally
enforced as a Formal Apprenticeship sometimes is ; and
the position of the Improver in Engineering has been dealt
with at some length in order to illustrate the fact that
without a binding indenture a certain small amount of Migra-
tion is more or less inevitable. Of the other branches of
the Engineering and Metal Industry, Smithing and Boiler-
making adopt what I have called Following-Up. Otherwise
the conditions are very similar to those just described.
In London two of the largest of these trades are Tinsmithing
and Iron and Brass Founding. In the former some form
of Regular Service, but not, as a rule, Apprenticeship, is
almost universal, except where the use of machinery has
caused the abandonment of the old method of working ; and
in practice regular employment is nearly always given during
training. On the whole the same thing holds good in the
case of Founding, though Migration is somewhat more
common. Brass Finishing also is mainly taught by Regular
Service and often under a Formal Apprenticeship, and
the work in London has not been taken over by unskilled
juvenile labour to the same extent as it has in some other
centres. Finally, some agreement, formal or verbal, is
usual with Patternmakers and Coppersmiths, whose methods
of teaching are stricter and more regular than those of many
others. It should be added, however, that owing to the

68 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

peculiar character of London Industry, its methods cannot
always be regarded as typical of other places.

Regular Service also continues to hold its ground in the
Making of Optical and Scientific Instruments, in the Precious
Metal Trades and in Art Metal Work. The two latter, for
a variety of reasons, show a greater proportion of Learning
by Migration than does the former ; but all these crafts
are noteworthy for the general adoption of Regular Service
without the assistance of a definite agreement of any kind,
formal or otherwise. Their boys are employed either
" during good behaviour " or under even less definite condi-
tions. Nevertheless they do as a rule learn their business
throughout in a single firm.

The manufacture of Optical and Scientific Instruments
has two main branches — Lens Making and Instrument
Making — in which the journeymen are known as glass and
metal workers respectively. The latter again are divided
into Framers and Turners, who correspond to the Engineers'
Fitters and Turners, though the work of instrument-making
is by many regarded as of somewhat finer quality. In the
Spectacle Trade, again, there is a distinction between workers
on white metal and on gold, and among the glass workers
there is a special class of jobbing hands, who, when neces-
sary, put an extra surface on the lens. Machinery is being
used to an increasing extent in the commoner lines of glass,
and especially on cheap spectacles ; but the finer grades are
still done entirely by hand. In metal work the influence of
machinery is less felt. Its amount varies little from firm to
firm, and so a man is not in danger of being placed at a
disadvantage if he has to seek employment in a new shop.

These trades combine a very high degree of skill with a
rather marked subdivision of labour between the different
classes of goods which they produce. These vary from
cheap spectacles to the largest telescopes and surveying
instruments. In a sense, therefore, the making of each of
them is a separate branch in itself and frequently a man will
not make nor try to make any other than his own. The
work is fine and delicate and requires a very high level of

REGULAR SERVICE. 69

skill and this makes it difficult to take up more than one
branch. Thus the teaching is necessarily narrow, but,
though narrow, it is also very thorough, and as a result these
trades lend themselves to a regular form of service, without
the support either of a legal binding or a definite agree-
ment. The same cause also operates to check casual migra-
tion from firm to firm, except where a boy has already spent
at least three years in a single place. Apart from this there
are only a few exceptions, caused chiefly by gross failure to
teach during service.

Both Formal Apprenticeship and the payment of a pre-
mium have practically died out. One large firm said :
" We have a few indentured apprentices ; but we prefer to
take on common boys, starting them as errand boys and
teaching them for ourselves." These latter it employed
" during good behaviour," but seldom or never exercised
its power to dismiss them. In another case there were two
classes of boys, apprentices and learners, and in this way
they are still classified by some people. Only a few firms,
however, continue to take the former. " Practically speak-
ing," I was told, " there is no bound Apprenticeship, partly
because a few persons pay premiums of £50 or £60 with a
view to entering the trade as employers, and there would
therefore be a difficulty in apprenticing the others." Its
disuse, however, was also attributed to the difficulty of
getting premiums or of inducing boys to work without
wages. " The usual policy," it was said, "is to take what
you can get and if a £50 premium is forthcoming it is taken,
if not a boy is employed at a nominal wage, and failing that
as an errand boy at 55. a week." The latter is the normal
method ; and its results are classed as on the whole " pretty
fair," but are sometimes held to be inferior to those likely
to be produced by the more formal system. A good deal
of opinion, moreover, favours the possibility of reviving
the latter.

As it is boys are usually taught in one of two ways. They
may start as " learners," either with a verbal agreement, or
even more frequently with a tacit understanding, to the

70 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

effect that they shall get certain wages and, provided that they
give satisfaction, regular employment and teaching. The
employer can dismiss them and they in turn will stay only
so long as they are decently treated. This is " employment
during good behaviour," and neither side is legally bound
to the other.

Secondly, many are taken on in the first place as errand
boys, and then, if they are smart, get to the bench and gradu-
ally pick up the trade. To begin they run errands, sweep up
the shop and in their spare time do simple manual work.1
Then,when things are slack, two or three of the men teach them
a little in order to make them useful and they progress in this
way. This method is adopted by some of the larger firms but
is most common among the small employers of good reputa-
tion. The latter sometimes refuse to take any direct respon-
sibility, but give such excellent chances of learning that
employment with them is very much sought after.

Its continuity in either case is hardly questioned. Early
on, by a rough and ready selection, those who are obviously
unsuited to the trade are got rid of, but otherwise the
employer's right of dismissal is seldom exercised, and then
only for incompetence or misconduct. Nominally retention
or dismissal could sometimes be determined either by the
state of trade or by the boys' own behaviour. In reality
everything depends upon the latter, and if it is satisfactory
the firm contrives to keep them on. In any case they are
less likely to be put off when trade is slack than the men are,
since within limits errand boys are always needed. The
chief complaint is that they are kept for a long time on one
sort of work only. But if they look after themselves, and
if they insist on being put to better jobs, decent employers
will probably give it to them, or, as it was once expressed,
" If they are kind." If it is refused, migration to another
firm may take place.

1 Conditions in the manufacture of leather goods are often very
similar to this ; but in them a regular division of the time will some-
times be made by which the boys will do the errands in the morning
and work at the bench in the afternoon.

REGULAR SERVICE. 71

There is, however, one important exception. In some
cases, those who have started at 55, or 6s. a week quickly
become expert at certain processes, such as " roughing up "
the glass and soon earn full piece-rates at them. This is
semi-skilled work, but a quick worker can make good
money and some are content to remain at it. Again, the
semi-skilled machine-workers are somewhat better off than
in Engineering. Their work, being done in smallish quan-
tities, is far more varied, and they have to set their own
machines ; and so they get better wages. Moreover, some
of these men, both in glass and metal work, succeed in
rising. First they move to other shops in which most of the
work is similar to their own, but other sorts are done as
well, and, then, in lens work, to the " prescription " shops
to which retailers send their orders to be made up. Here
they get jobs of every kind and eventually become fully
trained mechanics.

The Art Metal Trades are composed of a number of
separate crafts, among which is one large and important one,
that of Gold and Silversmiths. The others are small and
include Silver Spinners, Diamond Setters and Mounters, Die-
Sinkers, Engravers, Block and Tool Cutters, Metal, Coin,
and Ring Makers, Chasers, and Enamellers. Here the pre-
dominance of Regular Service, especially in Silversmithing
and Chasing, is not so marked. The cheaper work often forms
a Blind- Alley employment for juvenile labour. Specializa-
tion by individual firms on particular articles sometimes
necessitates migration ; and on both sides the abuses
fostered by the absence of a binding agreement are not
limited to the same extent by the delicate character of the
work as they are in Instrument Making. Thus certain
firms will lead a boy to understand that they will teach him,
and then turn him adrift when he is about eighteen. On
the other hand, some boys for the sake of rather better
wages will leave an employer who has incurred trouble and
expense in teaching them. Normally, however, any under-
standing, however indefinite, is loyally observed, both by
masters and learners.

72 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

The amount of Migration, therefore, is decidedly greater
than in Engineering or Instrument Making, but neverthe-
less Service remains the predominant method. Unfortun-
ately, Formal Apprenticeship is most likely to be found
in those shops which are least likely to be able to train boys
thoroughly. First, there are the very large firms, with an
extensive subdivision of processes, whose organization
requires that the learners shall make themselves very highly
skilled indeed at one part of the trade only. At the other
end of the scale, the very small concerns contain an undue
proportion of premium-hunters or of men who lack the
capacity to teach properly.

The majority of firms, however, refuse to bind them-
selves formally. This applies more particularly to those of
moderate size which are often best fitted to train boys.
Their work is at least fairly good. It is largely done by
hand, though the use of the spinning lathe is increasing. It
is as varied as the prevailing specialization of output will
allow, and with them this last is not carried so far as it is in
the very small firms. They, therefore, give the best teach-
ing, but, though all the conditions are otherwise favourable,
take few bound apprentices. Arrangements are much the
same as in instrument work. Either a lad is employed as
a learner " on good behaviour " with an agreed scale of
wages ; or he goes as an errand boy for a year or so, working
at the bench in his odd moments, and gradually coming to
spend all his time there, till after about two years another
is taken on to do the errands. Probably on the average the
former gets the best teaching ; but the latter is also well looked
after as a rule, though his progress is necessarily slower. In
either case, his chances will depend largely on himself. If
he is civil and obliging and industrious, he will get helped
and pushed on. If he is not, he is likely to be kept back.
By the employers, again, the disadvantages arising from
these methods are often found to be less than those which
accompany Indentured Apprenticeship ; but it cannot be
denied that if they escape some of the latter, they produce
other defects of their own. This matter will be more fully
considered in a later chapter.

REGULAR SERVICE. 73

To sum up, therefore, the trades in which some form or
other of Regular Service is predominant, cover no inconsider-
able part of the field. Indentured Apprenticeship prevails in
Printing, the Verbal Agreement in most of the Engineering
and allied trades, Employment " during Good Behaviour,"
or Working and Learning in Optical and Scientific Instru-
ment Work and in the Art Metal Group. Moreover, even
where Regular Service does not embrace the whole of an
industry, individual trades in it, like Upholstery, still adopt
it to a considerable extent, whilst Service by " Working
and Learning " is found in a considerable minority of cases
even where Migration is most common.

In short, there are few trades from which it has entirely
disappeared. Usually a minority of firms bring up their
boys in this way, and with them informal service is more
frequent than formal. Often no definite rule is observed.
Shops of similar size and character adopt different methods,
or again a single firm may be teaching its boys in a variety
of ways. Special reasons will account for the occasional
presence of indentures. The- sons of foremen and old hands,
friends' sons or relatives, or boys introduced by those with
whom the employer does business, get specially favourable
terms, whilst others have to work their way up as best they
can or are taken on to do certain work and discharged
at its close. Hence the impression given is often one of
complete chaos ; but on closer inspection, the better-class
firms usually show some sort of regularity in their policy.

Of this state of affairs an excellent example is afforded
by the Building Trades, where Regular Service has to
contest the ground, not only with other methods, but with
a very larger influx of provincially trained work-people.
Here and in the Woodworking Trades, the shops which
teach their boys under the best conditions are usually those
that recruit the largest proportion of their labour from
outside London. Nevertheless many of the smaller firms
give at least a very good grounding in the trade, and often
get considerable variety of work, whilst subdivision of
processes and the use of machinery affect to some extent

74 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

the advantages possessed by the bigger ones. Indeed, it is
sometimes suggested that boys should first learn what the
small shop can teach and only proceed later to work in the
larger ones. Nevertheless, it is unfortunate that some and
often the best of the latter can take so few of them.

Here one or two special matters require notice. In these
trades, a certain — though fortunately not a numerous — class
of employers utilizes Formal Apprenticeship as a means of
obtaining a supply of cheap boy labour, and this practice is
most likely to occur in those cases in which its survival
is only casual. Secondly, Regular Service of some sort is
more usual in some sections of the group than in others.
With joiners a growing dislike of bound apprentices is ac-
companied by considerable readiness to take boys "on good
behaviour " ; and my own experience has been that joiners'
apprentices are taken by some firms who have given up
doing so in other branches. Indentures, however, are found
most frequently among the plumbers in conjunction
with the method of " Folio wing-up." Thirdly, the bigger
firms of good class form usually within each trade a small
group that insists upon Regular Service. Existing con-
ditions do not enable them to teach many boys — at least with
profit to themselves — but their organization does not lend
itself to a haphazard influx of improvers and other partially
trained workmen. They will sometimes take turn-overs,
that is to say, boys cast adrift by the failure or dissolution
of other businesses, or young men who have served their
time elsewhere and are completing their education, but
seldom or never the ordinary migratory improver.

This latter point may be illustrated by reference to the
practice of certain well-known firms with whom I came in
contact during my investigations. In the cases quoted, the
information dealt with the Joiners' Shop, except in the first,
third and fourth, where the answers covered all the branches
of the trade.

I. No boys taken.
II. Bound Apprentices with premium. Improvers

REGULAR SERVICE. 75

only in the case of turnovers or Apprentices
out of their time.

III. Apprentices bound and unbound, but the former are

apparently being replaced by the latter. Im-
provers much as with Firm No. II.

IV. Boys taken on Probation for two years and then

drafted into the Joiners' Shop as unbound
Apprentices. 1

V. Shop-boys, if capable, promoted to the bench and
employed " during good behaviour. " Some
improvers. The Foreman stated that in their
own interest boys ought after three or four
years to move into another firm.

VI. Bound Apprentices with Premium, and Improvers.
The latter, though liable to be put off, are
seldom dismissed in practice.

VII. Bound Apprentices, with power of dismissal re-
tained, by a clause in the Indenture, in the case
of misconduct.

VIII. Sons of men working for the firm taken on and
employed with their fathers " on good be-
haviour/' The Foreman said he could get
plenty of improvers, but would not have them.
IX. Bound Apprentices, sometimes with a Premium.

Foreman opposed to taking Improvers.
X. Have been accustomed to take Apprentices, but are

giving it up. No Improvers.

Thus among the bigger firms the alternative seems to be
between employing boys under regular conditions or not at
all, and the sons or relatives of the workmen frequently get
the preference for available places, but do not always utilize
it. The cases quoted, however, do not represent fairly the
growing tendency to substitute informal for formal con-
tracts. An instance was recently brought to my notice
where an attempt was made to apprentice two boys as

1 This method is also applied throughout the business, the boy
after his two years' probation going to whichever branch he appears
to be best suited for.

76 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

joiners. Ten firms were approached and of these nine
stated that they had ceased to bind boys by indenture,
finding them to be too much trouble, and the tenth replied
that places were reserved for sons of their own men, of whom
they had some already on their books awaiting an opening.
In addition to the larger firms, however, shops of all kinds
take an occasional apprentice, some as a regular thing, others
to oblige an employe or a friend, or because they fancy a
boy : whilst some of the smaller ones, who are ready to do
this on payment of a small premium, give an admirable
return for the money.

Nevertheless, throughout the trade as a whole, migratory
improvers are common, some being London boys and others
young men from outside, who are perfecting their education.
The latter will be dealt with later. As to the frequent exist-
ence of the former, the Foreman in Firm IV stated that some
of the boys apprenticed after probation left them to get
better wages, as improvers, and then found they were not
as good as they thought they were. Another foreman
(Firm VI) said he could get plenty of them if he wished,
which he did not, and a third objected to employing them
because this meant that they picked up their trade "as it
were in the gutter." Again a young South London journey-
man said that the common method was " to start as a
glueboy and work up as best you can in one or more
shops," and a prominent Trade Unionist that there was
"a lot of swapping shops and foremen." The Labour
Exchange applications from employers also show a demand
for both carpenters' and joiners' improvers, especially the
former, and the head of an important Trade School divided
the boys there into three classes — bound apprentices,
learners with a verbal agreement, and improvers.

In the larger firms carpenters and joiners form two dis-
tinct classes, but the smaller ones, on the contrary, continue
to employ all-round men who do the work of both. This is
one of the reasons for preferring them to the larger ones,
because in them lads have not only to prepare a job in the
shop, but to go out and fix it on the building afterwards,

REGULAR SERVICE. 77

and thus get an all-round knowledge before specializing on
either branch. In the larger concerns, however, they
usually grow up either carpenters or joiners, and the
attempt to give them a knowledge of both is sometimes
frustrated by their refusal to leave the comforts of the
joiner's shop and go out on the building. Carpentering is
much the rougher job and on the whole requires less skill and
more strength, and as a result the teaching of it is less regular.
Boys are taken on to make themselves generally useful and
take their chance of picking it up as best they can.

It is in Plumbing, however, that the need for a definite
and clearly defined system of teaching has been most fully
realized, and much attention has been paid to it, both by
the Plumbers' Company and by the Operative Plumbers'
Society, their efforts being directed largely to the revival of
Apprenticeship. Whether a lad is apprenticed or not,
indeed, he acquires his knowledge by the process known as
" folio wing-up." He must work for a considerable period
as mate to a journeyman,1 learning all about the trade in-
this way, till the time comes when he " gets hold of the
tools " for himself. The apprentice usually does this
in the latter part of his time, other lads obtain work
as improvers after a few years as mates, and the way
they are actually taught is much the same whatever the
form of engagement under which they learn. Those who
work under a legal or verbal agreement are probably in a
minority.

In Plastering, the disappearance of the hawk boy, who
served the men with material and proceeded from this
to learn the business, appears to have led to some slight
revival of Regular Service, and the bigger firms either take
bound or unbound apprentices or employ lads regularly
after starting them " about the shop." There are not,
however, quite such frequent objections, as with joiners, to
the migratory improver. Thus one foreman said, " I take
on boys who are sacked from other firms. These can always
find places because so few are entering the trade." Another
1 See Chapter VI.

78 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

who had other boys as well as bound apprentices under him
always tried to keep them on, though they were liable to
dismissal. Another firm said, " We only employ boys
casually when we are very busy," and yet another had
sometimes to take on boys with their fathers ; and in this
case the two were paid off together. But a large number of
the lads, especially in the smaller firms, are continually on
the move, though it is possible that, as with the stone-
masons, this restlessness has been somewhat checked by
the recent long-continued depression in house-building.
One employer complained that " the boys are always
moving, so that it is impossible to make anything of them " ;
and among the smaller firms, especially those engaged in open-
ing up the suburbs, the less regular system is undoubtedly
very prevalent. A representative of the Trade Union
spoke of much unemployment among youths in the trade,
and implied the existence of a great deal of migration. He
put it that " they steal their trade," getting into a shop
usually through influence, staying there as long as possible,
and then going off elsewhere. Finally, the growing separa-
tion of " solid " and " fibrous " work is rendering it difficult
to learn the whole business in a single place, so that some
migration is inevitable.

Stonemasons, again, show the same irreducible minimum
of Apprenticeship and Regular Service, but the large firms
take very few boys. Masons appear to be comparatively
immune from seasonal fluctuations, partly because so much
of the work is on large contracts which go on summer and
winter alike, partly because men can be transferred to the
yard when rain or frost stops work on the building. Cases
are found where formal Apprenticeship is being abandoned,
and the number of improvers is further increased by those
employers who bind a considerable number of boys and
then teach them only a single part of the trade, so that their
only hope of learning it properly is to go on elsewhere. Com-
plaint is also made that boys are always moving from firm
to firm to secure better wages and only discover when too
late that they are growing up very ill-taught. This, how-

REGULAR SERVICE. 79

ever, is not so marked now as in the years of very brisk
trade between 1895 and 1900. Some firms, too, have both
bound apprentices and improvers and as trade slackens some
of the latter have to be put off. In this trade, indeed, there
is little doubt that some of the most successful men have
acquired the business by Migration.

In Bricklaying, even fewer contractors indenture their
boys l and verbal agreements are uncommon. On most
large buildings, however, there are one or two who are making
themselves generally useful, and if they have the capacity,
an effort is usually made to teach them. This leads, there-
fore, to some survival of Regular Service of the fourth type.
Normally, however, the business is acquired by Migration or
by a labourer working his way up. A young fellow gets an
" insight " into the work in the latter capacity and then
" gets hold of a trowel " and does the easier parts of it, and
when a job comes which he cannot do, he " gets sacked." By
this time, however, he has learnt a little. He then goes to
another firm and repeats the process over and over again
until he becomes competent. The higher parts of the trade he
cannot master in this way, but he can learn them later on
with the help of a Technical School. This method is strongly
opposed by the Bricklayers' Society and can only be success-
ful where it is weak or non-existent ; but it is quite frequently
practised.

In Painting and Decorating, several grades of workmen
must be distinguished. Among the highly-skilled and well-
paid interior decorators, employed by the West London
Furnishing Houses, the few remaining apprentices are found.
Occasionally, also, a sort of " patrimony " survives. Thus
one well-known firm said " we have two or three families
of painters who have worked for us for generations and
the fathers bring their sons up to the trade." Otherwise
this branch of it is recruited almost entirely from outside
London.

The ordinary house painter employed on building con-
tracts is seldom or never apprenticed, but starts as a boy

1 Apprenticeships, when they exist, usually last for four years.

8o INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

helping the men, then gets the rough work like " washing
down " the walls to make ready for the painters, and next
does a little of the easier painting, such as putting on the
first coat or doing parts which do not show much. He thus
gradually progresses. Occasionally, he gets regular em-
ployment from beginning to end in a single firm, but the
marked winter slackness and the general irregularity of the
trade is against this. Migration, therefore, is very frequently
necessary.

Finally, there is the casual brush-hand, who gets into the
trade anyhow, often when he has been compelled to leave
his regular employment, since some of the work requires
little more capacity than that of an ordinary labourer.
Soldiers and, more frequently, sailors, turn to it and also
the failures of nearly every trade, whilst large numbers of
the chronically unemployed will be found to have done
painting at some time during their lives. Those who wish
to take to it permanently can soon learn enough for the
purpose, for the trade has a few months of high pressure,
notably in March, April and August, when almost any one
can get a job, and the foremen are sometimes reduced to
picking out " those who look like painters " from among a
crowd of applicants.

As a whole, therefore, a marked feature of the Building
Trades is that in them Regular Service has ceased to be a pre-
dominant system and is engaged in close competition with
rival methods ; but, at the same time, it is still insisted upon
by the better-class employers, whose work is most regular.
As in Printing, though to a much lesser extent, those firms
that adopt Regular Service in one branch may do the same in
others. Thus the few apprentices in Bricklaying are found
where there are also joiners', plumbers', and masons'
apprentices. This uniformity, however, cannot be relied
upon, and more frequently indentures are only adopted
with joiners or with joiners and plumbers. In Printing,
the system enforced consistently by its largest and strongest
section has extended or maintained its sway over the others.
In Building its adoption in one or two branches sometimes

REGULAR SERVICE. 81

leads to its extension to some of the others, but this exten-
sion is seldom universal and never includes the painters.

This long description must find its justification in the
fact that the Building Trades are in many ways typical
of the state of affairs in those skilled industries in which
Regular Service only shares the field with other methods.
In some of them, indeed, conditions are even more chaotic
than they are here : and their experience suggests the
need for the general restoration, not necessarily of formal
Apprenticeship, but of some form of regulated service suited
to modern conditions. And just as, where Regular Service
prevails, the presence of other methods is also found, from
the few compositors' improvers to the much larger numbers
in the case of Silversmithing, so, too, there is hardly any
skilled trade from which even formal Apprenticeship has
entirely disappeared.

A few words may now be said as to the relative position
of Regular Service in trades where it is not predominant.
Migration resembles it in the need for a long period of
actual learning, and differs from it in the continual move-
ment from firm to firm. Indeed, where a trade is divided
between the two, Service usually survives in the more
highly skilled branches and Migration elsewhere : but which
will be adopted in individual cases can often be decided
only as a question of fact. The latter is very frequently
found in London. With the exception of Upholstery
and, perhaps, Wood Carving it is quite as common in the
Woodworking and Furniture as in Building Trades.
Except possibly with the bodymakers, it is much utilized
in Coach and Van Building, as it is also in the making
of leather goods, and as already described has made
appreciable inroads into the Art Metal and Engineering
Trades.

Where a single mechanic or a squad is assisted by one
or more helpers — boys, youths or adults — the younger
workers spend some years serving the men before they get
hold of the tools, and after this gradually work their way up.
This is the process to which I have applied the term " follow-

82 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

ing-up," and the trades in which it prevails form a group
by themselves. In them a boy starts with a long period
of Regular Service, not as a learner, but as a labourer who
helps the skilled man and by this means gets to learn
all about the work. After this he is given the tools and
learns to do it himself. In this group are included smiths,
plumbers, gas and hot-water fitters, leather splitters,
boiler and tank makers, glass blowers and wire weavers,
and in all of them except Leather-Splitting and Wire-
Weaving, there is some survival of formal Apprenticeship.
It is most common in Plumbing, not infrequent in Smithing
and Gasfitting, but less so in Plating, whilst it is very
occasionally found among the Rivetters, as one or two of
their foremen try to insist upon it.1

The case is somewhat different when we turn to those
employments which are properly described as semi-skilled,
such as many of the processes in Boot and Shoe Factories
and in Leather Dressing, Wholesale Bookbinding and
Engineer's Machine Minding, to give only a few examples :
for in them formal Apprenticeship, or even a long period of
service, have ceased to be necessary or even desirable. If
they have held their ground, therefore, it is not in these
particular branches, but in those parts of the trade that
have not been affected by the newer methods, and more
especially where hand-work has survived, as in Leather
Bookbinding and Bespoke Bootmaking ; for these still
demand a high, and often a very high, level of skill, and
need a regular training to produce it.

Hence, whatever method is predominant, there are very few
trades in which there is no survival at all, either of Appren-
ticeship or Regular Service ; but where this survival is only
casual, it has not the same value, since the method cannot
then set a standard like it does where it predominates. In-
deed, when Apprenticeships are rare, their appearance is
sometimes the result of purely accidental influences. Never-

1 This description of London must not be taken to apply to other
centres, in some of which Apprenticeship to these trades is far
more frequent.

REGULAR SERVICE. 83

theless, differences of method can often be traced to real
distinctions in the character of the work or the class of shop ;
and these will to some extent determine whether Regular
Service or Migration shall be adopted.

First of all, as has been illustrated by the case of the
Building Trades, size and organization often exercise a
decisive influence. The work of the bigger firms is com-
paratively regular, whilst those of moderate size not only
do not have such a consistent turn-over, but, even when
they have, the numbers employed in the different sections
may vary enormously. One job may need few men except
bricklayers and masons,1 another may employ a much
greater proportion of plasterers, joiners and plumbers.
There is, however, an increasing tendency for a firm to
specialize on a single branch, Plumbing, Plastering, Masonry
and so on ; whilst at- the other end of the scale small
firms will often be able to keep one or two apprentices
continuously employed.

Secondly, differences in method often accompany differ-
ences in the quality of the work, whilst these different
qualities may each be localized in separate districts. I
have already described the case of the Furniture Trades,
in which Service of some kind is almost universal in the
high-class retail trade of West and North- West London,
and Migration is very common in the much larger whole-
sale industry of the Eastern Boroughs.

Thirdly, there is often a line of demarcation between hand
and machine work. The latter usually divides a trade into
a number of semi-skilled processes ; but has if anything
accentuated the need for Regular Service in the higher
branches. Sometimes, especially with hand work, a seven
years' Apprenticeship still survives as in certain classes of
Bookbinding.

Finally, Apprenticeship, usually with a premium, will
be resorted to where a special effort has to be made
to get an individual boy taken, such as in cases of
physical deficiency, with Jewish boys who need special

1 A ^Church Restoration, for instance,

84 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

conditions to provide for their religious observances, and
sometimes for the purpose of getting a bad or unmanage-
able lad taken. This latter device only makes matters
worse as a rule, but the two former are legitimate and
necessary.

Before leaving this matter, however, one may sum up
shortly what are the different classes of firms who continue
to indenture where this has ceased to be the rule ?
First, there are those very large firms of a type common in
the Building Trades, whose organization is best suited by
the regular employment of such boys as they teach, though
usually they take only a few. With them the otherwise
excellent conditions are modified by the taking over of
many of the preliminary processes by machinery. Secondly,
apprentices are found in businesses adopting a very high
degree of specialization, which requires each boy to become
a highly-skilled worker at a single part of the trade. He will
still rank as skilled, and will be exceptionally so in his own
line ; but is at a disadvantage if he has to seek work else-
where, owing to the small number of firms that require
his particular skill. Indeed, it is this, rather than any
actual deficiency in the teaching, that is the real cause
of the trouble.

Similarly, the smaller firms who take apprentices fall
into two classes. First, there is the ordinary run of them,
who usually have room for one or two whom they are glad
to take, especially if a small premium goes with them.
Often they get sufficient variety of work to enable them
to give training that is well up to, if not above, the average ;
and even if its quality does not allow of this, they are well
fitted to give a lad a thorough grounding in the business.
On the other hand, their work may sometimes lack variety,
and be confined to one or two lines of goods, but on the whole
they give a good chance of learning, and make an honest
attempt to carry out their part of the contract.

This, however, is not the case with the other type of
small apprenticing employer, namely, the premium-hunter.
Such men often work alone or with not more than one or

REGULAR SERVICE. 85

two men, and have been described as " making their
living " by always having one or two apprentices with a
large premium of £30 or £40. x These they are usually
unable to teach ; often they " make trash " or do such a
small variety of work, that even if they possess the capacity
they cannot give their boys teaching of any value. Thus,
even where the employer does his best, it is rightly con-
tended that he has no more right than the deliberate exploiter
to take apprentices, since he is not in a position to give
them a proper training.

Lastly, firms of every class and size take Apprentices for
other than business reasons, and between them bind a not
inconsiderable number of boys. Sometimes the employer
does not feel in a position to refuse the request of a good
workman or the recommendation of a personal friend or
business connection. Others, again, take a fancy to boys
employed to make themselves useful about the works, and
decide to indenture them. For instance, one small master
in the Cabinet Trade does not usually take apprentices,
and the five he has had during the last twenty years or so
have all started with him as " little boys " about his shop,
and have been bound because they displayed some capacity
and aroused his interest. Moreover, frequent though such
cases are at present, it is not probable that this " unemployed
good- will " is as yet by any means exhausted. In this
way, too, Skilled Employment Associations have sometimes
found it possible to get over the refusal of a firm to appren-
tice : for " we sometimes induce them to take boys by
getting them interested in our work or in the boys we send
them." And Apprenticeship under such conditions is
likely to have a peculiar value, since the giving of special
care to the teaching is practically assured.

Taken as a whole, then, in the trades where formal Appren-

1 An instance was given me of a Diamond Setter (engaged, that
is, on the process of fixing the Diamonds in the mounting of a piece
of jewellery), who for the last twenty or thirty years has never had
less than two apprentices working for him. He gets with each a
premium of ^40, and is said to be quite incompetent to teach them.

86 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

ticeship is uncommon, we find that, even omitting the worst
cases of deliberate exploitation, a good many of these
apprentices are not employed under the most favourable
conditions. For to set against the good small shop, the larger
firms in the Building Trades, and the class last mentioned,
there are those that are peculiarly unsuited for the purpose
—the large works which are over-specialized and the small
premium-hunters. Moreover, that type which is often best
for the purpose — the business of medium size — frequently
refuses altogether to bind itself by an indenture.

This, therefore, is the position of the older form of Appren-
ticeship in some industries, but the beginnings of a new, and
what promises to be a valuable development is to be
seen in the growth of short period Apprenticeships, usually
for four years, instead of five, six, or seven. This practice
combines, or maybe made to combine, the advantages both
of Regular Service and of Migration. It ensures regularity
and continuity of employment during the earlier working
years when the danger of a boy running wild is greatest.
It also meets the frequent difficulty of learning a trade
entirely in a single firm. Short Apprenticeships give a
good grounding in a trade and " make a lad into a good
improver," and as such he can perfect his knowledge by
migrating to other places. Moreover, when he comes to
do this, he knows what he wants and what the conditions
of his trade require, and is of an age and experience to
look after himself better, and so avoids, or at least is less
likely to surfer from, the dangers that beset a younger
improver. The chief objection to this method is that, if
the binding is for too short a period, the employer may have
no course but to specialize a boy upon one branch of the
work ; and it is perhaps unsuited to the most highly skilled
trades. Still, under proper safeguards, it should help to
solve many of our existing problems : and if ever a uniform
system of training is to be restored it will probably follow
some such lines.

At present the device of Short Service followed by Migra-
tion appears to be most frequently utilized in parts of the

REGULAR SERVICE. 87

Engineering Trades. It is sometimes adopted in heavy
engineering, but is perhaps even better suited to the lighter
work on electrical machinery and implements. In the
latter it has to contest the field with a tendency to grade
the work among boys in different stages of knowledge and
skill : and in one important firm it was being adopted to
replace less regular methods. After spending a certain
time on various simple machines, the boys were to choose
their trade from a number of alternatives and spend the
rest of their four years' service at it. Again, in the Art
Metal Group, shorter periods of three or four years are not
unknown, and they are also found occasionally in the Build-
ing and Furniture Trades. Moreover, even where they
are not actually in existence, some of the foremen are be-
ginning to advocate them in the interest of the boys. In a
large furniture factory, for instance, in both the joiners'
and cabinet makers' shops, the foremen commended the
refusal of the firm to indenture their lads on the ground
that they should be free to move elsewhere after a certain
time, and that they ought to do so. So, too, in the Building
Trades a boy may be best suited by a small shop in his
earlier years and by a larger one later on. These reasons,
too, are also beginning to set employers against the longer
period of indenture, and, generally speaking, opinion in
favour of the new method appears to be growing.

On the other hand, Apprenticeship direct to the men
seems to be dying out. It is still found in the process of
Gold and Silver Wire-Drawing, a very small trade indeed,
and occasionally in the Japanning of Leather. The most
important instance of it, however, is in one of the preliminary
processes of Leather Manufacture, namely, Fleshing, which
may be briefly described.

After leaving the lime-pits, the skins are brought to a
flesher. This man works over a beam and with a long,
sharp, two-handled knife takes off the loose flesh which
still adheres to the inner side of the pelt. The work is
paid by the piece, and an unskilful workman can spoil a
good number of skins. Apprenticeship usually begins at

88 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

about the age of eighteen and lasts for three years. The
lad is bound directly to one of the fleshers, and is paid at a
lower piece-rate. Half the difference between this and the
normal rate goes to the man in return for his trouble, and
the other half to the employer to compensate for spoilt pelts.
Among the watermen, also, many boys are bound to their
own fathers. Otherwise, the method only survives in
individual cases, in which a firm allows a man to make
arrangements for putting his boy under another.

Thus, to sum up the present position of Regular Service,
we find that it varies from one industry to another, and
takes a variety of forms. First, there is the universal
enforcement or marked prevalence of Formal Apprentice-
ship, which is only found in the Printing Group and a few
small trades. Secondly, some less formal type of Regular
Service predominates without being universal — notably
in Engineering and the allied crafts, in Optical and Scientific
Instrument Making, and in the Art and Precious Metal
Trades, though in all of them there is some survival of In-
dentured Apprenticeship. Hence, in one form or another,
Service is the normal method of training in no inconsider-
able portion of the Industries of London.

Thirdly, it is sometimes found to be predominant in
certain parts but not in the whole of a trade. Thus, as in
Bookbinding and Bootmaking, the machine processes
are done by semi-skilled operators, but Service holds its
own among the skilled handworkers. Again, as in Cabinet
Making, it retains among the firms doing the higher class
work the position that it has lost in the wholesale trade,
and the division is largely a local one between East and
West London. Finally, the presence both of Apprentice-
ship and Regular Service is found elsewhere in a small
number of firms, sometimes, but not always, as the
result of accidental circumstances.

The conclusion to be drawn, therefore, is that, in the
wider sense of a regular system of teaching for a definite
term, neither Service nor even Formal Apprenticeship
can fairly be described as moribund. Modifications of

REGULAR SERVICE. 89

old practices are required, and greater flexibility is
needed, with perhaps a variety of methods to suit the
necessities of different trades. But in some at least the
older conditions might well be extended or restored, and
sometimes regret is expressed that Apprenticeship does not
replace the less formal arrangements that prevail. Under
present conditions, however, the informal system is being
generally preferred, and both employers and employed find
advantages in it. This preference, however, is not the
result of any vital objection to the formal system : and all
experience goes to show that employers, if properly ap-
proached, might be persuaded to reconsider the matter,
and such reconsideration will be necessary if the less formal
methods are not to take an even firmer hold than they
have done already.

CHAPTER V.
LEARNING BY MIGRATION.

Meaning of Migration — Six Classes of Improvers — The Out-of-Time
Apprentice and the Turn-over — Numbers increase with reduc-
tion in period of Service — The Short-Service Apprentice — The
Country-Trained Workmen — Such Migration is really a com-
pletion of Service.

Migration as a Method is confined to the other types — The
Exploited Apprentice — His later career — The Casual Fringe
of Improvers — The Cause of this — Their Ultimate Chances —
Presence among them of some abler boys — -These influences
bring about some Migration where Service is predominant.

Systematic Migration — Its Character — Description of its
working in the Cabinet Trade — How a start is made — Its
Adoption sometimes deliberate, more frequently due to chance
• — Its value to clever boys in poor circumstances — Start in
unskilled boy labour — Migration usually exists in skilled trades,
but not to the same extent in those requiring the highest skill —
Often accompanied by unfavourable industrial conditions —
Reasons for its frequency in the Building Trades.

Influences specially favourable to it — Subdivision of Output
— Cabinet Making — Its Extent in it — Often a Necessity —
Typical Cases — Its amount here must not be exaggerated —
Much Regular Service still found — Similar conditions in the
rest of the Furniture Trades — Its position in Upholstery.

Grading — Its Character — In operation in the manufacture of
Lighter Electrical Machinery — Difficulty of absorbing all the
Boys — Other examples — Machined Woodwork — French Polish-
ing— Leather Goods Work.

Existence of Migration where Service predominant — Present-
Day Conditions which favour its growth — Summary of its
present position.

So much has had to be said in the last chapter about
the position of Migration in certain trades, that a somewhat
briefer treatment of the subject will be possible in the
present one. In dealing with it, it is necessary to begin by
distinguishing between the different classes of Improvers.
For the Method of Migration, so far as it is a method, is

LEARNING BY MIGRATION. 91

one of learning as an improver, but not all improvers will
be learning by Migration.

When we come to classify them, it is possible to distinguish
some six chief varieties, namely : the Original Improver or
Out-of-Time Apprentice, with whom Turn-Overs can be
included, the Short Service Apprentice, the Country-Trained
Workman completing his education, the Exploited Appren-
tice, the Improver of the Casual Fringe, and the Migratory
Improver proper. Of these the first three really use migra-
tion to complete an education begun under Regular Service.
Migration proper applies to the others.

In its original sense the term Improver denoted a person
who had already served an Apprenticeship, but had not
become fully competent at his trade. It thus corresponded
to the narrowest definition of a bound and indentured
apprentice. Such persons are still found, and they have
to work for a time for less than the ordinary rate of wages
until they become thoroughly efficient. Sometimes their
position is fully recognized, and a few Trade Unions make
provision for it, and even fix a limit of time within which
full wages shall be paid. More frequently, indeed, such
arrangements are left for employer and employed to agree
upon between themselves. In Printing, however, an
apprentice must obtain his full money on coming out of
his time, but in this there is a period of seven years' service,
and subsequent Migration has not been rendered so neces-
sary by developments of machinery, as it has been else-
where. The plasterers again insist, not always successfully,
on the payment of full money at twenty-one. But in other
trades improvers of this class are not uncommon ; and
sometimes there is a sort of tacitly accepted idea of the
rate an apprentice ought to get on coming out of his time.
For instance, in one case in the Building Trades, I was told
that in the last year of his time he would receive £i or 215.
per week, and that at its conclusion his money would be
raised at once to Sd. per hour, and that he would get the
full rate in about two years.1

1 Since this was written advances have been obtained by most
sections of this industry in London.

92 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Various causes keep up the numbers of these improvers.
The length of an ordinary Apprenticeship is being reduced,
and five years has outside the Printing Trades become
the normal period. Often this is due to the impossibility
of learning the whole of a trade in a single shop, a thing
which in other cases has led to Short-Period Apprentice-
ships or to Migration pure and simple. Further, some
foremen hold that five or even seven years are insufficient
to learn one throughout, and that at the close of them, even
if his knowledge is complete, a man lacks experience and
adaptability, and thus a short term of Migration at some-
thing below the full rate will be to his advantage. Finally,
the attitude of bound apprentices may sometimes lead
to similar results. Employers and foremen both complain
that they presume on their secure position and only really
apply themselves to their work in their last year or two.
Hence they have still a good deal left to learn when they
come out of their time.

To these must be added another class. When a firm
goes bankrupt or retires from business, some of its boys
may still have part of their indenture to serve. Normally,
they would be transferred to another employer and bound
to him for the remainder of their time. They would then
be known as Turn-Overs or Turn-over Apprentices. Some-
times, however, a man may neglect, or not be able, to make
such arrangements, and the only way in which the appren-
tice can complete his education is by getting a job as an
improver ; or his employer may prefer to provide for him
in this way rather than by a formal turning over. On
the other hand, some firms who do not ordinarily employ
improvers will take on those who are really Turn- overs,
in order to give them a chance of finishing their education,
since this is often the only way for them to do it.

The Short Service Improver has already been dealt with,
and reasons have been given for supposing that he will
grow in numbers, as this device replaces both the longer
formal Service and the more casual Migration. Short
Service really represents a combination of the two, and under

LEARNING BY MIGRATION. 93

favourable conditions obtains the advantages of both.
It aims at giving a general groundwork in a trade, and turn-
ing out the learner at the end of his time as a " good im-
prover," fit to make his way up for himself. It seems also
the best calculated of any existing system to meet all the
difficulties of the present industrial situation, and everything
seems favourable to its development. Moreover, the dis-
tinction made by some firms between the improver who
has had a regular job of three years or more, and the one
who has not, points in the same direction, since some who
normally adopt a full period of Service will refuse to take the
latter, but, if they have a vacancy, will find a place for the
former. In any case the development of the Short-Service
system in a trade will of necessity increase the number of
i nprovers in it.

Thirdly, there are the country-trained apprentices or
workmen, who are so numerous in some industries. They
come mainly from country districts, the country towns
and the smaller boroughs, and have usually served their
time in a shop of small or moderate size possessing little
machinery. Now under these conditions a more thorough
all-round training can be given than that which is often
obtainable in London. The countryman, indeed, has
still to master the finer work, the greater speed of working,
and the special conditions of machine production, which
are frequently characteristic of it ; but often, though by
no means always, he makes in the end the best tradesman.
To do this, however, he must first spend a few years as
an improver in the " finishing school " of London Industry.1

Now all the improvers hitherto considered have this
in common, that the training they are receiving is simply
supplementing and finishing off that which they have pre-
viously obtained under Regular Service. The two, in fact,
are not competitive but complementary. In the case

1 " As already indicated, in many branches of the [Building]
Trade London is an excellent finishing school, but a bad training
ground." Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London, vol. v.,
p. 100.

94 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

of Short Service, indeed, this is the result of a more or
less definite arrangement. What has to be remarked,
therefore, is that each of these classes accounts for a
considerable number of improvers, and that this number
is tending to expand. Thus, even in trades where Regular
Service is markedly predominant, their existence can be
noted ; but strictly speaking, they are not learning by
Migration, but are merely completing a training given
hitherto under the other system.

As a method of training proper, therefore, Migration is con-
fined to those who acquire their trades " wholly or mainly "
by means of it. It is thus limited to the remaining types ;
and in two of them, that of the exploited apprentice and
of the casual fringe, it is largely the result of mischance
or misconduct. Nevertheless, they account for a good
proportion of those who learn in this way. To suppose,
however, that the deliberate exploitation of boys, whether
by their employers, their parents, or themselves, is at all
general, is in my opinion both inaccurate and unfair. Cases
of it are more numerous than they should be, but, existing
conditions being what they are, it is rather surprising that
they are not even more common. Far more frequently
the trouble results from ignorance, lack of information or
mistaken ideas, from lack of means on the part of the
parents, or from the demand made on the employer to pay
the full value of a boy's labour. Where, however, exploita-
tion does exist in any form, full training can only be obtained
or completed by means of Migration.

Where the fault lies primarily in the employer, a dis-
tinction must be made between those who do not teach and
those who cannot. At the worst, five or six boys are taken
and bound, if possible with a premium, few, if any, men being
employed. They are then kept either at mere labouring
or have the work so parcelled out among them, that each
does only one or two processes and soon comes to do them
well and rapidly. Being confined to them, however, they
come out of their time knowing very little more than when
they began it. Such firms usually prefer an indenture as an

LEARNING BY MIGRATION. 95

excuse for offering lower wages and for the power it gives
of keeping boys bound to them for a number of years.
Even so, indeed, the bolder of these will run away from
their service, in the confidence that their master will not
care to face publicity. Happily also such extreme cases
are rare, and they naturally attract an amount of attention
quite out of proportion to their numbers. More frequently
there is a partial failure to teach, and the training given
is more or less defective. The boys are taken for what can
be made out of them, and left to fend for themselves.
Thus Technical Instructors have known them in such cases
to " burst into tears " because they are nearly out of their
time, and do not know many essential things, and have
small chance of learning them where they are.

Similarly with employers who cannot teach, there are
extreme instances, as already described, in which the man
is a " duffer " who makes trash, and very little of that,
and ought not to be allowed to have an apprentice at all.
Others do more, till we get the shop which teaches a good
part of a trade quite fairly well, and gives its boys reasonable
chances of becoming in time fully competent workmen,
though it leaves them a great deal still to learn after they
leave it.

It follows, therefore, that members of this class vary in
character, position and opportunity of rising. Those who
come out of their time practically untaught, have very
small prospect of becoming tradesmen. At twenty or
twenty-one they still have almost everything to learn ;
and the mere fact that they have submitted for so long
suggests that they lack the necessary " grit " to overcome
difficulties and face ordinary competition. With others
the chance is much more promising. Those who have been
partially taught will, indeed, have to wait for some time
longer than they ought to do before they get the full journey-
man's wage, but there is no reason why they should not
get it in time. Their chief danger is that they will not grasp
their need for improvement but be content to remain
as they are. It is, however, those who most quickly realize

96 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

their position, and leave their indentures to get new situa-
tions, that are most likely to do well : for by so doing they
have already shown the pluck, energy and insight that
lead to success. Anyhow, if either type of boy is to
make himself thoroughly master of his trade, he will have
to do so by means of Migration, and he will have so much
to learn, that he can fairly be described as having acquired
it mainly, if not wholly, in this way.

The improvers of the casual fringe are usually boys who
for some reason or other cannot or will not stick to a job.
Such are to be found in almost every trade, however regular
its methods may otherwise be, with the exception of a
few whose organization is very strict indeed. They include
those who, because of defects of character or ability, are
always being compulsorily moved on, or who are otherwise
competent but too restless or quarrelsome to retain their
positions and so throw them up for trivial reasons before
they have had time to learn much. Even so some of them
do manage to acquire a partial or, more rarely, a complete
knowledge, but others move continually from trade to
trade, and end by becoming men " who can do anything "
but not any one thing.

Complaints of the " big shilling " are also frequent, and
some youths can always be enticed away from a place by
the offer of rather higher money elsewhere. It may even
result in their leaving skilled work for an unskilled job.
More frequently they stick to the same trade, but go to one
firm after another. In this case the habit is more common
when business is brisk than when it is slack. Thus in the
Building Trades youths who could get good wages in the
boom years between 1896 and 1900, afterwards found that
their defective training placed them at a serious disadvan-
tage. But there is always some movement of this kind
going on, quite independently of these fluctuations.

Undoubtedly many such boys fail eventually to become
competent workmen. Those of the last class are most
likely to succeed, since some of them do keep their eye on
their chances of learning as well as on the money to be

LEARNING BY MIGRATION. 97

earned ; and at times some of the others pull themselves
together. But more often than not the position is irretriev-
able. Some become very expert at one part of the work
and earn good money whilst working, but get very irregular
employment. Others, again, may get steady employment
at wages somewhat above those of a labourer but below
those of an artisan. Others fare even worse.

The causes of the trouble are various. Carelessness and
lack of supervision are responsible for much ; unemployment
in adolescence is even more fatal than in manhood ; and
the selection of an unsuitable trade will lead to much harm,
especially in a disposition naturally restless or lazy, but
capable of steady application to a congenial task. The
matter is largely one for organization — to dovetail jobs,
to put the round peg in the round hole and, where necessary,
to keep the boy steadily occupied in the more beneficial
forms of unskilled work. Usually prevention is the only
cure, and habits of restlessness once acquired can rarely be
eradicated or a record of dismissal and incompetence lived
down.

An altogether different type of improver, though re-
sembling these last in belonging to the casual fringe, is the
youth who takes advantage of such opportunities as occur,
and advances himself by his own efforts from an unskilled
boy labourer to the position of a mechanic. In some indus-
tries in which Regular Service is predominant, there are
jobs, especially in small repairing shops, which provide a sort
of half-chance of learning for those who have grit enough
to take it. Usually a boy starts by obtaining some kind
of unskilled work in connection with the trade, and picks
up in this way enough knowledge of it to enable him to
better himself. Then when his actual position, which
after all is a boy's job and only worth a boy's wage, no
longer provides for him, he has to go, but by this time he
knows enough to get a better position elsewhere as an
improver. The following is a case in point :—

A lad, after a short time as Telegraph Messenger and

98 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

two years as Railway Page Boy, got a job in a small engin-
eers' shop containing two men, attached to a large under-
clothing factory. He got it quite accidentally in answer
to an advertisement. Starting as a porter, he came later
to clean the motors by which the machinery was driven,
and to help the men in the engineer's shop. He had, how-
ever, to do all sorts of other work ; but when the two
mechanics had a lot on hand he assisted them, and the
one in whose charge he was helped him to get on. He went
to a Technical Institute to learn smithing and took up
turning there, and when I saw him was looking out for a
job, if possible as a turner's improver, or, failing that, as
hammerman, with a view to becoming in time an improver
to smithing.

Such openings would be useless to many, and it is only a
very few who have the ability to turn them to account as
stepping-stones to better things. But one merit of the less
formal Service is that it does more often leave an opening
to the abler of such boys thus to " steal their trades."
Cases of this kind are not, indeed, numerous, but they
do provide for a few who might otherwise remain labourers
all their lives.

It is obvious, therefore, that even where some form of Regu-
lar Service is predominant, there is still room for a certain
amount of learning by Migration without counting those im-
provers who are simply completing their education. The
position is that Regular Service is accepted voluntarily and
not under any compulsion by the bulk both of employers and
employed, but there are shops of an inferior type and boys
who lack steadiness or ballast who find employment in them
as improvers ; and there are other occasional outlets for them.
These, however, must not be confused with the kind of
Migration that prevails where it is a definite method of
learning and covers a large portion of a trade.

Systematic Migration of this kind is found where such
a movement from firm to firm is so common a process as
to form a readily available alternative means of entering

LEARNING BY MIGRATION. 99

a trade. There is no longer any Regular Service in the
sense in which the term has been used, but the youth leaves
one place and goes to another as circumstances or inclination
dictate— when he is sacked, for instance, or when he sees
the chance of a rise in wages. Moreover, the employer comes
to regard such improvers as integral parts of his establish-
ment, and up to a point treats them like journeymen, taking
them on and dismissing them according to the needs of his
business. There thus often grows up a definite demand
for them, and classes of work are set apart as specially
" suited to improvers." Sometimes, indeed, the product gets
graded according to the price paid for doing it, or the skill
it requires. In speaking of Silversmithing, for instance,
one young fellow said : " You don't have improvers, but
each hand is paid a different amount according to what
he is worth." Where such conditions are found the
amount of Migration is usually large.

A description of the method as it prevails in the trade
that is most typical of it, namely, the East London Cabinet
Trade, may be quoted here in the words of a small Master
Cabinet Maker.

A " little boy " of fourteen comes into a shop at 6s. a week to
run errands. He does not do the work or possess any tools, but
from watching the men at work he gets to know how it is done.
His wages rise to about 95., the most he is worth as an errand
boy, and when he asks for ios., he is refused and leaves. He
gets another job for about ios. a week, saying he can do some
simple thing, and on being sacked or leaving that place, gets
another to do a harder piece of work at a higher wage. This he
may not yet have done, but having seen others do it, he contrives
to carry it out sufficiently well to keep the place. Thus he
gradually makes his way, till he can earn full money, and if he is
smart will have learnt to make not only a single article but a
variety of them.

A commencement can be made in a variety of ways.
Some boys have fathers or relatives who own a small shop
and take a turn at it first with them, and others, before
they start, get a friend to give them a few hints or learn
a little at a Trade School. Usually, however, a beginning

ioo INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

is made by obtaining a job in some shop as odd boy, since
this is likely to lead to a chance at the bench, which any
foreman will give to those who are smart and capable.
Often the lad's father or brother is at work there and so
gets him the place.

Sometimes boys will deliberately set themselves to learn
by Migration because, among other reasons, Apprenticeship
is falling into disfavour with them as well as with their
employers. The comparatively low wages of the apprentice
cause them to prefer to make their own way : and the best
of them will, as a matter of fact, acquire their trade by
Regular Service, probably of the fourth kind, namely
" Working and Learning." Getting a job that suits them,
they keep it. Their wages rise with their knowledge, and
their services to their employer make it worth his while
to pay them well. Hence it is not surprising that some
of the smarter ones, choosing not only their trade but their
mode of acquiring it, prefer Migration, or at least choose to
take their chance of having to move. " Is it to be expected/'
said one foreman, " that a smart chap will take lower wages
and perhaps pay a premium, when by the help of the Techni-
cal Schools he can learn just as well without ? " Similarly,
those who have received two or three years' preliminary
training in a Day Trade School are often capable of taking
an improver's job at once, and working their way up from
this. These last are found mostly in Building, Wood-
working and Art Metal, and in Engineering they start
usually as apprentices.

Again, Migration, whether adopted deliberately or not,
is of great value to clever boys whose families are in such
poor circumstances that they have to earn the largest pos-
sible amount as soon as they leave school. By its means
they still keep open for themselves the possibility of entering
skilled work, and Juvenile Labour Exchanges might do
much to assist them to make a start in this way. Similarly,
where learning is subordinated to wage earning, but not lost
sight of, they may quite well become first-rate workmen,
more particularly if they obtain adequate help and guidance.

LEARNING BY MIGRATION!: ; V'roJ

It not unfrequently happens, however, that boys start with
the idea of learning a trade wholly in one place, but after-
wards migrate to other firms. The more informal types
of Regular Service especially leave many loopholes for this.
Thus, if they feel that their job does not give them suffi-
cient scope, or that they are not learning as much as they
ought to do,1 they move on and seek better teaching and finer
qualities of work or greater variety elsewhere. Sometimes,
indeed, this will be done with the co-operation of a sym-
pathetic employer or foreman. It should be remembered,
however, that when a good boy gets into a good shop, he
is apt to stay there. Thus, whatever his original intention,
he does not in fact migrate, and his Service becomes
regular.

Nevertheless, whilst a good many definitely choose to
utilize Migration, the great bulk of those who enter a trade
in this way, do not do so deliberately, but more or less as
the result of chance. Wherever the method is common,
there are always plenty of openings at the bottom for
unskilled boy labour, and, after working at them, lads
find that they have a liking for the business, and that there
is an opportunity of entering it. So some of them learn it,
others learn only a part of it, and yet others simply move
on after a time to another unskilled job. The " boy about
the shop " is common everywhere, and special trades have
special boys, like the glue-boys in joinery and cabinet making,
whilst the small masters often give them a little of the actual
work to do. An acquaintance of mine, for instance, is
engaged in making what-nots, which he prepares and fits
himself, whilst his wife does the polishing and the lads mind
the glue, run the errands and do things like sand-papering.
Now some of them have left him for a better job and
eventually learnt Cabinet-Making as he in his time had
done before them. There is the danger, indeed, that they

1 Thus a Trade Instructor in Silversmithing said — " Improvers in
our trade consist either of the clever, able boy, who feels that his
ability is not being given sufficient scope or of the boy who for in-
competence or other reasons cannot keep any place long.

: ^NBUSTRIAL TRAINING.

may become makers of what-nots or of small tables or of
a particular piece of furniture only and not cabinet makers.
For the conditions prevailing here result among other things
in the growth of much specialization on single articles ; and
from lack of guidance many boys fail to make the best of
their chances ; and of the openings which exist, some only
will be utilized fully, others partially, and yet others not
at all.

The industries in which Migration is most common are
usually skilled, but are not as a rule such as to require the
very highest type of skill. Thus in Optical and Scientific
Instrument Making, and in a great deal of Engineering, it
is strongly discountenanced, and Regular Service is insisted
upon, as is usually the case with the firms doing the finest
work in the Furniture Trades. At the same time this
tendency must not be exaggerated, and many first-rate
workmen have learnt by Migration. Further, it is most
prevalent where certain conditions exist which are in many
ways unfavourable to sound training. Thus, the occupa-
tions in which it is common generally show either a marked
seasonal character or much casual employment, and indivi-
dual firms experience ups and downs of activity quite apart
from the general state of business. These influences, indeed,
render it convenient for employers to be able to engage and
dismiss boys and youths, just as they do adults, and so make
it desirable from a business point of view. Many firms,
however, are averse to dismissing a learner if it can be
avoided.

Two circumstances, however, peculiarly favour the
growth of Migration, namely, the subdivision of production
or output among different shops, and the " grading " of
the work among different workers at varying rates of pay.
Its prevalence, however, is not limited to cases where one
or both of them is present. A notable exception is to be
found in the Building Trades, in most of which it flourishes.
For this there are a number of reasons, and more particu-
larly the fact that in them, without so marked a subdivision
as that just mentioned, it is still difficult to acquire the

LEARNING BY MIGRATION. 103

whole of a trade in a single firm. The bigger works often
have a varied output, but there is frequently a division
into men's, improvers' and boys' work. Again, an extensive
use of machinery may remove from a lad's experience many
of the rougher and simpler jobs which it is desirable he
should learn, even if he may never be compelled to perform
them as a man, since they help to give the best preliminary
grounding. Now in the smaller shops he will get them,
but in the bigger ones he will not ; and this, therefore, has
to be set against the undoubted advantages of the latter.
Indeed, he will sometimes go first to a small firm for a few
years, and get to know what he can there and then remove
into a larger one, thus naturally dividing his course of train-
ing into two parts. In one branch, that of Plastering,
the need for this is even greater, owing to the growing
number of businesses which specialize either on solid or
fibrous work. Finally, the growing dislike of Apprentice-
ship among both employers and boys, and the desire of the
latter to be free to move, has led to " much swopping of
shops and foremen." For all these reasons, therefore, the
method of Migration is common in the Building Trades,
and they stand in many respects midway between the old
conditions and those in which subdivision almost compels
migration ; and in them its growth is much encouraged by
the existing absence of system.

Of the two great influences at work the operation of the first
is most clearly seen in the Furniture Trades and especially
in Cabinet Making. The latter covers a far wider area
than its name would imply ; for it includes the making of
most articles of furniture or of woodware about a house
which " are of light character, and used for purposes of orna-
ment, and are not fixtures in the building," 1 and in addition
to them cabinet makers are employed in the manufacture
of telephone stands and boxes, and of cameras, barometers
and looking-glass frames. Now in this trade specialization
of product or output is carried further than in almost any

1 This definition was given to rne by the Head of the Wood-working
Department of a well-known Trade School.

104 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

other. Some of it is found in certain large firms in which
there is also specialization of processes, and far more in
the small hand shops which abound in East London. Now
the cabinet maker's products vary very much in style and
character, and where they are easy to make and of common
quality, an improver will often be as useful as a journeyman.
Thus, in the windows of a Labour Exchange one may see
advertisements for " a cabinet maker or good improver,"
or " a cabinet maker for cheap barometer frames to joint-
up — improver will do."

This, in short, is work specially " suited to improvers/'
and it will vary from what a boy who is just beginning to
learn can do to such as will fully test the capacity of a young
man who has mastered a large part of the business. More-
over, the conditions as to employment are markedly variable
in every way, and many small firms cannot give regular
employment to their boys, who will for this reason alone
be compelled to move about ; and thus Migration under
present conditions becomes practically a necessity. The
most marked case of seasonal fluctuation, however, is to
be found not in Cabinet Making, but in the Pianoforte
Trade, and here, too, movement from firm to firm is common.

A few typical cases of the working of the method may
perhaps be of interest. The first is that of a foreman—
a comparatively young man — in the cabinet shop of a firm
of Makers and Importers. He began life as an odd boy
about the shop, and when not otherwise engaged was given
sand-papering or, later on, a little simple manual work.
Thus, he gradually improved his wages and got hold of a
few tools, and failing to get a further rise, left the firm he
was with, and found another place where he got rather
more money and learnt a little more. This process he
repeated, and after about five years knew enough to be
put on piece-work like a journeyman. From this he con-
tinued to improve himself, and in all worked in about
eight places to master the trade, staying usually nine months
or a year in each. He declared this method to be one by
which a smart boy could always learn and learn well. It

LEARNING BY MIGRATION. 105

would be the master's interest to bring him on as rapidly
as possible, in order to get the best return for his wages,
whilst, if dissatisfied, a lad is free to leave and go elsewhere.

Another instance was that of the son of a cabinet-maker,1
who always had a liking for this trade. His father did not
wish him to enter it, but he persisted, in spite of opposition.
First, however, he spent six months in a surveyor's office at
6s. a week. Not caring for sedentary work, he went on
trial for a month as a compositor's apprentice, but did not
like that either. He then got a job as a cabinet-maker's
boy and after two months was put to the bench. His wages
to start with were 55. and had risen to 75., when a question
of a lost tool cost him his place. He next had two jobs,
each of six months' duration, as an improver on very cheap
work — first at 115. a week, and then at 135. In both cases
the firm went bankrupt. After this he worked piece-work
alongside of his father and further improved himself, his earn-
ings increasing from 155. to £i, and since then he has been
employed for two years by another firm, his wages rising
during this time from $d. to 6%d. an hour. Here he some-
times had to work short time, but had never lost more
than a day or two between each job. When I saw him he
was contemplating another move and expected to get full
money after another two or three years. He did not regret
his choice of a trade.

Another learner spent a year after leaving the Elementary
School doing odd jobs in various shops, and for six months
more was errand boy to a Clock Repairer, who taught him
a little. A brother who had a small cabinet-making business
then started him in the same capacity at 55. a week, and
after five years he was getting I2S. 6d. as an improver. He
was under some sort of agreement to learn the trade, but
was dismissed for slackness. In less than a week, however,
he got another place and after nearly two years was earning

1 This and the three following cases are the industrial histories of
students at one of the Maintained Institutions of the London County
Council, who, by the kind permission of the Principal and the
Instructors concerned, I was enabled to interview.

io6 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

255. a week piece-work and expected to take some years
more to get the full rate. His slow progress was attributed
by his instructor to the fact that he was probably mistaken
in his choice of a trade.

A third student had begun with two years at a Day Trade
School and started at about seventeen years of age at los.
a week for a Bermondsey firm, being put off for slackness
after three months. His next job where he earned 4^. an
hour lasted the same time, when he left to go to the firm
where his father worked. He stayed there for two years
(his wages rising from 4^. to $d. per hour), and when I saw
him had just started for another firm at 6d. per hour. In
all he had had about seven weeks unemployment during
this time.

One more case may be given, that of the son of a Fore-
man Decorator, who was himself an Instructor in a Techni-
cal School. In his case manual training at an Elementary
School brought out a liking for wood- working, and though
he began as a clerk, he continued his woodwork during the
eighteen months that this lasted. His first job at the trade
brought him in 155. a week at the start and, when, after
eighteen months, the firm was wound up, he was getting
4%d. an hour. After three weeks " out " he got a further
job for another seventeen months, and at the end of this
time was getting 6d. per hour. That firm also closed down,
but after a few days he got another situation, and when I
saw him he had been working there for two years and was
getting full journeyman's money (io^d. per hour). During
the time in which he was learning he had been unemployed
altogether for about two months only.

Such, on the whole, probably represent fairly the condi-
tions under which the better class of improver acquires his
trade ; but those who attend Technical Schools are above
the average in ability, in opportunity and, above all, in
success. Even for them; however, the normal alternative
is either constant movement or slow progress ; and with
others, the change of situation is likely to be more frequent,
unemployment longer in duration, and progress slower and

LEARNING BY MIGRATION. 107

more doubtful, the more so as the high immediate wages
paid to improvers often compel the employer to keep
them on the kinds of work which they can do well.

Even in the Cabinet Trade, however, the prevalence of
Migration must not be over-estimated, common though it
is in East London and in the wholesale trade generally. Most
of the higher-class firms, still retain some form of Regular
Service, usually without a binding agreement, and even in
East London there is a certain amount of it, including some
Indentured Apprenticeship. Again, some small firms take
apprentices in return for a small premium, and some, both
large and small, without one. Moreover, the Jewish Board
of Guardians are active in binding their boys to this trade,
and the local Skilled Employment Associations are able to
place a certain number in it.

Similar conditions prevail in other branches of the Furni-
ture Trades, though in some of them Migration is not nearly
so frequent. In Upholstery, for instance, the proportion
of workers engaged on better class work is larger, and, being
entirely handwork, it is so far better served by Regular
Service or even Formal Apprenticeship, and machinery
does not exercise as great an influence as it does in Cabinet-
Making. Indeed, Bound Apprenticeship is sometimes con-
tinued among Upholsterers by employers who have other-
wise abandoned it. Still, there is some subdivision of pro-
duct between good and cheap, and between large and small,
work, and some firms confine themselves to a single line of
goods. These tendencies are not carried so far as they are
elsewhere, but they are sufficiently developed to cause
appreciable use to be made of the method of Migration,
though even in the wholesale trade, it is neither so frequent
nor so necessary as in Cabinet-Making.

The histories of a class of boys and young men bear out
this contention.1 Their mode of becoming Upholsterers
had been as follows : —

1 In these the comparative frequency with which a lad starts as
an errand boy and works his way up is worth noting.

io8 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

I. Premiumed Apprentice for five years by Skilled

Employment Association.

II. Started with his father and had been in two jobs in
five years.

III. Apprenticed without a premium.

IV. Started on an errand boy's job, picked up a bit in

three years and was then apprenticed elsewhere
for a further three.

V. Had served a five years' Apprenticeship with a
West London firm and was working as an
Improver.

VI. Said he was apprenticed for two years (!).
VII. Started learning as an errand boy and was intend-
ing to make a move.
VIII. Worked his way up in a single firm after starting

as an errand boy.
IX. Started as an errand boy and became an unbound

apprentice.
X and XI. Apprentices indentured with a premium by

the Jewish Board of Guardians.

XII. Apprenticed in Reading, from which place he came
to London.

XIII. Going to be apprenticed shortly.

XIV. Son of a Moulding Manufacturer and going into this

but studying Upholstery as well.

Thus of these not more than three could fairly be de-
scribed as learning by Migration. The presence of others
apprenticed by institutions like the Jewish Guardians and
of one or two from West-End firms has to be allowed for, but
even so the number, whose Service was actually regular, is
significant. At the same time, there is undeniable evidence
of the existence of Migration ; and this is likely to be far
more common in those branches of the business which are
not so well represented among the students. It is the
better-class boys who attend a Trade School, and they come,
on the whole, from the better-class firms, and so their
employment is more than usually regular.

LEARNING BY MIGRATION. 109

Hence over the trade as a whole, the demand for the
migratory improver is far greater than would appear from
the instances just described. The Labour Exchanges may
be quoted as showing this in their demand both for actual
improvers and for boys " able to do " this or " used to
doing " that, who are such, in fact, if not in name. In the
roughest kinds of work, the stuff is simply knocked together,
and there is sometimes little to teach, but some of the
boys do learn enough to make them ambitious to learn
more ; and the prevalence of casual employment and an
irregular demand makes it necessary for some of them to be
taken on and dismissed according to the state of trade.
Indeed, two years at a Day Trade School previous to work
in the shop is suggested partly to meet these circumstances,
and partly in order that the boy, instead of running wild,
may start at their close with some little knowledge of the
business and a clear idea of what he wants. Moreover, in a
trade like this, those who begin with the idea of Migration
may very well find that the shop they are in can give them
nearly all that they require, just as sometimes, where Regular
Service prevails, circumstances may induce them to move
about.

The second great underlying cause of Migration is found
in the " grading " of work within a single firm. Here it is
not necessary that, as in the first case, the output of each
business should be concentrated upon a few articles, though
this may sometimes be the case. Nor is there that com-
plete specialization on to single machines, which produces a
class of semi-skilled workmen. What happens rather is
that the production of a firm is divided up into a number of
parts and graded according to the skill required in each of
them. Much of the work, therefore, does not need fully
trained hands : and so is carried out by a number of boys or
youths in various stages of development, who are paid
according to their value. This is likely to happen where a
great variety of machines of different degrees of complexity
are in use, though that is not a necessary condition of it. In
any case, there is a great deal of work " suited to improvers/'

no INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

and they are given ample opportunity of working their
way up.

It has already been pointed out that the prodominance
of Regular Service in Engineering does not extend to those
concerns in which the scale of production or the character of
the work render some form of subdivision feasible, especially
those few which are engaged in new construction upon a
large scale. In heavy engineering, this has led to the em-
ployment of a number of semi-skilled machine-men, but some
of the younger and more ambitious of them contrive to
learn the trade by migrating as improvers. Of them an
employer said that " there are a good many in the trade,
coming mostly from large firms where work is very much
specialized."

It is in lighter engineering work, however, that the method
of " grading " is found, and it is by no means confined to the
larger firms. In the electrical branch both trade fluctua-
tions and the irregularity of orders are marked, whilst the
work lends itself to this practice. There are varying degrees
of difficulty in it, and so there is a tendency to have a worker
for each : and a number of grades of gradually increasing
skill have thus grown up between the boy and the man.
As one employer put it, " our work is such that we get certain
classes of it in which we only want a hand earning so much
an hour and so we get an improver " ; and as these vary in
skill, a young fellow has the chance of improving his position
bit by bit and of progressing from one to the other. Often,
and perhaps usually, he will be paid his full value, and so
must depend upon himself for what he learns.

The ordinary process of learning is more or less as follows.
A lad, sometimes at fourteen, sometimes later, starts on a
machine at the current rate of wage, beginning usually on a
punch-press, and being raised as he wants more money to a
drilling machine. For two or three years his work requires
little skill, but he gets to know his way about the shop.
Next he will be promoted to the position of an improver at
about 3^d. per hour and start on some more elaborate
job. The employer just quoted stated that some of his

LEARNING BY MIGRATION.

boys stayed on with him, especially if they were promoted
to the fitter's bench, and that others left to take improvers'
jobs elsewhere, whilst they themselves took them in
from outside as they required them. Regular Service is thus
replaced by a gradation of employment, which springs
naturally out of the conditions of production and wage-
payment. Possibly the difference in the actual teaching
given is not great, except for the liability to a constant
change of firm.

Here, indeed, the most difficult problem is perhaps that of
absorption. A good proportion of the lads can and do
make their way into the trade : but the lighter electrical
work probably takes more boys or youths than it can itself
find room for as men. Further, there are some processes
in it which are little more than a superior kind of Blind
Alley, in which the lightness and easiness of the work limits
the highest wage obtainable to that of an improver or at
best of a low-skilled adult. At the same time, some of
them, as, for instance, the making of certain parts, tools and
accessories, give knowledge and information enough to pro-
vide a start in learning which could be continued else where.
Moreover, the number of learners in other parts of the trade
is sometimes less than it requires, so that some at least of
the superabundant improvers in electrical work can find
other positions to complete their education in, whilst its
generally rapid expansion enables it to absorb more young
workers than most other industries can.

There are further examples of gradation in two important
branches of wood- working, those of sawyers and wood-work-
ing machinists and of French polishers, both of which have
their services utilized in a number of trades. With the
former, the level of skill is more varied than among the
joiners and cabinet-makers who use their products. Partly
owing to the danger involved and partly to the intricacy of
much of the machinery, the best workers earn more than
the men in these two crafts, but in other cases both the
skill and the pay are much lower.

As regards the training required, indeed, the trade falls

H2 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

roughly into two parts. A large number of mills confine
themselves to the sawing of timber into lengths and widths,
sometimes, but not always, rough planing it as well. In them,
though there may be one or two planing machines, nearly all
the work is done at the saw-bench. This is worked by a
man, assisted by a boy to " pull out " and remove the wood
after it has been cut. Here the man's job is little more than
semi-skilled, and so far as the boys are concerned, the work
is a Partial Blind Alley. The smarter of them are promoted
to fill vacancies among the sawyers, but only comparatively
few can be provided for in this way.

Where, however, the wood is worked as well as sawn, a
considerable variety of machines is used, and far greater
skill is needed. There is some specialization on particular
machines, and their number and the different degrees of skill
involved in working them form a gradation of employments
for the learner who can take advantage of it. Bound
apprentices are rare. Like the sawmills, pure and simple,
these factories require boys to do various kinds of labouring
work, but the numbers required by them are nothing like so
much in excess of what they can find room for. Hence those
who have their wits about them learn enough to get on to a
simple machine, either in their own or another factory ; and
this trade, like some others, demands boys who "understand "
or are " used to " one or another of them. With the large
Builders and Contractors, for instance, where very few boys
are taken, they are usually promoted from the gluepot
and put into the machine room if they show capacity. In
this case, indeed, they are put right through the trade and
employed regularly till they have mastered it. Otherwise
migration is common and is favoured by the fact that youths
of different ages are required for different machines. The
present lack of organization and guidance for the boys is,
however, responsible for many failures, and probably far
more enter the trade than succeed in acquiring it.

The work of the polisher covers an even wider area. Under
this head the French (wood) polisher and the metal polisher
may both be included, as the same conditions of teaching

LEARNING BY MIGRATION. 113

apply in both, though the latter's work is rather more skilled
and its conditions more regular. French polishing in parti-
cular is often described as being done by women and girls
only, or by unskilled boy labour ; but this is an exaggera-
tion. Undoubtedly much of the latter is employed on the
less skilled jobs, but it is also on these that women and
girls are being introduced, with the result that on the
average the skill of the men who work at the business
has rather increased than diminished. For the same reason
the amount of Blind Alley work has been reduced, so that
the excess of young boys entering it is not so great as it was.
Thus to the bulk of them polishing offers a definite opening
and demands from them a fair or even sometimes a high
level of skill. Its irregular character and the prevalence of
casual employment are, however, against it.

Here the gradation is unusually well marked. At each stage
which a lad reaches, there is a demand for boys to do just
that kind of work, and so there is also when he has improved
himself a little more. First, there is a " boy for polishers'
shop " (i.e., to run errands and do odd jobs), then " boy to
help polishers," " boy who knows a little polishing," " boy
who understands polishing," and so on till the " polisher's
improver " is reached and finally the improver who " will
do " in lieu of a polisher. Each job is a little better than
the one that is left, a little worse than the one next taken.
Actual Apprenticeship is rare and except in the larger
firms Regular Service is not common ; but, given proper
organization, the existence of such a sequence would be some
compensation for their absence.

In the making of leather goods, again, this method is
often found. In the manufacture of boots and shoes, in-
deed, the work as a rule is either semi-skilled or as in the
Bespoke Trade so highly skilled as to require Regular
Service, whilst in saddlery and harness-making such boys
as are taken are usually bound apprentices. But in the
making of portmanteaux, trunks and bags, and of such
smaller articles as purses, pocket-books, and attache cases,
it is common, though there is also some Apprenticeship and

H4 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Regular Service. There is, as usual, the start as an errand
boy, the learning to make a particular part and the demand
for boys who can make " straps " and " handles " and so on,
then for the improver, and finally for the one who " will do "
instead of a man. To describe the method in full would
only be repetition.

This concludes the consideration of those trades in which
Migration is most prevalent, but in a number of others it
still exists as a distinct and competing process side by side
with the dominant one of Regular Service. In Silversmith-
ing, indeed, the amount of it is considerable owing to the
existence both of subdivision and grading, and to the infre-
quency of indentures and even of the more binding kind
of verbal agreement. In Bookbinding there is a class of
business which lies midway between the semi-skilled machine
production and the very highly-skilled-hand-binding, namely
general jobbing work and vellum-binding. It is what one
might call " five-year " work, that is skilled work in which
the normal period of Apprenticeship would be five years,
but where there is also some migration. A similar state of
affairs is found in some of the metal trades, notably in
Ironfounding.

For the presence of conditions which particularly favour
it is not necessary to the existence of Migration. Some-
times, indeed, they render its frequent use probable or even
inevitable ; but it can exist in their absence and, as in the
case of House Building, can even play a very important
part, when such special circumstances are found only in a
modified form. Moreover, general industrial conditions
favour its presence to some extent in almost every trade.
The rigidly binding agreement is falling into disfavour and is
being replaced largely by informal Regular Service. The
latter leaves necessarily more loopholes for Migration than
does the former, and so in various ways it has come to take
a distinct place in such employments as mechanical engin-
eering and art metal work. The thing can be done, and if
the boy gets discontented or the firm's business slack, he
moves, or is moved, on. Moreover, there are circum-

LEARNING BY MIGRATION.

stances in which after a time his interests will really lie in
going further afield, and some will enter a trade with the
deliberate purpose of doing so.

Thus the area covered by this method is a wide one, and
from various sources it gets a considerable proportion of boys
to adopt it. For not only is it found where circumstances
render it more or less necessary, but it is utilized by many lads
who through their own or others' faults have failed to master
their trade entirely by Service and have to learn it, or com-
plete the' learning of it, in this way. Except for plumb-
ing and gas-fitting, in which Following-up prevails, it plays
a big part in all the Building Trades. With a few excep-
tions, notably Upholstery, it is in even more frequent use in
the wood- working and furniture group,1 and in sawmills
and French Polishing it appears to be predominant. Other
instances of its importance are to be found in parts of the
engineering industry, and in the making of leather goods.
Finally, it is found in existence to a smaller extent even
where Regular Service prevails, notably in silversmithing,
ironfounding and jobbing bookbinding. Like the latter,
in short, it is frequently important, and present almost
everywhere. It is^further, a method that is growing in
popularity.

1 The following return of the proportions of boys employed in
various ways in London and injjthe whole of the United Kingdom
in the returns published in the Report into Earnings and Hours of
Labour in the Building and Wood-working Trades in 1906 is inter-
esting : —

All Working
Apprentices.

Full-Time
Improvers.

Others.

All Boys.

Lon-
don.

U.K.

Lon-
don.

U.K.

Lon-
don.

U.K.

Appren-
tices.

Im-
provers.

Others.

Building .
Cabinet-making,
etc
Sawmilling, etc. .

151

208
25

10,350

2,488
1,452

176

1,493

291

386
420

1,844

1,346
3,023

236

2.93

12,019

2,996
i,75i

409

2,258

489

592
555

2,489

1,790
4,i3o

CHAPTER VI.

FOLLOWING-UP, OR LEARNING FOLLOWING UPON

LABOURING.

Conditions leading to the Method of Following-Up — Brief Descrip-
tion of it — Apparent Overlapping with, and Real Difference
from, Methods previously described — Tendency of Following-Up
to create a Partial Blind Alley — Trades and Numbers of work-
people affected — Organization of Work in them.

Plumbing — The Start — Work as a Mate — His Duties — Learn-
ing about the Trade — -Work as an Improver — Illustrations —
Frequency of Formal Apprenticeship in Plumbing — Comparison
of Apprenticeship and Following-Up.

Conditions produced by Following-Up in this trade — -Tendency
to a Partial Blind Alley only slight— Mate's Work provides
a permanent livelihood — Danger of Overstocking the trade
greater — Probably a reality— Opposition of some Plumbers to
mates who attempt to rise — Danger of producing ill-trained men
— Possibility that capable boys will remain mates all their lives.

Following-Up among Smiths — Heaviness of Work reduces
number of boys — -Apprenticeship less common — Dangers of
Method less marked than in Plumbing.

Following-Up where men and boys work in squads — Rivet-
ting — Method as working in Boiler-making — The Heater and the
Carrier — Rivetters recruited from the latter — Conditions of the
work and training — Other trades recruited in this way —
Training of the Platers.

Extent of Migration during Learning — Attempt of Unions
to enforce five years' continuous service in a single firm —
Trade a Partial Blind Alley, possessing a dual character as such —
Tendency to a Reserve of Boy Labour — Other Branches of
Rivet ting.

Following-Up in Smaller Trades — Leather-Splitting : a
marked Partial Blind Alley — Attempts to provide for those
displaced — Wire-Rope Weaving — Glass-Blowing — Acquirement
of Bricklaying by labourers — Resemblance of this to Follow-
ing-Up apparent rather than real.

Summing-up, as to character of trades where Following-Up
prevails and as to its dangers — Illustration from it of the need
for a properly regulated scheme of training.

J16

FOLLO WING-UP. 117

IN some trades the method of production requires that
the skilled man shall have a helper or assistant definitely
attached to him, and the tie between them is very close
indeed, since the latter is put to serve a particular man and
him only. In other cases a certain number of mechanics
and assistants form a squad ; and frequently these men are en-
gaged and dismissed at the same time. The plumber and his
mate, the smith and his hammerman, look for jobs together,
and a foreman would take on both if he took on either, as he
would a squad of rivetters in Boilermaking, whilst a brick-
layer and his labourer would usually be engaged as two
separate individuals. Moreover the tie is a close one in
another sense, namely, that the helper comes into such direct
contact with the actual work that he can hardly fail to
learn how it is all done, and can use this as a starting-point
to get hold of the tools and so " follow-up " and acquire
the trade. Many of the helpers are grown men, but a good
proportion of them are youths, though not young boys, as
the work is often too heavy for them.

Thus there grows up a third distinct method of learning
a trade. It may be designated " Folio wing-Up " or Learning
following upon Labouring, and is roughly as follows. A boy
or youth works with his man or squad for a number of years
either as a labourer or helper. He is not there to learn.
His business is to assist the man to do his own work. But
in so doing, even if he does not actually handle the tools,
he acquires and, if he has any capacity at all, can hardly
help acquiring, a knowledge of their uses and of the pro-
cesses and of the way in which they are carried out.
Thus on the one hand he will probably get very little oppor-
tunity of actually doing a man's work, and on the other will
obtain a clear view of the trade from the inside. Eventually,
however, he finds an opportunity to get a start for himself
as an improver. Then in his further progress he may stay
in the same shop or he may have to change over and over
again before he is finished. A Master Plumber summed up
the process epigrammatically as " Bad Mate, Good Mate,
Bad Plumber, Good Plumber " : and in this and other cases

Ii8 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

where the method is found, even bound apprentices
have to begin by serving the first few years of their time
as mates to a Journeyman ; for in any case a period of mere
assistance must nearly [always come before that of actual
work with the tools.

On the surface there may appear to be some overlap-
ping between this and the two methods already described,
and curiously enough Formal Apprenticeship is unusually
common in one or two of these trades, more particularly
in Plumbing. Apart from this, Following-Up begins with
a long period of employment in a single firm, that is to
say as a mate, and often after a start with the tools has
been made, comes movement from firm to firm as an im-
prover. Superficially, therefore, the process seems to be a
combination of Service and Migration, varied by individual
cases in which either the former is regular throughout or
in which there is no period of continuous employment.

The two things, however, are really very different.
Even the improver who is teaching himself or the youth
who is working and learning is not in the position of a
labourer or assistant to another person, but is actually using
the tools, and acquiring by doing the work a certain part of
the business of the mechanic. He and the apprentice are
learning not only how it is done, but how to do it themselves.
But the mate who is following-up is primarily there to
assist and serve another and he is kept to it. In this sense,
in short, the apprentice or improver is clearly a learner
from the very beginning, whilst in Following-up a period
of service as a mate or helper precedes the actual learning.
In it, therefore, both the service and the migration are of a
different order ; and Following-up or Learning following
upon Labouring rightly stands out as a method by itself.
The vital fact is this, that the boy or youth is there to assist
the man. By so doing he puts himself in a position to learn
later on, but not till then does he actually do so.

Under this method the number of boys or youths who are
employed in a trade is apt to be greater than can find per-
manent occupation in it. Usually the proportion varies

FOLLOWING-UP.

119

from one assistant to one tradesman, up to two to three or
occasionally one to three. Now even the latter, when' it is a
minimum required for the purpose of a trade and not a
maximum to which employers are limited, introduces into
it an excess of boys, whilst the others would cause the excess
to be considerable. Individual occupations, however, are
able to reduce or get rid of the surplus. Thus plumbers'
mates and smiths' hammermen have a definite occupation
which can best be classed as semi-skilled work ; and many
of them are grown men and only the residue youths attempt-
ing to learn. Again in other cases jobs can be provided
later on in other parts of the factory for some of the assist-
ants. Hence the surplus is often small when it might
reasonably be expected to be large ; but some of the trades
which comprise this group are undeniably employing far
more boys than they can permanently absorb.

This method is nothing like so common as Service, or
Migration. It is more or less confined to certain trades
and is seldom found as a competing alternative outside of
them. The number of workpeople affected is shown by
the Census of 1901 to have been as follows : —

County of
London.

Outer !
London.

Greater
London.

Rest of
England
and Wales

Smiths and Strikers
Plumbers and Mates .
Gasfitters and Mates .
Railway Engine Drivers,
Stokers and Cleaners

8,H3
8,582
5.027

4.697

4,619

5.707
2,720

4.679

12,732
14,289
7.747

9,376

112,573
50,679
9,369

60,307

Total . . „ . .

26,419

17.725

44,144

232,928

In addition to the above there are the boilermakers and
the glass-blowers. A separate return for the former is not
available for London in the Census figures of 1911. In 1901
there were about 3,300 of them in the County of London and

1 Partly estimated : Urban Districts only.

120 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

about 5,600 in Greater London. Nor is a separate return
given for the glass-blowers, but they form the great bulk
of the London glass workers, of whom, according to the last
Census, there were 3,299 in the County of London. For three
smaller processes, those of tankmakers, leather splitters, and
wire rope weavers, separate figures were not given in either
Census.

The last three groups only employ a small number of
workers, the tankmakers being estimated at from 250 to
300 by Mr. Charles Booth in 1893, and probably do not
much exceed that number now. The leather splitters likewise
are probably not more than a few hundreds, and the wire-rope
weavers are but a small portion of the 1,500 odd wire-workers
shown to be employed in London. The means by which in
Bakeries men rise from being Third Hands to be Second and
eventually First Hands, and those by which bricklayers'
labourers acquire bricklaying, bear some resemblance to
" Folio wing-Up " ; but for reasons that will be given later
they cannot rightly be classed with it.

The actual organization of the work varies. Most fre-
quently men act in pairs — smiths and hammermen,1
plumbers and mates, leather splitters and assistants.
In Boiler and Tank Making, however, and in any form of
rivetting, squads of four or five are usual, composed of one
or two rivetters, one holder-up, and two boys, or in some
cases only one. Glass-Blowing is carried out by Chairs of
four, of which the junior members are, or may be, boys, and
in Wire-Rope Weaving the man manages the machine, with
one or two of them as " watchers-out/' The different
methods of working vary considerably, and for this
reason a detailed description of them may be helpful.

On the whole the operation of the system is seen most
clearly in the case of the plumber, to which that of the gas-
fitter bears considerable resemblance, except that the work
of the latter requires that the mate shall himself sometimes
use the tools. In both the mate is a semi-skilled man, so

1 In the larger works there are often several hammermen to one
fire, but this is not common in London.

FOLLOWING-UP. 121

that a boy has to make himself reasonably competent as
such before he can get taken on in the better firms. Again,
the work is mostly heavy, and so in the bigger ones a start
before sixteen or seventeen is unlikely. It can be made
earlier, however, in some of the small jobbing shops where
only lighter work is done and less skill and knowledge are
required in the mate. These facts also account for the
disfavour with which young apprentices are, not unnaturally,
regarded by some of the plumbers. The man who has only
an " apprentice boy " of fourteen, instead of a grown man,
is very much more handicapped than one who has a youth
of seventeen or eighteen, even though the latter may not
be fully efficient.

First of all, therefore, the boy or youth must acquire
sufficient competence as a mate to enable him to get em-
ployment as such in an ordinary firm. To do this he gets a
relative or a friend to put him up to things a bit, or goes into a
small shop as odd boy where he knocks about for a year or
two and, from sweeping up, comes to help the men generally,
and later, if the work is light and easy, to serve one of them.
At sixteen or seventeen he goes, if he can, to a big firm and
gets taken on as a mate. He will start there at from 3^.
or 3%d. up to 4^. or 5^. an hour and will reach the full mate's
wage (jd. per hour) after about two years.

His work is now varied and requires both strength and
intelligence. He has to hold the tools and pass each one
as required — in itself no light task owing to their number
and variety. Certain of them, those used for wiping, for
instance, he has to treat in the fire and keep at the right
heat — an important and difficult matter. When dents in
the piping are being straightened he has to help draw the
mandrils and bobbins through them, and to hold the pipes
whilst they are being bent by the plumber. When brass is
used he has to prepare it for receiving the solder, and when
the piping is being fitted on the building, he has to carry
it and hold it in position.

In doing his work the ordinary mate will not have to use
the tools at all, but he does require a certain amount of

122 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

skill. In its course, moreover, he can hardly help getting an
intimate knowledge of the tools and their uses and of how
it is all being done, besides carrying out certain preliminary
processes. Short of actually doing a mechanic's work,
therefore, he learns all about the trade, and indeed may get a
thorough insight into it. Thus if his plumber is a good
man, he is better served so far than many an apprentice
elsewhere who goes straight to the bench. In any case a
smart chap can hardly help learning enough to enable him
to go and practise the actual processes for himself in a Trade
School, which he should do whilst he is still working as a
mate, and during this time many will also acquire a set of
tools with which to start as improvers. Many jobs, indeed,
like the " wiping of joints/' can be carried out in the Schools,
so that at them the mate can practise for himself of an
evening some of the things which he has seen his plumber
do during the day. Thus one foreman said : ' ' You can see
lads at the Technical Schools any evening of the week doing
ordinary plumbers' work, wiping joints, beating out sheet-
lead, and so on." This, of course, is only a beginning, and
some years of actual work in the shop will be required to
attain proficiency ; but it does make a start easier. Another
advantage possessed by learners in plumbing consists in
the shortness of the hours recognized in the London Dis-
trict, namely forty-seven in summer and forty-four in winter ;
and these give them almost exceptional opportunities for
attendance at classes.

Thus the time comes when the mate feels competent to
start for himself, and so soon as an opportunity occurs, he
goes out and takes his first job as an improver. He now has
a mate of his own. Usually he will proceed to another firm,
as many plumbers do not look with favour on their mates
taking up their work. Often a small shop doing general
repairs or light work, or else one that is specializing on certain
branches, is the first venture. Either of these can usually
find room for an improver. He is taken on at a price and
put off when not wanted or not able to earn it. Some work
their way up to their full money in their first improver's

FOLLOWING-UP. 123

job. Others will make several changes, and learn a little
more at each place. They may make competent plumbers,
or they may not, but they seldom or never go back to a
mate's job. And as already stated, the method of learning
is much the same, even where there is an Apprenticeship or
Agreement. The apprentice will work as a mate for some
years and will only be given the tools in his last year or two.

It may again be worth while to quote a few industrial
histories.

Aristides x (aged 23) is the son of a plumber. He went
into the trade because he himself took a fancy for it, as his
father had no special idea of putting him to it. He began
with a year as office boy in a plumbing firm at 8s. a week, and
for the next year worked with it for 125. as plumber's boy.
He then moved to another shop where he got 4^. per hour,
and was there for fifteen months. After this he worked for
three months at 5^. When this job was finished he was
out for six' weeks, and then got taken on under the L.C.C.
as mate to a Union workman at yd. per hour — the full rate
for a mate. This man would not allow him any chance to
learn, and if he picked up the tools told him to put them
down. What he did, however, was to see how each job was
done and then " come up here," 2 and practise it. He found
that Non-Society men were the same. They would let him
do nothing but wait upon them. After nearly two years he
lost this job through spraining his ankle, and then got one
or two short ones as a mate in small firms. Then he started
as an improver. His first job produced 9^. per hour. He
was dismissed for slackness, and after a fortnight got another
job for 10 d. per hour. In the former both the walking fore-
man and the foreman of the job gave him a little help.
In one of these firms there were five other improvers like
himself, and about half of the mates were young men who
were not getting the full money, and several of them were
trying to learn the trade. The second of these jobs came
to an end after three months. Since then he has worked

1 The names, of course, are imaginary.

2 I.e., to the Trade School.

124 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

on temporary jobs for Builders who do not keep a plumber
regularly employed, usually having a week or two out of
work in between. In one of these he worked for six
months at 10 \d. per hour, and in another, lasting about the
same time, he got the full money, lid. When I saw him
he was still doing this sort of work, as he was unable to get
regular employment.

Brasidas1 left School at 14^. His father was at one time
a carpenter and then a policeman, but has since retired.
He began with three years in a Tramway Engineer's Office,
hoping to become a clerk. He then tried for a position to
be trained as a Sanitary Inspector, but failed to obtain it,
and was advised to become a plumber and work his way
up to it. When I saw him he had been six years at this,
five as a mate and one as an improver. He has worked
for five shops altogether and moved backwards and forwards
between them. He began with eighteen months with a
Sanitary Engineering firm for 4^. per hour and was dismissed
for slackness. After three weeks he got a job at 5^. per
hour and in time raised his wages first, to 6d. and then to yd.
He was usually out for about a fortnight at the end of each
job. In his first improver's place he got Sd. and was there
for three months, but in his next he accepted 6%d. on the
understanding that he should be taught estimating and
measuring, and when I saw him had worked there regularly
for nine months. The agreement was being pretty well
observed.

Cincinnatus,1 after nine years at the trade, is still a mate.
His father is a gardener. He left school at fourteen. It
had always been his ambition to become a plumber, and a
mate's job was the first that presented itself. Business, how-
ever, is so bad he would change if he could, though he likes
the work. He was four years in his first job for a Master
Builder and Plumber and worked as mate to his employer's
son. He was the only boy there. His wages for each of the
four years were 8s., ios.6^., 135. and i6s. respectively, and
he was given the tools and the chance to do the work as
1 The names are, of course, imaginary.

FOLLOWING-UP. 125

opportunity offered, there being an understanding to that
effect. With them he got regular employment. He always
had the ambition to get into a big shop, and eventually
obtained a job in the one where he was when I saw him. He
had been there nearly five years. For the first three he
had worked for the firm in the country, and after that came
back to London. For about twelve months he was employed
irregularly by them, being continually put off and losing
about thirteen weeks out of the fifty-two. He started at 4 %d.
per hour and when I saw him was get ting 5 \d., which is not
the full mate's money. He finds he has been very much kept
back, and that the men are mostly hostile to those who, like
himself, are trying to get into the trade in this way. Some
men will do all they can to prevent them doing so, whilst the
preference given to the sons of the plumbers employed by
the firm, or to those who have influence behind them, keeps
the others back. When I saw him he was intending to try
his luck with the foreman to get a start as an improver,
and to go elsewhere if he failed. There were some twenty
improvers employed by this firm.

Curiously enough Plumbing shows a greater tendency
towards Formal Apprenticeship than any other branch of
the Building Trades. The growing realization of the needs
of public health and sound sanitation has led to special atten-
tion being paid to the question of the training of plumbers.
This has resulted in movements for the Registration of
Plumbers and for the revival of Apprenticeship among them
and in both of them the Plumbers' Company has been active.
On the other hand the method of Folio wing-Up, the organiza-
tion of the trade, the short working hours and the position of
the Trade Schools render indentures to some extent less neces-
sary. The long period as a mate, too, keeps the learner under
better control during his earlier years at the time when such
control is most necessary, and so checks the tendency to run
wild that is often found among improvers. Moreover for the
first few years of his time a lad's work will be much the same,
whether he is an apprentice or not. From the learner's
point of view also, the advantages of being bound are less

126 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

than they are elsewhere. "Is it to be expected that a
smart young chap shall take lower wages as an apprentice
boy and perhaps pay a premium, when by working as a
mate and using the Technical Schools, he can learn just as
well and get better money while doing it ? " In other words
Following-up is in many ways an efficient alternative to
Apprenticeship, but even here the value of a definite and
regular engagement to teach must not be lost sight of.

This value is further increased, when the question of
recruiting, as well as that of the actual teaching, is con-
sidered ; for the laying down of definite conditions of service
makes it possible to regulate more quickly and successfully
the flow of labour into the trade. With mates it is often
difficult to know whether they will or will not attempt to
become plumbers, and thus more may try to do so than it can
hold, since the number of young mates cannot be limited so
easily as that of apprentices. This fear, often a justifiable
one, is largely responsible for that hostility which some
plumbers display towards the efforts of their mates to better
themselves, and so prevents the latter from getting the
help and advice which they require. Indirectly, therefore,
Following-up may for these reasons result in inefficient
training in cases where Apprenticeship or Service would not.
Thirdly, it does cause some failures which with a regular
agreement might never occur. The boy or youth who
has to stand alone and teach himself does require a higher
level of ability than the one under a contract, and this is
one of the reasons why the value of the latter may be so great.

What is needed, therefore, is some method which,
without closing the alternative avenue, shall extend the
number of contracts of Apprenticeship or other definite
agreements, and regulate the influx into the trade ; some
method, in short, by which, at a certain stage and on ful-
filling certain conditions, a youth who is f ollowing-up shall
be definitely recognized as a learner. At present Follow-
ing-up is far more common than Apprenticeship in the
Building and Contracting firms and with most of the Builders'
Plumbers, whilst the latter prevails as a rule among the

FOLLOWING-UP. 127

smaller firms, the Sanitary Engineers and similar businesses.

Finally the question arises how far those who enter the
trade by this means can get permanent employment at it,
and whether it is actually a Partial Blind Alley, as it would
be if all the mates were actual as well as potential learners.
Allowance must be made, however, for the facts that a
considerable proportion of the mates are grown men who
are likely to remain as they are, and that the occupation of a
mate is a semi-skilled one requiring considerable strength,
and thus provides a man's livelihood. Hence, if the pro-
portion of grown mates were sufficiently large, there would
be room for all the youths who desired to do so to enter
the trade as skilled plumbers, without any danger of over-
stocking.

A study of recent censuses suggests that normally there
is some, though not a marked, surplus of youths between 17
and 20 ; but a greater and more real danger is that of an excess
of adult men. Many of the younger, and some of the older,
mates aim at making themselves plumbers, and even if
they fail to become competent, seldom go back to their old
position, so that the trade contains a number of inferior
mechanics who are " good mates spoilt." Further there
is no real check on the number who try to enter it, and so
the presence of many young mates may mean more
potential plumbers than it can hold. Again, when there
is an excess in the upper grade, a similar one is likely
to result in the lower, since each plumber must have his
mate. Thus instead of a proportion of the younger men
being turned off altogether at an early age, there is the
danger of a more or less general shortage of employment
for all. The returns of the Plumbers' Union in London
have for the last ten years shown an excessive rate of un-
employment in good years and bad alike. Compared with
the rest of the Building Trades, Plumbing is not very highly
seasonal, so that this high percentage of unemployment
is the more remarkable. No doubt it is due in part to other
causes, but, nevertheless, the tendency to overstock the
trade is largely responsible for it.

128 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Moreover Following-up has undoubtedly helped to produce
a class of half -trained and casually employed plumbers,
though this result is not so serious as it sometimes is in the
case of Migration. The ever-present danger of overstocking
has led some of the men to attempt to keep back the mates,
and has sometimes prevented all but the most persistent from
learning the work properly. Secondly, the special chances
which it still provides have called into it a number of men
who lack the capacity to acquire it, thus adding to the
number of " good mates gone wrong " who only make
inefficient mechanics. Finally the long preliminary period
of labouring renders them less able and less willing to leave
it than the younger boys who spend their youth about some
other industries.

Thus the trade as a whole shows a comparatively slight
tendency to turn off boy labour at the close of adolescence,
but is apt to suffer from a general over-supply of adults,
accompanied frequently by the growth of a class of casual,
because inefficiently taught, workmen. • In the opposite
direction there is a danger of keeping in its lower ranks
those who are fit for something better. At present boys
of real ability may remain mates all their lives from one
cause or another, real lack of opportunity, want of confi-
dence in themselves, opposition from the journeymen and
so on. Entering the trade and finding their way barred,
they either fear to leave it or are attracted by the certainty
that is still theirs, and thus there is a further waste of good
material. In other words, the trade may not act directly
as a Blind Alley, but appears to produce other consequences
that are no less harmful.

With the smiths conditions are very similar, but the
undesirable results of Following-up are less in evidence.
Their trade has three chief branches, those of Engineers',
Builders', and Coach Smiths', between which there does not
appear to be much interchange, though the methods of
working are similar. Methods of teaching are much the
same as with plumbers, except that Apprenticeships and
other definite engagements are less common. They are

FOLLO WING-UP. 129

found mostly in some of the bigger shops, where Regular
Service of some kind is general in all departments. Thus
the Ship- Repairing firms have a rigidly interpreted informal
agreement. Normally, youths serve for some years as
hammermen, and during this time may learn vice-work as
well. Then they get on to a " small fire " as improvers,
probably in another firm, and work alone at it without
an assistant. An influence hostile to Apprenticeship or
even Regular Service, which is absent in the case of plumb-
ing, is that the teaching of an apprentice often means the
laying down of an extra fire, which in many cases is impos-
sible. The big shops are often able to keep special fires
to which a lad can be raised, but the small ones cannot do
this, and the only alternative would be to dismiss a competent
man to make room for the learner. Thus, not only are
fewer apprentices taken, but a young hammerman is more
likely to have to move into a new firm before he can get a
start as an improver.

Again, Smithing is a trade in which the question of strength
is of even greater importance than in Plumbing, and hence
young boys are not sought after. Thus they must wait
till they are seventeen or eighteen, or go to a place where
light work is done. " Boys are of no use to me," said one
foreman ; "it wants a strong chap of eighteen or nineteen to
manage the hammers. So I take on a young fellow of that
age at about 3^. an hour, according to what he is worth. If
he has been at a small firm where they take boys, which
is best, he will get $d. or so. Many little shops employ them
and pay them a few shillings a week, so that this represents
a fine rise to them/' The case of the young turner's improver
described in a previous chapter is another illustration of
this process. The hammerman is in the same close contact
with the work as the plumber's mate, and sometimes has
the further advantage of getting certain small parts of it
to do for himself.

The dangers of Partial Blind Alley employment appear
to be far less here, for the Census returns shows a deficiency
both of boys and youths. Again, the strength required

130 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

by the hammermen reduces the proportion of youths among
them who have ambitions to learn and increases that of
grown men who find a permanent livelihood at hammering.
Nor is there any definite evidence that this trade as a whole
contains an excess either of smiths or hammermen. The
greatest dangers are the growth, as with the plumbers, of
a class of half-taught mechanics, and the possibility that
some who are fit for a smith's job will remain assistants all
their lives.

Learning by " Folio wing-up," however, is not confined to
occupations in which a man and a boy work together in a pair.
On the contrary, it is from Boilermaking, in which they
are employed in squads of four or five, that the name is
taken. In them the " rivet boys " who serve the men are
said to " follow-up the trade." The method applies chiefly
to Rivetting and Holding-up, many platers and angle-
smiths learning their business in other ways. Nor is rivet-
ters' work confined to the actual making of boilers. Their
Union, the Boilermakers' and Iron and Steel Shipbuilders'
Society, covers boilermaking, iron and steel shipbuilding,
and bridge, girder, pontoon, tank and gasometer making.
And in nearly all of these the rivet ter is employed. The
method of Following-up, however, is most important
in reference to Boiler and Tank Making. The former
employs angle-smith, plater, rivetter, caulker and holder-
up, and also a semi-skilled class of drillers, but in the London
repair work the same person often acts both as rivetter
and caulker.

In Rivetting the " squad " normally consists of five persons
— two rivetters, one holder-up, and two boys (a heater and
a carrier) . The former drive in the rivets which are brought
to them red-hot from the fire by the boys, and the holder-
up holds the plates in position during the process. Of the
boys the younger heats the rivets at the fire, and the older
one carries them from it to the boiler or tank. This is the
normal number in Boilermaking. In the lighter tank
work the squad consists as a rule of three only, rivetter,
holder-up and boy. Again, in some cases the use of the

FOLLOWING-UP. 131

hydraulic blast displaces the boy at the fire, but where, as
in ship-repairing, the rivets have to be carried some distance,
several carriers may be needed to each squad.

The rivet-heater is usually a boy of from fourteen to
sixteen, who starts at the earlier age at 8s. or 95. a week. At
sixteen he either becomes a carrier or leaves the trade, and
this proves the first crisis in his fate. If he passes through
it safely and becomes a carrier at 35. a day, his chances of
learning the business are increased, though all the carriers
do not do so. The rule of the Boilermakers' Society requires
apprentices to enter it not later than sixteen, and in London,
where they are very few, the taking of a carrier's job marks
a definite step up the ladder, though as yet the position is
not quite assured.

The lad's duty now consists in taking the rivets from the
fire and placing them in the holes in the plates already made
by the drillers for the purpose. This is responsible work,
since it is important to keep the rivets at the right heat
and get them in position smartly. A good or bad carrier
may, indeed, involve an enormous difference in the amount
of labour entailed on the rivetter by a day's work. Hence
some of them earn very good money, getting 35. a day after
a short time, and even more on piece-work. It is from
this job, therefore, that a boy follows-up the trade. The
Union rules lay it down that he shall serve for five years
continuously, starting not later than sixteen, and that he
may be allowed a year more to get his full money in the shop
in which he is working ; and they make special provision for
cases where his time does not end until after he is twenty-one.

There is not here, as with smiths and plumbers, the same
definite change from the position of assistant to that of
improver. The carrier's position as a learner gets recognized
sooner or later, and he is given opportunities to learn. If
he is definitely apprenticed or the son of a member of the
Union, the men lay themselves out to see that he gets taught,
whilst the Society itself appears to take special care of its
young workers. Strength also plays a very important part
in this trade, and as his physical powers develop, a boy can

i32 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

start on a man's work with comparative ease. So he asks
the holder-up to give him a try, and, if it is convenient, he
gets a chance to do a bit of this. Or when caulking and chip-
ping are being done, the foreman lets him have the tools
and go round with the caulkers. So he gradually comes to
learn the business, or " gets the tools into his hands " as
the phrase is, and when a vacancy occurs, either as holder-
up or second rivet ter, he is put to fill it.

Moreover, the rules of the trade allow the learner or
apprentice not merely to follow it up in this way to the
extent of becoming a holder-up or a rivet ter, but to progress
from one job to another till he reaches the highest positions.
Thus from holding-up he can rise to be first a plater and
finally an angle-smith. Others will go straight to rivetting
without first working as holders-up, whilst the less capable
never progress beyond this, the lowest of the skilled branches
of the trade, in which they get 395. a week, as against the
455. and 485. respectively of the rivetters and platers. Angle-
smiths get even more.

Unlike the rivetters, however, the platers do not acquire
the trade only by this method. Their duty is to mark
off the plates, see to the cutting and shaping of them, and
place them in position for the rivetters : and to some extent
they are recruited from boys who have worked with them
from the very beginning. These are taken on to make them-
selves generally useful, often with the idea of learning later
on. If so, they are usually put to assist the marker-off,
and after a few years the foreman takes them under his own
control and gives them small jobs of cutting and shaping to
do, and after this they gradually acquire the trade. They
are learning, therefore, not by Following-up, but by informal
Regular Service, and a good proportion of London platers
have started in this way. Similarly, the small and select
body of angle-smiths are partly recruited directly.

Migration from one firm to another during the time the
trade is being learnt is explicitly forbidden by the rules of
the Society, which lay down five years' continuous service
as an apprentice and in a single firm. After its conclusion

FOLLOWING-UP. 133

a further year in which to get full money is given to those
whose time commenced before they were sixteen, but not
to those who started later than this. For the latter special
regulations have been made.

These rules appear to be strictly carried out in the
Northern Shipyards, but except perhaps with platers,
it is doubtful if the conditions of a repairing centre
permit of their enforcement in London. Continuous
work for five years, with some allowance for short stop-
pages, is indeed more or less general, but service in a
single firm cannot always be adhered to. Sometimes in-
sistence upon it compels carriers to give up the attempt to
learn, but in other cases they contrive to do so whilst working
in different yards, and it would appear that service in
a single squad is admitted as a substitute for service in a
single yard. Conditions of work make changes from one
firm to another a necessity for the men themselves, and
therefore for the boys who work with them. Moreover,
apart from this, there appears to be a good deal of casual
migration and picking up of the trade in one firm after
another. One foreman said that his experience was that
after about five years from the time they started as carriers,
all who showed sufficient competence were " recognized as
apprentices," and given a certain period to get their full
money, and that the boys appear to be well looked after
by the Union.

The trade is undeniably a Partial Blind Alley, more
particularly when the squad has a full complement of two
boys to three men. As such, however, it possesses a peculiar
double character, some having to leave it as early as sixteen
and others not until some years later. In the first place a
large number are employed from fourteen till about sixteen
as heaters, and from them the carriers are recruited. But
all of the former cannot be absorbed, and a large proportion
have to seek other employment. At this age such is not
very difficult to obtain, but the character of the rivet-heater's
job does not appear to improve his chances of good work
elsewhere.

134 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Thus, a preliminary weeding-out of the boys is made, and
those who remain become carriers ; but even so it is not
possible for all of them to stay permanently in the trade,
though the proportion who do so is very much larger than
in the case of the heaters. The progression of rivetters to
plating somewhat increases the number of openings, but
against this have to be set the cases where a squad requires
more than one carrier. The experience of different foremen
varies. Some are able to find room for practically all their
carriers. Others have a marked excess over and above the
number that they can find room for. Taken as a whole,
there appears to be a small excess, and some of them have
to leave the trade. A few of those who do, get semi-skilled
work as drillers.

Finally, the irregular character of much of the work has
the inevitable result of collecting a reserve of boy labour.
Partly this is due to the action of spells of unemployment
in spoiling a boy's chances of learning. Short periods of
it do not much militate against him, but long-continued
irregularity often makes it practically impossible to acquire
the trade. Moreover, some firms get a number of lads waiting
round their gates to be taken on when there is a rush, owing
to the attractions of casual labour and high pay. Thus not
only does the trade require more boys to do its business than
it can absorb into its ranks as men, but it gets more than
are really necessary to carry out the work.

The other branches of rivetting do not need detailed treat-
ment, since the general conditions remain much the same.
With bridge-builders jobs are usually of longer duration, and
the conditions approximate rather to those of the building
trades in which changes of job often occur only after a lapse
of months. In the lighter Tank-making, squads appear to
consist of two men and one boy only, and many lads used
to follow their fathers into it, and these obtained the best
chances. It has, however, been largely revolutionized by
the development of machine-rivetting, which has not only
reduced the amount of labour required, but has brought
it down to the level of a semi-skilled process. Moreover,

FOLLOWING-UP. 135

in machine-rivet ting, the rivet boy as such is not needed.

These are some of the chief trades in which the method of
Following-up prevails, and illustrate the forms it takes, ac-
cording as men and boys work together in pairs or in squads.
But it is worth while to consider some of the smaller processes
which adopt the system, since in them the characteristics
of a Partial Blind Alley are usually very marked. That
known as Leather-Splitting, which is applied to sheep's pelts
and other light hides, may first be dealt with. To begin
with, these pass through the lime pits and then through
the hands of the flesher.1 After this the inner and outer
pelt have to be separated, or in the technical phrase,
split. This used formerly to be done by hand, and was a
very highly-skilled process. It is now done upon a machine
and requires considerably less skill, though good money can
be made at it. Each machine is worked by a man assisted by
a youth. The former puts in the pelt. This requires great
care and accuracy, as otherwise it will be spoilt, and the work
has also to be done very quickly. The youth stands at the
other side to pull out the separate pieces after they have
passed through. He also has to pay great attention to his
job, though it is not a skilled one.2

He starts at about sixteen years of age, and is paid either
at once, or very shortly, at the rate of 4^. per hour, but
will not get much more until he leaves this job and be-
comes a splitter, and grown men occasionally do the work.
Thus the boy's position is not dissimilar to that of the
plumber's mate, but after being raised to the front of the
machine he would soon be able to do the man's job. He
would, however, go more slowly for some time and, being
paid piece-rates, would earn less.

Some firms make a great effort to keep on as many of
their boys as possible, by promoting one or other of them
whenever a vacancy occurs on a machine or a new one is
laid down, but as the London trade is not expanding rapidly,

1 See Chap. iv.

2 For a general description of the Manufacture of light leather
see Chap. vii.

136 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

the latter is not frequent. Hence the process is to a rather
marked extent a Partial Blind Alley. The job itself lasts
longer than many other blind alleys, however, and the
wage to be earned is considerably higher. Hence a youth
can afford to stay in it till as late as twenty-two or twenty-
three, and many do so in the hope of a rise. As, therefore,
each boy stays in it five or six years, or even longer, the excess
is correspondingly reduced. Secondly, the factories in
which splitting is carried out contain a number of semi-skilled
processes into which those who cannot find places as splitters
might be drafted. But though some of the employers fill
such vacancies by promoting boys from other departments,
I was not able to get definite evidence that this was done in
the case of the splitters' helpers ; and in any case, when all
allowance is made, not all of them can look for permanent
employment in the same factory or even in any parts of the
leather trade.

Similar conditions exist in wire-rope weaving, whose pro-
cesses and methods somewhat resemble those of the textile
trades. The wire is first wound on to specially made bobbins,
and then woven on small machines into strands, and these
strands on larger ones into a rope. This is then taken into
another shop to be finished. The finishing is essentially a
skilled process, whilst the weavers earn up to 6s. a day on
the biggest machines.

Boys are employed in considerable numbers, coming
into the works at about fifteen years of age to carry out
the preliminary process of winding the wire on to the bob-
bins. The next step is to serve as look-out boy on the
bigger machines, to call the minder's attention to any
flaw or breakage in the wire. Many more are employed
than can find places as men, and a good number drift away
to other jobs or show no aptitude for this one. An attempt
is usually made to find room for those who do. They con-
tinue at " looking-out " for some time, and are then put to
work a smaller machine. In one large firm they are sent
into a separate room where there is a man told off to teach
them, and those who have got into it may be taken to have

FOLLOWING-UP. 137

started definitely to learn the business. They would then
wait their turn to get on to a bigger machine. In this
firm also some of the learners in the finishing department
appear to have been selected from among the look-out
boys. This, and the fact that every machine does not
require a boy, somewhat reduces the excess, which is never-
theless admitted to be considerable.

Another small industry is that of Glass-blowing. Here
the work is usually done by a " chair " of four persons, com-
posed of the maker, the most skilled man, two blowers or
" servitors," and a boy. In some of the best qualities an
additional man, called a foot-maker, is also employed.
The boy starts making himself generally useful, and gradu-
ally rises to do the blowing, and sometimes from that to be
a maker. Whether apprenticed or not, he begins as in other
trades belonging to this group by being told off definitely
to assist the other men. The number of learners or appren-
tices is strictly limited by the rules of the men's Union,
and so it is not every boy employed in a " chair " who
can enter the trade, but those who are taught learn by
" folio wing-up " from one position to another.

This practically concludes the account of the trades which
definitely belong to this group ; but the method of acquiring
bricklaying resembles in so many ways that of Following-
up that it is worth considering here, the more so as the
numbers affected are large. Thus in 1911 bricklayers
and bricklayers' labourers numbered about 15,000 in the
County of London and over 28,000 in Greater London, and
these totals still showed a considerable drop compared with
1901. Separate returns have not yet been given for brick-
layers and labourers in the last census except in a few
instances, but in 1901 the proportions in London were
about 6 of the former to 5 of the latter.

In this trade the provincial influx is large, and it is
mainly recruited from the younger labourers who obtain a
knowledge of the simpler processes by observation, and
then get hold of a trowel and start to lay bricks. Many
of them have come in from agricultural districts, where

138 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

they may have done some rough brick or stone laying,
and possess ambitions above those of the ordinary town
labourer.

The resemblance to the method of Following-up lies
in this, that, by working as a labourer, serving a bricklayer,
a man or boy gets to know how to handle his trowel and
how to do the easier parts. Much bricklaying is very
simple work iadeed, and in cheap suburban building or on
some large plain job, an intelligent man can very easily do
it and continue to do it for some time. If he comes to some-
thing more difficult, or the contracts end, he gets sacked and
goes off to find another place, and improves his knowledge
a little in each situation till he can do all the ordinary work.
Finer processes, such as gauge work and the cutting of
cornices and arches, cannot be learnt in this way, but a
Trade School will enable him to get an insight into them.
The Bricklayers' Society, indeed, and many of the work-
men look with strong disapproval on this means of learning,
so that the would-be bricklayer has to go into small firms
or suburban districts, or wherever the Union influence is
not strong.

Nevertheless the real resemblance to the method of Fol-
lowing-up is but slight. The labourer often serves a single
bricklayer, but is not attached to him in the way that a
mate is to his plumber, nor are they, as a rule, engaged
and dismissed in pairs. Thus, the bricklayer's labourer
is occupied running up and down a ladder with a hod, mixing
mortar, and so on. He does not come into very close contact
with the actual work, nor does he, like the plumber's im-
prover, start with a detailed knowledge of what all the
processes of the trade are and how they ought to be done.
He has simply seen how the simplest and easiest work
is carried out, and when he begins to lay bricks, he has
only the same sort of knowledge, though rather more of
it, with which the joiner's glue-boy starts at the bench.
His position, therefore, is rather that of the promoted
shop or errand boy. He is assisted, however, by the
easiness of the simpler kinds of bricklaying and by the

FOLLOWING-UP. 139

amount of cheap building that is done, in which builders
often prefer a young, energetic chap who will get through
the work quickly, if very roughly, and will be prepared to
take wages little better than those of a labourer.

Moreover, bricklaying is also, though not very often,
acquired by more normal methods. There are occasional
Apprenticeships, and boys engaged about the building
pick up the trade and work their way up, sometimes in
the same firm, and sometimes by moving about as improvers.
This is really what the labourers are doing. They are not
following up the trade, but are learning it by migration
after a late start. Nearly all of them are young men, and
it should be added that of those who learn in this way many
fail to become efficient bricklayers.

To sum up, therefore, the method of Following-up applies
to a group of occupations nearly all of which are skilled,
though one or two are near the border-line that divides
the skilled from the semi-skilled. It includes several large
trades and a few smaller ones, and its salient feature is the
long preliminary service of the helper who, after this, raises
himself to the position of a tradesman. The method is
liable to danger from two alternative sources. Either it
may create a Partial Blind Alley, or it may cause a trade
to become overstocked owing to the number of helpers who
have attempted to rise. Sometimes both these evils are
found in existence side by side in the same trade, and at
others, thanks to certain modifying conditions, they are
both avoided. Other difficulties also arise. The helper,
being a semi-skilled worker, has a definite occupation before
him, even if he does not become a tradesman, but he may
be fit for something better and yet never be anything
more than an assistant.

This group of trades, moreover, illustrates very well the
difference between the old technical idea of an Indentured
Apprenticeship and its underlying meaning. The former
may even be inapplicable to some of them, though in others
indentures are by no means unusual. In any case, many
of them can be, and are, quite successfully learnt without a

140 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

definite binding, or even without any kind of agreement at
all. But the underlying meaning of Apprenticeship com-
prises the systematic regulation and control of the teaching,
of the teacher, and of the taught. It includes the right
choice of a trade, the control over the conditions of instruc-
tion, and the after-care of the boys themselves. In this
sense Following-up still requires an Apprenticeship System :
and in some ways its special characteristics make the need
greater and not less than it is elsewhere. Such, for instance,
is the result of the tendency to a Partial Blind Alley, and
the frequent absence of an effective control by the employer.
Similar arguments also hold good of Migration. Indeed, the
more informal are the conditions of employment and learning,
the greater is the need of organization. In the form, there-
fore, of a regulated and organized scheme of teaching,
suited to modern needs and varying according to the require-
ments of different industries, the Apprenticeship System
is eternal.

CHAPTER VII.
THE PICKING UP OF SEMI-SKILLED WORK.

Semi-Skilled Labour an intermediate grade — Definition of it — How it
is learnt ? — Its Four Classes — First Class — Semi-Skilled Position
due to Specialization of Processes — Method of Teaching —
Three Forms taken by it — Examples, the Factory Boot Trade —
Small number of young boys employed — Publishers' Bookbind-
ing— The Engineering Trades, heavy and light — Conditions
producing this class less frequent in London than elsewhere —
Other instances — High Skill required within a narrow limit —
Second Class — A moderate level of all round skill — As a result of
the natural character of a trade — Carmen — Navvies — Paviours —
Printers' Warehousemen and Cutters. — As a result of only
acquiring part of a trade — Due to strictly limited demand for
higher-grade labour — Coach Painting — Due to failure to learn
the whole — House Painting. Third Class — Considerable Care
and Responsibility involved — Some manual skill also required —
Scaffolders— -Stationary Engine Drivers and Stokers — Crane-
men — Little or no manual skill required — Labourers in Chemical
Works — Fourth Class — Mates or Assistants of Mechanics —
Summary.

Question whether general level of skill has decreased. — •
Reasons for holding that it has not — Influence of Semi-Skilled
Labour, especially upon Boy Labour Problem — Late Age
at which it is entered — It is permanent and easy to acquire —
Definite Livelihood provided by it — Its capacity to meet in
part the difficulties of Blind Abbey employment — Absorption
of surplus boys in semi-skilled work — Done in a single Factory,
as illustrated from the Manufacture of Light Leather — Dangers
of Semi-Skilled Labour — Liable to encourage drifting and
failure to learn — And to keep boys who are fit for something
better — Need for Organization to embrace both skilled and
semi-skilled labour and contrived to meet the special difficulties
of both.

BETWEEN the mechanic and the unskilled labourer there
is an intermediate class of workmen. To this the name of
semi-skilled is given and modern developments of industry
cause it to have a steadily increasing importance, It takes

141

142 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

a variety of forms and on the whole is growing at the expense,
both of the grade above and of the grade below it. It
introduces into the question of Industrial Training problems
and difficulties which differ somewhat from those which we
have hitherto been considering.

It may be worth while to return for a moment to the
definitions given in an earlier chapter. According to these,
skilled work consists of all employments that " require a
long period of training, whether this is obtained under a
definite contract or agreement and in a single firm, or
whether without any such agreement the worker is teaching
himself his business in one or more firms." Again unskilled
labour " only possesses the minimum of skill and knowledge
and therefore neither requires nor receives any definite
period of training. Such knowledge as distinguishes a
good from an inefficient unskilled labourer can be suffi-
ciently acquired by practice alone." This class, therefore,
will not need definite treatment in reference to the training
actually given to it, whilst semi-skilled labour will. For
it " includes those trades and processes which do not need
a long period of education, but can be acquired in a com-
paratively short time. Nevertheless they are distinguished
from the third (unskilled) class by the moderate level of
knowledge, skill and power that they require." Thus it is
often possible to learn to do the actual work in a short time,
but afterwards considerable practice is still necessary in
order to obtain the speed and the accuracy of the adult
worker. The pace ot a youth is less and he is more liable
to spoil what he does.1

To the teaching of this grade, therefore, the term " picking-

1 The following definition of a semi-skilled workman was given
by Sir Benjamin Browne in his evidence before the Poor Law
Commission : " The semi-skilled man is a man who works a machine
or does something of that sort, like the man who strikes for the
blacksmith. He is a man who would not have to serve an apprentice-
ship, but he has picked up a certain amount of special skill which
makes him worth more than his neighbour for the special work.
In that class you include coalminers and navvies and all those men."
(Appendix, Vol. VIII. Question 86298. November 26, 1907).

PICKING UP OF SEMI-SKILLED WORK. 143

up " can conveniently be applied. There is little regular
teaching, nor does a youth take a long period to acquire his
work, even allowing for what he spends in perfecting himself
at it. When he is too old for a boy's job, or wants more
money, or sees a chance to better himself, he gets on to a
new process and " picks that up." Further the recruiting
of these occupations is not confined to boys and youths,
but, in factory employments especially, use is also made of
adult labourers, particularly when considerable care,
strength, or sense of responsibility is required. Again
certain kinds of work enable those who follow them to take
up some semi-skilled job. Thus Scaffolding, is largely the
monopoly of sailors ; soldiers sometimes have advantages
for qualifying as carmen, and the numerous semi-skilled
brush-hands engaged in House Painting are recruited from
the failures of almost every other trade.

It is now possible to distinguish between the various
classes into which semi-skilled labour can be divided.
These are four in number. First there are the numerous
specialized processes, which involve considerable skill
within a very narrow range, and include certain branches
of the Engineering and Electrical Trades, the factory indus-
try of Boot-Making, Publishers' (Wholesale) Bookbinding,
some of the processes of Leather Manufacture and the
Machine-Ri vetting of Tanks and Boilers. Such specializa-
tion is usually accompanied by the use of a great deal of
machinery. Secondly, there are those occupations which
may be called semi-skilled par excellence, in that they always
have been so, and have not required the development ol
machinery or of specialization to make them so. They
need no more than a moderate general level of manual
skill and dexterity. With them may be grouped those
workers who are semi-skilled because they have only learnt
part of a trade. For some trades do not necessitate the
thorough all round training of all their hands. The best
workmen receive it, but others either can, or must, be con-
tent with a lower level and a knowledge of some parts only
of the work. These, too, are usually the easiest ones. In

144 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

this class come carmen, navvies, warehousemen and cutters
in the Printing Trades, and brush-hands in House and Coach
Painting. Thirdly, there are jobs which may be placed in
this grade on account of the responsibility and the often high
degree of care and trustworthiness required of the.workmen.
Sometimes a certain amount of skill is also needed and
sometimes it is not. Such jobs include those of crane drivers,
scaffolders, stationary engine drivers and stokers, a good
many labourers in chemical works and so on. Lastly,
there are the men who are employed as mates or assistants
to other workmen, as in some of the trades described in the
last chapter.

The general method of learning is much the same in nearly
all these occupations, though there are differences of detail.
The most important of them is that in some cases a boy's
job is distinctly preliminary to a man's, and in others there is
little or no connection between them and they may not be in
the same department or even in the same factory. Usually,
however, there is some sort of connection, if only a slight
one, and many firms make a point of recruiting their semi-
skilled workers from boys previously employed in other
parts of their business. In any case a start is made on a
boy's job at the usual wage, which gradually increases till
it reaches a maximum beyond which no rise will be given for
that particular work ; and many boys will have moved to
other situations before this point is reached. Those who
remain will then contrive to get themselves promoted to
something better and gradually work their way up.

Usually at about the age of 18 there is a definite break.
The boy's job has come to an end, the man's job has not
yet begun. In the former the boy has attained both his
maximum usefulness and his maximum wage and the work
allows of no further advance. He has to leave it, therefore,
and to find himself something more suited to his years.
Such a break, indeed, usually distinguishes the semi-skilled 1
from the skilled worker ; for in the life of the latter this

1 An exception must be made in the case of those who are mates or
assistants of mechanics.

PICKING UP OF SEMI-SKILLED WORK. 145

break either comes much earlier or does not come at all.
The former spends his time on boy labour till this fails him,
and when it does, he contrives by good luck or good manage-
ment to get into a job in the intermediate grade. In it he
remains, and after this point progress is as described. The
new process is learnt in a few months or a year at most,
and then the learner still needs to increase his speed and
to perfect the accuracy and economy of his working.

Such is the general method of " picking-up " semi-skilled
work ; but differences in detail justify the separate descrip-
tion of individual trades. Semi-skilled occupations produced
by specialization and the development of machine produc-
tion fall into three classes — those in which there is a pro-
gression from an easier boy's job to a more difficult man's
job, those in which boys employed about the factory are
promoted to other work at a lower wage than is paid to a
man, and thirdly those in which vacancies in the semi-skilled
processes are filled by adult labourers. Examples may be
found in the Boot, Bookbinding and Engineering Trades
respectively, whilst the Leather Trades afford an instance
of marked simplification, as well as specialization, in the
processes.

In the Boot Trade the field is divided between the skilled
artisan who requires a long period of training and the semi-
skilled worker who does not. " Bespoke " work belongs
mainly to the former, and in it " the craft "* usually has to
make a boot throughout. Wholesale factory production,
on the other hand, is subdivided among a number of semi-
skilled jobs, and there are a good many home workers of
this grade, who work by hand. A clear line, however,
cannot always be drawn between hand and machine work,
since one firm will put out processes which another keeps
inside the factory. The extent of the subdivision also
varies. Sometimes every little process has its separate
worker, man, woman or boy ; but on the whole this is
not carried so far in London as in some other centres. There,
whilst methods differ, the normal factory demands not the
1 The trade term to describe the skilled hand bootmaker.

146 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

most highly specialized worker, but a distinctly more capable
hand who can carry out more than one job. The result is a
body of workers who are essentially semi-skilled, and each of
whom has to get to know a number of processes. Thus
" training is hardly the right expression to apply, but rather
experience. One man gets to know more sorts of work than
another, often at much cost and trouble to himself, moving
about from place to place in order to do this and starting
afresh each time at low wages." A certain type of firm,
indeed, attempts to keep each of its boys and men at a
single thing in order to increase its hold over them ; but
more often a man is required to adapt himself to several.

Employment as a youth commonly precedes employment
as a man. Sometimes a chap begins as a lad " about the fac-
tory," but usually he goes on sooner or later to some special
boy's job. Where the Team System prevails, the work is
divided up among a number of men and boys, and some
of the latter fill vacancies among the former. In such cases,
however, the proportion of lower grade workers is too great
to enable all to rise in this way, but of the rest some no
doubt secure other positions in the factory. Even where
the Team is not found, moreover, there are often boys'
jobs and men's jobs, with the chance of a rise from one to
the other ; and, speaking generally, the higher positions
are filled largely by those who have started in the lower
ones.

In this trade the simpler processes are carried out more
frequently by older youths of sixteen and up wards than by
younger boys. Such a late start, indeed, is a characteristic
of much other semi-skilled work ; and those employed in
this way are young labourers who are paid as such and take
their chance of getting better jobs afterwards. Frequently
boys pure and simple are only employed in small numbers.
" Men prefer," said one employer, " to take on a boy if they
want one, show him what they want him to do, and let him
go if he wishes to."

Similar, though not identical, conditions prevail in
a great deal of bookbinding. The trade has three branches

PICKING UP OF SEMI-SKILLED WORK. 147

—high-class binding, jobbing, and publishers' work. The
first two are carried out by hand and require all-round work-
men. Leather binding frequently need as full seven years'
Apprenticeship, whilst jobbing necessitates a considerable,
though shorter, period of learning, either by Service or Migra-
tion. In publishers' work, however, books are turned out
by the thousand, and subdivision has been carried very far.
Hence in a few months a youth can learn enough of a certain
process to be put on piece-work, and after a further period
of practice will be as fast as a man, and earn as good money.

This bears much resemblance to the conditions of the Boot
Trade, and once again it is experience rather than training
that is needed ; but there does not appear to be the same
gradation of boys' and men's jobs. Lads usually start
" about the factory " and make themselves generally useful
in one of the departments until they are promoted to some
branch of the trade. Otherwise a youth will probably be
got in from outside to fill a vacancy. Moreover the pro-
cesses do not seem to be so minutely subdivided. Each one
requires a moderate amount of skill, and so a boy who is put
to one of them will probably stay at it. Here again there
appears to be some deficiency of younger lads, though it is
less marked than in the Boot Trade.

Heavy Engineering affords the best example of the third
method where labourers are taken " off the floor " to operate
machines and work their way up. A description of what is
done in the North-East of England is worth quoting.

" In our trade, the semi-skilled man is the man who was on the
floor, that is a shop labourer. If he is any good at all, he is taken
to a small machine, say a drilling machine : then if he is any
good at that, he goes to a planing machine and so on to a slotting
machine and other things, but not to lathe work usually.
Planing, drilling and slotting are usually worked by semi-
skilled men who get higher and higher wages. . . . They get
very good wages, not so good as the engineers, though better
than the labourer gets." 1

Such conditions cannot apply so frequently in London

1 Poor Law Commission : Evidence of Sir Benjamin Browne,
Question 86334. November 26, 1907.

148 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

because of the small size of many firms and the varied work
of others. But in a few large ones which are engaged on
new construction vacancies on some of the machines are
filled from among the labourers. It is probable also that
boys working the punch-presses, screw-cutting and other
semi-automatic machines are sometimes promoted in this
way, either directly or after a few years as shop labourers.
Similarly, rivet-boys who fail to become rivetters are occa-
sionally put to work as drillers. In the lighter electrical
work, however, much of the machinery is operated by
youths who gradually progress and either become fitters'
or turners' improvers or get a semi-skilled man's job else-
where.

All these processes show the same limitation in the scope of
the work done by the individual man. At his particular job
he is of ten very highly skilled indeed. Thus, Sir Benjamin
Browne told the Poor Law Commission, " a number of them
turn out beautiful work, although they have not the same
range of power that the skilled man has. A semi-skilled
man will work one machine as well as a skilled man will.
When that is not wanted, the skilled man will go to another
wholly different, but the semi-skilled man cannot do it
nearly so easily." * His wages usually fall midway between
those of the mechanic and the unskilled labourer, but in
London, where specialization is often less marked, those
of the higher grade of semi-skilled often approximate
fairly closely to those of the artisan. In Engineering,
for instance, the man who can operate both the planing
and slotting machines may get nearly as much as the fitter
or turner.

The less prominent, but probably more numerous, class
from which skill of a moderate amount but of wider range is
required, forms a permanent element in industrial life rather
than a special product of modern conditions. It has
grown with its growth rather than by the displacement of
other grades. Indeed it is more likely to have been itself
displaced in certain cases by the development of machine
1 Question 86333,

PICKING UP OF SEMI-SKILLED WORK. 149

production. Semi-skilled workers of this kind also fall into
two classes. Of these the first consists of men whose business
requires a fairly wide range of competence and who have to
learn the whole of it. Such are carmen, navvies, street
paviours, printers' warehousemen and cutters and so on.
The second is found in trades such as House and Coach
Painting where besides the skilled men there are others —
usually the majority — who have only acquired a part of it.
The carman is an excellent example of the first class.
Normally he is recruited from the vanguards, but not
entirely, since soldiers who have learnt to drive sometimes
take up his work. Boys usually " get on the vans " as soon
as they leave school. Many of them only remain at it for a
year or two, and few or none remain vanguards for more than
four years.1 During this time they will probably pick up a
little bit of driving — moving the van, for instance, a few
doors further down the street, backing it in and out of the
yard and so on, and by the age of eighteen their wages will
probably have risen to IDS. or I2s. a week.2 The next
stage is that of driving a light cart for a weekly wage of from
155. to 2os. This lasts about three years, and by the
recent agreement between the Master Carmen's Association
and the National Transport Workers' Federation the
matter has been put on the following definite basis : —
" Cob and Pony Drivers, 12 cwt. vehicles, 155., rising to
2os. No lads under seventeen to be employed." 3

1 " The average life of a van boy is four years." Spencer J. Gibb,
Problems of Boy Life.

2 Some large concerns, notably the Railway Companies, some
big Stores and some firms of Carters and Carmen Contractors, try as
far as possible to provide for their vanguards, and, where they have
other departments into which they can be drafted, attain consider-
able success in this. Elsewhere a good many have to leave the job
and find another occupation.

3 Labour Gazette, August, 1911. The following were the rates of
wages agreed upon for Carmen : —

One Horse Drivers (25 cwt. Light Singles) 225. per week^ Overtime
(Heavy Singles) . . 275. „ 6d. per

Two Horse Drivers (50 cwt. Light Pairs) 285. „ f hour.
,, „ „ (Heavy Pairs) . . 315. , „ )

150 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

If he has stayed in the business until he is eighteen or
nineteen, the would-be carman probably remains perman-
ently at it, since those who drop out usually do so earlier. He
next procures a man's job, and his further progress depends
partly on circumstances and largely upon his own abilities.
His first rise will be to a light single van for which the mini-
mum wage is now fixed at 22s. a week, and some will remain
at this. Others will attain to better paid positions and
even to that of a four-horse carman. The heavy brewers'
drays require the greatest skill, but their draymen appear to
be a class apart, and to come chiefly from outside London.

Other occupations of this kind are recruited in a similar
way from boys and youths, or sometimes from adult un-
skilled labourers. The navvies require some skill and a good
physique, and piece-workers among them make high earnings.
" Take the navvy," Sir Benjamin Browne told the Poor
Law Commission, " you want to dig a hole somewhere ;
if you get a navvy and pay 45. 6d. a day he will dig the
hole for half the price a labourer would do it for at 35. a
day, because he knows exactly how to dig a hole and use his
spade and shovel."1 In this job the strength needed
prevents a boy doing the actual work, but on any big
contract various young labourers are employed, and these
in time get hold of a spade and so gradually learn.

The paviour is made in much the same way, as the follow-
ing statement by the Engineer to a London Borough Council
shows. " Young fellows start as labourers at 6J^. per hour,
and if they are smart they will be given a little work to do
if there is a pressure of work and will be promoted in time
to the class we call improvers with an immediate rise of
wages of \d. per hour, and after this rise gradually to the
full rate." The comparatively high wages that are paid

Three Horse Drivers 345. per week } Overtime

Four Horse Drivers 385. ,, Jis.perhr.

\ Overtime

/first year 75. ,, [3^. perhr.

Vanguards j second year .... 8s. ,, j ^d. ,,

(thereafter . . . . . IDS. ,, ) ^d. ,,
1 Question 86298.

PICKING UP OF SEMI-SKILLED WORK. 151

in it appear at first sight to prevent the classing of this
employment as semi-skilled ; but against them must be
set its seasonal character and the exposure to the weather
that is involved.

Mention may also be made of printers' warehousemen
and cutters. Their work has two branches which are
often performed by the same person. One consists of
general warehouse work, and the other of folding and
cutting paper, and, where magazines are being bound,
operating the wiring machine. A few firms adopt regular
methods of teaching, and there are occasional Apprentice-
ships for short periods and at a comparatively high rate
of pay. Otherwise the whole thing is quite haphazard.
Numerous messengers are employed by large printing offices,
and the smarter of these are put to help the nien and in
time get on to the bench and do a little cutting and so
eventually pick up the job. One firm stated, however, that
it had adopted a form of Apprenticeship owing to the bad
effect that the more casual kind of employment had upon
the boys. Warehousemen earn up to 32$. a week and cutters
in the best firms as much as 365.

The conditions prevailing in trades where a portion only
of the workers acquire the whole business, are somewhat
different and deserve detailed treatment. Sometimes there
is only a limited demand for the higher grades of labour
and a far bigger one for the lower, and at others this result
is caused or accentuated by defective methods of teaching
and recruiting. Cart and Van Painting provides an instance
of the former, and House Painting of the latter, each of
them being in itself a skilled trade, but either requiring, or
finding room for, a considerable amount of semi-skilled
labour.

In the former the painters proper are assisted by a much
larger number of brush hands.1 The latter paint the
bottom of the vehicle throughout and the body except for
the final coat or, in the technical phrase, " finishing/' which

1 A special class of heraldic decorators is engaged upon such
things as armorial bearings.

152 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

is put on by the painter. He also does the more elaborate
processes such as toning, glazing and so on. The painter
gets from S^d. to gd. per hour and the brush hands from 6d.
to yd., the work as a whole being far more regular than that
of the house painters in the Building Trades. There is,
moreover, a very definite division between the two grades.
Several brush hands are required to keep one painter busy
and only a few of those who enter the trade can hope to
reach his position.

The painters, however, are recruited mainly from the
brush hands. Apprenticeship is unusual. The boy enters
as an errand boy and his promotion depends upon his own
capacity and to some extent upon the size of the shop.
" One of the two boys in my employ at painting/' said one
employer, " started like the others as an errand boy and
gradually got to do the cleaning up of the vans ready for the
painter, and then got hold of a brush and made himself
into a very good little brush-hand as he is now." The
majority of the men do not go further, but remain semi-
skilled workers. 'So far, therefore, this method is simply
that of teaching the easier half of a skilled trade, but
from this point those who are to reach the higher grade
can gradually work their way up.1

There is no such necessary distinction between different
branches of House Painting, and in it, therefore, it is mainly
lack of training that keeps certain persons to the less skilled
portions of the work. In practice house painters fall
roughly into three grades — the highly skilled interior decor-
ators, mostly of the West End Furnishing Houses, the
ordinary house painters employed by the larger Builders
and Contractors and by smaller firms of a good class, and

1 The boy in question was expected by his employer to go further.
"If he chooses," the latter added, " to practise with his pencil
in his spare time, at home, in the dinner hour and so on, and he
shows he is up to the work, I will give him a chance at lining and
make him into a painter. But he must show he can use the pencil
first or the risk will be too great. He will, however, have to go
elsewhere as an improver to finish, owing to the small size of my
shop."

PICKING UP OF SEMI-SKILLED WORK. 153

the casual brush hands engaged upon the rougher work.

Members of the first class are recruited little if at all from
among the ordinary house painters. They come mainly
from the provinces. Such of them as are Londoners are
trained with very considerable care. Either there is a
Bound Apprenticeship or they are taken on under their
fathers. Their rate of pay varies from 9^. per hour up-
wards and some earn considerably more. In many ways,
indeed, they resemble a separate trade more nearly than a
higher grade of labour within a trade, and their numbers
are a small proportion of the London painters.

The bulk of these belong to the other two classes. The
ordinary House Painters reach a fair level of skill and earn
8%d. or gd. per hour, but are frequently out of work for a long
time during the winter. Such of them as acquire their
business in London have usually started as boys to assist
the painters and make themselves useful, being sometimes
taken on with their fathers. The learner, therefore, is
really a young painter's labourer and in time is put to clean
the walls in preparation for the painting, and after this gives
the first coat of paint or paints parts of the house where
appearances do not matter much. Thus in time he becomes
a painter. The abler of these men ought perhaps to rank
as skilled workmen, though their wages are lower than
those of other artisans in the Building Trades and their
employment less regular, but the less capable must be
regarded as semi-skilled.

Below them come a very large number of casual and
often low-skilled brush hands, who have picked up their
business anyhow. They can often do little more than the
roughest and easiest parts of it which are very quickly learnt.
As a result the trade has become the refuge for the failures
of nearly every other. Ex-sailors are most frequently
found in it and often work successfully at it, but almost
every trade and even unskilled labour contribute recruits
to it at one time or another. The Distress Committees, for
instance, find it to be quite a common thing for labourers
to say that they either could do or had done painting.

154 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Its seasonal character intensifies the difficulty. There is a
severe winter slackness and even in bad years two periods
of very heavy pressure from mid-March to May and in
August and September. Each lasts about six or eight
weeks. In London the latter is the busiest of all, and so
great is the pressure that foremen are often compelled to
put on any labour they can get, and to keep on any man
who has the least idea of handling a brush. Thus it is
not difficult to pick up a slight knowledge of the rougher
work ; and sufficient to provide a more or less precarious
living is easily acquired. But the men who do this become
at best semi-skilled and are often hardly that. Many of
them do not earn more than from 6J^. to 7^. per hour and
some of them do not get more than a few days' work in the
week or a few months in the year.

The third of the four chief branches of semi-skilled labour
is made up of those who rank as such less in virtue of manual
skill, than of the responsibility placed upon them and of
the honesty and trustworthiness required of them. They
have to exhibit, therefore, care and steadiness above the
average, either in addition to, or in place of, such skill as they
may or may not possess. Hence such employments are
recruited almost entirely from grown men. The scaff older,
for instance, not only requires considerable dexterity in
tying ropes and making knots, but since the safety of a
number of other men depends upon it, his work has to be
done with very special care. It is largely in the hands of
ex-sailors whose experience on ship board peculiarly fits them
for it.

Another such employment is that of the drivers and
stokers of stationary engines in factories. When a vacancy
occurs, an intelligent labourer is selected to fill the position
of stoker with a rather higher wage than before. If the
engine-driver's post falls vacant, the stoker will be promoted
to fill it. Again the crane-driver who has displaced the
hodman on large buildings has a very responsible post
when dealing with the large Scotch derricks. Two men and
a boy are usually in charge, and the chief man's place would

PICKING UP OF SEMI-SKILLED WORK. 155

be filled by the second hand and sometimes the latter's
by a boy. The practice appears to vary between taking a
man from outside and promoting a lad. The bigger cranes
require two or more persons to operate them, and so a
novice can be started in a less responsible position. All
these occupations require further of those who follow them
a certain amount of manual skill.

Typical, perhaps, of the men who, with little or none of
this, yet need to possess certain qualities which raise
them above the level of the ordinary unskilled labourer, are
the bulk of workers employed inside the chemical factories.
Their position was admirably described by Mr. Esme
Howard in Life and Labour of the People. Usually the
staff of a factory consists of foremen, chemical labourers,
employed in various parts of the manufacture, and presided
over by an intermediate grade of leading hands, and yard
labourers. The chemical labourers form the most impor-
tant section and are recruited from the best of the yard
labourers and in their turn recruit the leading hands.
Care, intelligence and good behaviour are what are required
of them, and this is even more true of manufacturing drug-
gists where the effects of a mistake would be much worse.

" The ordinary chemical labourer," wrote Mr. Howard, " is
rather to be called disciplined than skilled. . . . When a new
process is to be tried, the trained chemists superintend its course
until the foreman or leading hand in charge has become thoroughly
acquainted with it, and then these men. . . . become responsible
so long as the process is continued. . . . But the great body of
labourers need little skill and acquire no special knowledge ;
they have only to carry out exactly the orders given. The
qualities necessary for a good chemical labourer are, as for a
soldier, attention and obedience, and the closeness of the parallel
is curiously shown by the preference given in some factories to
men who have been in the army." *•

In short, as Mr. Howard pointed out, they are trained

if not skilled. The returns given in Life and Labour of the

People show their wages for a full week to have been from

245. to 265. in 1892, and their total earnings one week

1 Life and Labour of the People, vol. vi. p. 100.

156 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING,

with another as much as 305. owing to the amount of
overtime that is frequently worked.

Finally, there are those who have definite positions as
the assistants of an artisan, such as plumbers' mates,
hammermen and railway stokers. Detailed description
of them is not required, since the method by which a youth
becomes a good mate or hammerman was fully dealt with
in the last Chapter — the help of a relative or friend, the
years of light work in a small shop, and then, with growing
strength, the job in a big one at a lower rate till he becomes
a qualified assistant at the full standard wage. On the
Railways this progression may be even more regular. A
youth starts first as an engine-cleaner at 145. a week and at
eighteen or later is promoted to be a third or fourth class
stoker getting i8s, a week and rising to 2is., and from
this gradually reaches a better position, the maximum wage
of a fireman being on most railways 275. a week.

Semi-skilled labour thus falls into four classes, viz.,
specialized labour with a high level of skill within a very
narrow range, unspecialized labour, with perhaps nearly as
wide a range as the mechanic but with a far lower level, the
men whose work requires great care, attention and steadi-
ness with or without a modicum of manual dexterity,
and the trained assistants of the artisans. Semi-skilled
labour is on the whole on the increase and is tending, particu-
larly in the case of the specialized processes and of a few
others such as cranemen, to displace men either from the
higher or lower grades. The first of the four classes is
attracting the most attention both in this and in other
respects. Its growth has certainly been rapid and it is
worth considering how far its increase or that of semi-
skilled workmen of other kinds has reduced the demand for
the artisan.

The common assumption that there has been an absolute
displacement of the latter and a net loss of skill among the
manual workers as a whole, cannot be accepted without
large reservations. In some cases there has been an actual
improvement in skill where the unskilled labourer and not

PICKING UP OF SEMI-SKILLED WORK. 157

the mechanic has been replaced, as the hodman has been
by the crane-driver. In the Engineering Trades, too, the
specialization upon particular machines appears to be
producing a similar effect. Sir Benjamin Browne, for
instance, has expressed the opinion that in it there is getting
less and less room for the absolutely unskilled labourer,
" for we specialize more every day." 1 The subdivision of
skilled work, therefore, is to a great extent balanced by this
taking over by semi-skilled machine-minders of much of
the heaviest and least skilled drudgery.

Secondly, most of the reduction in the demand for skilled
labour is a relative rather than an absolute one. In amount
it has as a rule not decreased but increased, whilst the semi-
skilled workers have multiplied more rapidly. In other
words the one has expanded at a normal, and the other
at an abnormal rate. This may not be true of the Boot
Trade, where there appears to have been a direct substitu-
tion of the lower for the higher grade, nor of certain branches
of leather manufacture in which some of the processes have
been much simplified. But in Engineering, specialization
and expansion have normally gone hand in hand. The
big, prosperous and growing concerns are adopting the
former, and largely increasing their demand for artisans
at the same time. Indeed, it is stated on good authority
that much of the increase in this industry would not have
been possible without the cheapening that has been brought
about by these changes.

Thirdly, no allowance is made for the general rise in the
level both of skill and wages that can be seen among all
classes of workpeople. Thus, once more to quote Sir
Benjamin Browne, " the semi-skilled workman of to-day
is in many cases as good as the skilled was a quarter of a
century ago " : 2 and again, in reference to the whole body
of workpeople, " you will find the wages are getting higher
and higher and the hours shorter and shorter, and they are
turning out a better class of work." 3 Thus a redistribution

1 Poor Law Commission Evidence. Question 86305.

2 Ibid. Question 86333. 3 f^id. Question 86336.

158 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

between different grades may go hand in hand with an
improvement in the standard of capacity which each of
them possesses.

Finally a reduction in manual dexterity need not mean
a loss of general ability but merely a change in its character.
A decrease in this respect may be balanced by an increase
in mental powers — in intelligence, in alertness, in
adaptability. This subject, however, will be discussed
more fully later ; but enough has been said to cast doubts
upon any hasty generalization as to a decline in the skill of
the manual working classes.

Semi-skilled employments exert an important influence
upon the problem of boy labour. Like the skilled trades,
they require special treatment adapted to their particular
needs. Whilst, however, separate measures and a separate
organization are necessary for each of these two grades, yet
it is essential that they should be co-ordinated. Semi-
skilled work, moreover, does something to provide an
escape from one of the great difficulties of our time, that
of Blind Alley employment ; and in the relations in which
it stands to the juvenile worker will be found one of the
clues to the solution of the problem.

First, there is the fact that the age of entry into it is
usually later than either into a skilled trade or into boy
labouring. Some of its branches, therefore, are recruited
from among adult labourers, and in most others employ-
ment upon the actual process does not begin till after
seventeen. Frequently it happens that a lad first spends
some years as an errand or factory boy, or, as in the Boot
Trade, at some easy boy's work. But those processes
which give a permanent occupation are normally recruited
from youths of seventeen or eighteen, who in other words
are thus wanted in these trades just at the age when ordinary
boys' jobs are beginning to fail them.

Secondly, semi-skilled work is both permanent and easy
to acquire. It lasts a man for life, provided he has no
higher ambitions, and in most cases it is not hard to learn.
Needing only a moderate level of skill, which can be obtained

PICKING UP OF SEMI-SKILLED WORK. 159

in a short time, it is not beset by the same difficulties and
dangers as a skilled trade. In the latter, just as far more is
obtained by success, so is the risk of failure the greater.
Hence a youth of seventeen or eighteen who is not yet
provided for can be placed with comparative readiness
in semi-skilled labour, which does provide a definite liveli-
hood for those who follow it, even if this is only on the
basis of a moderate standard of living.

The semi-skilled employments, therefore, since in most
cases they do not begin till a later age, and are able to
give a permanent occupation when they do, are well fitted
to act as the antidote to the Blind Alley. At seventeen or
eighteen a break comes in the life of many boys. Boy labour
ends, men's labour has not yet been secured ; and the change
of job has to be made. At present, however, too many
Blind Alleys are not connected, as they might be, with situa-
tions in semi-skilled processes that are waiting to be filled ;
and the problem is to link up the one with the other, and
to make the passage between them easy and not, as it is
now, difficult and likely to be missed.

Much semi-skilled work, therefore, is well fitted to achieve
this purpose. In some cases where the boys' jobs and the
semi-skilled jobs are in the same factory, this is sometimes
done now if only in a rough and ready way, and it is capable
of considerable extension. Thus boys working semi-auto-
matic machines could often be promoted to better paid
jobs, were it not that their failure to stick to their work
frequently prevents this. Such dovetailing, however, can
perhaps be best illustrated by a description of a large leather
factory in which efforts are already directed to the promotion
of its boys as they grow up. As a result the firm is almost
self-sufficing, and its vacancies are nearly all filled from
within it.

It is engaged in manufacturing light leather out of sheep's
and goats' pelts or what is known in the trade as " split
leather," leather which is used for hat bands, pocket books,
photo frames and so on. When first brought into the factory
the pelts go to the lime pits in which they are left to soak,

160 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

usually for about three weeks. The work is let out to
" gangs " consisting of a head man or " lime jobber " and
labourers ; and to fill vacancies among the former, a suitable
man is promoted from another department. The labourers
start at about twenty years of age, and are gradually initiated
into the work. The pelts are then taken to the " fleshers "
by whom the flesh still adhering to the inner hide is removed
with a sharp two-handled knife. This is a skilled job and
boys are apprenticed for three years to the Fleshers' Union
and put under the charge of a workman as its representative.1
The splitting or separating of the inner from the outer
pelt, follows.2 It is done on machines, each worked by a
man and a youth. In this firm the men are recruited
from their helpers, of whom, however, there is of necessity
a considerable surplus.

The pureman next treats the skins with bark or other
substances preliminary to the actual tanning. Here, as in
lime-jobbing, the work is done by a headman and labourers.
The two head tanners are the only skilled men in the Tanning
Department, and are assisted by numerous men and boys,
the latter doing such preliminary jobs as cleaning the pelts
and the former carrying out the main processes under the
direction of the tanners. These labourers are mostly un-
skilled and are recruited from the boys. Intelligent men
are raised from other departments to fill vacancies among
both the head puremen and the head tanners. Dyeing too
is more or less unskilled and is mostly done by lads, a few
of whom are promoted to be strikers-out.

The leather, coming wet from the dyers, is apt to shrink
and needs to be smoothed and levelled out to its full length.
So the wet hides are laid upon a table and forced out again
to their full size, and thus the moisture is gradually got out
of them. This is a semi-skilled process, performed by
men, and is known in the trade as striking-out.
The leather, being still damp and apt to crumple, is next
strained by being tacked on to boards. Care has now to

1 As described in Ch. IV. Supra.

2 As described in Ch. VI. Supra.

PICKING UP OF SEMI-SKILLED WORK. 161

be taken to stretch it to its full dimensions. Otherwise
speed in working is the prime necessity. When a vacancy
occurs, a boy or youth is put to it and soon works as quickly
as the men.

Last comes the finishing, by which the glaze or varnish
or, in some cases, a grain is given to the leather. For most
of this work machinery is used : but the final grain is put
on by hand. Hand finishing requires considerable skill,
and machine finishing is a good semi-skilled job ; but to
each of them learners are carefully brought up. They are
usually selected from the firm's errand boys, the brighter
ones going to the hand process. The others are put at the
back of a machine and gradually work their way round to
the front.

Methods of production vary so much in this trade that no
one firm can be regarded as typical of all, but this combina-
tion of a number of branches, involving different levels of
skill, is common in the leather factories. Thus in the firm
just considered we get skilled work directly recruited by
boys engaged to learn it, processes employing a surplus of
boys, among which are both Partial and Total Blind Alleys,
and processes that require few of them and are capable of
absorbing some from the other departments. These latter
include employments of the intermediate grade, like Machine
Finishing and Striking-out, and unskilled ones, such as
those of the labourers in Tanning, Straining and Lime-
Jobbing. Lastly, there are a few higher positions, to
which the more intelligent men can hope to attain.

A surplus of boys in some departments, therefore, can be
provided for in others, as to a great extent they are already,
and the better firms at least make a special effort to bring
this about. Thus many of those who come in as lads
can work their way up to some sort of a permanency.
The firm in question stated that " we find room for a good
portion of our boys ; but a part of them are so rough that we
cannot do anything with them, and they won't ever be
more than unskilled labourers and do not want to be."
The trade contains a sufficient variety of employments to

162 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

offset at least partially the Blind Alley character of some
of them ; and undoubtedly more could be done in this way,
especially if employers could be provided with more suitable
labour. Moreover even where the whole process is not
• carried through in one factory, the necessary arrangements
to transfer boys from one firm to another should not be
very difficult, whilst there is the further possibility that
the boy labour of one trade could be dovetailed on to the
semi-skilled adult labour of another.

It is in these directions, therefore, that semi-skilled work
is to a great extent the antidote to Blind Alley jobs, since
it often provides means of employment just about the time
when a large number of youths are seeking for it. But it
has its own special dangers. One phase of the Problem
of Boy Labour consists in failure to provide permanent
employment, and to this every grade is liable, and the semi-
skilled one not the least. For it may lead to frequent
failures to acquire an occupation. Many semi-skilled j obs are
quickly and some of them quite easily learnt ; and so special
arrangements for teaching them are seldom made or needed.
They are, therefore, as easy to leave as they are to enter,
and many boys and youths throw them up on the slightest
pretext and go elsewhere, so that, when they come to man-
hood, they have failed to attain capacity to do any definite
thing. Even in the skilled trades this is common enough,
but in them there are some checks upon it. The difficulties
of learning may dishearten a boy at first, but they at least
do something, both then and later, to keep him to his work,
and agreements and understandings also assist thereto.
In semi-skilled work the latter hardly exist, and the ease
with which it can be picked up makes a boy think that
fresh work is always to be found. So he becomes careless,
tries many things, settles at no one of them and thus learns
nothing properly. Often he learns nothing at all.

The second danger is that these processes will absorb
boys who are capable of something better, as has already
been described in the case of plumbers 'mates and assistants ;
and when a boy of ability enters one of them and stays

PICKING UP OF SEMI-SKILLED WORK. 163

there all his life the result is a double economic loss. He
himself has to be content with a lower standard of skill and
livelihood than his capacities warrant, and the community
loses by the waste of his powers on lower-grade work. At
present there is little to prevent this result and many causes
to produce it.

To sum up, therefore, semi-skilled labour has un-
doubtedly the special advantages that its actual pro-
cesses generally require a deficiency of young boys and
that it provides a definite occupation for life. Thus it
could be made to act as an antidote to the Blind Alley.
It has also its special dangers. The ease with which it can
be learnt has caused the teaching of it to be left to look after
itself, and so learners are far more likely than in the skilled
trades to run wild and learn nothing. Secondly, there is
the danger that those who are capable of better things will
enter and remain in a semi-skilled job.

Organization is required, therefore, both to utilize
its merits and to avoid its dangers, and it is in con-
nexion with the provision of this that skilled and semi-
skilled employments come into their closest relationship.
Their problems differ, but an organization is needed
which shall embrace both. In each case the right boy
has to be put into the right job, and prevented from
going to an unsuitable one ; and those who are most
capable of skilled work should, so far as possible, have the
preference for it. Those below this level, or those for whom
the skilled trades cannot find room, are marked out to be
distributed among the semi-skilled jobs, according to their
capacity and inclination. For besides the wider distinction
between the different grades, there are narrower gradations
of skill within them. Finally, industry requires, and is likely
to continue to require in the future, much unskilled labour,
and this should be set aside for boys and men whose capacity,
relatively at least, is no more than equal to it.

The boy, therefore, has to be fitted to the job, and
though this end can only be gradually achieved, a start
has already been made. Thanks to the Labour Ex-

164 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

changes and other agencies, more are being put into
suitable positions than before, and still more and more
will be in the future as their organization is perfected.
The further this work is carried the easier will it be to
extend it. But this is not all. For it is necessary that
those who go to semi-skilled and unskilled labour no less
than the skilled artisan shall be made each in his own
position into good workmen — steady, disciplined, and
intelligent. Not only must a boy be put to a job, but
he must be kept at it and prevented throwing up one
after another at his own sweet will. That is to say, we
have to organize boy labour, first by putting boys in their
right positions and then by enabling and, if necessary, com-
pelling them to make the best of themselves in them. To
do this is one great problem of semi-skilled labour, as it is
of other grades ; and arising out of it is that of using these
jobs to their fullest extent to meet and remove, as they
can do, the dangers of Blind- Alley employment.

CHAPTER VIII.
VALUE OF DIFFERENT METHODS.

Methods Actually in Existence — Reasons for Subdivision of them
that is adopted — Difficulty of Estimating Numbers who learn
under Service or Migration — Numbers in Following-Up, and the
Semi-Skilled Trades — Relative Position of Service and Migra-
tion— Chapter mainly concerned with them — Need for separate
consideration of Formal and Informal Service — Learnerships — •
Necessary Qualities of a good system of teaching — Regularity :
Variety — The Indenture — Its Advantages — Bad Results of
its Absence — Objections to it in certain trades — Causes of
Difficulty — Discontented Apprentices — Informal Service and
the Right of Dismissal or of Leaving — Modicum of teaching
essential as a result — Its Elasticity — Support for both Methods
— To be successful Formal Apprenticeship should be general —
Trouble caused by difficulty of breaking Indenture — Means,
and Existing Instances, of facilitating this — Fourth Parties
to Indentures : Skilled Employment Associations, Juvenile
Advisory Committees— Abandonment of the Premium — Causes
of this — -Survival for Special Reasons — Attitude towards
Apprenticeship when it is Universal or General ; the Printing
Trades — Where it is not; the Building Trades — Its value in
setting up a Standard of Teaching.

Migration compared with service of any kind — Its Variety
and Lack of Regularity — Its Merits — Higher Earnings Afforded
— Value to poor but able boys — Its Necessity — Its Disadvan-
tages— -Throws too much responsibility upon the boy —
Irregular employment in trades where it is common — In itself
makes changes of job inevitable — Boy left without control,
when it is most needed — Teaching as a rule less good than
under Service — Control though non-existent is even more
necessary — Organization required — Summary of Methods —
Tendency of " mixture of methods " to make it difficult to get
the best out of any of them — Need and means of reorganizing
them.

The Other Methods — Following-Up — Its Peculiarities and
Dangers — Picking-Up — Features of training for Semi- Skilled
Work.

The Four Methods require to be organized in co-operation
as well as individually.

165

166 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

BEFORE considering the value of the various existing
methods of acquiring a trade, it will be well to recapitulate
briefly what they are. Four main divisions may be distin-
guished, namely, Regular Service, Migration and Following-
up, in the case of Skilled Work, and the Picking-up of
Semi-skilled Trades. These may again be subdivided as
follows :—

A. Regular Service.

Formal i. Bound Apprenticeship.
Informal 2. Definite Verbal Agreement.

,, 3. Employment during Good Behaviour.

,, 4. Working and Learning.

B. Migration.

i. Generally or Largely Adopted in a Trade.
2 . The Result of Misconduct by the Employer

or the Boy.
3. Chance openings taken advantage of.

Between these two methods lies a new one that is growing
in importance : — Short Service followed by Migration, where
a boy serves for a few years and comes out of his time a
good improver.

C. Following-up.

1. Where a Mate assisting a Single Mechanic

acquires a trade.

2. Where boys working in a squad rise to fill

men's jobs.

D. Picking-up of Semi-skilled Trades.

1. Trades where a high level of narrowly

specialized skill is required.

2. Trades requiring only a moderate level of skill,

but of a wider range.

3. Trades in which special care and responsibility

are needed.

4. Semi-skilled Assistants of Mechanics.

Thus, in each case a different method of subdivision has
to be adopted. With Regular Service it is based upon

VALUE OF DIFFERENT METHODS. 167

the difference in the various kinds of agreement or contract
under which a boy works, and with Migration upon the
reasons which induce him to learn in this way, whilst with
Following-up it depends upon whether he works with one
man or several, and with semi-skilled trades upon the kind
of skill or service that is required of him.

Secondly, with Service and Migration, one sometimes
predominates markedly whilst the other is only occasionally
found. Among compositors and stereotypers, Formal
Apprenticeship is almost universal ; and among wood-
working machinists and French polishers there is not very
much Regular Service. Often again, one method may be
the normal rule, whilst the other has a smaller but still
definite place. Thus Service is usual, but not unchallenged
in Mechanical Engineering and Silversmithing, and so per-
haps, if only the wholesale trade of East London is considered,
is Migration in Cabinet-Making. Thirdly, the two may be
more evenly divided, as in Joinery, and perhaps in the
making of leather goods. On the other hand, the third
and fourth methods are usually confined to definite trades
or branches of trades, and in them cover the whole ground.

The extent to which these different methods prevail
varies so enormously from trade to trade, and is so largely
a matter of guess work, that any attempt to estimate the
numbers who depend for their training upon them would
be practically valueless in the case of Service and Migration,
but a rough calculation can be made of the workmen affected
by the other two. Thus, in Greater London, the total
number including assistants engaged in the chief trades
that adopt Following-up was in 1911 just over 44,000 and
in the Rest of England and Wales about 233,000, to which
workers in Bakeries, 19,014 and 59,716 respectively, ought
perhaps to be added, since in London at any rate a modified
form of it is found in them. Boys rise to be Third Hands,
and the latter to be Second Hands and from them the First
Hands are recruited. Semi-skilled employments, again,
including assistants in Following-up totalled about 330,000
men and boys in Greater London. In all these figures, how-

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

ever, an allowance must be made for the employers and
foremen who were included in the trades concerned, as they
have not been separately estimated in the Census.1

The total number of men and boys engaged in skilled work
in London '- in KJII has been put at about 482,000, of whom
Following-up, including Bakery workers, appears to account
lor about 32,000, leaving some 450,000 in trades acquired
by Service and Migration. Whilst, however, no useful
estimate can be obtained of how this number is divided
between them, sonic general deductions ran safely be
drawn. lrormal Apprenticeship plays but a small part
outside tin' Printing Trades, but the majority of the workers,
and piokibly a fairly substantial majority, appears to
learn under some form of Regular Service. It claims the
allegiance of some very important industries and of a good
many smaller ones. Its predominance is specially marked
in the Printing and Kngineering Trades, and somewhat less
so in tlu' Ait Metal and Instrument group. Moreover, even
when it is most common. Migration never possesses so clear
a supremacy as Service often has. In the three groups
just mentioned, for instance, i! is only in a few branches,
notably Silversmithing and the making of Electrical
Machinery, that Migration plays at all an important part.
Again, where, as in Bookbinding, the bulk of the workers
are semi-skilled, Regular Service, sometimes in one of its
more rigid forms, is usual among the minority of skilled men.

Migration, on the other hand, owes its strong position
less to marked predominance in a few, than to its presence
as an important competing method in a large number of,
industries, It is most prominent in Woodworking and
P.uilding and in the making of electrical goods, electrical
machinery and leather goods: but it is doubtful if it is
clearly predominant over Service except in a few branches
such as iMvneh Polishing. Mouse Paintiiu; and. perhaps,
Machine Woodwork. It should be remembered, however,

1 500 UU.P. I.

J Thr figures j-.ivrn lor London ivli-r. nnlrss otlirr\\isr sl.itrd, lo
(iivali-i I , union.

VALUE OF DIFFERENT METHODS. 109

that the comparison is with all forms of Regular Service.
If it were with Apprenticeship alone, the result would
probably be very different.

The present Chapter wijl attempt to estimate the value
of all the different methods of acquiring a trade, but will deal
mainly with Service and Migration. Following-up and
the modes of teaching in the semi-skilled industries have
already been considered, and though each has some pecu-
liarities, what is said of the first two methods largely applies
to them. A boy who is " following-up " his trade, for
instance, may have to migrate from firm to firm during the
process, and will be liable therefore to the dangers of Migra-
tion, which will be increased, on the one hand, where the
process is a partial Blind Alley, and decreased, on the other,
when he starts with continuous regular work for some years
in a single firm and in a trade that absorbs most of its boys.

So far Regular Service and Migration has each been
considered as a single group of methods, the presence or
absence ol continuous employment having been regarded
as of sufficient importance to outweigh other differences.
It is now necessary to subdivide the former into its various
branches, each with merits and deficiencies of its own.
Indeed, the less formal methods may almost be said to stand
midway between Indentured Apprenticeship and Migration,
and at their best combine many of the advantages ol both
of them. If, therefore, a general term is required to cover
all forms ol this informal service the need is perhaps best
satisfied by the word Learnership.

Many boys an; now being definitely engaged as learners
for a period of years, but without any formal agreement,
and many employers, owing to the trouble which indentures
involve, are refusing to bind those whom they teach,
and prefer conditions which reserve to them the right
of dismissal.1 In the displacement of Formal Apprentice-
ship, therefore, Learnerships are playing at least as pro-

1 The Assistant Manager of a London Exchange said, " Employers
won't have the system of bound Apprentices. What you do find
now are learnerships."

170 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

minent a part as is the increase of Migration. Under
the term, moreover, must be included not merely the
definite verbal agreement, but employment " during good
behaviour." Probably also the fourth form, " working and
learning," can be so described where a firm takes boys in
this way with the deliberate intention of allowing them to
learn a trade. Where, however, there is no such intention,
and boys here and there just happen to learn, the name
is scarcely appropriate. Perhaps, therefore, unless other-
wise stated, Learnership is best confined to the second
and third forms of service. It seems likely, indeed, that
if an ideal method of training is found, it will consist either
of a carefully regulated system of Learnerships or in Short
Service, whether formal or informal, to be followed by
Migration.

Among the qualities necessary to a good system of teach-
ing, two which possess fundamental importance are those of
" Regularity " and " Variety." In the earliest years of
his working life it is essential that a boy should work under
fixed and definite conditions. He requires continuity of
employment and of teaching and the chance to progress
steadily, together with systematic care and supervision.
These qualities may be summed up in the term Regularity,
and whilst mere employment in a single firm does not
guarantee them, it is usually a necessary preliminary to
obtaining them. So far then as they are concerned, condi-
tions under Regular Service are generally favourable. But
a boy also needs to master different methods of working
and the different kinds and qualities of work, and so the
experience necessary to him is often wider than a single
shop is capable of giving. This is the quality of Variety,
in which the advantage often rests with the Method of
Migration. A certain number of firms satisfy both require-
ments, but many more cannot, and therefore the choice of
the best method depends largely upon individual circum-
stances. Indeed, it is in provision to meet problems such
as these that our present industrial organization is most
defective.

VALUE OF DIFFERENT METHODS. 171

The comparative merits of Apprenticeship and Learner-
ship must first be considered, and with this question is
bound up that of the Indenture and Premium. On a
superficial view the advantages of the former are obvious,
since, where its conditions are properly observed, it does
put the teaching and the control of the boy upon the most
regular basis, and ensures the best possible care and atten-
tion. Above all, it emphasises the relations of em-
ployer and apprentice as those of teacher and learner.
At its best, therefore, Apprenticeship does make for that
insistence on the essential importance of teaching, which
was the finest feature of the Elizabethan system. Really
to make the best of it, however, it should be applied, as it
very seldom is, uniformly throughout a trade ; but even
where it is not, it does sometimes put some check both on
the boy and the employer. In too many such cases, how-
ever, it fails to do so.

Informal Service, however, must be judged by its suc-
cesses and failures taken together, and on the whole the
proportion of the latter is likely to be smaller under Appren-
ticeship. Where there is no formal tie, a boy is more likely
to leave to get higher wages or to be dismissed for slack
trade or other reasons. Moreover he often thinks he is
earning more than he is paid for certain work, making no
allowance for the expense and trouble of teaching him, and
either obtains a rise from his employer or moves to another
firm in order to do so. But if he is always to secure his full
immediate value in this way, his master can less well
afford to teach him better work and he gets less chance to
improve. In fact, in many cases the employer will have so
to regulate his work as to secure a full return from it week
by week, and cannot, as under Apprenticeship, afford an
immediate loss for the sake of a higher future gain.
For, if after being taught part of a trade, the boy is going to
be attracted elsewhere by better money, the employer must
act accordingly and keep him at the work which he can do
well. It is only fair to add that in many trades most of
these tacit agreements are fairly carried out on both sides.

172 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

A boy does not leave a decent master nor a master dismiss
a satisfactory boy ; but there are a good many instances
to the contrary.

Moreover, under these conditions both employer and
learner are far more apt to regard his employment as that of
a labourer rather than a learner, and for these reasons the
displacement of Apprenticeship is lamented, and its re-
storation suggested, in the Art Metal and Instrument Trades.
Further, all boys do not start with a preference for
employments giving the highest wages, but many on the
contrary are determined to learn at all costs.1 Under the
informal system, however, the habit of looking first to
what can be earned is apt to grow up gradually, and having
caused a lad to move once or twice, it finally leads him to do
so for any or every reason and at length almost without
reason.

Such are the respects in which Apprenticeship possesses
the greatest advantage ; but there is much to be said for
the less formal Service, and it obtains considerable support.
Many firms in the Building and Engineering Trades are
refusing to bind boys and are substituting employment
" during good behaviour " or an informal agreement. " The
boys get taught," said one of the latter, " in exactly the
same way as an apprentice would be, but we will not bind
ourselves to teach him." The chief objection to Appren-
ticeship springs from the attitude and behaviour of the
boys themselves. Being bound for from five to seven
years, as the case may be, so that they cannot be got rid of,
they presume upon this, feeling that their position is secure
and that they have plenty of time before them. Some,
as a result, are openly lazy or unruly ; more simply take
things easily, and do not bother themselves, and thus only
realize their position as the end of their time approaches.
This source of trouble is quite common, and many of those
concerned declare that " apprentices are more trouble
than they are worth/' and that in their last year or two,

1 Sometimes they and their parents will even accept unnccercarily
low wages in return for an offer to teach a trade

VALUE OF DIFFERENT METHODS. 173

when they should be compensating their employers for the
loss hitherto involved in teaching them, they are barely
earning their wages.

The difficulty is mainly caused by the fact that the
ordinary form of Indenture does not permit the dismissal
of an apprentice except at considerable inconvenience,
and after the trouble of taking him to the County Court.
In the old days, before the right of an employer to thrash
an unruly one had lapsed, it was different ; but now without
the power of dismissal there is no easy means of controlling
him. On the other hand, a lad may be tied for years to a
master who is failing to teach him, and where the use of
Apprenticeship is spasmodic, it assists unscrupulous firms
to exploit their boys.

Again, where alternative methods of learning are avail-
able, the apprentice may see that others who are learning
his trade, perhaps even in the same firm, are being paid
more than he is. As a result he becomes discontented and
lazy, and only does an amount of work which he considers
to correspond to the wages he is receiving. Hence he comes
out of his time less efficient than he might have been, and
ought to be, and suffers accordingly. One foreman, a
very successful teacher, told me that he used to say to his
boys : " Never mind if you are earning for your employer
more than he pays you. You have to look to the years in
the future and learn all you can about your trade. So
the more you earn for your employer now the more you will
earn for yourself when you are a man." But many boys
do not see this, to their own and others' loss. To this, too,
must be added, so far as the employers are concerned, the cost
of bench room, of spoilt material and of loss of time and
temper by foremen and men, this last by no means a small
item, and there is little cause for wonder if they prefer to
teach their boys under less formal conditions, which afford
them a greater degree of control.

One advantage of Learnerships, therefore, consists in
the retention of the valuable right of dismissal. In good
firms it is selglom or never exercised. The mere threat is

174 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

sufficient, and even that is not always required. The boys
know that their employment, wages and chance of learning
depend on their behaviour and progress, and for this reason
are on the alert to make the very best of themselves, and
for many it is good that they should be so situated. Instead
of being careless and lazy, they have every inducement to
do their best, and in such circumstances a learner will often
come out of his time a better workman than a boy of
equal ability who has been a bound apprentice.

Secondly, trouble as regards wages is more easily avoided.
In Apprenticeships they are frequently a fixed amount for
each year irrespective of the progress and conduct of the
boy, and learners are more often paid "what they are worth. "
In this way the payment of the latter can be more easily
arranged so as to give them every inducement to do their best
and yet not cause them to sacrifice their chances for immedi-
ate high earnings. Similar methods are sometimes adopted
in the case of apprentices, notably, as in the Printing
Trades, by the payment of good conduct money as an
addition to wages : but with them a fixed or unvarying
rate is a frequent cause of difficulty.

Again, Formal Apprenticeship is very well calculated to
enable a good employer to make the best of a good boy ; but
at times it fails very badly, either assisting exploitation
by unscrupulous masters or producing lazy or incom-
petent apprentices. With no binding agreement, on the
other hand, the former has at any rate to teach suffi-
ciently well to induce learners to stay, since otherwise they
can always leave and go elsewhere. They must reach,
therefore, at least a certain minimum standard, whereas
under Apprenticeship they may be in a position to teach
much or little, according to their inclination. Similarly
a boy has to make sufficient progress to induce the employer
to keep him Jand to avoid dismissal. By the necessities
of the case, therefore, he has both to be taught, and himself
to learn, at least moderately well. Thus the worst failures
of Apprenticeship are avoided.

Finally, Informal Service, being far more elastic, is better

VALUE OF DIFFERENT METHODS. 175

suited to those trades in which circumstances necessitate a
change of firm after a few years. Not very many will bind
for less than five and often they require more. Thus an
informal contract is less likely to stand in a boy's way,
either when he has learnt all that a shop can teach him or
when he sees a real chance of bettering himself. The
master cannot legally keep him ; there are fewer formalities
to be gone through ; and a good firm will usually be willing
to help him to improve his position, when the proper time
comes.

Both methods receive considerable support. The Printing
Trades are almost solid for Apprenticeship, the Engineering,
Building, and, on the whole, the Art Metal and Instrument
Trades favour the less formal arrangement. The latter,
therefore, appears to cover a wider area. Excess of restric-
tion in one case must be set against deficiency of it in the
other. On the one hand, Learnerships may limit the power
of an employer to teach his boys thoroughly or cause him
to dismiss them for slackness ; on the other, they may lead
them to spoil their own chances by not sticking to their work.
In several ways, therefore, the learners are rendered
liable to long spells of unemployment, and these are perhaps
the worst danger which a lad can incur.1 Against this is
the fact that the binding character of an indenture is apt
to produce lack of energy and application on his part or
to lead to his exploitation by unscrupulous employers.

These last difficulties, however, are far more marked in
trades where Apprenticeship 'has to compete with other
methods. Where, as in Printing, it is almost the universal
rule, they are far less serious. Its success in its present
form, therefore, depends largely on the possibility of apply-
ing it consistently throughout a trade. Where this is not
possible, there are two alternatives, either to regularize
still further the engagement and teaching of learners or
to simplify the form of indenture and make more easily
available the right of breaking it for misconduct on either

1 Thus one Instructor said : "I advise a boy to put up with
almost anything rather than that."

176 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

side. In this connexion the question of Indentures
and Premiums may well be considered a little more
fully.

The main trouble is caused by the difficulty of breaking
an Apprenticeship. To do this, at the present time, resort
to a magistrate is required. Legally it may be possible to
avoid this by a special clause in the indenture ; but the fact
is not generally known and the law on the point is so vague
that reference to a jury would probably be necessary in
any case.1 The boy, therefore, must be brought up in the
County Court, from which employers are deterred by the
time, expense and publicity involved, the more so as the
chances of a favourable verdict are not good. Most magis-
trates, weighing the danger of ruining a boy's career
against some temporary loss and inconvenience to the
employer, will, except in cases of the most flagrant miscon-
duct, give the former the benefit of the doubt, or, at least,
will very strongly recommend that he should be given
another chance. Many employers, therefore, prefer to
make the best of a bad bargain rather than resort to the
law.

The remedy lies in facilitating the breaking of inden-
tures, and even now a few firms actually modify them in
this direction. In one case a clause was inserted to make
the engagement " terminable by a week's notice on either
side," and in another to make employment depend "on
good behaviour," whilst in a third the indenture was
drawn up, but not actually signed by the firm till the
expiry of the Apprenticeship. These devices, however,
have their disadvantages. Where, as with the firms just
quoted, an employer's methods are above suspicion, they
are perfectly fair conditions ; but unless the boy has corre-
sponding rights, they might, if generally adopted, be abused
by unscrupulous men, though, as a rule, it is easier for him
to get out of an unsatisfactory bargain than for his master.
The latter, indeed, is frequently in the dilemma that he may
be saddled for years with an unsatisfactory lad if he does
1 See J. M. Myers' The Law Relating to Apprentices.

VALUE OF DIFFERENT METHODS. 177

bind, or that he may lose a good one, just as he is becoming
valuable, if he does not.

There is one arrangement, however, which is not open
to the same objections, namely that utilized by the Appren-
ticeship and Skilled Employment Associations. They
make themselves a fourth party to the indentures which
they bring about and retain the power of cancelling them
upon due cause being shown by either of the other parties
to them. Further, their knowledge of each case, incom-
plete though it may be, is greater than that of a magistrate.
They can thus prevent the worst cases of exploitation and
set right quickly those small troubles and misunderstandings
which otherwise cause so much harm, whilst in the last
resort their power of breaking the indenture is equally
accessible to both sides. These powers they have used with
good effect, and they might with advantage be given to the
Juvenile Advisory Committees of the Labour Exchanges,
and thus made to cover a far wider area. Some such exten-
sion, indeed, seems to be the best way of meeting the
difficulty, though the right of utilizing this process would
have to be limited to Apprenticeships made through an
Exchange or other recognized agency.

Unlike the indenture, the payment of premiums has
to a great extent been abandoned, and in many cases their
survival is largely the result of chance or accident. Except in
one or two trades where they are retained for special reasons,
the great bulk of employers do not ask for them and even
refuse to take them. Thus a very large firm of Builders
said : — " We are prepared to take a boy and do what we
can to teach him, but, owing to the changed conditions of
the present day, we always refuse to take a man's money
for doing so." The reference was mainly to the influence
of machine production, but the statement applies equally
to the tendency of modern industry to replace a contract
to teach by a wage contract for work done. Having
abandoned the premium and paying higher wages as well,
the employers now undertake rather to give "opportunity
to learn," and it is a common practice to take shop or

178 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

factory boys with " a chance to learn the trade/' Another
reason for refusing, or at least not asking for, premiums is a
result of the trouble which those who have paid one often
cause. It is significant, too, that in Printing, in spite of the
general survival of Apprenticeship, the taking of them is
strongly discountenanced by nearly all good offices. Else-
where they are usually returned in increased wages or in
the form of other privileges, and are not as a rule required
in the case of sons of the workmen employed by a firm.
One very large concern, indeed, keeps all its openings for
the latter and demands a large payment from others,
mainly in order to discourage outside applications.

There are, however, special circumstances in which
premiums are taken. Thus, there is the articled appren-
tice, the son of a manufacturer, merchant or professional
man, who pays perhaps £200 or £300 in order to fit himself
to become an employer. Again, in some large firms, in
addition to learning a trade, the premiumed apprentices
are put through the Draughtsman's Office and perhaps
given a general insight into the business. Many of them
are sons of foremen and leading hands. Other shops never
ask for a premium, but if the indentures are made by a City
Company or Apprenticeship Charity,1 and carry a premium
with them, they will accept it ; and a cause of com-
plaint against some Apprenticeship Associations is that
they have paid one with their boys to firms who otherwise
would never have dreamed of demanding it.

More frequently, however, the payment is made in return
for special privileges, as by the Jewish Board of Guardians
to compensate the employer for excusing the boy from
work on the Jewish Sabbath. Skilled Employment Com-
mittees stipulate in their indentures for time to attend
Technical Classes during working hours, and special induce-
ments are sometimes offered in order to place a physically
defective, or even an unsatisfactory, boy. The premium-
hunter and the exploiter who regard these payments as a

1 In one case a firm coming into possession of such a premium
handed it over to the boy's father to buy him tools.

VALUE OF DIFFERENT METHODS. 179

useful source of income need not be further described. They
must not be confused with that class of small shops which
honestly carry out their contract and teach their apprentices
well, but insist upon a premium, though usually a small
one. Taken as a whole, indeed, premiums are not
sufficiently general to influence either way the value of
Formal Apprenticeship.

Before leaving this matter, it is interesting to compare
the general attitude towards it in trades like Printing, where
it is almost the only method in use, with that which is found
in others, where it is far from common. In the former its
working meets with general approval both from employers
and employed. A certain number of complaints there must
be, but they are far fewer than in other trades. More than
one of the men's leaders, indeed, informed me that there
was little reason to complain of the way in which the boys
were taught, whilst the employers do far more than in
most industries to encourage attendance at Trade and
Technical Classes. Much of the credit for this belongs
to the Trade Unions concerned and in particular to the Lon-
don Society of Compositors which has established in the
biggest offices " chapel committees " to look after the inter-
ests of the apprentices and to ensure their fair treatment.
These trades, it is true, are in some ways well suited by
Apprenticeships, but the fact remains that masters, fore-
men and men alike agree as to the general excellence of the
teaching. Such abuses as exist are neither serious nor
widespread and are diminishing rather than increasing.
Nor do the masters complain of the conduct of apprentices
in the way that is frequent elsewhere. There is, in short,
a general desire to uphold the system and all parties to it
appear to show unusual readiness to meet each other's
views.

Very different is the state of affairs in the Building Trades,
in which, with one possible exception, Formal Apprentice-
ships are not numerous, whilst in many firms they have been,
or are being, replaced by employment " during good be-
haviour." The employers complain of the behaviour of

180 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

the boys, and the workmen of the employers, and the
apprentices themselves are ' discontented. Nor do the
results appear to be at all good. Frequently apprentices
turn out less well than those who have not been bound and
indentures are apt to be used for purposes of exploitation.
Nor do the alternative methods give real satisfaction.
Under them also boys fail to learn properly and employers
complain that they go off elsewhere just as they are becom-
ing useful. In Printing universal Apprenticeship sets up
a common standard and a common rule, and the standard
is a high one. Here spasmodic Apprenticeship completely
fails to do anything of the sort, and it is to be feared that
it is being abandoned by firms of good class and getting
more and more confined to those of a less desirable type.

The value of Apprenticeship lies not in its mere existence
nor in its form and rules, but in the definite standard of
teaching and conduct which it enforces upon teacher and
taught — in its application to Industrial Training of what Mr.
and Mrs. Sidney Webb have called the " device of the
common rule," which in this case is a tacit understanding
rather than a definite regulation. Still, where this exists,
it is none the less enforced, since it creates a Public Opinion
in a trade to which the normal firm conforms. There is a
known and accepted standard upon which each Apprentice-
ship is tacitly based, and where there is such a thing, those
who depart from it are more quickly detected and more
successfully checked, and abuses, being more clearly seen,
are rectified with far greater ease. Where, however, one
man takes bound apprentices, a second learners and a third
improvers, things are different. What is perfectly fair
under one method may be grossly unfair in another, but
such unfairness is less easy to detect or stop, because there
is no one accepted standard, by reference to which it can
be measured. Again, this standardization of teaching has
its value in keeping before both parties, and before the boy
most of all, the fact that he is there to learn. There is no
alternative method by which he can earn more but learn
less, and so the idea of learnership is insisted upon. Just

VALUE OF DIFFERENT METHODS. 181

because it fails to set any standard, therefore, the value
of spasmodic Apprenticeship is comparatively slight, and
to get the best of any system universal enforcement of
it is needed throughout nearly the whole of a trade. It
should be added that if it is sufficiently general Informal
Service can similarly set up a standard. This appears to be
the case with the Verbal Agreements in Engineering. Such
a standard, indeed, will have to be less definite and cannot
in the nature of things be so systematically enforced.

As contrasted with Migration, however, both Formal and
Informal Service possess in a high degree the fundamental
merit of Regularity. This is especially true of Formal
Apprenticeship where employment is not merely regular
de facto but subject to fixed conditions. Against this must
be set the disadvantage arising from insufficient variety,
which is perhaps most marked under an Indenture, since
its terms are the most difficult to alter. Learnership is far
more elastic and at its best combines both these fundamental
necessities, whilst, under Migration, the gain in variety is
often more than counterbalanced by its irregularity. Still
even with Informal Service there may be some loss in
variety, though not a very great one.

As a method of teaching, Migration has many advan-
tages, and for the abler boys it may even prove to be the
best of all, provided always that they are properly looked
after by their parents. On the other hand, it is more than
proportionally dangerous to those of less ability. Its
supreme merit is that, under ordinarily favourable circum-
stances, it gives great variety of work. The boy who has
moved about from one firm to another has seen far more of
the trade and its methods than he who has stuck to a single
one ; and many acquire greater self-reliance from working
under such conditions. Similarly it possesses perhaps to
a greater extent even than Informal Regular Service, the
merit of making a boy depend on himself for his advance-
ment, and so more alert, wide-awake and attentive. For
under Regular Service his place is secured for him provided
he does sufficient to keep it, but the Improver has not only

182 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

to do this but at the proper time to find himself a new one
and to secure for himself a position that will give him better
work and higher wages.

Again, his earnings will probably be greater whilst he is
learning, but this is not an unqualified advantage. It is well
enough for the sensible boy, who recognizes that immediate
earnings are not everything and is determined to learn.
But it is often the smartest and most promising who succumb
to the temptations. Clever boys are apt to learn one sort of
work very quickly and then be content to make 255. or 305.
a week at it, forgetting that a tradesman should be worth
considerably more. As workmen, therefore, they are of
less value than they ought to be and such special skill is far
more likely to be rendered useless by some industrial change
than is the all-round capacity of the fully competent
mechanic. Still Migration, taken as a whole, does give the
benefit of higher earnings ; and if, in this respect, its disadvan-
tages are sometimes more marked than its advantages, it has
at others a peculiar value.

More even than Informal Service it meets the case of the
able children of poor parents, or of those who require high
immediate earnings because of the illness or prolonged
unemployment of the father. At 14 a capable boy may easily
earn his 8s. or los. a week at 'simple jobs without losing all
chance of learning a trade, and even if he fails to do so, the
alternative in any case would have been low-grade work.
Again, to some extent, Migration gives a wider choice.
The rudiments of many trades are very much alike — as, for
instance, in the different branches of wood or metal work ;
and a boy beginning at one may easily find a better opening
in another and so eventually be better suited. Under
Regular Service, on the other hand, this is not possible,
except by special arrangement.

Finally, Migration is in certain trades almost a necessity,
since, where the subdivision of product is carried beyond a
certain point, Regular Service throughout the time of learn-
ing is a mistake. Where a boy learns all that a shop can
teach in two or three years, and this is only part of what he

VALUE OF DIFFERENT METHODS. 183

needs, he must move elsewhere in order to acquire the rest.
Such a state of affairs is common in the Cabinet Trade, and
wherever specialization of process or output is carried
very far, and, again, where some shops employ a surplus of
youths and others can find room for them as improvers.
Thus it is often possible to acquire by Migration the whole
of a trade when this cannot be done so effectively by Regular
Service, and in all these cases what is required is not an
attempt to re-establish the latter where it is unsuitable,
but to organize this alternative. In short, what is needed
is not Regular Service, but Regulated Migration ; and
the attempt to secure regular employment for learners in
a series of different jobs is one of the most important of
the tasks which awaits the Juvenile Labour Exchange.

The case for Migration, therefore, depends partly on its
merits and partly on its necessity. It serves the more
capable and sensible of the boys who adopt it as well, or
better than, any other method. But, as at present organized,
its success depends too much on the possession of more than
average ability by those who utilize it. Boys, as a rule, are
not capable of looking after themselves, and whilst some
who are not manage to " get there somehow," many fail
from lack of control or guidance. It is sometimes said that
the smart lad will succeed under any method, however bad,
and the bad one fail under any other, however good. It is
by its effect on the average boy, therefore, and on those
who can succeed with care and attention, but not without,
that a method must be judged, and the result of this
test is not favourable to Migration. The dull, plodding
boy, the smart unbalanced one, the boy who needs keeping
up to the mark, the careless, the grumbler, and the irre-
sponsible, will all be unduly exposed by it to the danger of
failure : and the number who do fail will be unduly high.
At the same time, many of these failures are due less to the
method itself than to neglect to organize it, and it would
appear capable of such organization as would remove or
dimmish its most serious blemishes.

Moreover the industrial conditions that usually accom-

184 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

pany Migration are themselves peculiarly dangerous.
Nearly all the trades in which it flourishes are much affected
by general depressions of trade, by seasonal slackness, and
by the casualization of employment. Further, single
businesses in, for instance, the making of electrical machin-
ery have ups and downs of prosperity and slackness, quite
apart from the general conditions of trade, and both boys
and men are taken on and put off as occasion demands.
There is thus apt to be what Mr. Beveridge calls a Reserve
of Labour in the case of boys as well as men. This state of
affairs is particularly marked throughout the furniture
trades, though here the better-class firms retain mostly
some form of Regular Service. Where Migration prevails,
therefore, many of the boys have of necessity to make con-
stant changes of work which often lead to considerable
spells of Unemployment.

But the method tends of itself to produce these results,
quite apart from trade conditions, and sometimes quite
independently of them. Of necessity, learning by Migra-
tion involves change of firm from time to time, and therefore
increased liability to unemployment. In fact, where there
is marked subdivision of employment, this is quite unavoid-
able. But in other cases also, improvers are employed to
work at a particular job and, when they have learnt all they
can at it, have to find themselves another if they want to
learn more. The most successful, indeed, often get job
after job with little or no loss of time, but, taking one year
with another, the rank and file usually lose a good deal : and
the danger of this is undoubtedly far greater than with
Informal Regular Service.

Moreover boys are left without supervision or a regular
job just when they need them most. The older improver
who has served for three or four years in one firm is better
able to look after himself, but to the younger ones steadiness,
discipline and control, for the time at any rate, are more
essential than variety. One great danger is that a boy will
learn only part of a trade or drift from one trade to another
without mastering any, As a result of being unemployed,

VALUE OF DIFFERENT METHODS. 185

he may throw up the one he is learning in despair and either
try to enter another or take unskilled work. Again, from
an employer's point of view such an improver is necessarily
engaged and paid as a wage-earner and not as a learner.
Hence it is no one's business to teach him, and what he can
earn comes gradually, but necessarily, to fill a larger and
larger place in his outlook, till he loses sight altogether of
the other thing, and may even leave a good trade at which
he is getting on excellently for better paid unskilled work ;
and when, as not infrequently happens, the abler boys
succumb to this temptation, the loss is all the greater.

Finally, the actual teaching that he gets — as apart from
the experience — is frequently not so good as with Regular
Service. Though a few firms make a point of bringing
them on, improvers are usually left to do the best they can
for themselves and obtain their knowledge as they may.
They do not get the advice and assistance of experienced
men in the same way that a learner does. Thus they are very
liable to acquire wrong methods of working that are difficult
to eradicate, and may even permanently lower their value.
" My objection to improvers," said one foreman, " is that
their knowledge is picked up in the gutter. There is no con-
tinuity, and in between whiles boys work at casual jobs, and
this way of learning is responsible for overstocking the trade
with half-taught labour." Again, the method involves the
continual " swapping of shops and foremen/' so that the
improver is under no one man's control for long, and a fore-
man " won't take the same interest in a boy another man
has been training as in his own." This is only natural, and
its results are frequently unavoidable, but they are none the
less serious.

Such are the disadvantages of Migration, and whilst
many of them are inherent in the method itself, they are
immensely aggravated by the conditions under which it
exists. The migratory improver works under no definite
rules, nor is he under any direct guidance. He is generally
regarded as a person who looks after himself, and he is left
to do so. Having refused or been unable to get Regular

186 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Service, it is assumed that he can take care of himself and
does not need control, whereas, in fact, he really needs it
more than the apprentice or learner does.

Of these last the former has a definite place to work at
for a definite time, settled conditions, and a clearer objective
before both himself and his employer. The learner, again,
though there is no binding agreement, gets much the same
thing in practice. Where contracts are not carried out,
therefore, the problem is to enforce them. With the im-
prover any organization for this purpose has still to be
created. For Migration to a great extent involves the
absence of any guarantee either of regular employment or of
teaching. The improver is only paid for as long as he is
required or chooses to stay. His difficulties, therefore,
cannot be dealt with by fixing conditions over a long period.
Because he has to be continually changing his job, they are
peculiarly severe : and the only feasible method of dealing
with them is by careful control and supervision of indi-
vidual boys, in short, by Juvenile Labour Exchanges and
After-Care.

If and when created, this organization will reduce to a
minimum the disadvantages of Migration and correspond-
ingly increase its merits. Of the former, one of the greatest
is the danger of Unemployment and Casual Labour. To
meet this one of the chief objects of the Exchange should be
to arrange where possible a series of consecutive jobs, arid
other means can be taken to meet such periods of unemploy-
ment as are inevitable. Again, the Exchange, the After-
Care Worker and the Technical Instructor can all assist,
both in advising when to make a change of firm and where
to go ; and as a result such changes will probably become
less numerous. The improver will work, in short, in fewer
firms for longer periods. The average boy, again, will not,
as hitherto, be left alone to look after himself ; whilst
the conditions of acquiring knowledge can be modified,
partly by a fuller use of the Trade Schools, partly by inducing
employers to put their improvers upon a more definite foot-
ing as regards teaching. In time, perhaps, a system of

VALUE OF DIFFERENT METHODS. 187

definite engagements for shorter periods might be estab-
lished, thus reviving in a modern form something resembling
the " annual hirings " of the Statute of Artificers.

There is, therefore, for the time being at any rate, both
the need and the room for all three methods — Apprentice-
ship, Informal Service, and Migration — each with its re-
quisite organization and its separate sphere. At present,
indeed, they are not kept distinct, but compete with one
another, sometimes even within a single form, and with
disastrous effect. For these conditions make it difficult to
get the best out of any of them and accentuate the evils and
abuses of all. Thus, to recapitulate briefly, casual Appren-
ticeship cannot standardize teaching over a trade or district,
and it is this standardization that gives it its chief value.
Such a standard is of necessity inapplicable to firms that
follow other methods, and the lower requirements of these
tend to conceal the abuse of its terms by those who adopt it.
Such abuse, therefore, flourishes more readily where the
method is only occasionally utilized. Finally, as is illus-
trated by the case of the Building Trades, all hope of getting
the best out of it is destroyed by the growing discontent with
its conditions both among employers and apprentices.

Again, its presence in this form has probably prevented
the alternative methods from being as well organized as
they might have been if they had stood alone. The higher
standards have been associated only with Apprenticeship,
and for this reason those required under the less strict rival
methods are lower than they need, or should, have been.
The most palpable difference between Informal Service and
Apprenticeship is that the former does not possess the fixed
rules of the latter, or at least not so many of them, and
insistence upon this difference has tended to retard its better
organization. For similar reasons, the real difficulties and
dangers of Migration have been obscured. The ignoring of
the fact that the improver needs more actual control than
either the apprentice or the learner is largely due to the
idea that some form of Regular Service, and especially of
Apprenticeship, is the proper method of learning any trade.

188 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Against the evils of Migration people look back to the
re-establishment of the old system under conditions that do
not suit it, rather than forward to the proper organization
of the new : and by failing to adopt the right policy, they
fail also of the only present means of achieving success.

What has to be faced, in short, is the fact that, whilst in
time a single uniform system l may be developed, the exist-
ence of several methods side by side is inevitable both now
and in the immediate future. Whilst, therefore, each
of them has its separate sphere which it can serve better
than any other, trouble arises because they are not kept
separate, but contest the whole field to their mutual loss.
Consequently, to make the best of each and all of them some
line of demarcation is essential. It is not necessary that one
system only shall be admissible throughout a whole trade,
since different ones may suit different branches of it. Cabinet-
Making, for instance, might have Service in West London
and Migration in the wholesale trade. But it should be
possible to distinguish spheres of influence throughout which
a single method shall be applied with some approach to
uniformity, and at least to put a stop to the existence, side
by side, of two or more within a single shop. Under present
conditions the employer is not to blame, but a change would
probably be as advantageous to him as to the boys. In
some cases, however, a combination in the form of Short
Service followed by Migration may prove to be the best
solution.

The establishment of such an organization will undoubt-
edly be both slow and difficult, but the germ of it already
exists in the Juvenile Labour Exchange. Few things are
more necessary. So long as several methods mingle to-
gether, either the raising or the enforcement of any standard
will be difficult. With separate spheres of influence, each
can have the regulations suited to it and its own " Common
Rule." It will obtain also its own public opinion to enforce
their observance ; and to get a thing accepted is the first
step towards getting it improved.

1 Probably in the form of Short Service followed by Migration.

VALUE OF DIFFERENT METHODS. 189

Regarding the other two methods, it will be sufficient to
sum up the conclusions of previous chapters. The same
confusion which affects Service and Migration is to be found
in them, though modified somewhat in the case of Following-
up by certain of the conditions that accompany it. Both
of them, however, stand somewhat apart from the others —
Following-up because it applies to a limited group of trades
possessing distinct methods of working, and Picking-up
because it is concerned altogether with a lower grade of
labour.

In Following-up the first few years are passed in a labourer's
position, serving one or more mechanics, after which a youth
gets the tools and makes his way, sometimes in a single
firm, and sometimes by movement from one to another.
The conditions, especially the mingling of methods and
their results, are often very similar to those already described.
Nevertheless, the danger is somewhat less, first, because after
some' years as an assistant a youth is better fitted to look
after himself when changes from firm to firm become neces-
sary, and, secondly, because even if he fails to rise further,
he has a semi-skilled job as mate or hammerman to fall
back upon. There is still, however, the danger on the one
hand of creating a class of half-taught mechanics, the " good
mates spoilt," who are neither the one thing nor the other,
and on the other the risk that some who are capable of better
things will never rise beyond an assistant's job. Following-
up, moreover, has another defect that is peculiar to itself,
namely, that it is liable to overstock a trade with mechanics
because it is just a chance how many mates will become such,
and sometimes more will do so than an industry can find
room for. Some of these employments, again, either
are, or are liable to become, Partial Blind Alleys. Like other
methods, therefore, Following-up requires an organization
specially suited to its particular needs. Like them, however,
it does not as yet possess it.

Picking-up, on the other hand, is frequently found in em-
ployments whose demand for labour is such as to enable them
to absorb some who have hitherto worked in Blind Alleys.

igo INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

In proportion many of them employ older youths far more
than boys. They are easy to learn, can often be learnt later
in life, and therefore are well fitted for those who have not
quite sufficient capacity to become artisans. But the ease
with which they are entered, and left, and the haphazard
methods of acquiring them, cause many to drift into them
and out again, till they grow up either without occupation
or with no proper grasp of one, and in any case without
learning application or discipline. Here, therefore, the need
is to put the right boys to these employments and keep them
under a steady control, so that the best may be made of
them in work suited to their capacity.

Finally, these several chief methods — Apprenticeship,
Informal Service, Migration, Following-up and Picking-up —
have also to be organized in combination, as well as individu-
ally. Each has, as its separate sphere, certain trades or
branches of them. But they must also be regarded as
parts of a single whole. It is not enough merely to organize
the teaching of the skilled trades, but all boys from the most
to the least capable must be put to some occupation, and
the right boy to the right occupation. This, at least, is the
ideal, and whilst the possibility of applying it to every
individual is doubtful, the nearer this can be approached
the better it will be. Again, the abler boys must go to the
skilled trades, the moderately competent to the semi-skilled,
and the least gifted to the unskilled, whilst similarly a broad
distinction can be made between those suited for manual
and for clerical employments. Moreover, they must be put
not only to learn the right trades, but to learn them in the
right way, not necessarily by any hard and fast rule, but by
a well-ordered care and control. Whether they are to be
compositors or dockers, they should grow up regular,
disciplined, and intelligent men ; and to ensure this they must
be suitably placed and kept steadily at work, and, when a job
fails or is likely to fail, must be helped and assisted to another.
This, perhaps, is a high aim, but only so will our alleys cease
to be blind and the organization of boy labour become
thoroughly efficient.

CHAPTER IX.

THE START IN A TRADE.

Second Problem is the Method of Training in Detail — Its Import-
ance— Importance of Original Selection of a Trade — Extent
of this Problem — Variation in Methods of Selection adopted by
Employers — Absence of Method — Failure to guarantee more
than Character and Physique — Comparatively Small Number
of Failures under Regular Service — Natural Selection by Pro-
motion of Boy Labourers : Its Value ; Its Disadvantages.

From the Boys' Point of View — Two questions — How to find
a trade ? — How to get a job? — Second often answers First —
These matters generally left to Individuals — Work of School-
masters and others — Absence of Co-ordinated Scheme for
dealing with them — The Juvenile Advisory Committee — Choice
of an Occupation— Vague Ideas of parents and boys — Finding
a Job — Popular Trades — Failure to test boy's capacity
or influence his choice. Difficulty of Discovering Prospects
of a particular trade. Extent to which boys have places to
go to— Tendency to take first decent opening — Trades often
discovered only after they have started to work — Insistence
on a job being obtained at once — Justification for this ; its
Danger — Difficulty of Finding a Particular Place, contrasted
with frequency of jobs with no prospects — Unsuitable Trades —
Lack of expert advice for working-class parent — Its Results —
Social Reasons for choice of a trade.

Influence of Wages on Choice of Employment — Distinction
between desire to start boy earning and desire to get highest
possible wages — Justification for and Advantages of Former —
Tendency to lead to evil result and reasons for this — Classifica-
tion of Parents according to their Attitude — Preponderance
of Boy Labouring over Skilled Work very great at fourteen —
Errand Boys' jobs a Natural Opening — Bad Results of present
conditions largely due to Want of Information — Wages in good
work higher than is usually supposed — Frequency of Insistence
not on highest possible wages, but on a certain Minimum
Amount — Justification of this attitude — Deliberate Preference
for high wages over prospects a later growth — Reasons for this
— Disastrous effects of lack of information combined with
peculiar industrial conditions of London.

191

192 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

So far, what has been considered has been the question of
entry into different trades, or how boys get into them to
begin with, and how, having done so, they work their way
up to become journeymen. The operation of these different
methods in detail, or how the boys are actually taught, con-
stitutes the second of the three main questions of Industrial
Training, and is of scarcely less importance. For in good
hands an inferior system may work very well indeed and in
bad ones, as with some cases of Formal Apprenticeship, the
very best method can be made an engine of abuse. Indeed,
the best teaching is sometimes given in those firms which re-
fuse to take any responsibility for providing it. The subject,
therefore, has now to be treated from a somewhat different
standpoint, that, namely, of the arrangements actually made
for teaching the boys. Even so, however, the old demarca-
tion still holds, that under Regular Service a boy gets taught or
at least gets a definite opportunity to learn, and under Migra-
tion has to teach himself and find his own opportunities.
In dealing with this branch of the subject, moreover, it is
necessary to include not only the years in which a boy is
actually engaged in learning, but those which elapse before
he starts to do so, or, in short, his whole life from the
time he leaves school until he has either acquired an occupa-
tion or definitely failed to do so. The matters with which it
is concerned, therefore, are numerous and include Choice
of a Trade, Age of Entry, Wages and Earnings, Work in the
Shop, Relations to the Employer, and Technical and Trade
Schools.

Since a boy's start in life affects his whole career, the
selection of his future employment is of vital importance,
and cases of unsatisfactory teaching are frequently due to
an initial mistake in this matter or to the way in which lads
have spent the one or two years which may have elapsed
before they start to learn. The' special difficulties of Lon-
don— its huge area and scattered character, and the irregu-
larity of much of its work — intensify existing evils ; but,
great though they often are, it is necessary to guard against
exaggeration. A recent report of the Birmingham Education

THE START IN A TRADE. 193

Committee estimated that in that city a quarter of the chil-
dren between fourteen and seventeen who had attended the
Elementary Schools, needed constant care and supervision
during adolescence owing to the inability of their parents
to look after them, and that the remainder needed at most
only occasional advice or assistance. Thus under existing
conditions about one in four appeared to be in real danger
of having their future prospects injured. In London the
proportion is likely to be appreciably greater, and others are
likely to suffer from causes which only begin to operate
after they have reached the age of seventeen. In both
towns, moreover, some who do not need continuous, will
require occasional, supervision.

The future of many will be influenced, for good or evil,
by the various methods of selection which employers adopt.
Many firms are careful in their choice of learners and appren-
tices and obtain them from various sources. Preference
is frequently given to sons, brothers, or nephews of men
working for the firm, and competent workmen can usually
place their boys in this way, though some of them prefer to
put them into another trade or shop. Those employers,
however, who take few learners often get more by this
means than they can find room for. Others obtain them in
the general course of their work — from firms with whom
they do their business, by the recommendation of custo-
mers, and so on. Thirdly, many Head Teachers of the
Elementary Schools do a great deal to find positions for
their boys and applications are made to them when one is
required. A few are also obtained through the clergy or
workers in clubs. Again other employers, more particu-
larly in Engineering, only take learners at sixteen and insist
on the continuance of their education up to this age, whilst
some of the Day Trade Schools are building up a connexion
among firms of repute in their industries. Finally, many
shops, without getting them from any particular source,
will carefully test their fitness for the business.

Even the most careful selection, however, can in many
cases guarantee only character and general physique, and

194 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

that it does not always ensure industrial fitness for the
particular job is shown by the failures that still occur. A
boy of fourteen or fifteen frequently does not know his own
mind and sometimes his bent is not apparent when he leaves
school. The usual probationary period of from one to three
months is often too short, and comes to an end before the
keenness due to the novelty and excitement of starting
work has worn off. Again, an employer sometimes feels
bound to take a lad against his better judgment, as, for
instance, when an old and valued workman insists upon it,
or he may only be able to offer an opening in a trade other
than the one the boy desires, and this his parents dare not
refuse. The result in each case is that the mistake is only
discovered when it is too late. A big firm can occasionally
transfer a lad to a more suitable branch of its business, but
this is not common. Usually an employer is afraid to
turn him -adrift and so keeps him and makes the best of
him, and he never becomes a competent workman.

Even where the boys are carefully selected before engage-
ment, therefore, there is likely to be an appreciable number
of failures ; and where they are not, it is usually very much
greater. Now a deliberate choice is, as a rule, only made in
the case of those who are definitely taken on as apprentices
or learners ; and even with them only in some firms, and
more often in the large than in the small ones. Chance plays
a much bigger part in the promotion of boy labourers.
With Migration the improver is engaged and paid as a wage-
earner and is put off if he fails to earn his money ; and
with Following-up it is largely a toss-up whether a mate
possesses the capacity, or obtains the opportunity, to rise.
What happens is that in each case the better boys gradually
learn the trade and learn it successfully, others either leave
it altogether or fail to become competent. Hence trouble
arises not only because the wrong boys are sometimes
selected, but because those who are not selected have their
chances spoilt.

Two classes of employers have to be distinguished, those
who make a deliberate practice of promoting the best of

THE START IN A TRADE. 195

their boy labourers, and those who simply raise to the
bench the first who happens to take their fancy. There
are many of the former and the jobs of the glue-boy in
Joinery and Cabinet-Making, and of the errand boy in Silver-
smithing provide an avenue into a trade for some of them
at any rate. So too some printing and stereotyping offices
apprentice the abler of their errand boys. Now this policy
has many advantages from the employers' point of view.
To see boys at work is often the most efficient criterion of
their fitness for it ; and by taking the pick of them, a wider
choice is possible. Moreover, it gives what is often their
only real chance of rising to clever children in poor circum-
stances who must start earning at once. On the other
hand, a succession of incompetent and unsuitable boys may
be both troublesome and expensive, and this is even more
liable to happen to those who leave matters to take their
course. On the whole, however, employers of both kinds
succeed in obtaining sooner or later the lads they require,
though they may not always get a really suitable one, as
distinct from one " who will do." It is true that the number
of unsuccessful speculations is likely to be comparatively
large ; but this is little more than an ordinary trade risk.
Matters are far less favourable when we look at them from
the boys' point of view, and especially when we consider,
as we must, not only those who do get the chance to learn
but those who do not. It is not all employers who will take
trouble about them, and for this they themselves are some-
times to blame. " We find room for a good proportion of
our boys," said a leather manufacturer, " but some of them
are so rough we cannot make anything of them. They
won't ever be and do not want to be anything better than
unskilled labourers." Their failure to stick to their jobs
often increases the difficulty of providing for them, but
this restlessness itself is in part the creation of the con-
ditions under which they work. Thus the latter help to
spoil their prospects, both by creating character and habits
that are unfavourable and by causing them to waste their
time in a succession of boys' jobs till it is too late to learn a

196 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

trade or even an occupation of any kind. So the
difficulties are increased from the first and the chances
biassed against them by the haphazard methods of selection
that are adopted, and what may at worst prove a not very
serious loss to the individual employer may be ruin to
them.

Hence in choosing their vocation boys are hampered at
the very outset. How they make this choice must now be
considered ; and two distinct, though allied, questions
require an answer, first how do they fix upon a trade, and
secondly, how do they find an opening in it and obtain their
first job ? Often, indeed, the reply to the second question
provides the answer to the first, as, for instance, that a boy
chances to get a certain job and afterwards stays in it to
learn the business, or that another starts out to get into one
trade and abandons it for something else. The importance
of a lad's first place, therefore, has to be insisted upon, since
the conditions that accompany it will often mean the whole
difference between success or failure, though probably it is the
leaving rather than the entering of it that matters most. In
itself it may be, and often is, neither good nor bad. What is
important is whether he sticks steadily at it when it is a
permanency or leaves it at the right moment for a better
position when it is not, or whether in either case he throws
it up at the wrong time for other casual jobs which lead to
nothing.

This matter, like so many others, is left very much to the
individual to settle for himself, and there is no well-defined
method of dealing with it. Only in the last few years has
any general organized attempt been made to control the
placing of boys in employment. Apart from the efforts of
parents and friends, however, there have existed for some
time various agencies through which some of them have been
provided for as they leave school. Perhaps most has been
done by the Head and other Teachers in Elementary Schools,
many of whom obtain positions for a good proportion of
their boys, but their work surfers from certain inevitable
deficiencies. Frequently they cannot test the value of a

THE START IN A TRADE. 197

job, nor have they always the most suitable boy to fill it,
but, like the parents, have to make the best of whatever
offers and endeavour to fill a good post at all cost, sending
the best available. Here the Labour Exchange with its
wider area of selection will have a great advantage. Above
all, the teacher has neither the time nor the power for the
even more important task of supervising the after-careers of
his boys. The Clergy and their workers also find a certain
number of places, but act under even greater disadvantages.
Boys' Clubs as a rule devote more time to looking after
those who are in work than to finding it for those who are
not. Finally, the Skilled Employment Associations pro-
vide for a few hundreds each year as apprentices and learners
and assist with advice a somewhat larger number.

Nevertheless, until the last few years, there has been no
co-ordinated effort to deal with all those who need assist-
ance. The first move was made by the Circular Letter sent
out by the Headmasters and Headmistresses of Council
Schools offering advice to parents whose children were leav-
ing at the end of the following year. The re-organization
of the Care Committees in 1908 saw a great extension of their
After-Care work, which includes both the placing of boys
and their supervision until seventeen. This was put on a
still more definite basis by the establishment of Juvenile
Advisory Committees under the Labour Exchange Act
(1909). The number of these is now considerable and their
organization is being steadily improved. The system, how-
ever, is still in its infancy.

The fact remains, therefore, that for the present and in the
immediate future at any rate, the choice and finding of work
will rest with the boy and his parents. What they have to
do is, first, to discover what occupation1 he is suited for,
and, secondly, to find him a job in it — not merely, be it noted,
to find him a job. Outside agencies can give far greater

1 This term, as stated in Chapter I, maybe used to describe any
kind of employment that has a definite independent position, but
includes semi-skilled and unskilled as well as skilled work.

198 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

assistance with the latter than with the former, which must
always depend chiefly upon the father.

Many parents have a very clear idea what they want
their boys to be and some even have a place waiting for
them, but too often no thought is given to the matter till
they have left or are about to leave school. Not seldom,
indeed, the offer of advice by the Head Teachers is not taken
advantage of. The thing is simply put off till the last
minute.

A few weeks before he leaves, a boy will say that " my
father (or my mother) hasn't told me yet," or the mother
will inform one that, " I have not thought about it, he is
not leaving School for two months, is he ? " and even a
few days before it is much the same. " We must see
what turns up." " He must get what he can, like the others
did/' 'The boy must take his chance," and so on. In
many cases, indeed, the need for doing anything before he
actually leaves is not realized, and when he does every-
thing has to be fixed up in a hurry. Again, even when
a lad has a particular thing in view, nothing will be done
to find him a place in it, except perhaps that a relative will
promise to speak for him. He only starts to look for one
after he has left, and, whilst doing so, will very likely drop
into some errand boy's job or go " on the vans " instead.

Moreover, even where his choice is not a mere passing
fancy, as it often is, many a boy of fourteen selects his trade
for all sorts of reasons, that have no reference to the prospects
it offers or his own capacities. He selects it because, for
instance, it is a " nice clean trade " like Joinery or " a
respectable sort of trade " like clerking, or because a boy
friend likes it and " will speak to the guvnor for me."
The most implicit trust, indeed, is often placed in somebody
speaking to some one else, and the matter is left at that.
Further there is a fashion in trades and there are some —
usually it is true the most prosperous and best paid — which
every other boy wants to go into. Some of them undoubtedly
give a definite opening, but certain purely temporary jobs
have also a great attraction, partly because of the high wages

THE START IN A TRADE. 199

and partly because a boy sees so many of his friends going
into them.

Throughout, therefore, a very marked feature is the
failure on the part of a boy's parents to grasp the need for
making any provision for him until he has actually left
school, and with this often goes, almost necessarily, a com-
plete lack of knowledge of his tastes and capacities. The
cause is not so much absence of forethought as want of
information and inability to realize its necessity. Hence
boys are allowed to select, or may even be forced into, quite
unsuitable trades, whilst when they choose suitable ones
they may fail to get into them. Thus from the outset the
chances are often weighted, and weighted heavily, against
them.

A Foreman Joiner, employed by a well-known firm, put
the matter as follows :-—" A father ought to see, though
he does not do so, that his son finds out what his future line
in life is to be. It is easy enough to make a boy say where
his taste lies. A father should make him think about it,
grasp what the trade is and what work it does, so that he
gets a general insight into it." To do this is far from easy.
Nevertheless it is for their neglect in this respect that work-
ing-class parents are most to blame. Many boys indeed
have no special bent for any one trade, but it is an advan-
tage to know this ; and parents could undoubtedly do more
than they do to find out what a lad is fit for and what he
wants to be ; and after that make him learn all about it and
realize what the work is and what he is letting himself in
for. Where a boy does this, my informant added, he learns
twice as quickly after he has started work. As it is the
very contrary attitude is often adopted that "it is not
what the boy wants, but what his father wants : he must
take his chance like his father did,"1 and in this way his
chances of entering the trade he is best fitted for are spoilt,

If, however, parents fail to do all that the}7 might in this
respect, conditions are very much1 against them in other
ways. For one thing they frequently have neither the time
1 This was actually said to me by the mother of a boy.

200 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

nor the means to discover the future prospects of a trade.
Many causes may be operating to contract the demand for
labour in it, but these do not always appear on the surface
nor are they sufficiently obvious to guide the individual
workman. What is common knowledge is often inaccurate
and at best behind the times. An industry may decline
for some time before the fact is generally known, or again
it may get much overstocked with labour during a boom,
as happened apparently to the Building Trades between
1895 and 1900. Yet boys may still continue to enter it
after the decline has set in. Hence as regards its remoter
prospects their parents suffer from a lack of information
for which they cannot fairly be held reponsible.

When a boy leaves School, therefore, he has as a rule
but the vaguest idea of his future calling, and little or no
effort has been made to find him a place in it. With nothing
else in view he frequently becomes an errand boy or mes-
senger boy, more or less by default, these jobs being both to
himself and his parents the natural opening. Sometimes,
too, one finds that, like the Greek admirals after Salamis,
who each put himself first and Themistocles second, lads
have chosen one definite trade only and can offer no alter-
native to it but such a job, which, besides being a natural
opening, is thus used to fall back upon when other things
fail.

Again it is necessary to guard against exaggerating the
extent to which things are left to the last minute. For
many more boys than is sometimes supposed do contrive to
have a place awaiting them when they leave School. Some
go to what constitutes another kind of natural opening when
they enter the same firm as their fathers, elder brothers or
other relatives, though not necessarily to do the same work.
Others go to a job found by a friend, who is frequently
another boy already at work, and where there is a prominent
local trade many gravitate into that. Even in these cases,
however, a lad is often just pitchforked into the first thing
that offers, without further attempts to select something that
suits him. U uallythe job is neither the best available nor

THE START IN A TRADE. 201

the one that offers the highest immediate wages, but simply
the first that turns up and it may give prospects either good
or bad. Here again chance rather than choice rules ; and
this applies equally to those who are careful to put their
sons into good trades, except that they do wait for some
decent opening instead of snapping up the first that occurs.
Chance, however, may very well turn out successfully and
sometimes does so.

The matter is further complicated by the fact that many
boys only discover, rather than choose, their occupations
after they have started to look for work. Their original
choice does not survive the search for it ; but in this search
they often get into a position to learn something, and may
even obtain openings as good as the most careful selection
could have afforded. Sometimes a firm has a good place
to offer, and a boy, passing in the course of his wanderings,
" sees a card in the window/' takes the job and learns the
trade ; or again in those temporary boys' jobs that are con-
nected with a skilled trade a smart lad manages " to get to
the bench and work his way up." It is thus that the reply
to the question of how a boy finds a job also answers that
as to how he selects a trade.

As regards the former, again, he is once more left in a
position which still further increases the influences that are
working adversely to his chances. Usually when he leaves
school, he is simply sent out to find a job for himself, with,
it is true, some help from the rest of his family ; but, as the
time the parents can give to this is very limited, it falls
mainly upon himself to do the best he can with little know-
ledge of what he wants and less of how to get it. As a rule,
indeed, he has to hunt for his work by going from street
to street and shop to shop, just as any other non-employed
person does, with sometimes a periodical visit to the Labour
Exchange.

What he is sent out to find is not a trade, nor even any
job in particular, but simply a job. His parents' attitude
usually is that he must do this and be quick about it. It is
put to him that he is big enough to earn a wage, and ought

202 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

to do so ; and where the home circumstances are not good
the pressure to find something quickly is very great. Often
there is no distinction between one thing and another and
no idea beyond this of simply getting a job. The parents,
indeed, are less likely to sacrifice the future deliberately
than to insist on their boy taking at once some sort of place.
Against this attitude his usually indefinite ideas are not
proof. He is made to understand that he must get something
and not miss a chance, and that the other thing can be seen
to later. The working-class parent is oppressed, often un-
duly so, with the difficulty of finding a boy work at all,
and therefore, fearing that he will get nothing, hurries him
into the first thing that turns up.

It is only fair to remember, moreover, that to get a boy as
quickly as possible into decent work of some kind is often
the wisest course. Early unemployment is perhaps the worst
danger than can beset a young worker, and quickly gives
him a taste for street loafing and casual habits. Indeed,
many experienced persons think that, unless he has some
marked capacity for a particular trade, and sometimes even
then, it is best for him to take the first decent job that
offers and then look about him for something better. This
will keep him steadily at work from the outset, and en-
courages habits of regularity and discipline ; and to their
value many parents are fully alive.

The real danger is that where this course is adopted with
something better in view for the future, the matter will not
be followed up but things will be allowed to slip, and even-
tually nothing will be done. A boy wants to be, say, a
carpenter, but, being unable to find an opening at once,
becomes a messenger or errand boy, and finally the matter
is dropped and forgotten altogether. Or again, having
got one boy's job easily, he finds it as easy to get another
at slightly higher pay and thus acquires the habit of con-
tinually changing, so that, sticking to nothing, he learns
nothing. The real cause of the trouble, however, lies less
in the actual taking of the first job than in the results that
often follow from this, and these in their turn are accentuated

THE START IN A TRADE. 203

by the failure to find out what he needs before he leaves
school.

Of the many causes of the abandonment of the vaguely
desired trade for the ubiquitous errand-boy's work, the
most potent has still to be mentioned. Even where a
certain trade is kept steadily in view, there is still the very
great difficulty of finding a place in it, which is enormously
increased in London by its vast size, the scattered character
of not a few of its industries and often by the large num-
ber and small size of the firms engaged in them. It is diffi-
cult, if not impossible, therefore, for the parents to know
what is offering even within a comparatively small area,
and in the really good jobs there are many boys and few
openings. A lad, in short, may be vainly seeking what
he wants, whilst a few streets off an employer may not be
able to get a suitable one for just this kind of job, and, to
make matters worse, parents have neither the time to look
for an opening nor the knowledge to discern its real value
when they do find it. The boy naturally knows neither
where to look nor how.

On the other hand, Blind Alleys, offering good wages but
poor prospects, are everywhere ; and as the search for a
particular thing becomes more and more hopeless, the feeling
grows that he must not go on hanging about the streets and
doing nothing, and the boy gives up the attempt and takes
labouring work, hoping still for something better to turn
up. Not getting what he wants, he falls back perforce on
whatever he can get. The better chance that he hopes for
may never occur, and is perhaps forgotten, and instead of
leaving his work to learn a trade, he may stick to it until it
leaves him.

Or, again, he may find an opening in a skilled trade, but
not in the one he wants, and yet neither he nor his parents
may dare refuse to take it. Even in labouring work this
fear of missing an opportunity is very strong, and with
skilled employment it is much increased by the fact that
the chances of learning a trade seem so few. Thus a father
in this dilemma often prefers to put a boy to one which he

204 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

does not like rather than run the risk of not placing him in one
at all, and sometimes the results are disastrous. Finally,
even where the trade itself is the right one, the shop may be
unsuitable. It may only have an inferior quality of work,
or may use so much machinery that it cannot teach the trade
properly, or its general treatment of its boys may be bad.
But the ordinary workman has no sufficient means of finding
this out, and is not likely to unless expert advice is put
within his reach. At present it is difficult for him to get this.

Thus even where far greater care and foresight is shown
by the parents than is usually the case, there are still great
difficulties which may very well lead to disaster. Indus-
trial conditions and lack of method, therefore, combine to
produce it. Two cases may be given to illustrate this
state of affairs. A young Silversmith told me that " I saw
the silverware in a salesroom window and thought it would
be a good trade to go to. Now I find trade to be fluctuating
and wages none too high." He appeared, however, to like
the work and in that way was getting on all right. Again,
an Heraldic Decorator's Apprentice got his job through an
advertisement. " My mother saw a coat of arms over the
door and thought that was the sort of work I should do and
what a fine trade it would be/' After going there, however,
he found that the firm had got the worst name in London.
" As soon as you say you come from . . . well ! "

Finally, many boys choose their occupations carefully
and deliberately, but choose them not for industrial, but for
more general, reasons. By this I mean that the deciding
factor is not their capacity for the work but the social
position it gives or the general conditions under which it is
carried on. My experience in two South London Schools
threw an interesting light on this point. In them the bulk of
the boys want to go into four or five things, clerical employ-
ment, engineering, printing, messenger work and, to a lesser
extent, woodwork.

The fondness for printing was due to the large amount of
it done in that neighbourhood, the numerous offices pro-
viding some real openings and some highly paid boys' jobs.

THE START IN A TRADE. 205

Messenger work, again, is a natural opening taken by the
more thoughtless or used to fall back upon if other things
fail. Moreover there is a fashion in trades, and at present
Engineering is decidedly the fashionable one, and for this
reason many boys choose it. " Every boy wants to be an
engineer nowadays," and every ambitious mother wants
her son to be one. Electrical and motor engineering are
the most favoured branches, though to many the term
signifies almost any kind of heavy metal work. A few
who make this choice possess real capacity for it, but more
are fitted for it neither manually nor intellectually. The
number of boys in the lower standards who want " to be an
engineer " is quite significant.

Clerical labour and woodwork illustrate another form of
this tendency. The choice of the former bears witness
to the desire for an advance in social position and to a real
attempt, however misdirected its character, to think out a
lad's future. The " cult of the black coat," the eagerness,
that is to say, of many artisans to put their sons into such
employment, is still marked, though perhaps less so than
formerly. The hope of a better social position than that
of the artisan is in part justified, since many branches of it
give better pay or prospects and usually greater security.
On the other hand its lower grades, partly because of the
numbers who have entered them, are poorly paid and over-
stocked with labour. The trouble is accentuated because
boys who are obviously unsuitable are put to the work.
There are, however, signs of a reaction against this view and
of attempts to make artisans of those who ought to be clerks.
Similarly woodworking is chosen because it is " a nice clean
trade," or " a respectable trade," though this tendency is
not so marked as might have been expected in the two
schools in question. Thus it is inevitable that there should
be a certain further number of misfits when reasons of this
kind determine the choice of occupation.

.Finally it is necessary to consider what part is played
in the selection by the wage to be earned. Here two things
have to be distinguished, First there is the desire of the

206 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

parents for their boys to start earning as quickly as possible,
and secondly the demand, so often attributed to them, of
high immediate earnings at all cost. These may be described
respectively as the legitimate and illegitimate attitude
towards the question. After all the beginning of a boy's
industrial life does mark the beginning of his earning power ;
and this is how he regards the matter himself. " Earning,"
wrote a Committee of the London County Council in 1906,
" looms larger in his imagination than the more laborious
and less remunerative learning," and naturally the time
when he leaves school is to him the time when he will begin
to earn, just as it is to children of the middle classes. And
up to a point he is right. At school he only learnt ; at work,
even when he is learning, he is also earning.

Nor need the desire to get a boy earning some wages at
once necessarily involve a demand for the highest possible,
still less the sacrifice of his future prospects. Often com-
paratively moderate rates are accepted without demur
if there is a good opening, and many jobs, which give at least
a chance to learn, pay much higher wages than is generally
supposed. The boy, as already stated, is told to get a job
and do it quickly, the attitude being that "it is time you
are earning as you're a big boy now, so don't hang about
doing nothing." He is often, it is true, left to do the best
he can for himself, but where there is an opportunity to
learn and reasonable wages are offered, an extra shilling
or two is not allowed to stand in his way.

Moreover, for the reasons already given, it is often wisest
to get him into work as quickly as possible and give him
time to look about him. But here, again, the danger lies
in the consequences of this rather than in the thing itself.
Having got the job for so much money, he finds he can get
another for rather more, and so acquires the habit of con-
sidering only the wages ; and thus he gradually loses sight
of any ideas of learning he may previously have had.

In most cases, therefore, the real trouble does not originate
in insistence upon high earnings or " the big shilling," at
least not in the first instance. It is due rather to lack of

THE START IN A TRADE. 207

information, to the difficulty of finding an opening, and
once again, to much want of thought. Indeed there is
sometimes not sufficient of this even to produce any definite
choice of higher money earnings in preference to better
prospects. The matter is simply not thought about at
all till the boy leaves school, and then he takes the first thing
that turns up, and as, at fourteen at any rate, Blind Alley
jobs are far more numerous than any others, it is heavy odds
that he gets into one of them. This is confirmed by the
experience of Skilled Employment Associations. They
find that those who put their boys into such work simply
from ignorance of its character and of the other available
openings, are far more numerous than those who select them
purely for the sake of the high wages. Here again, the
difficulty lies rather in that great lack of information
upon which I have attempted to insist. Boys are wrongly
placed because their fathers " do not know."

As regards their attitude, therefore, parents seem to fall
into the following classes. The first consists of those who
succeed in finding decent openings for their boys, and the
second of those who .insist upon getting large, if not the
largest, possible wages at once, corresponding to the lads
who, as one employer said, " have no ambition to be anything
beyond unskilled labourers." A third class is made up of
those who are too poor to do anything else. Hence if their
sons show real ability jobs ought to be found for them in
which they can get good money at once with a chance later
on to work their way up. It is more especially the elder
children who are affected in this way, since their earnings
often give the younger ones a better opportunity. Fourthly,
there are those who desire to put their sons to a good trade
and try to find something for them, but fail to do so and
then allow them to get whatever they can ; and last, and
perhaps most numerous of all, those who simply take the
line of least resistance, doing nothing until the boy is fourteen
and then taking the first job that offers, and that probably
one with no prospects, since there are so many of these.

Moreover to put a lad to a boy's job pure and simple,

208

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

even though it leads directly to nothing further or better,
is in many ways the natural thing for the wife of a labourer
or even of an artisan. Quite apart from household needs,
it is for many a necessity, simply because at fourteen there is
nothing else available for them. Many skilled trades do
not take their learners until sixteen and some of these have to
iill in the interval at some kind of labouring. Moreover,
taking all kinds of work together, the great majority have,
between fourteen and fifteen, to do this. This may be
illustrated by the numbers returned by the recent census
as occupied between these ages in certain important boys'
jobs and in some of the chief Industries 1 :—

EMPLOYMENT OF BOYS BETWEEN FOURTEEN AND
FIFTEEN.

Bov LABOURERS AND BOYS' JOBS.

BOYS IN INDUSTRIES (excluding
Dealers).

County
of
London.

Greater
London.

County
of
London.

Greater
London.

Messengers, Ware-
house Boys, etc.
Government Mes-

8,848

12,905

Engineering and
Metal . . .
Precious Metal

1,042

1,780

sengers .
Vanguards
Office Boys and
Junior Clerks .

939
1,475

1,564

!,345
1,903

2,398

and Implements
House Building .
Woodworking and
Furniture .
Leather .

345
264

533
177

517
47°

796
229

Total (4 groups) .

12,826

18,551

Total (5 groups) .

2,361

3,792

Thus the groups in the first table contain considerably
more than half of the boys between fourteen and fifteen
years of age employed in the County of London. Some of
them, it is true, are undoubtedly in positions in which,
given good conduct and capacity, promotion to the bench
is probable ; but this is partly offset by the fact that some
of those returned under the skilled industries are doing

1 Exclusive of those returned as dealers.

THE vSTART IN A TRADE. 209

work that offers no prospects. This table, therefore,
thoroughly bears out the statement that if there is a pleni-
tude of jobs there is a paucity of good openings.

For a mother to put a boy to a Blind Alley, in short,
is as natural as it is often necessary. Probably her own
people, brothers, husband and so on, all began life running
errands or as vanguards, and many of her neighbours'
children and of her son's own friends are thus occupied. There
are so many of such jobs going, and so many boys going to
them, that it becomes the obvious course to take, either
at once, or at least when other things fail. Many a woman,
indeed, will hardly know of anything else that is more than
a name to her. What occurs at once is that " the boy
might be an errand boy or a messenger boy." For she
does know what these are, and what the work is, and still
more that they fetch 6s. or 8s. a week.

So too it is with other boys. As described, their first
choice may well be a trade of some sort, though messenger
work is also popular. But if this proves impossible, they
go quite naturally into some boy's job, which has probably
been their only alternative. Then in time many of them
come to forget their original objective, including some of
those whose capacities were equal to their ambitions. For
instance a boy left School wanting to learn a trade. Nothing
had been done and he found himself a job in a paper ware-
house. The lad possessed considerable ability and his
mother was spoken to about the matter and promised to
ask him, but did not do so ; and as he himself was quite
happy where he was, and had said nothing more about his
trade, nothing more was done.1

Broadly considered, therefore, the fact that the Blind
Alleys are so plentiful as to form much the most natural
thing for a boy to go to, shows clearly how large a part
want of imformation plays in determining for a parent
the relative importance of different matters connected with a
job. These include the wage to be earned, the conditions of

1 An actual case.

210 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING

employment, its influence on the boy, and the prospects
for the future. All should be considered ; but often only
the first one is because it alone is realized, whilst the others
are not. The money wage touches the working-class family
at every point and so is not likely to be forgotten. And
it ought not to be, for it is one of the things to be taken into
account, though not the only one.

The trouble arises because in many cases even the exis-
tence of the others is not realized. Some parents hardly
grasp the fact that different places give different prospects,
and others who do are quite unable to distinguish between
the good and the bad. Indeed good pay and good prospects
sometimes go together. A big shop paying 6s. a week
may give a chance to learn : a small one offering only 55.
may not. A lower wage, therefore, is no necessary guarantee
of a better opening, though on the whole the two things
vary inversely. Moreover, future prospects are indefinite
and vary from shop to shop, and even where their impor-
tance is realized, there is in many cases no certainty as to
what they will be in a particular job. Often only a chance
or opportunity is given, and not a guarantee. The one
thing, in fact, that is clear and definite is the money paid,
and so this settles the matter. " The boy must take his
chance like his father did before him," or "he must take
what he can get like all the others did," and if lack of pros-
pects is pointed out, " perhaps he will be one of the lucky
ones who will be kept on." Or again he may be allowed to
please himself . Indeed it is not possible to deny that chance
of this kind will sometimes turn out better than the most
careful arrangement.

Want of knowledge, therefore, is the main reason why
immediate wages play an unduly large part in the choice
of employment. Where there are several things of equal
importance, and only one of them is really known, that
one must obviously receive more than its fair share of
attention ; and so it does here. Deliberate sacrifice of
prospects for the sake of the largest possible money is, in
my opinion, comparatively rare though not unknown, and the

THE START IN A TRADE. 211

choice is apt to be too haphazard even for this. The boy just
goes to the first decently paid thing that offers. The great
matter is for him to get something, and into something he
is put as quickly as possible without waiting to look for
anything with either better pay or better prospects.

What one does find in some cases, however, is that a
certain amount of money is demanded, and provided that
it is offered, parents are prepared to sacrifice if necessary the
chance of a higher rate. This holds good, moreover, of
families in which considerable care is taken in placing the
boys. Here, in fact, there is a sort of standard rate or
minimum wage for a boy of fourteen, which parents can and
will accept but for which they will stand out. Usually it is
5s. per week, and a higher sum is not insisted upon. It is not
uncommon for a mother to " want to put the boy into
something that will last him for life, but a few shillings
a week will be useful," and the two things are not always
incompatible. Many jobs that give prospects will give
this amount to start with, more particularly to a smart boy,
especially where employment is "on good behaviour,"
or where he works on the errands, or partly on them, partly
at the bench. Indeed, except in a few trades and a minority
of firms in others, a learner ought not as a rule to need to
start at less ; and as already stated, lower wages are no
necessary guarantee of better prospects. To ask for a
certain wage, therefore, is a very different thing from 'de-
manding the maximum obtainable ; and up to a point the
wisest course is to aim at a certain reasonable minimum.
For the sacrifice of wages to prospects is only prudent when
the object is not otherwise obtainable ; fairness to the other
children demands that it should not be made without due
cause.

But, if rare at this early stage, deliberate preference for
higher wages over better prospects frequently grows up
later as a result of the influences at work. The absence
of definite methods of putting boys into trades helps to
push the idea of learning into the background, even where
learners are employed, and often their position is rather

212 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

that of boy labourers who are given the chance to learn if
they show capacity. Later on again, the improver is paid
according to " what he is worth " and teaches himself as
best he can. Now all this tends to hide or keep in the back-
ground the need of learning something. Being thus taken
on to work, and, if he can, to learn, a boy soon comes to
demand his full value and to see that he gets it. Similarly
he takes the first decent job that offers without any idea
of sacrificing his prospects, but, having done so, he and his
parents soon get into the habit of looking first to the wage
to be earned. So from one Blind Alley job he quickly goes
to another and yet to another. Or, if he is learning at all,
he may make himself perfect at one thing and try to get as
much as he can at that. To begin with there is often a
clear intention of learning, but too often the habit grows
up afterwards of choosing jobs for their wages alone.
This is the result of the conditions under which the start
in life is made ; and once more it is not the immediate but
the ulterior consequences that are most to be feared. It
is not that boys or their parents begin by sacrificing learning
to earning, but that they come to do so later.

Throughout, therefore, the chief cause of disaster consists
in lack of information, guidance and advice. Parents neither
know what their children need nor how to get it for them ;
and the results are rendered worse by the absence of uni-
formity and the variety in methods of engagement that
are such marked features of London. Many a boy leaves
School with at best a vague idea of what he wants and with
no situation awaiting him. He has, as a result, to be placed
in a hurry and, so far, the parent is, in part at least, to
blame. When he comes to look for a. job, he is again without
information as to what is going, or advice as to what to
take or to avoid and what to do or not to do. Then London
conditions render his search difficult, dangerous and often
hopeless. Even when started, he is not seldom left without
help or guidance to look .after himself ; and to the many
boys who must make frequent moves after new and better
work, this lack of guidance is peculiarly disastrous. Alto-

THE START IN A TRADE. 213

gather the start in life of a London boy is beset by many
dangers ; for his need of information and assistance is often
great in proportion as the amount of them that he obtains
is small.

CHAPTER X.

CONDITIONS OF ENGAGEMENT AND
EMPLOYMENT.

(a) Age at Starting in a Trade.— Usual Age of Leaving — Influence

of Length of Service on Time of Start — Reasons for Late Start —
Special Reasons : Work too heavy for young boys ; Dangerous
Trades ; Responsible work ; Increased Use of Machinery —
General Reasons : Preliminary work in trade at boy's job ;
older, stronger and more experienced boys preferred- — Boys of
fourteen still preferred sometimes — Reasons for this — Frequency
of engaging boys at fourteen without putting them direct to
the trade — Chance often determines the matter — Boys do not
always know their own minds — Definite answer impossible.

Should a boy go direct from School to his trade ? — Reasons
for — Reasons against — Not always possible — Use of temporary
jobs in such cases.

(b) Suitability. — Difficulty of testing this — Means of doing so adopted

by employers ; Their limitations — Periods of Probation — Boy
labourers engaged with view to ultimate promotion — Selec-
tion of abler boy labourers for promotion — Value to employer
of power to dismiss under Informal Service.

Fitting right boy to right trade — Less difficult than is sup-
posed— Marked capacity for a few trades only somewhat rare —
General capacity frequent — More important distinctions :
Clerical and Manual Work; High and low-skilled labour —
Selection should follow these broader lines.

ing to a number of influences — Effect of changes in methods of
production on period of service — Little reduction in general
skill — No uniform period of Service — Variations in practice of
Trade Unions and of employers — Three Common Arrangements :
Seven years, Five years, Till twenty -one — Five years most com-
mon— Growth of Shorter Apprenticeships — Reduction in period
no new thing.

Time taken to learn usually about seven years — Often longer
than mere teaching requires — Increase in Wage Contract : boy
cannot spend whole time learning — Influence of Subdivision of
output — Time wasted by both these influences.

Question of reduction in general skill — Proportionate in-
crease in semi-skilled labour — Probable reduction in unskilled- —

214

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 215

Skilled labour has gained in level of skill what it has lost in
range — Greater gradation of skill but no decrease — Net time
spent learning probably shorter — Time spent before and after
service — Trade has now to be learnt more thoroughly — Prob-
ably no decrease in general skill — Each grade requires more
skill than formerly, but is often less well taught.

(d) Preference and Heredity. — Their meaning ; Preference is not a

right — Less Common for Father to teach his son ; Cases where
it occurs — Forms of Preference given by Employers — Extent
to which it is given — Complete refusal rare — Reasons why not
taken advantage of.

Heredity less marked than elsewhere — Exceptions to this
and their causes — Illustration from Boys working at Trade
Schools — Trades in which it is common — Reasons why men put
their boys into other trades.

(e) Wages. — Small difference between learners and labourers' wages

in London — Methods of Wage Payment — Fixed Time Rates;
Their Different Forms — Good Conduct Money — Varying Time
Rates ; Common in Building Trades — Piece Rates ; How paid ;
Illustrations.

High Boys' Wages in London — Approximation of Learners' to
Boy Labourers' Wages — 55, a week obtainable at fourteen —
Exceptions — Wages in different trades — General Evidence — Evi-
dence of Board of Trade Enquiry into Earnings and Hours —
Evidence as to boys starting at 55. or less in United Kingdom
and in London.

Rate of rise year by year — From 25. to zs. 6d. a year most
common — Enormous variations in wages earned in last year of
service — Rise in learners' wages in recent years — Fears of
parents baseless — Proper means of meeting them.

WHEN a boy selects a trade or gets his first job, a number
of conditions are settled which have an important bearing
on his future career. These may now be treated under
five main headings and in the following order, namely : —

(a) Age at Starting in a Trade.

(b) Suitability for a Trade.

(d) Preference and Heredity.

(e) Wages.

(a) Age at Starting. — With this are closely connected
the questions whether or not a boy goes to his trade direct
from school, whether he can be put straight to something

216 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

that will keep him throughout life, or, if not, how the gap
between elementary and industrial education is to be
bridged. In London the school leaving age, which is
fourteen, is higher than in many other towns, half-time
is almost unknown, and exemptions are not common, the
Labour Certificate being granted only to boys above thirteen
and in the yth and ex-7th Standards. On the other hand,
the number who remain at school after that age is probably
above the average. Nevertheless the vast majority still
leave at fourteen, and we have to consider therefore how
far a boy can and does go at that age direct to the occupation
he is to follow through life.

The practice in this respect varies very much and is
largely determined by the length of service required and
the use and disuse of an indenture. Legally, a contract
of Apprenticeship cannot be enforced against an apprentice
after he reaches his twenty-first year, and so some firms
prefer to get their boys direct from school in order that
they may have served seven years before attaining it ; but
where Apprenticeships of this length are not the custom,
there is less object in doing so. Most of the employers
who use indentures, however, try to arrange for them to
be terminated at or before twenty-one, but there is no
hard and fast rule. The age of starting, therefore, differs
from trade to trade and firm to firm, and is usually between
fifteen and sixteen and sometimes rises as high as seventeen.
Some Trade Unions allow entry until then but not later.
Fifteen, however, is perhaps the most common, though a
number of reasons delay the start in many cases until
sixteen.

In some trades, indeed, it is difficult if not impossible
to start a boy as a learner before the latter. Where the
work is laborious, a strong lad is wanted and one of fourteen
will not do. Thus in Plumbing he has to do mate's work,
which is usually heavy and requires at least a youth's
strength. Only the smaller shops which " get nothing
but one-inch pipes," as one Foreman Plumber said, can
employ one usefully. Normally the work will be too hard.

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 217

This is even more true of Smithing, where young boys are
almost useless for the hammering. Again in boilermaking
they are engaged as heaters at fourteen, but not at the
more responsible work of carrying till sixteen. Similarly,
they will not in some cases be employed because the work
is dangerous. In sawmills, for instance, they " pull-out "
at fourteen, but do not work machines till much later.
In the fleshing of hides and skins, in which a sharp two-
handled knife is used, seventeen is the age for taking appren-
tices, and in bricklaying youngsters will not be employed
as learners on high buildings.

So, too, where a job requires special responsibility or
discretion, only older lads will be put to it. They may,
perhaps, be put to do boy's work about the shop as soon
as they leave school, but will not go to the actual work of
the trade until later. Again special reasons cause the
taking of learners to be deferred. Certain restrictions, for
one thing, on the employment of very young boys may
cause their engagement to be delayed until sixteen ; or,
as in Joinery, the increased use of machinery for the
simpler and rougher work leaves less for them to do, and
such jobs as they can still be given are found to be too
heavy for them.

These influences specially affect individual trades ; but
there are also some general ones which tend to create a
gap between elementary and industrial education in all
alike. There is an increasing substitution, for bound
apprentices or for the more definitely engaged learners, of
lads employed first on boys' jobs who, if they show aptitude,
are promoted to the bench. Sometimes this is practically
another way of starting to learn a trade, and some employers
advertise their vacancies as such. By others, however,
only the ablest are kept on, and the rest have either to
find an opening elsewhere or, not liking the particular
trade, leave it of their own accord. In favour of this
practice are the facts that it often gives a more real and
definite trial of a boy's capacity and inclination and that
they themselves have time to find out what they really

3i8 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

want. This is not always possible when they are taken
as learners direct from school.

Moreover, apart from this, there is an undoubted tendency
to raise the starting age. The boy who has been about a
bit and got a little experience is often preferred as possessing
more sense of responsibility than the one who has just left
school. He is beginning, too, to realize his future and is
less likely to " get larking about/' Further, even if no
great strength is required, those of fourteen are usually
small and therefore of comparatively little value, and, if
they are small for their age, they are specially difficult to
place, whilst, except in trades requiring fineness and
delicacy, the preference for a strong chap " who can turn
out plenty of work " gives them little chance.

There are, however, some reasons which still cause many
employers and foremen to insist upon having their boys
directly they leave, particularly in some of the more highly
skilled trades, and in Printing the insistence on a seven
years' Indenture to terminate at twenty-one, or soon after-
wards, makes this inevitable. First whilst some lads have
a greater sense of responsibility at sixteen than at fourteen,
others, who have been allowed to run wild in the meantime,
are distinctly less amenable to discipline than when they
were younger, and also have often forgotten much of what
they learnt at School. Moreover, where a trade requires
both intelligence and manual skill, it is better to get hold
of them at once before the influence of long hours of monoto-
nous and uneducative toil has had its effect. Hence many
firms find boys to be most teachable and most able to learn
at the earlier age, and some Foremen refuse to take those
who have been elsewhere or have left their first place so
soon, considering them to be " rolling stones/'

It is a nice question, therefore, which pays the best, and
the answer depends very largely on the class of work they
have been doing. The boy who has been in a post that has
exercised his wits and intelligence and has been well looked
after at home, may have benefited by discovering during
the interval his real bent and by possessing a strengthened

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT 219

sense of responsibility. Others, on the contrary, may have
deteriorated, may have lost their power of application by
running wild, or have had their intellect dulled by drudgery.
A firm's policy, therefore, will vary with its experience ;
and some who do not take learners till fifteen or sixteen,
insist on their having remained at school till then, and in the
Engineering Trades a record of two years at a Secondary or
Technical School is sometimes required.

Moreover, some employers get their boys at fourteen with
the full intention of teaching them a trade, but do not at first
employ them to work as learners. They make themselves
generally useful and are practically on probation for a year
or two. One large firm of Builders and Contractors, in
particular, does this systematically. Boys are definitely
engaged as probationers for two years at 55. a week and are
taught a trade at the end of that time. Usually each work-
shop has two of them, and a few more are employed in
other parts of the business. They do not necessarily remain
in the department in which they served their probation,
though they often do so, and some of the foremen prefer
it. These, and others similarly situated, therefore, do in a
sense go direct from school to their trades, though they do
not begin to learn them at once, and their case is somewhat
different from the often haphazard promotion at a later age
of the more capable boy labourers and of those the employer
likes. Yet another cause of an interval between leaving
and starting to learn is that, where few learners are taken,
applicants will have to wait for a vacancy to occur.

Finally, whilst many large and some smaller shops
adopt a definite policy, others leave the matter more or less
to chance. An employer simply waits until he wants a boy
and then advertises. He takes the first eligible one, who is
otherwise satisfactory and not obviously too old or too
small for the work, and thus chooses the most suitable lad
whatever his age. Hence it is sometimes an older, and some-
times a younger, one who is taken. This is even more true
of those who afterwards become improvers. They get to
know a little about something, perhaps after working at

220 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

several other jobs first, and having at last hit upon a trade,
get work at it at the best wage they can ; but many of them
are not able to do this until they are sixteen or even older.

Like that of the employers, the experience of the boys
themselves varies. Some know what they want and have
a job to go to. More know neither what they want nor how
to get it, and spend a year or two finding it out. Hence
some who are qualified to speak prefer that a boy should not
try to enter a particular trade at once, unless he knows his
own mind very clearly, but that he should take the first
decent job that offers and find out what he really likes.
Some, indeed, sample three or four before they hit upon the
right one, which they learn very successfully. This, indeed,
will be inevitable, so long as many of them continue to
start work without knowing what they are fit for. Others,
again, are compelled to take work that is well paid and
obviously, if they are to go to a trade, they must do so later,
since their circumstances make it impossible at first.

The question as to the usual age of starting to learn,
therefore, hardly permits of a definite answer. Frequently
both employers and learners leave it to chance. A firm
wanting a boy gets the best one it can, whatever his age.
A boy goes on finding himself jobs till a happy chance puts
him in a position to acquire a trade and he does so. The
starting age, therefore, varies from fourteen up to about
seventeen. Sometimes, notably in plumbing and smithing,
boys are not usually taken until sixteen and at others
fourteen is the rule. Some employers prefer an earlier, others
a later, start but this at least is obvious, that many boys
do not go direct from school to their trades, at least to learn
them, and the fact that many are employed first as labourers
before being employed as learners further complicates the
matter.

Should a boy therefore who is to learn a trade go to it
straight from School ? That he should get a job and go to
work as quickly as possible is obvious in order that he may
avoid the very great danger of early unemployment. So
far, in short, the parental instinct is a sound one. The

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 221

danger, as described in the last chapter, is that if he enter a
Blind Alley, he may stay at it instead of going on to some-
thing better and thus reach manhood without any definite
occupation at all.

There is much to be said, indeed, for getting a boy
started at once in a particular trade. In this case he is
definitely in work that will last him through life, provided of
course that the shop is a decent one, and that he has selected
the right craft. He has had no time to forget what he learnt
at school, and is most amenable to discipline. Moreover,
he is not left to run wild and is less likely to acquire casual
and irregular habits or that of continually changing his job.

To set against these advantages, however, there are
several objections. Placing a boy in a trade at once often
renders any adequate trial of his capacity difficult, and
makes it practically impossible to employ him first on trial
about the shop, as a boy labourer, which is perhaps the
best test of all, and sometimes the best thing that can be
done. Secondly, many leave school without knowing their
own minds, and thus the attempt to provide for them straight
away may cause them to select something at which they
cannot succeed. This difficulty, it is true, ought not to arise :
but it will continue to do so for so long as more effort is not
made to discover their bent whilst they are at school.
Lastly, the thing is often impossible. Fewer chances to
learn are available at fourteen than at fifteen, and fewer
at fifteen than at sixteen. In short, the opportunity for
many does not and cannot come until later. To put all
boys in permanent situations at fourteen, therefore, is
impossible, and the attempt may be disastrous. For
failure to get anything but a Blind Alley job may make
boys think that nothing better is available, and so cause
them to give up all idea of learning a trade. Rather they
should, where necessary, be led to look upon their first few
places as stop-gaps to occupy their time till something better
offers, so that they may keep their attention fixed on the
latter.

The question, therefore, is a very open one. Where a

222 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

boy can be put immediately to learn something for which he
is suited, it should by all means be done, both when he has
some special bent and when he possesses that general capa-
city which is likely to succeed at anything. This, however,
is not always possible : and even where an opening is avail-
able, it is better for many to wait where they can safely do
so. The danger consists less in putting a boy into a Blind
Alley than in leaving him in one without help or guidance.
It is the latter that he needs most, for if he gets them the
problem will probably settle itself according to the circum-
stances of each case. Where suitable openings offer, boys
can go to them at once. Otherwise they can be put into
temporary work which they know to be temporary, to
await the time when something better will offer. Two
objects will thus be served. The boy will be safely and
usefully employed in the meantime, and a Blind Alley, while
he is at it, will cease to be such, and will form a connecting
path along which eventually he will reach his trade.

(b) Suitability. — Closely bound up with this question is
the further one of the means adopted to select boys as
apprentices and learners. The difficulty of testing their
suitability in the first few months after they leave school,
when almost any form of wage-earning is novel and there-
fore pleasant, encourages the use of employment during
good behaviour and in temporary boys' jobs as a probation.
Without one of these devices a real test may be difficult,
the more so as many parents do little to find out their boys'
inclinations ; and so the selection must otherwise be a leap
in the dark.

First of all we may consider the means which employers
adopt for their own protection. Not all of them by any
means go to any special trouble in choosing learners, and
many simply take them as they come. Much of what is
to be said, therefore, will apply only to those who do. In
their case, care is taken to know first of all something about
their boys' characters and antecedents. Either they are
sons and relatives of employes, which gives the firm a
special hold over them, or they come with recommendations

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 223

from various business connexions, or are introduced by the
men. Other employers get good references with all the
lads they take, or, as one of them put it, " know all about
our boys before we bind them." Many, for instance, will
be first recommended as suitable by teachers in Elementary
Schools. Such recommendations, however, usually guarantee
their character and general capacity, but not always their
aptitude for a particular industry, and upon this matter
clearer information is obtained concerning boys who stay
at school until sixteen, and especially concerning students
at a Day Trade School. These latter, indeed, are picked
lads of more than average capacity who have possessed
from the very beginning a definite aptitude for certain work ;
and apart from them, and some few of those recommended
from the Elementary Schools, little more than the good
character and respectability, and to some extent the general
intelligence, can be relied upon. Capacity for the trade in
question has still to be tested.

Apprentices are, as a rule, taken on trial before being
bound, usually for one month, less frequently for two or three,
and occasionally for longer. Three months or less often
prove inadequate, however, even when the boys have been
carefully selected in the first place. Some employers, there-
fore, let the period of trial run on, and delay signing the
Indentures for six months or even a year, and the Skilled Em-
ployment Associations often find it advisable to do the same.
With learnerships, too, though similar trouble is sometimes
experienced, a longer probation is more frequent and more
easy to arrange.

Secondly, as already described, many firms engage boy
labourers with a view to teaching them eventually, and
will for a time employ them on the errands or in making
themselves useful. Sometimes, as in the higher grades of
cabinet work, where this device appears to be popular, the
number of such boys is small, and room can easily be found
for all of them. At others the engagement as an errand
boy is for a more or less definite period of six months or a
year. This form of selection, therefore, differs from the last,

224 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

because boys start first at unskilled jobs and afterwards
learn. It differs from those that follow in that the firm
employs them with the full intention of teaching them
afterwards, provided they are competent, with the further
advantage of taking away the blind alley characteristics
of such temporary jobs. The use of this method might well
be extended, and the efforts of the Labour Exchanges could
well be devoted to this and to ensuring a better original
selection of boys for the purpose.

Thirdly, as described in the last chapter, vacancies are
filled by the promotion of the ablest of the boy labourers
employed by a firm, who are given a chance to learn, but are
not taken on with this purpose in view. Usually the la-
bourers so employed far outnumber the vacancies for learners,
or else they fill only a few of them, the rest going to ordinary
apprentices or learners. In Printing, for instance, especially
with Compositors and Stereotypers, a regular practice is
often made of promoting the best of the errand boys, who
after twelve or fifteen months are bound, their indentures
being as a rule dated back for a year. Such offices, however,
generally employ a large number of ordinary apprentices
as well, and, since their work is highly skilled, only a portion
of the errand boys, who come often from a rougher and less
educated class, have the capacity for it. This policy is
not confined to the Printing trade, and by its means a good
many get their chance.

Finally, many firms leave matters to a process of " natural
selection," pure and simple. They just take boys on without
any agreement, and if they are unsuitable, get rid of them.
If they are suitable, they stay and are taught, unless indeed
they themselves prefer to migrate elsewhere. Such em-
ployers simply take a likely lad and put him on, and sooner
or later they get one they like and teach him. The power of
dismissal protects them against others.

From their point of view this is the great advantage of
Informal Regular Service, that the power to dismiss a boy,
apart from the valuable hold it gives them otherwise,
guarantees them against serious loss. With Apprentice-

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 225

ships there is always an element of chance at the best of
times. Some firms are very successful in getting a very
good type, others are not, and the gains on the best who can
be kept are offset by losses on the worst who cannot be got
rid of. The matter is even more of a lottery with those
who simply advertise and take what they can find, when
frequent misfits are inevitable : for even where more care
is taken, the means of testing the applicants often prove
inadequate. Here again Juvenile Exchanges and After-Care
workers will probably be able to give great assistance.

At the same time,, the task of fitting the right boy to the
right trade is less difficult than is sometimes supposed.
Marked capacity for one or two things only is comparatively
rare, and many lads possess a general aptitude for manual
Work that enables them to learn many kinds of it with success.
Otherwise the fate of the very large number who want to
be engineers and nothing else, would be sad indeed, but
happily most of them settle quite comfortably into another
trade. Perhaps a positive dislike, or even a physical in-
capacity, for certain industries is more common than a
special fitness for them. Often it is largely a question of
health — to keep consumptive boys, for instance, out of
employments liable to cause phthisis, those with delicate
chests from wet outdoor work, and those who are weak or
small from heavy labour. Otherwise lads only suited to
one or two jobs are very common, and a special bent of
any kind often accompanies marked general ability.

Such distinction as there is, indeed, usually follows
broader lines than those of single trades or industries. The
main division is between Manual and Clerical work, and
this is often a very clear one. The two are sufficiently dis-
tinct to demand powers and abilities of a different kind,
and thus boys who would make good " tradesmen " may
very well fail as clerks and vice -versa. Much is written
about the prejudices felt by many parents for clerical
employment and of the resulting mistakes, but similar
failures are caused by the attempt to make mechanics of
those who are unsuitable. Errors of the first kind are, per-

226 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

haps, more numerous ; but those of the second are not
uncommon. Anyhow as between manual and clerical
occupations there is often marked variation in aptitudes.
Most boys fall definitely into one or other of these classes,
and the problem is to put each into the right one. A
third and smaller class consists of those whose special bent is
towards work with the pencil — drawing, design, draughts-
manship, and the like.

Another important distinction is that between different
levels of skill and capacity, according as they are fitted for
highly-skilled, semi-skilled or unskilled work. Often, how-
ever, their own choice will not correspond to this. Ex-VII
may wish to go as an errand boy, and Standard V to be
an engineer, and much waste of good material would result
if they were allowed to have their way. The able boy would
be thrown away on low-skilled labour, and the dull boy
become the half-taught, underpaid and casual mechanic,
of little use to himself or any one else. This distinction,
again, is a clear and useful one. It is possible to find out a
boy's capacity, so as to guide him into the right sort of work,
and this will often mean going beyond the schoolroom, since
backwardness here may accompany decided manual capacity.
When, therefore, this has been properly tested, boys can be
graded accordingly.

It is on these wider lines, in fact, that their bent needs
to be discovered and tested, and beyond them the chief point
of importance in selecting a trade is with many to get them
into a suitable place, and then keep them steadily at work
in it. This will apply not only to the future skilled worker,
but even more to those ~vvho can only hope for semi-
skilled or unskilled jobs. Almost always the vital thing is
to do this, and to prevent them from drifting from one job
to another. The average boy is usually fitted for many
things and a slight preference for one over another may be
of small importance compared with steady and regular
application to whatever it is.

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 227

first, since length of service depends largely on the age at
which it begins, being probably five, six or seven years,
according as it starts at sixteen or earlier. Again a boy who
is bound at the later ages may already have learnt a little
of the trade, or at least, by working at some labouring job
connected with it, have obtained some preliminary knowledge
which one of fourteen takes time to acquire. So, too, the
period of service will not always be sufficient for the boy to
learn the whole of his trade. Nevertheless, modern conditions
do frequently make it difficult to acquire it completely
in a single shop, and the shorter period which is sometimes
stipulated for in the Indenture meets this difficulty by allow-
ing the extra year or two to be spent in finishing the training
elsewhere. Sometimes special short Indentures are arranged
to procure this. Finally the conditions accompanying the
less formal Regular Service, and still more Migration, may
necessitate a longer period than formal Apprenticeship
would require.

The whole problem is greatly affected by alterations in
methods of production and by the development of the wage-
contract, under which boys are paid their value as workmen
and learn as best they can. The former has in some cases
reduced the amount of skill needed to the semi-skilled level,
but does not necessarily mean that a whole trade thus loses
its skilled character. Sometimes it does so, as in some parts
of the manufacture of light leather, where improvements in
machinery have very greatly simplified matters. In book-
binding, again, publishers' work has been divided into a
number of semi-skilled jobs, whilst the other branches
remain as skilled as before, and in some other trades only
certain sections of the work are affected, and that chiefly
in the larger establishments. Some of the machine-men in
engineering may be quoted as an instance of this. Or
thirdly, the development of an industry may create new
semi-skilled processes which did not exist before. In every
such case the result is that for these processes the old period
of training ceases to be required, since the new kinds of
work can be learnt in quite a short time, and a new grade
of labour partly or wholly replaces the old.

228 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Secondly, changes in methods of production influence
other trades in various ways, but without producing so
marked an effect. Sometimes they have limited the skill
required, and at others have merely altered its character
or changed the mode of acquiring it. With some of the
commoner and cheaper work much less of it is now needed,
more particularly where, as in joinery and cabinet-making,
the parts are prepared so completely by elaborate machinery
that they only need to be fitted together by hand. This,
however, does not apply to the better-class work to any-
thing like the same extent.

A more frequent tendency of machine production is to
produce a concentration of skill, the work done covering
a narrower range but reaching a higher level. Greater
rapidity of execution, fineness, and accuracy are needed,
and these compensate for any loss in other directions. An
elementary example of this is found in the separation of
fitters and turners in large engineering establishments.
Again, as also in engineering, a reduction of manual skill
may be compensated for by the need for increased intelli-
gence and a higher level of technical and scientific knowledge.
Thirdly, the use of machinery may even increase the
dexterity needed by taking over the simple processes and
performing them more quickly and with fewer men, but re-
quiring greater skill in its manipulation than the handwork
did. This so far has been the result of the introduction
of the Linotype in Printing.

Lastly, less may have to be learnt and yet the trade be
more difficult to learn than before. The simpler and rougher
processes are usually the first to be taken over by machinery,
and when they are done by hand, many of them are the
natural things on which to start a boy. Thus the later ones
are more difficult to learn now that this stepping stone to
them has. been removed. Hence in these various ways
changes in method of production, resulting from the use
of machinery and other industrial developments; frequently
alter the character of the skill required instead of reducing
its amount ; and if the creation of new processes is omitted,

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 229

the extent to which the latter has taken place is not very
large. Thus on the whole changes in methods of production
do not seem to have reduced appreciably the length of
time required to master a craft. Consideration of the effect
of the wage contract must be postponed until after that of
the actual practice of to-day.

Turning to this, therefore, we find no uniform period of
service, and London conditions appear to render the applica-
tion of one to all industries impossible. Moreover, there is
no uniformity even in each separate trade and sometimes
different lengths of service will be adopted for different boys
within the same firm. The age at which an indenture was
signed often settles the matter, and as boys start at different
ages, their service varies accordingly.

Trade Union policy also fluctuates . Rules are most strict
in Printing. The compositors enforce successfully the full
seven years, and the lithographers have a rule to this effect,
but in practice accept five. With the machine-minders and
stereotypers the full seven years are strictly adhered to
and both these bodies have been successful in securing this.
But otherwise the longer period is seldom enforced, among
the Unions that require it being the journeymen curriers
and the paintbrush makers.

Perhaps the most common policy is to demand a minimum
of five years, but to raise no objection to six or seven. Some
of the smaller societies, including that of the Brushmakers,
require five years' actual Apprenticeship, but most of the
Unions follow the example of the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers and accept five years' work at the trade, and in
practice this condition can be satisfied in different ways.
With the engineers, the requirements of the Board of Trade
for the Sea-going Engineers Certificate help to maintain the
predominance of regular service in a single firm. The boiler-
makers also fix five years in a single shop, but in certain
cases allow the apprentice a further twelve months, in which
to get his full money. Many Unions, however, either do
not possess any rules on this subject, or leave them to be
arranged by the different localities, and in the London

230 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

District no stipulation appears in the working rules of most
of the Building Trades.

There is no great uniformity in the methods favoured by
employers, but three different arrangements are common,
namely seven years, five years, and until the learner is
twenty-one. Periods of six years are sometimes found in
individual shops, but are not common. The habit of bind-
ing till twenty-one is popular in some large Building firms
and is not uncommon elsewhere, and where it exists it pro-
duces much variety of practice even within a single firm.
Service for seven years is markedly predominant in Printing,
but otherwise only in a few small and highly skilled
trades like saddlery and coppersmithing, and in the higher
branches of some others, notably bookbinding, whilst else-
where it is adopted by a few individual employers, either
because they are doing particularly good work or for special
reasons.

On the whole, however, five years is undoubtedly the most
favoured period. It certainly is so in engineering, where
a good many firms, chiefly the larger ones, do not take their
boys before they are sixteen. Both in building and wood-
working it is very common, the numerous small shops in the
latter usually preferring it. Again, in art metal work, both
such regular agreements as there are and the less definite
understandings which are usual, last for this length of time.
Moreover two of the most vigorous institutions engaged
in placing learners — the Apprenticeship and Skilled Employ-
ment Association, and the Jewish Board of Guardians-
choose as a rule to bind for five years rather than for seven.

Finally, shorter Apprenticeships, though not yet very
numerous, are becoming more so and often are better suited
to the new developments of industry. Boys need a wider
experience than a single firm can give them, and, if bound
for four years to be grounded in their trade, can afterwards
obtain this in other shops. At present, however, it is only
in Engineering that such a device is being definitely taken
up, but individual firms are utilizing it elsewhere ; and
not a few who do not formally adopt it are advocating its

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 231

use, or are refusing to bind their boys at all, so that they
may be free to move on after three or four years.

For these reasons, therefore, the period of service is
being somewhat reduced, but this reduction is by no means
a new thing. As early as 1814, a few trades were substituting
five years for seven, and the tendency had spread far by the
time the sixties were reached. Present conditions are
even more varied if consideration is given to the time a
boy actually takes to learn rather than to the length of
service. So far it has only been possible to consider cases
where some form of agreement exists ; for obviously with
Migration and Working and Learning no fixed periods
are possible. In any case, except with a full seven years
or with Technical Training before Apprenticeship, as in
engineering, further work as an improver is usually needed
before the learner can become fully competent.

Once more no general rule can be discovered, but the whole
process will generally take about seven years. A few of the
skilled trades require either less or more ; and the time
differs so much from one individual to another that, as many
foremen insist, it is often difficult to strike an average
bet ween them. One boy will learn more in five years than
another will in ten, but six or seven will most nearly re-
present this average. The lad either serves the longer period
or works for an extra year or two as an improver at something
below the full rate. What he has still to learn after he
comes out of his time will vary, but he will probably have
to perfect himself in certain things, and in any case will take
time to acquire the experience and self-confidence of the
seasoned workman.

Moreover, the conditions under which boys learn often
cause them to take longer to do so than the mere teaching
of the work would require. Perhaps the most important
of these is what I have called the Wage Contract, under
which they are paid as much as they are worth and left
to do the best they can for themselves. This also exists in a
modified form in the case of many who are engaged definitely
as learners. They likewise often get nearly their full value

232 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING

and pay no premium. They have, therefore, to make
themselves generally useful, running errands and so on in
their first year or two, for instance, in order that they may
earn their wages. Hence their progress is likely to be
slower. The employer cannot afford to spend so much on
teaching them or to treat them solely as learners, and thus
they learn less quickly than under the older conditions.
Others start simply at the errands with a tacit understanding
that they shall be promoted if they are capable and indus-
trious, and yet others spend part of the day at this and the
rest at the bench. In every case there is delay and the
time taken to learn is lengthened, because it is not devoted
solely to learning. Obviously also this obtains to a far
greater extent where the boy is simply employed and paid
for his work, both in the case of Migration and in that of
Working and Learning under Regular Service.

This is undoubtedly one of the most important and wide-
spread of the influences that are operating in this direction,
but there is another which is scarcely less potent, namely
that Subdivision of Output, which causes each firm to pro-
duce only one or a few articles. Hence to learn the whole
trade, a boy must move about and work in several shops,
according to the process that prevails in cabinet-making.
Indeed the Wage Contract usually accompanies this, and is
in some cases the result of it. For the lad is wanted not to
learn, but to make a certain article, and he is paid for what
he does.

These influences, therefore, lead to a considerable loss of
time in learning, and this is often inevitable, not only
as a result of periods of idleness between different jobs,
but because those who are learning in this way often stay
longer at each part of the work than they require to learn
it. Either they wait until a good opening presents itself
elsewhere, or, being content with their conditions, are in no
hurry to leave. Moreover they cannot fit their work exactly
to the need of learning a trade. They must take what jobs
they can get, and the fresh knowledge each one gives will
not always be in proportion to the time they spend upon it.

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 233

Finally since they are paid their full value, the employer
must keep them at work qn which they can earn their money,
and so further delay is caused. This is, perhaps, even more
true of the plumbers' mate, who has often a greater difficulty
in getting an opening to start with the tools than does the
ordinary boy improver ; and he may continue to work for
some years as such before his chance comes. All these,
things, therefore, increase the time that is required to learn
a trade under modern conditions, and because it is wasted,
much longer is often taken than would be necessary under
a more regular system.

This brings up for solution another problem. Allowing
for shorter periods of actual service, and for the time that is
thus wasted or otherwise occupied, does the actual learning
now take longer than it used to do, or not so long ? Or,
to put it in another way, do the trades of to-day require a
lower level of skill than formerly ? On the spur of the
moment an affirmative answer is often given, based on the
increasing numbers employed in semi-skilled processes,
on the various devices for simplifying the work of others, and
on the greater separation, as with carpenters and joiners, of
different branches of a trade. The question, however,
cannot be disposed of so easily, and there is much in support
of the contrary view.

First of all, the development of new industries has multi-
plied the number of trades and processes and further diversi-
fied them. Hence the additional semi-skilled workers are
engaged largely on new processes or on others formed by the
separation from a skilled industry of certain fractions of its
work. Some direct displacement of artisans there has been,
though less than is usually supposed ; and semi-skilled
machine-men have also replaced workers of an even lower
grade, doing the heaviest and least skilled drudgery. So
far, therefore, there seems to have been no great loss on
balance. Probably the number of skilled workmen is
larger than ever before, and that of the semi-skilled very
much larger. Both, that is to say, have increased, but the
latter the more rapidly of the two, and if there has been

234 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

any absolute decrease, it is probably in the lowest grades of
labour. As Sir Benjamin Browne told the Poor Law
Commission, " there is less room now than ever before for
the absolutely unskilled man, for we specialize more."
Nor must it be forgotten that some in the intermediate grade
possess capacity that is not very much below that of many
tradesmen. Lastly it is sometimes maintained that the
semi-skilled man of to-day reaches the same level as the
mechanic of a previous generation, and the latter a far
higher one. This would involve a general rise in the level of
skill ; and in many trades that of each particular grade is
certainly higher than formerly.

Secondly, where certain processes have been taken over
by semi-skilled workers, the trade affected would seem to be
necessarily less skilled than before, but this ignores the
important fact that the level of skill has to be taken into
account as well as its range. The workman may have to do
less, but may also have to do it better ; and this is what
actually happens. The skilled trades of to-day require
greater perfection of workmanship than they used to do —
great fineness, accuracy, rapidity of output and so on. Thus,
where certain forms of work are done by a different grade,
or processes formerly combined are separated, there are
compensations in these other directions. The higher level
of skill, in short, offsets its narrower range.

Thirdly, there is greater gradation of skill than ever before,
and this often produces the appearance of a decline. Differ-
ent branches of a trade are getting more differentiated.
For instance, when all kinds of bookbinding were done in a
single firm, a man was required to turn his hand to every-
thing. Now some shops specialize on leather binding and
others on jobbing or vellum-binding, whilst publishers'
work is done on a large scale by machinery. Thus there are
three separate classes— highly skilled, skilled and semi-skilled,
instead of only one. As a result, therefore, the level of skill
appears to have declined. In reality, it is as high as before,
though more carefully graded. The best workmen are
confined to the best work, the ordinary skilled men to

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 235

jobbing, and so on ; and as a result every branch of it is
better done than before, and those who are doing it reach
a higher level at their particular job.

Fourthly, even allowing for waste of time, the actual period
of service required in most trades is probably shorter than
formerly, but this is made up for in various ways. Some boys
are better prepared for learning before their service begins.
Many of them do temporary boys' work about a trade for a
year or two before it starts, and so know a good deal that
an apprentice, coming fresh to it, will take some
time to find out. With the longer period, both now and
formerly, the younger boy spends some time making himself
useful and getting used to shop conditions, and if straight
from school, does not at once settle down to his work.
The boy of to-day has already mastered these preliminaries
and knows his way about, and thus saves himself and
his employer a good deal of time..

Again, much of the simpler boys' work to which learners
were first put, and which was often reserved for them, is now
done by machinery ; and the fact that there are few suitable
jobs to put them to, is one of the reasons why employers are
less eager to take young boys. This means, therefore, that
there is less to learn than formerly in the easier branches,
and as much as before in the more skilled ones . Hence the
training afforded by this preliminary work is no longer
given, and trades so affected thus prove more difficult
to learn and require older boys. In fact, learning is a
shorter business, but, while it lasts, a harder one.

Finally, whilst less has to be learnt, it requires to be
learnt more perfectly. Not so much time is now spent in
actually learning a trade, and more in perfecting what has
been learnt ; and this perfection comes gradually by practice
and experience. Apprenticeships as a result tend to be
shorter, work as an improver to last longer. Wide skill
of a moderate level comes once for all during the former,
but perfection in a higher grade only after a sfow ripening of
the powers. A shorter period of service, therefore, does
not necessarily involve a lessening of skill, when so much is
still left to be acquired after its conclusion.

236 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

For all these reasons it is probable that the skill necessary,
and the time taken to learn, have not decreased, though the
period of service may have done so ; and in some cases the
greater technical and scientific knowledge of to-day really
involve a higher general capacity. Further, any decline in
the level is likely to be not an absolute one, but due to
changes in the relative numbers employed in the different
grades. If it has taken place at all, it arises out of the
fact that the semi-skilled processes employ a larger share
than formerly of the working population, and that their
increase has been more rapid in proportion than that of
the higher ranks. Upon these points, however, and more
particularly upon the latter, no confident answer can be given.

Within each class, on the other hand, the level has pro-
bably been raised. There may be fewer fitters in proportion
than formerly and more machine-men, but both fitter and
machine-man are better workmen than they used to be.
Hence, even if this comparative increase in some of the
lower ranks of labour is an actual fact, the general improve-
ment in the skill of all grades has to be set against it, and the
net result is improvement rather than diminution.

One reservation must be made, however. So far the
question has been of what is required of a competent work-
man, and not of the skill actually possessed by the rank and
file. For here it is probable that defective methods of
training and other influences cause far too many to grow up
insufficiently trained for their different tasks, and that
the number of these is increasing. Their need of thorough
training is greater than formerly, and probably what they
actually get is inferior, and one of the most disastrous
results of our existing lack of method is that it has
failed to provide fully for the higher standard of to-day.
In short, the skill needed is no less than it was, but the need
is less well provided for.

(d) Preference and Heredity. — The questions of Preference
and Heredity a*ffect considerably not only the suitability of
different boys for different jobs, but the whole problem of
recruiting. They may be defined as follows : — Preference

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 237

means the taking by an employer of sons or relatives of his
own workpeople rather than others, and Heredity the recruit-
ing of trades from the sons or relatives of those engaged
in them, which includes the further question of hereditary
capacity to exercise them.

The former does not confer any right like that of Patri-
mony or that given by some Trade Unions to their members
to teach one or more of their sons without binding them.
The individual firm does not admit the possession by its
workmen of the right to put their boys into its vacancies.
It retains for itself the power of deciding in each case, though
sometimes a refusal is practically impossible. The Water-
men, perhaps, provide the nearest approach to a right, and a
few Trade Unions, I believe, try to reserve openings for
sons of their members generally, but not necessarily of those
employed in a particular shop. Otherwise employers
retain their freedom of action, and many men prefer to
place their boys elsewhere.

Such a right was far more common in the past when a
man not only brought his sons into the workshop but taught
them himself. Now, even when they are employed in the
same firm, they seldom work together. When they do, the
father is usually a small employer or a workman just setting
up for himself, so that his position is rather different,
since he is either training the lad in order that he may
succeed him in the business, or else is giving him a start
in this way, with a view to getting him into a bigger firm
later on as an improver. Foremen again sometimes teach
their own sons, but some of them choose to put them under
another man. So too in Folio wing-Up a lad will not seldom
start as mate or assistant to his father, and where piece-
work is common, as in the wholesale Cabinet Trade, men
take their boys to help them, whilst among the Watermen
a good many are apprenticed to their fathers. Otherwise
father and son only work together in individual cases and
comparatively few firms encourage such arrangements.
Where a preference is given, however, it will often be made
a condition that a man looks after his boy if necessary,

238 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

and sometimes they are put together till the latter gets used
to the work.

Most employers give some sort of preference to their
men's sons, and this will frequently be extended to include
other relatives. Neither is it confined to mechanics, but
embraces clerks, warehousemen, labourers and carmen;
and thus they give men in the lower grades a better chance
of getting their sons into skilled work. Carmen seem parti-
cularly successful in placing their boys in good trades,
thanks partly to the large number of firms with whom their
job brings them into contact, whilst men in the Building
Trades, who move about a great deal, often provide for
them either with old employers or with those engaged in
different branches who are working on the same contract.

Some shops, moreover, give not only preference for
vacancies, but more favourable terms of employment, as
when their men are excused the payment of a premium
or allowed to pay at a reduced rate. One big firm, indeed,
demands a very heavy one from all others in order to dis-
courage applications from outside. Or again, sons of
their employes may be taken on without an indenture, or
allowed, when others are not, to enter their service as
improvers, or to come and go with their fathers.

The actual extent of such preference varies. A few
employers try to fill all their vacancies from the families of
their own men, some getting more than they want in this
way and others failing to get sufficient. Much depends on
the prospects of the trade in the near future, since a bad
outlook deters a man from putting his sons into it. A more
common practice is to inform them of vacancies and give
them the option of filling them, whilst also receiving outside
applications or promoting smart errand boys. Others, again,
confine the preference to foremen and old and respected
workmen, in whose case, indeed, it may not be easy to refuse
it. Some also take such a lad if there happens to be an
opportunity, but will not upset existing arrangements for
his benefit. A few give no preference at all or even try to
avoid taking their men's sons, either because they think

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 239

them likely to do better away from their fathers, or because
of the difficulty of getting rid of them if they are unsatis-
factory ; but such are not very numerous. Finally, a good
many have no definite policy in the matter. The great
majority, however, do give some sort of preference, if only
to the extent of trying to oblige any well-conducted work-
man.

Frequently, indeed, none is asked for and employers not
seldom say that " a case has never arisen " or that the grant
of it is not taken advantage of. Many men prefer a different
trade for their boys, others merely a different shop, and the
reasons for this can best be discussed as part of the general
question of heredity.

There is less of this latter in London than might be
expected, and its importance there is reduced by certain
special influences. The happy-go-lucky selection of occu-
pations causes many to enter those to which they are
not best suited, and any marked capacities in their sons is,
therefore, as likely as not to be for something else. Others,
again, have no special aptitude for one trade rather than
another, and their boys will probably be much the same.
Finally, its industries are so many and so scattered that
interchange between them is far more likely to take place
than in towns in which one or two are predominant.

As a result there is little doubt that in London children
follow their parents less frequently than elsewhere,
Employers and foremen, even where only a few apprentices
are taken, often experience difficulty in getting sufficient
from among the sons of their own men, whilst those who can
get more of them than they want, usually employ very
few. Moreover, where sons do largely follow their fathers, it
will generally be found either that the trade is a specially
prosperous one into which everybody is trying to enter, or
that the firm has an exceptionally good reputation. It is
true that heredity is somewhat more marked in the localized
industries, such as the manufacture of leather. But even
allowing for this and for those who go into different work-
shops in the same trade, or who enter closely allied ones,

240 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING. -

the proportion of lads who follow their fathers is small.
As illustrating this the following table analyses the cases
of some eighty-seven learners whom I was privileged to
interview at various Trade Schools : —

Father in the trade-
As Employer . . . . .8

As Foreman ...... 2

As Journeyman . . . . 15

25
Other Relatives in the trade —

As Employer ...... i

As Journeyman or Apprentice . . 7

— 8

In Cognate Trade to Father's ... 10

No connexion with Father's Trade ... 44

No family connexion, therefore, could be found in just
over half these cases, but in many of the remainder there
is no certain proof of heredity. Those in which the father
is a small employer or foreman are peculiar — first, because the
opportunities for teaching are specially favourable, and,
secondly, because, where the father has a business of his
own, boys are put into it, who would not be if they were the
sons of journeymen. Moreover, such boys are probably
much over-represented at the schools, in proportion to the
numbers who are so situated. Again, in the case of brothers,
it will often happen that the elder one has succeeded in a
different trade than that of his father ; nor does a closely
allied employment mean much, since many will put a lad
into any job, provided it is not their own. Hence the
true proportion of hereditary cases is likely to be very much
less than that shown in the table.

If, however, statistical measurement is difficult, there is
more ample general evidence as to the facts. This prefer-
ence for other trades is due to a number of causes apart from
those already mentioned. The matter varies with the state
of trade. The Boilermakers' Union tries to reserve as many
vacancies as possible for sons of its members, and in the

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 241

Engineering Trades generally men try to secure them, but
have to face very keen competition from outsiders. In
Printing heredity seems to be marked with the machine-
managers, with the young and growing branch of stereo-
typers, and, to a smaller extent, in lithography. It is much
less so with compositors, whose trade has tended to become
over-stocked. Comparatively few boys, on the other hand,
follow their fathers into the Building Trades, except with
plasterers, masons and possibly plumbers, or into the
woodworking group. The Art Metal Trades occupy an
intermediate position.

Secondly, men are being increasingly influenced by any
special disadvantages attaching to particular callings as
they come to realize these more clearly. Thus the fear of
the displacement of hand labour by machinery has largely
influenced woodworkers, and even during the Building boom
previous to 1900 restricted, though it did not altogether
prevent, the increase in the number who took up joinery. So ,
again, trades are being avoided in which, as in painting or
bricklaying, there is much 'seasonal or general irregularity
of employment or where, as with silversmiths, the former is
becoming more marked.

Thirdly, a great many appear to have a prejudice against
their own trade and to prefer anything but that, especially
if they themselves have not been very successful at it.
They realize its disadvantages, but not those of other jobs,
and therefore try at all cost to place their boys elsewhere,
whilst sons of mechanics in poor circumstances may have to
take up highly paid labouring work. On the other hand,
those who have done well may make their boys follow
in their footsteps, but many successful artisans, though
not perhaps so many as formerly, hope to raise them still
higher by putting them into clerical employment. More-
over, apart from the necessary interchange between different
industries, the number and scattered character of those
of London always give a man plenty to choose from besides
his own, and this has a similar effect. A boy is far more
likely to go to a trade that is not his father's than in places

242 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

where a few industries employ the bulk of the population.

Finally, several reasons are leading the workmen to
choose different shops in their own trade. Sometimes they
think that others can give a wider and more varied experi-
ence than their own ; and even more frequently they feel
that they are better apart, that the boy ought to fight his
own battles, and that he will do more for himself under a
stranger. Such reasoning is common and implies on the
father's part neither dislike nor distrust of his own firm.

(e) Wages. — The question of learners' wages, especially
at the start, is an important one, more particularly in their
relation to those of unskilled boy labour, as a result of the
superior attraction given, or said to be given, by the higher
earnings of the latter. The difference between the two, how-
ever, at any rate in London, is not nearly so great, nor are the
initial wages of the former so low, as is very generally sup-
posed. The great variety of methods considerably complicates
matters. Some boys do not go to their trade as soon as they
start work, but later, when their greater age and strength
often help them to command better money. Others
start to work at their trade before they start to learn it and
their wages, even if they are apprenticed, will usually,
though not always, be fixed by what they were before and
not by the ordinary apprentices' rate. Others again, as in
silversmithing and trunk-making, will combine the two,
spending part of their time at the errands and the rest at the
bench. Thus apart from the helper or assistant in folio wing-
up, boys start to learn in three ways : as definite apprentices
or learners, at boys' jobs learning in their spare time, and at
pure boys' work that leads later on to learning. The two
latter methods are growing. The definite learner, therefore,
comes into competition with them, and this competition
has tended to raise his wages nearer to theirs, especially
where he has already worked in the shop in some other
capacity. In some cases, however (especially in those of
boys brought into the firm from outside), they may at sixteen
still have to accept the wage of an ordinary apprentice in his
first year. Finally the increase in the wage-contract has

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 243

forced up the rates paid to learners, though these remain
lower than those of boy labourers.

Methods of Wage Payment fall into three main classes —
Fixed Time Wages, Time Wages varying with the value of
the work, and Piece Wages. In the first case, but not in the
other two, there is usually an accepted scale for all boys,
rising each year by a definite amount. It is generally a
weekly wage, it is sometimes supplemented by certain
additional payments, and is often payable during holidays
and sickness, at least when these are of short duration.
Hourly wages are usually higher, but to prevent slackness
are only paid for the time actually worked.

Fixed Time Wages take various forms. First, there is
the uniform rate, most common with bound Apprentices
and the more formally engaged learners. With this there
is an agreed rate of increase each year. Sometimes this is
2s. or 2s. 6d. a year throughout, but at others it may begin
with only is. a year and rise later by 2s. 6d., 35. or 45., and
occasionally in the last year of a long apprenticeship by as
much as 6s. or 75. Variations according to character and
progress are not recognized, and some firms adhere strictly
to these rates, finding that to discriminate causes jealousy.
Others, however, will in practice give an additional rise to
satisfactory boys. Again, with some learners employed
" during good behaviour, " there is often an informal under-
standing, as in silversmithing, that a boy shall receive
a uniform rate and a fixed annual rise as long as he stays ;
5s. a week to start, with 2s. 6d. a year or is. every six months,
is most usual. As the boy is not bound, however, alterations
are easier than with apprentices. The employer may have
to concede an additional rise to keep him, or may be able
to refuse or delay the ordinary one if he does not give
satisfaction.

A fixed wage, however, will often be supplemented in-
various ways. Sometimes a definite additional weekly pay-
ment may be made, either at once or after the first year or
two, in return for good conduct and progress. This may
take the form either of an increase of the weekly wage or a

244 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

bonus or other payment in proportion to the output. The
latter usually depends on how much a boy can turn out above
a certain minimum amount, and, like piece-work payments,
is apt to tempt him to keep to forms of work at which he can
earn a high bonus instead of acquiring an alround know-
ledge of the business.

The other method of supplementing wages is more satis-
factory and finds its best illustration in the Good Conduct
Money paid in the Printing Trades, which is, or can be, with-
held if satisfaction is not given. Usually it consists of an
additional 2s. a week on the wages specified in the indenture,
the two together often amounting to 8s. in the first
year. Sometimes, however, it is only is. a week at the
start or is not paid at all till the second year. In one case
the payment consisted of wage and conduct money in equal
amounts, the two combined being 6s. in the first and 8s. in
the second. The method is, as a rule, very successful, so
much so that the payment is seldom withheld, and it is
perhaps the best way of keeping an apprentice up to the mark .

Lastly, whilst a wage is fixed for each year of service,
additional money is, or may be, given, if the boy is worth it.
I came across one indenture, for instance, where the ap-
prentice " may be paid something over and above his agreed
wages, but this shall not be paid as of right." More often
there is a verbal promise to this effect, or the boy is led to
understand that his chance of such a thing depends on him-
self. Frequently, however, a firm simply gives the additional
rise when it thinks fit, or the boy asks for one and gets it,
especially if he can go elsewhere if it is refused. The
result, therefore, is a fixed minimum wage supplemented by
additional payments according to circumstances.

The second class of wage payment consists of a Time Rate
varying from one boy to another according to the value of
their work. In this case, when a lad is put to the bench,
the foreman decides what he is worth, and pays him accord-
ingly. After this his money rises according to his ability,
and not to any fixed scale. Thus two boys may start at the
same age, tjie same time, and the same rate, and yet after

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 245

a few years be earning very different amounts. This is
common in the Building Trades where youths of twenty
often get high wages. It is thus a payment fixed in advance,
according to an estimate of the work likely to be done,
some allowance for the trouble and loss involved in teaching
being usually made. This method is common with Migra-
tion and the less formal kinds of Regular Service and, where
there is no agreement, with Folio wing-Up. Payment by the
hour is usual, with no allowance for loss of time, and the
boy is paid not only for the value of his work but for the
actual duration of it and no longer.1 Sometimes these
two methods are combined, and a fixed weekly wage is paid
for the first few years and later an hourly one, rising
according to " what he is worth."

Payment of learners by the piece is not common, even
when it is usual with the journeymen, and where it is found
it sometimes takes a special form. Thus in Engineering a
boy may be set to assist a gang or squad on piece, who will
pay him a time wage and make what they can out of him.
Improvers, on the other hand, will more usually follow the
custom of the shop in which they are employed. In a few
cases, however, apprentices and learners are paid in this
way, though to begin with they often get a time wage until
they know something about the work. Then they get a
fraction of the men's rate. To illustrate this method
of payment the cases of the Fleshers, Brushmakers and
Tinplate Workers may be described.

With the former learners are apprenticed to the men's
Union at the age of eighteen for a period of four years
and are put in charge of a particular man. The recognized
rate of pay is so much per 100 skins (45. 6d., for instance,
for sheep- skins) , and the apprentices get a lower one. The
difference between the two is divided equally between the
man and the firm, to compensate for trouble and spoilt
material respectively.

In the Pan and Hair work in Brushmaking, the boy works

1 With the possible exception of public holidays.

246 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING,

for three or less frequently six months at one branch with a
journeyman, who teaches him and gets the benefit of his
earnings. Often, though not always, he receives no wages
during this period, or only what the man chooses to allow
him. After this he is put on half piece-rates, which later on
are sometimes raised to two-thirds. Then when he has
served half his time, the same process is repeated with the
other branch of the business. In Paint Brush work, where
seven years, and not five, are the rule, the rates paid are
usually higher.

Finally in Tinplate Working the practice varies, as some
firms pay time wages throughout. In the majority, indeed,
these only last for about two years, till the boy knows
enough to go on piece work. The rates paid vary from one-
third to half of the ordinary ones to begin with, and later on
from half to two-thirds. Outside these trades, however,
payment of learners in this way is not often found except in
individual firms, but it is far more common with improvers.

In London boys' wages, both with learners and labourers,
are well above the average and, as already stated, the differ-
ence between those of the two classes is less than might be
supposed. On this matter the working of the London Labour
Exchanges has brought to light some interesting facts.
One sub-manager declared that the wages offered, where
there was opportunity to learn, were a revelation to him. He
put the usual rates at from 55. to 75. to begin with for the
former and from 6s. to 8s. for the latter. The comparison
is somewhat affected by the high wages paid to apprentices
in some big firms, but on the average the difference is pro-
bably not more than 2s. a week. Similarly the Skilled Employ-
ment Associations have found that a learner, especially if pre-
pared to make himself generally useful, should be able to
secure a starting wage of 55., and with some exceptions my
own experience confirms this. Less may have to be accepted,
however, by some bound apprentices, by those employed in
some small struggling firms which only offer 45., and by some
of those engaged upon high-class work, or where expensive
materials are used. On the other hand, some boy labourers,

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 247

especially errand boys in small shops, get no more than
5s. a week.

The approximation of the learner's wage to that of the
errand boy in a small shop is the result of several causes.
First, the shop boy working his way up to the bench or
spending part of his time at it, is growing more and more
common ; and, secondly, employers of other learners are
coming to use them in this way for the first two years and so
have raised their wages accordingly. Hence the existence of
this alternative way of acquiring the trade, and the increasing
amount of labouring work that they do, have improved
their pecuniary position, whilst causing them often to take
longer to get f full money. Thirdly, the wage-contract has
extended itself to the apprentice and learner, not quite to
the same extent as with Migration, but still to a considerable
degree. Thus their earnings in their earlier years now
approximate far more nearly to their value as workers,
and as a consequence, the employer does not undertake
to do as much as before in the way of teaching them. When,
further, the conditions do not allow, as often they do not,
of a full knowledge being acquired in a single firm, there is
much to be said for such an arrangement. The result of
these various causes, therefore, is that where the errand-
boy with a chance to learn gets from 55. to 75., the learner
as a rule gets at least 55., so that in most London trades
initial wages at fourteen are not as a rule below this, 45.
being uncommon and 35. rare. The chief exceptions have
already been described, and at the start wages are some-
times lower when apprenticeship lasts for four years
only. In some cases, moreover, the yearly increase may be
bigger later on, to compensate for the lower initial rate,
but, on the other hand, those who start fresh at fifteen or
sixteen may have to be content with 5$.

Five shillings a week, therefore, often constitutes a
tacitly recognized minimum wage for learners, and this
fact goes far to justify the parents' insistence upon it.
Moreover its frequency shows that there is little ground for
the fear, which is sometimes expressed, that the learning of

248 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

a trade will involve nominal or very low initial wages.
Even where the material is valuable, the necessity for
these can be avoided, either, as in high-class bookbinding,
by a seven years' apprenticeship, or, as with certain
saddlery firms, by only raising the rate by is. a year instead
of by two or more. With the latter a lad starts usually
at 6s.

Among the chief branches of skilled employment Printing
pays, on the whole, the best wages, and these are often as
good as those paid to ordinary boy labourers of corre-
sponding ages. The prevalence of seven years' service gives
the employer a longer time to recoup himself for any initial
losses, and the greater demand for them shows the employ-
ment of apprentices to be more profitable than elsewhere.
Except in small offices, the wage is seldom below 6s. in the
first year and is frequently 75. or even 8s. The latter
appears at one time to have been the minimum in the
large society offices, but the former is now more common.
In the last year the wage is usually about £i, but is sometimes
more. Moreover, the actual wage is frequently increased
by Good Conduct Money, usually of about 2s. a week, and
sometimes by a bonus. 55. to start with is usual in Engineer-
ing, but sometimes as much as 8s. is paid ; but here many
boys do not commence work till fifteen or sixteen. 55.
or 6s. again is normal in Building and Woodworking with
occasional higher rates. In Woodcarving, for instance, 8s.
is common, but the apprentices have as a result to do much
labouring work for the first two years or so. In Silver-
smithing and Art Metal, where there are many small shops,
and in the making of leather goods, the learner usually be-
gins as an errand-boy at 55. or sometimes in the latter at 6s.

Interesting information as to the wages of boys are given
in the recent series of Board of Trade reports on earnings
and Hours of Labour in various trades in 1906 or 1907.
The exact figures required for the purpose of estimating
the initial wages are not available, but a sufficient approxima-
tion to them can be obtained. The number of lads and boys
of all kinds employed at different rates are given for the

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT 249

United Kingdom only, but the average earnings, both of
apprentices and of other boys, in London and other import-
ant districts, are stated separately. Moreover the Reports
give, in almost every case for apprentices and in some
instances for other lads, the median and the upper and
lower quartile,1 and this further assists us to calculate the
proportion earning the lower rates in London. Further
they provide separate returns for those who worked full time
and for all boys, including those who worked more or less
than this, and also distinguish time and piece workers.
The figures given below refer only to time-workers who
worked full time. Of these, taking the country as a whole,
the percentages in different wage groups below 6s. per week
were as follows.

Under
35.

35. and
under
45.

45. and
under
55-

55. and
under
6s.

Building Trades— All towns ... 1-4
Towns of more than 100,000 inhabi-
tants 0*6

3-3

2'2

7-1
6-1

n-8
11*3

Sawmilling 0-3
Cabinet-making and Machined Wood-
work 1-8

0-8

4 -4

2-9
9*4

8-3
12-8

Engineering and Boilermaking . . 0-3
Shipbuilding and Repairing . . . I o-i
Miscellaneous Metal. . .2*2

1-4

0-4

O*7

6'9
2'5

3-6

n-8

3-7

9*S

Railway Service 0-3
Printing 0-8
Bookbinding .... . |

o-o
2*5

1*7

0'5

7-6

9*4

3'7
13-9

I VO

Paper Stationery 0-2
Tailoring (Bespoke) .•«.... '7*7
Tailoring (Ready-made) .... 0-6
Boots and Shoes o-i

!•!

IO'I

1-7
°*5

6-5

IO'I

6-1
4-6

18-0
18-5
10-9
10-9

1 Professor Bowley defines these as follows : " When we are
dealing with a group of persons or things, each of which possesses
some measurable quantity, such as height or wage, we can choose
certain quantities which describe the group in brief. Suppose all
the items are arranged in a series in ascending order of the magni-
tude of this attribute, the magnitude appertaining to the item half-
way up this series is called the median. The magnitudes one-
quarter and three-quarters up the series are called the quartiles,

250

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Thus, taking the whole Kingdom, very few boys earn less
than 35. a week for full time, and the number earning
between 35. and 45. is only considerable in Bespoke Tailor-
ing and Cabinet Making. In eight groups out of twelve it is
less than two per cent., and in only two cases does it exceed
four. Even between 45. and 55. it is less than 5 per cent,
in five cases and in four more, it ranges from 6 to just over 7
per cent., these latter including Engineering, where the age
of entry is usually rather later than in other industries, and
Building. Now, except in the smaller towns and a few large
ones where wages are low,1 these rates are likely to be those
of boys in their first year. Hence for all towns a boy's
initial wage will range from 45. to 6s., from 45. 6d. to 55.
being perhaps most common. On the other hand, these
returns include improvers and boy labourers, and so the
proportion of apprentices and learners who earn the lower
rates will probably be somewhat greater, whilst the firms
which make them will, on the whole, be paying rates some-
what above the average.

On the other hand, London wages for boys are as a rule
higher and often much higher than elsewhere, as is shown
by the following table : —

Average

Wages.

Lower

Quar-
tile.

London.

All
Districts.

London.

All Dis-
tricts.

Building Trades —
Improvers

5. d.

24 O

S. d.
IQ 6

5. d.
18 6

5. d.
14 6

Apprentices

ii 8

8 2

7 o

5 o

Other Boys

12 6

lower and upper respectively." Thus in the case of the 10,350
apprentices in the Building firms about whom information was
given for the purposes of the Board of Trade Report, the wage of
the 5, 1 75th apprentice measuring upwards represented the median,
and the lower and upper quartiles lay between those of the 2,577th
and 2,578th and the 7, 752nd and 7,753rd respectively.

1 This is illustrated by the decrease in the percentages earning
the lower rates in some of the larger towns.

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 251

Average Wages.

Lower i
London

Qu-r-
tile.
All Dis-
tricts.1

London.

All
Districts.

Sawmilling —
Apprentices

s. d.

9 9
10 8

IO IO

ii 9
ii 5

12 II

10 I

12 6

10 2

12 2

9 ii

II 2
10 2

8 9
10 8

15 °

10 2

s. d.

9 I
9 8

7 6

10 2

8 o

II 10

9 3

8 10
8 3

8 ii
8 i

8 ii

8 2

6 3

8 7

9 5
9 9

9 4
10 4

S. G

8
7

6
6

o
o

6
6

s. d.

6 o
1 °

5 ^
6 o

c O

6 o

6 o
5 6

6 o
5 o

6 o
5 6

4 o

6 o
6 o

6 o

Other Boys

Cabinet Making and Allied
Trades —
Apprentices

Other Boys

Engineering and Boilermaking —
Apprentices

Other Boys ....

Railway Locomotive, Carriage
and Wagon Shops —
Apprentices

Printing —
Apprentices

Other Boys ....

Bookbinding —
Apprentices

Other Boys
Paper Stationery —
Apprentices ....

Other Boys

Tailoring (Bespoke) —
Apprentices ....

Other Boys

Tailoring (Ready-made) —
\pprentices

Other Boys
Boots and Shoes —
Apprentices

Other Boys ....

Thus the trades represented cover a very considerable
part of London industry, and over so wide an area it is re-
markable how very little difference there is between the
wages of apprentices and other boys. In the majority of
cases, the latter exceed the former by about is. or is. 6d.
per week, whilst in Printing, Bookbinding and Bootmaking
apprentices get appreciably more than others. Moreover,
in London at any rate, this difference is caused little, if at

252 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

all, by higher earnings on the part of the older apprentices, for
the lower quartiles, when available, show much the . same
differences as do the average rates, the only important
exceptions to this being found in the case of Printing and
Bookbinding. It should be remembered, however, that
the phrase " other boys " includes many learners of various
kinds, and differences in wages would probably be greater
if the comparison were made, not, as here, between appren-
tices and other boys, but between learners in these industries
and boy labourers of all kinds, including shop, errand and
messenger boys, and those in unskilled factory employ-
ment.

Sawmilling is the only trade in which apprentices do not
earn considerably more in London than elsewhere, the
average being only 95. gd. as against 95. id. and the lower
quartile 6s. 6d. as against 6s. Otherwise the difference in
the average varies from 2s. up to 35. 8^. except in the Boot
Trade, where it is even larger, and the lower quartile is
usually about 2s. higher. In Building, Cabinet Making and
Engineering it is 75., and in the Printing Group 8s. or more ;
and it is worth noting that Cabinet Making has a large
number earning less than 5s. in the United Kingdom as a
whole, but that in London its lower quartile is the same, 75.,
as in Building and Engineering and its average rate very
little smaller. In one case, however, Bespoke Tailoring, the
tower quartile is as low as 55. so that a good proportion of
the boys must be getting less. This is probably due to the
high quality of much of it and to the value of its material,
which involves payment of lower wages to apprentices.

Hence it seems certain that with this exception few learners
in these trades have to start at less than 55. a week in
London, whilst other evidence suggests the existence of a
large group there which commences at that rate. Unfor-
tunately the Reports give no direct information on this
point. Moreover, the small proportion of bound appren-
tices further reduces the number of those who are likely
to earn less, and increases that of those who get a higher
initial wage. The available evidence, therefore, supports

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 253

the contention that 5s. is the normal payment for a learner
in his first year, and that anything below this is uncommon.

The next point to be considered is the rate at which wages
rise. This will, as a rule, be a fixed one only where there is
some sort of agreement or understanding. Increments of
2s. are perhaps most common with sometimes a rather
bigger increase later on ; but with the less formal conditions
2s. 6d. a year is not unusual. Sometimes, however, they
only rise at first by is. annually, especially where the trade
is an expensive one to teach, and this has to be met by a
slower increase. On the other hand, lower initial wages
may be compensated for by a more than usually rapid one.
Bigger increments, moreover, are frequently given in the
later years of service, and a rise of 55. or more in the last
is sometimes found. But the frequency with which boys
are paid according to their value or are given an additional
increase above the agreed rate, if they are worth it, makes
it impossible to say definitely what their standard will be.
Those who are so situated usually get better wages than
others do, but have less certainty of regular employment.

In the last year of service, therefore, the wage varies
enormously, both on this account and because of differences
in its length. Usually the teaching of an apprentice involves
some loss in the earlier part of his time, for which the em-
ployer looks to recoup himself later on. He cannot, as a
result, afford to pay so much, when it only lasts four or five
years as when it continues for six or seven. This is one
reason for the comparatively high rates prevalent in the
Printing Trades, which in the last year are seldom below
2is. and are sometimes as much as 255. In the Building
Trades i8s. to £i are more usual with six or seven years, and
in Engineering, Silversmithing and the Furniture Trades
about 155. in the last of five, though more is sometimes given.
The normal rates, therefore, would probably be 2os. or 2 is.
with seven years, i8s. with six and 145. or 155. with five.
But learners of from nineteen to twenty-one who are "paid
what they are worth " often get very much higher money,
particularly in the Building Trades.

254 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Compared with past years, the wages of learners have
undoubtedly increased, and not only are they higher to
start with, but they progress more rapidly from year to year.
Moreover, with some few exceptions, this improvement
has been general and continuous for some time. Thus
a South London Labour Exchange Official, with thirty years'
experience of Engineering, put the wages in it at 8s. to
commence, and 2s. or 2s. 6d. a year rise, instead of 55. and
is. a year when he served his own time ; and whilst the
initial wage is not generally so high as this, the rate of pro-
gression certainly is, and both have without doubt improved
considerably.

Many of the fears entertained by parents are, therefore,
more or less baseless, and there is not as a rule any necessity
to accept less than 55. in order to secure a chance to learn,
though from lack of information less will sometimes be
taken. Many boys, however, get this rate without assist-
ance, and the development of Juvenile Labour Exchanges
will enormously improve their power of bargaining. Again
the difference at the start bet ween learners' and boy labourers'
wages is often small, notably in Building, Cabinet Making
and probably Engineering ; and even allowing for the
various boys' jobs not attached to any particular trade,
for vanguards and for unskilled factory labour, it is still
not very great and taking a general average is probably
covered by from 2s. to 35. a week. The learner can usually,
therefore, obtain 5s. or 6s. as against the 75. or 8s. of the
boy labourer, and if they can get the former, many are
ready to give up the latter in return for an opportunity to
learn something.

The present trouble, therefore, is due less to the actual
wages that accompany a chance to learn than to lack of
information as to what they are. Hence it is necessary
not only to bring home to parents that present high wages
may mean future low earnings, but still more to dispel the
idea that the learning of a trade necessarily involves very
low wages at first, or even no wages at all, when in fact a
reasonable amount can be obtained. Often they reject the

ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT. 255

idea of skilled work because they think less will be offered
than they can afford, when this is not the case. Secondly,
the available jobs must be put within as easy reach as
possible of the boys who need them. Thirdly, provision
must be made for those abler children whose circumstances
compel them to obtain good money at once ; and certain
jobs do give this and at the same time offer means of advance-
ment to a smart lad. Finally it will probably be desirable
to reorganize methods of payment, either to give rather
more at first in return for a slower rate of increase, or con-
versely to encourage parents by offering a higher wage
than at present in the last few years. Like many other
things, therefore, boys' wages require to be organized and
regularized so as to meet existing needs, and to assist their
proper placing and training.

CHAPTER XL
Ax WORK IN THE SHOP.

Importance of way in which teaching is given in detail — Employers
undertake less than formerly — Causes of This — The Promise
to Teach means less — Opportunity to Learn — Contract may
only cover part of a trade — Influence of rise in rates of wages.

Responsibility for seeing a boy is taught rests mainly on
Foreman — Large and small shops compared— In some cases,
however, it must rest with the men — Foreman may delegate
actual instruction — Question of time he can give to it — He
gives general supervision, help and advice.

Different Arrangements — Boy definitely in charge of a man :
Joinery ; Following-up — For how long ? — Among the men
generally — Special Arrangements — The Apprentices' Room with
a man paid to teach them — Its Advantages and Disadvantages-
Amount of teaching varies as a result of various causes — Teach-
ing and Instinctive Acquirement of Knowledge — Importance
of Boy's own Behaviour.

Mode of Acquiring a Trade — General Course varies Little — Boy
made generally useful at first — Strong Arguments to support
this, if it is not too long — Progress after this — Trades in which
there is a regular Progression in the work- — Trades where there
is not — Illustrations : Upholstery ; Joinery ; Compositing —
Course much the same in absence of Agreement, but takes longer
— Learning falls generally into two parts : to do the work, to
do it expeditiously.

Payment of Foremen or Men for teaching not common —
Men's attitude usually favourable — Exceptions to this and
Reasons for them — The Foremen's Position — Usually do their
work excellently.

Defects of Existing Methods — Failure to give actual teaching,
but boy pushed on as rapidly as he can learn — Failure to teach
more than a part of the trade — In the worst cases means serious
exploitation — Less serious form of it — Defective teaching mainly
due to circumstances— Deliberate Exploitation not common —
Existing abuses consist chiefly of some form of over-specializa-
tion— Its Advantages and Disadvantages to Employers — Not
much to be gained by it under existing conditions in London.

London demand is for " men, not boys " — Provincial supply

256

AT WORK IN THE SHOP. 257

of Labour strengthens this — Higher cost to employer of learners
than formerly — They are not profitable except in a few trades —
Difficulties rather that boys are not taken than that they are
not taught.

IN a preliminary chapter, I pointed out that two problems
have to be distinguished, namely : how a boy learns a trade,
and how he is actually taught it. The first of these has
already been dealt with, and we have now reached the
question of how knowledge of a trade is imparted in detail
and of how a contract to do so is carried out in practice.
This second problem is of little less importance than the
first. Well conceived arrangements may go astray or, on
the contrary, when a boy is left to pick up his trade as best
he can, his employer may take so great an interest in him
that he succeeds excellently. Very much, as a result, de-
pends upon individuals, but still, after all allowances are
made, the value of the teaching will, on the whole, vary with
the excellence of the arrangements under which it is
imparted. In other words, the general conception will affect
the details.

It is necessary, therefore, to ask, first of all, what it is that
the employer undertakes to do, and what are the considera-
tions in return for which he does it. Generally speaking,
boys are taken under circumstances that neither bind, nor
enable, him to give the same attention to them as in the
past. Premiums are rare ; wages are from the very be-
ginning much higher than formerly ; and the period of
service is shorter. Thus the employer gets far less in return
for teaching a boy, and the latter gets nearly his full value
as a wage-earner, even in the case of Apprenticeships and
other definite agreements. The effect of this upon his
earnings has already been considered. Its effect upon
training is that he has to do more for himself, and that his
master has neither the means nor the obligation to give
him as much as before. Self-interest, indeed, may lead
him to take trouble over a smart boy in order to make a
good profit from his last few years, but with Informal
Regular Service this is checked by the fact that the lad

258 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

may, and sometimes does, take himself elsewhere just as
he is getting valuable.

Normally, therefore, a boy can only claim " opportunity to
learn " for himself and not definite training, and is himself
responsible far more than he used to be for making his own
way. If, however, this is the case where there is some form
of contract or agreement to teach, it is still more true of
other methods of employment, where the learner is simply
paid for what he does and teaches himself as best he can, as
with Migration, with Working and Learning under Regular
Service, and sometimes with Following-Up. Modern con-
ditions of teaching, in short, do not impose upon the
employers the same obligations as in the past, and as a result
they leave far more to the boy, though many of the
former give much time and trouble to the matter, even
when they are not really bound to do so.

To some extent the displacement of Apprenticeships by
less formal agreements and understandings marks this
change ; but it is due only in part to this, and is largely
influenced by other modern developments, such as machine-
production and subdivision. Whatever the cause, the
result is that a promise to teach means not only something
different, but something less than it used to do. First, it
is becoming much more than formerly a contract to pay
wages, and even with formal agreements what is paid is
often such as to preclude the devotion of the same time and
attention to the matter.

Secondly, what the employer undertakes is rather to give
the boy opportunity to learn for himself than actually to teach
him. The boy comes into the shop under certain conditions,
is put among the men and given work to do, and, by seeing
the men at work and getting help first from one and then
from another, is able in time to secure promotion and
gradually make his way. Not seldom there is not, and cannot
be, the same systematic teaching as was once given, at least in
many big shops. This is not entirely a question of wages,
but in part of organization and methods of production ; and
the latter often make it difficult to teach the whole of a

AT WORK IN THE SHOP. 259

trade in a single firm. The result was summed up as follows
by a large firm of Builders : " We are prepared to take a
boy and do what we can to teach him, but we always refuse,
owing to the changed conditions of the present day, to take
a man's money to do so."

Thirdly, the contract to teach may not cover the whole
of a trade, but only such parts of it as are carried out by the
firm. In joinery, much of what is joiners' work in small
shops is done in the machine room of the larger ones and
cannot therefore be taught to the apprentices. In cabinet-
making and silversmithing, only certain articles may be
made, and so a boy can only be given such as the firm
gets.

Again, as in Publishers' Bookbinding, a large business may
subdivide its work among a number of comparatively
simple processes, and in no one of them can much be taught
because in none is there much to teach. The employer,
therefore, only undertakes to teach such parts of the trade
as he is engaged on. The case of Publishers' Bookbinding,
indeed, is an extreme one in which the time for Indentured
Apprenticeships has probably passed. But frequently the
teaching is inevitably limited in one direction or another,
though not to the same extent ; and this limitation has to
be met by a reduced period of service, by Migration or
by improved instruction in Trade Schools.

Finally, general conditions, and not least the scale of
wages paid, render it necessary to use boys for the first year
or two as boy labourers. Certain rates can only be
earned by doing, for part of the time at any rate, other
work than that of a learner, since otherwise a firm could not
afford to pay them. Sometimes there is even a tacit under-
standing that this should be done, and less frequently it is a
definite condition of employment. Boys have to earn
their wages, and sometimes can only do so in this way, and
where they are free to leave at any time the need for this
will be particularly marked ; for as was pointed out by a
prominent member of the staff of a certain Technical
Institute :

260 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

" The employer (in such cases) cannot afford to look ahead
with the learner, because he has to look to the immediate return
of each week's wages. If he loses by pushing the boy on, and
on the first year or two there often is some loss, he cannot feel
sure that the boy, having been made worth more than he is
actually paid, will not move elsewhere in order to get his full
value."

Thus in various ways the actual agreement, or the con-
ditions of employment where there is no agreement, commit
the employer to less than formerly. And, on the other hand,
a boy under modern conditions is frequently in a position
to teach himself more than in the past. There is sometimes,
for instance, less actual learning and more practising of
what has been learnt, and the Trade Schools are taking an
increasing part in the matter. Whatever the cause, there-
fore, the fact remains that to-day a boy is paid more money
and receives less attention.

Coming next to actual details, the responsibility for
teaching rests in general on the employer, and in particular
upon the foreman, in whose charge the learner is put. Only
a general supervision is possible for the head of a big firm
or for the General Manager of a large Limited Company,
engrossed, as they must be, mainly in the commercial side
of the business. Often, therefore, the foreman has practi-
cally a free hand, whilst the engagement and dismissal of
workmen is frequently left to his discretion. Sometimes
the existence of a Works Manager acts as a check upon him,
but in many cases his power is only limited by an appeal
to the employer in case of ill-treatment. With unbound
learners and improvers, moreover, he may be even more
absolute, and not only their teaching but their employment
and wages will be left to him. He will exercise his discretion
in raising shop boys to the bench, or in engaging improvers,
according to^the needs^of the work, and will pay them
" what theyjare worth. "^[Occasionally " the office " arranges
for and controls the apprentices, but leaves the others to
him. ^

In firms of moderate size, however, the partners can

AT WORK IN THE SHOP. 261

usually exercise a much stricter supervision'. The actual
teaching is still left to the foreman or the men, but, as one
employer said, " we are always in and out of the place and
can see what is going on," or, in the words of another, " we
are our own Works' Managers, and though we do not actually
teach we are always looking after the teaching." In small
shops, again, it is often done by the " guv'nor," or "one of the
guv'nors," thus bringing employer and learner into close per-
sonal contact. When the former is out, the lad will be put
in charge of a leading hand, and may be so entirely if he has
to be away a great deal. Where there are "two guv'nors,'
however, one will usually look after the commercial side
of the business and the other the workshop, with full charge
of the boys. But even with only one employer, he will at
least take the place of a foreman in a big shop, leaving the
men to fill in the details.

In some trades, indeed, especially under the method of
Following-up, the chief responsibility must rest upon the
men. Here a boy is far more under their control than
under that of the foreman, and cannot be moved about
from one to another like the ordinary apprentice. This is
particularly true of Plumbers, for usually they are scattered
in pairs all over a building or even over a number of buildings.
But trades where these conditions prevail are not numerous,
and normally the responsibility is undertaken by the
foreman in a large, and the employer in a small, firm.

The detailed teaching, however, may not be, and fre-
quently is not, done by the foreman, and with a large number
of apprentices in a shop this would be impossible. But
the boy is put in his charge, and he makes all the necessary
arrangements for having him taught. He chooses the
man with whom each is to work and sees that he does his
duty by him, or, if a lad simply works among the men, that
he gets fair treatment from them. He probably shows him
how to do the first piece of work, continues to help him with
advice when in difficulties, is at hand to see he does not
acquire wrong methods of working, and at the right time he
puts him to new and better jobs or to do one by himself.

262 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

He may even be given the discretion as to whether to
pay him an extra rise in wages. That is to say, as part of
his normal duties, he exercises general control and has to
see that a boy is taught, whether by himself or by others.

It is sometimes said, indeed, that foremen have no time to
teach the apprentices, who are thus left to get along as best
they can. The detailed teaching has certainly to be imparted
by individual men. But experience shows that as a body
the foremen can and do exercise an effective control, though
some individuals among them may fail to do so. Much of
the teaching of general principles belongs rather to the
sphere of the Trade School, but they contrive nevertheless
to give the boys every chance of becoming good tradesmen.

Still the work of a foreman is limited to supervision of
this kind and, apart from special circumstances, teaching
is carried out in detail partly by the men and partly by
the boy himself, the actual arrangements varying from
trade to trade.

Sometimes a boy is put definitely in charge of a single man.
In joinery, for instance, "put him with a man" is the
almost invariable answer to a question on this point ; for
in this trade men normally work in pairs at a bench and the
boy replaces the second man. The foreman distributes the
work to the joiner, who gives the boy such of it as he is able
to do and gradually brings him along, and exercises his
discretion as to moving him about from one to another. If,
however, the lad can get sufficient variety of work, he will
probably stay continuously with the same man, at any rate
for some time. Considerable responsibility, indeed, still
rests upon the foreman . He has to see, for instance, that the
man does his duty by the boy, and that he does not keep
him back for fear he shall spoil the work. This method
also obtains where Following-up prevails, and in a few cases,
like the Fleshing of Hides, and Gold and Silver Wire Draw-
ing, the learner is still bound direct to the journeyman. In
other trades again, he may be in charge of two or more.
Thus in solid plastering two plasterers may have a
boy to help them and to learn the trade from them, whilst

AT WORK IN THE SHOP. 263

in engineering an apprentice may be set to work with a
squad.

Few boys, however, stay with a man throughout their
whole period of service. Sometimes they may do so for a
considerable time, but at others only for a few months, or
at most a year or two, and as soon as they have mastered
the elements of a trade, they start to work by themselves.

This is not unusual even with time wages, and is common
where payment is by the piece. In the latter case they go
for a few months to be taught by a man, who makes what he
can out of them, and after this are put on piece-work at a
fraction of the ordinary rate.

Finally, many simply work among the men and get what
help they can. Usually they have a man on each side of
them at the bench to whom they can turn for assistance when
in difficulties. Moreover, they learn a great deal, not as the
result of direct teaching, but of keeping their eyes open,
watching others at work, and instinctively getting to do
what they do.

Special arrangements are sometimes made. Certain
firms find an older apprentice better able to teach a younger
one than a grown man ; whilst others prefer not to do this,
either because one boy, being as yet imperfectly taught, may
lead the other astray, or from fear that they will get " larking
about." More important is the provision of a separate room
for the apprentices with a special foreman to teach them.
To this suitable work is allotted, which has to be carried
out at a price as in other departments ; and usually the boys
are gradually drafted among the men in their later years.

To make special arrangements for teaching and to provide
a special teacher has many advantages, but the policy is
also open to certain objections. The apprentice loses
much from not being among the men and from not seeing
them continually at work. He may thus miss what is one
of the most valuable parts of his apprenticeship — the
knowledge that he instinctively acquires from watching
skilled men at work. Instead he sees other apprentices
who have learnt only part of the trade, and may in this

264 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

way acquire from them wrong methods of working. This
practice is most common in the Printing Trades, and is only
profitable with a large number of learners. Hence the
foreman can only give a limited time to each one of them,
and the younger boys largely depend on the help and advice
of the older ones. Now a youth, being inexperienced, easily
acquires wrong notions and in teaching others passes them
on, and the bad habits that result are often difficult to
eradicate. In any case his help is less valuable than that of
a skilled man.

Moreover, a boy needs not only to learn how to do the
work, but how to do it on business lines, that is to turn it out
at the pace and in the way required. This he can learn best
in the shop itself, and the methods of the apprentices' room
may not be the same. To some extent, however, these
defects are mitigated by drafting the boys among the men
later on or by keeping the apprentices not in another place
but in a different part of the room or, as in compositing,
in the apprentices' " ship." Finally, whilst it may prevent
a boy from running wild about the shop, this practice may
lead to other abuses. In the Printing Trades, for instance,
apprentices in certain firms used to be employed in this
way in a separate department and after a short time used
to be put on half piece-rates and encouraged thereby to
remain at the plain book-setting, where they could earn
good money at once, instead of learning other parts of the
business; but this abuse is now far less common than it was.
Altogether in estimating the value of the apprentices' room
one strikes a nice balance of advantage and disadvantage.

To sum up, therefore, the general supervision of a boy
mainly rests with the foreman and the detailed teaching
with the men. The attention that he gets varies greatly,
partly with the terms of his service and partly with the
character of the firm. But under modern conditions the
boy takes and must take a considerable share in teaching
himself, since the wages he earns necessitate this and methods
of production make it feasible. Often he has to learn less
and to learn it more perfectly, and therefore spends less

AT WORK IN THE SHOP. 265

time learning and more in practising what he has learnt.
Thus the latter becomes more important than before, and a
higher level of skill is accompanied by a narrower range.

Secondly, actual teaching often plays a smaller part than
the knowledge which a boy instinctively acquires by con-
tinuously being among skilled men and seeing them at work.
Its results may also be less permanent. When simply taught
the right way to do something, he may very easily lapse back
into his old wrong methods. But, having seen the men doing
it in a certain way over and over again, he comes naturally
to do the same, and to hold the tools and work the material
just as they do, and as a rule he has ample opportunity to do
this. " The boy," I was told, " has power to see for himself.
The sensible boy keeps his eyes open and not always glued
to his work and watches the men working and sees how they
do it and so gets to learn." Providing he does not talk
and waste the men's time or his own, no objection will be
made, except in a few very bad firms, and he will thus pick
up a lot. AS one employer put it, " this is a business affair,
and we can't sit round in a circle holding a class, and it
would be no good if we did/' Definite, careful, systematic
training is still wanted, but it is wanted in the form of help,
advice and guidance to control the boy in teaching himself,
and some one is required to see that he does not get into bad
habits and methods of working. Whether he does or does
not obtain what he needs will depend largely upon himself.

For his own behaviour will do much to determine whether
he is pushed on or left to himself or even kept back. If he
is civil and obliging and reasonably smart and alert, he will
get ample assistance both from master and men. If a
lad takes trouble about himself, others will do so for him.
" If a boy will look after our interests," said one employer,
" we will look after his." If, however, he is lazy and uncivil,
foremen and men soon get tired of him and tell him to find
out for himself, or even put hindrances in his way. At times,
indeed, a foreman may expect too much and lose patience
with a dull, plodding boy who is doing his best to learn.
But normally if he does not get help, either he is not fitted

266 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

to the trade or it is through some fault of his own. It he is
slack, careless or unobliging, he puts everybody's back up,
and if he does not learn the simpler work, he cannot go on
to the more advanced ; for as one foreman put it : "If
boys are kept back it is because they are not capable of any-
thing better." Abuses do exist, but for much for which
the employer gets the blame they are themselves really
responsible.

The mode of acquiring different parts of a trade may next
be considered. The order in which boys are put through
the work will be much the same under any method, though
the time taken over it will vary. For in any case certain
things have to be learnt at the beginning and others after-
wards. The method of Folio wing-up holds, perhaps, the
most independent position, since here they have first to
learn how to assist a mechanic, and then how to be one.
They start, therefore, by becoming good mates or assistants
and serve as such. Afterwards they find opportunities to
commence as improvers and work their way up, and even
when apprentices are taken in these trades, their course is
much the same. Otherwise the difference simply consists
in the fact that some, bound apprentices for instance, have
their progress arranged for them and that others have to
make each stage for themselves as best they can.

As a general rule a boy is first put to make himself generally
useful about the shop, sweeping up, running messages,
getting the men's dinners and so on. Thus by serving the
men with tools and materials, he gets to know their names
and uses. He also does certain other necessary jobs, like
" minding the glue," and in his spare time is given simple
work, such as sandpapering, filing-up or breaking up type.
Thus whether engaged as an errand-boy or not, he spends his
first six months or a year in this way, thereby acquiring
valuable and necessary experience. A minority of firms
regard this as waste of time and prefer to put a boy straight
to the bench, but if it is used in moderation there is much
to be said for it.

Coming fresh to his trade, a lad naturally knows nothing

AT WORK IN THE SHOP. 267

about it, such manual training as he has had being of little
direct use. He possesses at best a very slight knowledge of
the different jobs, and none whatever of the materials.
Now he acquires this and other preliminary information
better and more easily when he is knocking about the shop
than if he were tied to the bench. Above all, by being about
among the men, he gets to know the general character and
methods of the trade far better than if he were
limited from the first to his one small job. When he does
go to the bench, therefore, he has a much clearer idea of
what the work is and grasps more easily the part played
in it by each particular process.

Secondly, a boy straight from school has been used to
have plenty of exercise and variety and does not take kindly
to sitting down all day in one place. It is far better, there-
fore, to start him running about, with at most part time
at the bench. Otherwise if he is tied to it all the time, the
initial monotony may cause him to throw up the job.
Moreover, when he starts work, his hands are soft and in-
clined to blister, especially where it is heavy and the tools
big and hard, and the blisters become sores if he is con-
tinually working with them. A little time spent making
himself useful, in short, will enable his hands gradually to
harden and he will suffer less from blisters.

Thirdly, the present high wages are often more than an
employer could afford, unless he could use the boy in this
way at first ; and, on the other hand, a lad who cannot afford
to take small wages is thus enabled to get good money and a
fair chance to learn a trade at the same time. Finally, this
use of learners has the great advantage that it is not neces-
sary to employ boys solely to do the errands without the
chance of anything better ; and so it might even be
beneficial if the policy of sharing them out among the
younger apprentices could be extended.

Hence the advantages of thus employing boys for a short
time appear to outweigh the disadvantages, and machine-
production often leaves so little work that is suitable for
youngsters as to render it necessary. The question depends

268 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

rather on how long they are kept at it, and exploitation
consists less in its adoption than in its extension. Six
months is certainly justifiable, but anything more than this
would usually be too long. No hard and fast rule can be
laid down, since the time must vary with wages and con-
ditions of service, and according to whether a part of the
time is, or is not, spent at the bench. Nevertheless some
general understanding as to what under different circum-
stances would constitute a fair period would be more
than acceptable.

After this the boy goes to bench or machine and gets
work suited to his capacity. Some typical trades will be
described, but a few salient features of his development
may first be noticed. Sometimes, especially with skilled
machine trades, there is a kind of natural progression from
one job to another. The boy is moved from "feeding,"
" pulling-out," and such like, to work the simplest machine,
then he is promoted to rather a more difficult one and so
throughout the business. Instances of this are afforded by
woodworking machinists, printers' machine managers and
engineers' turners. Occasionally an arrangement will be
made to put him on to each job in an agreed order. Here
the great danger is specialization on to single machines,
a danger that is rendered greater where Migration prevails,
arid, in Woodworking, by the existence of sawmills in which
only a few machines are used. In Printing, however, it
appears to have been avoided, thanks possibly to its Appren-
ticeship System. This natural progression, indeed, is not
confined to the machine trades, but is found in some kinds
of hand work, notably French Polishing, Painting and
Upholstery.

Elsewhere the different stages are not always so clear.
There is usually some preliminary work for a boy to begin
on, though in many cases improvements in machinery have
left very little that is suitable for the younger ones ; and
sometimes the different branches of the work present nearly
equal difficulties, so that he just goes to whatever is most
convenient. This will largely depend on the orders the

AT WORK IN THE SHOP. 269

shop happens to be engaged upon at the moment, especially
where these vary much and rapidly. In every trade, how-
ever, there are easier and harder parts and a boy begins with
the former. What actually happens in different cases may
perhaps be made clearest by the description of the practice in
three important ones, Upholstery, Joinery and Compositing,
as given to me by men engaged in them. The first two
illustrate respectively the presence and absence of natural
progression. The third occupies an intermediate position.

The foreman in the first case was employed by a high-class
West London firm. Here the boy starts at the work
straight away, tacking the webbing which receives the
springs to the frame of the chair, building the foundations for,
and then sewing on, the springs. It takes him about a
year to do this. He next learns to put on the first stuffing,
building it up to give a good foundation for the second and
so ensure a firm and even surface when the chair is finished.
After mastering the first, he goes on to the second, stuffing,
where more skill is required, and then to put on the inner, and
finally the outer, covering. This firm takes a great interest
in its apprentices, and does not keep them monotonously
at one kind of work, but gives them others as occasion
offers. Thus in a few years a boy can make a simple chair
throughout, and afterwards has to take up the more delicate
work, such as stuffing difficult shapes, and cutting and putting
on expensive coverings. Where, as in this case, the material
is valuable, he can only be trusted with it towards the end
of his time. Moreover, in a shop of this kind, working
largely in private houses, there are other branches to learn
which would not be needed in a wholesale house — such as
room planning and curtain and blind cutting. The firm in
question indentures its boys with a premium and takes
special care to teach them thoroughly. Its work requires a
highly skilled type of mechanic.

Very similar descriptions of Joinery were given by two
foremen, one of a large furnishing, and the other of a well-
known Building and Contracting, firm, each of which
does work of a high class. Here each foreman, unlike the

270 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

upholsterer, believes in keeping the boy running about the
shop for a few months to serve the men and so learn the
nature and uses of tools and materials. The next year is
occupied in various small jobs, sandpapering, planing-up and,
perhaps, making a small dovetail. Then he will probably
go to the bench with a man for a year or two, the foreman
seeing that he gets suitable work, and then he is given work
to do by himself, such as to make a small door. Sometimes
he will be moved backwards and forwards, working first
with a man, then alone, then with a man again and so on,
and, having once mastered the different tools, will learn
the other and more difficult parts of the trade as opportunity
offers.

The Manager of a large Society Office in Central London
described the teaching of compositors. The apprentice
starts with a reader for six months, learning to decipher all
kinds of manuscript. This appears to be the general rule.
He then goes to the store and learns all about the different
kinds of type and materials and how to break up and sort
type. After this he is drafted into the Jobbing Department,
where the apprentices' " ship " contains about six of them
and a few men. Here he either gets a little job to himself,
like a small " advert," or he works under a man, who
supervises and teaches him. Later on he will go into the
Newspaper and Book Departments to learn, first, plain
book-setting and then display and artistic work. His
final year is spent on the Linotype. This firm again is to
some extent exceptional. The teaching of the Linotype
would not necessarily be done during Apprenticeship, many
smaller firms not possessing such machines, and more often
than not an apprentice starts in the book, and not in the
jobbing, department.

These instances illustrate very fairly the progress of
teaching in good firms. Where there is no agreement, its
stages will often be less definite, and it will usually take
longer, the boy having to take his chance to pick up what he
can. In many businesses the chief difficulties are lack of
variety in the work, and the fact that the different kinds of

AT WORK IN THE SHOP. 271

it are apt to come in rushes. So he has to do whatever is in
the shop, and, when he has learnt one thing, that to which
he ought to go next may not be available. Working for
a man, however, often has the advantage that the latter
gets a variety and the boy, assisting in what he does,
necessarily gets it too.

Finally, learning usually falls into two parts, first to use
the tools and to do the ordinary work of the trade cleanly
and correctly, and secondly to acquire rapidity of working
and master its finer branches. Sometimes speed is primarily
a matter of strength, and so can only be acquired in the
later years. Hence in the earlier ones the aim should be to
give sound methods of workmanship and the power to do
a job right ; and one defect of the wage contract is that
learners are soon able to obtain goodish money by turning
out quickly a lot of common stuff and sacrifice to this both
accuracy and finish. Thus even when they are not actually
bad, their methods become slipshod and they acquire
habits which are difficult to eradicate.

The teaching of the boys is largely influenced for better
or worse by the attitude of the foremen and the men towards
them. What they do in this way is nearly always regarded
in the case of the foremen, and usually in that of the men,
as part of their ordinary duties. With the latter, when paid
by the hour, the attention given to apprentices comes out
of the employers' time and so the latter consider that they
have the right to require them, if necessary, to help and
instruct the boys. Occasionally a small extra payment is
given to compensate for their trouble, this being usually
limited to the first few months, and in rare instances part of
the premium may be handed over to the foreman. But
under modern conditions of short service, high wages and
no premium, the employer has not, as a rule, the means to
make such payments. With piece-workers, however, unless
the boys are kept entirely in the foreman's charge, some
allowance is nearly always made ; or a man or squad of
men will be allowed to have the benefit of their services
free for a few months in return for teaching them.

272 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Turning to the attitude of the men, therefore, there is
little evidence of such a general attempt on their part to
keep learners back as is sometimes alleged against them,
though there is opposition to them in certain cases. This,
as a rule, comes from individuals, and, where it is general
throughout a shop or trade, has usually some justification.
In Plumbing, for instance, it is due to the difficulty of regu-
lating the number of young mates who will become plumbers.
With learners or even improvers it is possible to fix a definite
proportion to the journeymen and to stick to it. The num-
ber of mates who will succeed in rising is an unknown
quantity, and the employers may need a wider margin
against emergencies than in other occupations. Hence the
trade is liable to get overstocked, as indeed there is reason
to think it has done recently, and the fear of overstocking
makes many of the men hostile to the ambitions of their
assistants. Sometimes, indeed, such hostility may be the only
available check on the numbers who enter an occupation ;
and similar objections are found to teaching them in shops
in which boys are employed in excessive numbers, and for
this too there is much justification.

Hostility on the part of individuals has several causes.
The successful workmen are generally well disposed towards
the lads, their own position being secure. The unsuccessful
and incompetent fear them as competitors and so are apt to
try to keep them back. Often, again, it is a matter of tem-
perament. Some men are too lazy or not sufficiently kind-
hearted to take the necessary trouble. They " won't be
bothered " with them. Others again do not possess the
capacity to teach, and it is the foreman's business to choose
the right man for the purpose. Finally much depends upon
the boy himself. " If a boy is a good boy, the men will do
anything to help him," and though sometimes they may lose
patience with a dull but willing lad, it is usually his own fault
if they are against him.

The foremen's position has already been dealt with. As
a body they take a real interest in their boys, though no
more than the men do they " suffer fools gladly." But

AT WORK IN THE SHOP. 273

those who are willing and persevering, even if somewhat
dull, nearly always find good friends in them, and the
" bully," whatever his faults and perhaps because of them,
usually makes a good teacher. Occasionally they do not
give sufficient time to the matter, being too busy with other
work, and trouble may now and again arise from the feeling
on their part that the employer gets the premium whilst
they have to do the teaching.1 Certain firms recognize the
justice of this by giving them a share in it. Again, an
employer may leave them too free a hand, and they may keep
back the boys from fear of their spoiling work, or, having to
get it out at a price, may make them stick to whatever they
can do best, and there are always a few men in every walk of
Hfe who will never do more than they are obliged. Never-
theless foremen as a body are fully alive to their duties in
this respect, and there are not many who do not make the
necessary time.

Finally, we may consider briefly the chief defects of
existing methods of training. One great cause of trouble
is their variety and lack of organization, and this is specially
liable to arise out of those in which a boy has to teach himself,
as in Migration and " Working and Learning." With
them certain difficulties are inevitable, whilst their competi-
tion with other methods helps bad employers to evade any
more formal obligations which they may have undertaken.

Two sources of defect are most prevalent in connexion
with the carrying out of agreements and understandings. The
more common, but less serious, of the two consists in leaving
a boy to find out things for himself without help, whilst
pushing him on as fast as he can learn. In short, he is
given ample opportunity to teach himself but little assistance
in doing so. As typical of this practice, an engineer's
patternmaker, afterwards a foreman and Labour Exchange
Official, thus described what happened in his own case :

1 Their attitude was described as follows : " The foreman often
says, ' My father paid so much to apprentice me, and why should this
chap's father pay the governor so much when I have got to learn
him ? ' "

274 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

" The foreman would give me a bit of work . . . which I
had to do as best I could without help, being merely sworn at,
and told to do it again, if I did it wrong. So I had to learn for
myself. When I had mastered one job I was put on to another,
and the quicker I learnt, the quicker I was pushed on because
in my trade it pays the employer to do this. I got no help
from the foreman, who merely gave me the work to do and
seldom showed me anything — only what was absolutely necessary.
The tools were put into my hands, and I had to find out for
myself."

My informant added that the teaching was below the
average in this shop, so that it did not fairly represent that
given in the trade as a whole.

The defects of this teaching, therefore, are not such as to
deprive a boy of a real chance to learn, though, in the case
of those who lack ability to do so without assistance, the
one thing may lead to the other. Either a lazy or careless
foreman leaves him too much to himself or the men are too
hard driven to assist him. In any case, being pushed for-
ward as fast as he can learn, he is apt to acquire bad habits
and ways of working, and to grow up into a slovenly and
inaccurate, though perhaps a quick, workman, especially as
firms of this type often require speed rather than accuracy
and good work.

In the more serious form of exploitation a boy is only
taught one part of the trade and soon becomes expert at it.
He is then kept to this and in the worst cases, which happily
are rare, for the whole of his time. Thus a practice, that was
formerly far more common in letter-press printing than it
is now, was that already mentioned of teaching apprentices
the book-setting only and inducing them to stick at it, by
the payment of half-piece rates, so that they came out of
their time very inexpert and of little use, either to themselves
or the employers. More frequently things are not so bad
as this, but a lad is made to stay too long at each process
before being moved on to the next, more particularly in his
earlier years. He will continue to run the errands and do
easy boys' jobs until he kicks and many boys are not good at

AT WORK IN THE SHOP. 275

kicking. In Optical Instrument work, for instance, " a
boy will be kept on simple work unless he asks to be put to
something else, when they will give it to him — if they are
kind." Much, as elsewhere, will depend on himself. If
he keeps his eyes open and has the sense to look after him-
self, he will get pushed on. If not, he will be allowed to
remain for a long time at the same work.

Modern conditions, moreover, often render adequate
teaching in a single firm impossible, however willing the
employer may be to give it. Firms which specialize on
certain parts of a trade can only teach those parts, though
they may teach them very well. Others only " make trash,"
that is, do common work. The question, therefore, is
whether the former should not be limited to a shorter period
of service and the latter debarred from taking apprentices
if their work is not good enough. Finally the terms of
engagement, notably high wages and short service, often
necessitate slower promotion to better jobs than when they
were more favourable to the employer, and the freedom of
some boys to leave at any time has, for the reasons given,
a similar effect.

It is a mistake, therefore, to regard bad faith or deliberate
exploitation on the employer's part as the main cause of
defective training. For this sometimes circumstances, and
at others mere carelessness or want of thought, are chiefly
to blame. Thus in silversmithing a few very large firms
are more highly specialized than the majority, and their
organization requires the boys to be kept to particular
departments. Hence they become highly skilled within a
narrow range and trouble arises from the fact that only a
few shops require their particular form of skill. Excessive
nervousness on the part of foremen and men, or lack of
control by the employer, is another cause that is more
potent than exploitation. Much also is due to sheer care-
lessness. Finally employers are often the scapegoats of
their boys' misdeeds. The boy is slack or lazy or trouble-
some, and fails to learn properly from some fault of his
own. Afterwards he puts the blame for his failure on his

276 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

employer and finds plenty of people who will believe him
without troubling to inquire into the facts.

Apart from a small minority of really bad firms, therefore,
much more harm is done by carelessness and want of thought,
and there is little deliberate exploitation. The wonder is
rather that under the prevailing conditions there is not
more of it. Far more injury is done by the Wage Con-
tract under which boys get their full value as workers, take
their chance of learning, and often eventually neglect the
latter. Exploitation causes a few to be trained very badly
or not at all, and the Wage Contract results in a much larger
number being only moderately taught.

It only remains to mention two abuses that are liable to
occur in the absence of any agreement. Sometimes a boy
will be taught one or two simple things and have the hope of
learning the business held out to him. He will then be kept
till about eighteen and turned adrift. Secondly, where there
is only a loose understanding, a few employers put boys off,
either permanently or for weeks at a time, just as they would
a man. Occasionally, too, this happens under the Verbal
Agreements in Engineering, but is strongly discountenanced
by the best firms.

Whilst, therefore, over-specialization appears prima facie
to be a probable cause of abuse, it has often serious disad-
vantages, which even from the narrowest business point of
view render it unprofitable. First, a boy quickly becomes
expert at a single kind of work and can do almost as much
as a man at it, especially where this is of a grade upon which
the latter cannot be profitably employed. But whilst he is
thus earning a high profit on a small wage— or, as it is often
put, much more than he is paid—he is not doing work of
anything like the same gross value as a man does. More-
over, he occupies a bench at which an adult could turn out
a far larger output, and in London, owing to high rents and
rates, bench room is a very expensive item. Hence many
employers take as few boys as possible, in order to get the
maximum return from each bench.

Secondly, the more quickly and the more completely

AT WORK IN THE SHOP. 277

a lad is taught, the larger will be the profit which he brings
to his employer in the long run. His first few years will
probably involve some loss, in the later ones he will be
nearly as good as a man and produce almost as much in
value as well as in quantity, when still getting apprentice's
wages. On the contrary, those who become expert at cer-
tain things only quickly reach a maximum beyond which
they will not go, whilst their wages rise. In time, therefore,
they will earn little more than they get. Thus in the end,
if only his period of service is sufficiently long, it is the
boy who is well taught who returns the larger profit.
And these considerations apply with particular force to
London, both because of the great variety of so much of its
work and because often the learners taken are too few to
enable specialization to be effectively carried out.

In short, so long as they can be sure of keeping him, it
pays employers to train a capable boy thoroughly, and
push him on as fast as he can learn, and most of them grasp
this fact. If, indeed, he is free to leave at any time, a
considerable risk of losing him may have to be run. On
the other hand, dull lads may be kept back, because the
foreman feels that the ultimate return is too uncertain to
justify the risk of bringing them on quickly ; and in some
cases an undue advantage may be taken. Still even so
the more common cause of complaint is not that there
is no progress at all, but that it is unduly slow, that to begin
with they are kept too long upon the errands and upon
similar work, and that after this their promotion is not as
rapid as it ought to be. On the whole, however, most firms
do the best they can for their boys, whilst it must not be
forgotten that the taking of learners is a matter of business.
The employer must see at least that he does not lose on
them, and they have to pay their way in one direction, if
not in the other.

Finally, there is in many trades considerable unwilling-
ness on the part of London employers to take and teach
more than a very few boys. This again is due to the pro-
bability that it will involve either an actual loss or at best

278 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

a very small profit. On the one hand, their cost in wages
is high, the burden of rent and rates is heavy, making
bench room too costly and valuable to be filled with learners,
and sometimes there is little suitable work for them, especi-
ally for the younger ones. Employers likewise complain of
lack of adequate control and the difficulty of getting such
as are suitable, and further allowance is required for spoilt
material and the loss of the time and tempers of foremen
and men. On the other hand, many trades, notably Build-
ing, have an ample alternative means of recruiting in the
influx into London of well-trained provincial workmen,
and in many there is a more than ample supply of adult
men. " I don't need to take apprentices," said one em-
ployer ; "if I want a man there are always some of those
poor devils about who are only too glad of a job." The
cry, therefore, is that " we want men, not boys," or, if the
latter are required at all, it is as labourers rather than
as learners.

In London, therefore, learners frequently do no more
than pay their way ; and in many trades few are taken,
whilst of those few some owe it rather to their employers'
interest in them than to business considerations. To this
statement, however, there are exceptions. For the
reasons already given, large numbers of apprentices are
employed in the Printing Trades, in which the provincial
supply proves a less adequate substitute than it is else-
where. Again, in certain parts of Engineering, such as
Ship-Repairing, learners are numerous, partly to keep up
the supply of sea-going engineers, and partly because the
extent of the provincial influx is limited, though by no means
negligible. Nevertheless the fact remains that over a
great part of London industry the demand for learners
varies from small to very small. The difficulty is not that
employers fail to teach the boys they take, but that they
will take so few of them, and that those who teach best,
teach fewest.

CHAPTER XII.
THE SCHOOL AND THE SHOP.

Reasons for growing importance of Evening Schools — Various
Types of them : Evening Continuation Schools ; Technical
Schools ; Trade Schools — Increase in Teaching of Manual
Work most marked — Different Branches of Teaching —
Technical Education proper — Instruction in General Principles
or Higher Trade Teaching ; help given by this in learning
manual work — Higher and Finer Parts of Manual Work —
Teaching of ordinary Work of a Trade : Greater Variety,
Better Quality ; More Thorough Teaching ; Case of Sectional
Division of a Trade — Broadened Outlook — Supervision and
Control — Exploitation — Failure to reach those who need them
most — Value of Work they do — Value of Control between
fourteen and sixteen in Day Trade School — Value of Schools
generally and to different classes of Boys.

Estimates of their Scope and Utility — By Employers and
Foremen : for general principles ; for technical subjects ;
for higher branches or things which do not come into the shop —
Opposition to attempt to replace shop by School for ordinary
work of a trade — Indirect Value — By Boys : Drawing and
Design ; Value of practical work ; Better quality and greater
variety ; Allied trades or branches : Little importance attached
to technical subjects — Some difference in views of boys and
employers in some cases : marked similarity in others — Teach-
ing Staff hold much stronger views.

Value of Schools varies — Favourable Conditions — Illustra-
tion from Cabinet Making and Silversmithing — Unfavourable
Conditions — London Trades when considered from this point
of view fall into Five Classes.

Relations of School to Shop — Two Important Facts —
Decrease of Latter's Power to Teach — School still supplementary
to it — Illustration from utility of Schools to different Boys —
Why this is restricted — Value of the Workshop — That
of School greater with, than without, co-operation between
them.

Difficulties of Trade Teaching at School — Difficulty of keeping
in touch with actual practice ; likely to be increased with
compulsory attendance — Failure to work under competitive

279

280 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

conditions — Inability to work to scale — Difficulties connected
with the supply of teachers — The Voluntary System of attend-
ance and its Results : Limitation of Choice of Subjects ; Absence
of Control and Failure to keep boys ; Best Form of Organization
Impossible — Summary of Existing Position and Changes
Required.

UNDER modern conditions the workshop still provides the
fundamental basis of trade teaching, but from various
causes it cannot alone and unaided do all that is required.
What these causes are need not be repeated. Their results are,
first, that the boy has to do more for himself than formerly,
and, secondly, that it is becoming more and more difficult to
learn a trade throughout in a single firm. Moreover, modern
industry frequently requires an increasing amount of
technical and scientific knowledge that it is beyond the
power of the workshop to supply. Hence the Trade or
Technical School is coming necessarily to play a growing,
though still, as will appear, only a supplementary, part in
the training of the artisan ; and the present chapter, there-
fore, seeks to analyse generally, but with special reference
to London, the extent and value of its work.

Before considering this more fully, however, it will be
necessary to define carefully certain terms, such as Technical
Training, which in common discourse are apt to be used in a
somewhat slipshod fashion. Technical and Trade Teaching
form part of the wider problem of continued education,
their function being roughly to do for the mechanic and
craftsman what the ordinary Evening Continuation Schools
do for the commercial employments and what they might
and ought to do for unskilled labour.

Evening Continuation Schools or Classes are often referred
to in a generic sense to cover all these things, but the name
is used primarily to denote those which are engaged in
carrying on during the years of adolescence work done
in childhood by the Elementary School, or in giving
commercial education. Thus, on the one hand, they cover
the higher branches of subjects already taught or more
advanced literary subjects. Their curriculum, therefore,

THE SCHOOL AND THE SHOP. 281

includes history and geography, ancient and modern lan-
guages, mathematics, science and drawing. Certain kinds of
manual work — wood-carving, clay-modelling and repousse
work — are also taught, less in relation to particular trades
than for their educational value. On the other hand the
commercial departments contain classes for shorthand,
typewriting, book-keeping, and so on, and so provide directly
for the needs of the commercial employments. In London
the County Council has recently reorganized its system, and
the changes brought about in this and other respects will
be described in the next chapter. It will lead to greater
clearness, therefore, if the term Evening Continuation
School or Class retains this more restricted meaning ; and
to denote the more general sense the simpler phrase
Evening School or Class will be used.

When we come to deal with Technical and Trade Teaching,
however, we are concerned not with two separate subjects,
but with two more or less distinct branches of the same one.
Thus, as Sir Philip Magnus has said :—

' The term generally adopted to designate the special training
of persons in the arts and sciences that underlie the practice of
some trade or profession is called Technical Education. . . .
In its widest sense it embraces all kinds of instruction that have
direct reference to the career a person is following or preparing
to follow ; but it is usual to restrict the term to the special
training which helps to qualify a person to engage in some branch
of productive industry. . . . This specialized education may
consist of the processes concerned in production or of instruction
in art and science in its relation to industry, but it may also
include the acquisition of the manual skill which production
necessitates." l

Hence the term Technical Education needs in the first
place to be used in this wider sense. But it contains two
branches which may be described as Technical Teaching
proper and Trade Teaching. In practice these things are
not always distinct and not, seldom overlap one another,

1 Article on Technical Education in the Encyclopedia Britannica
(Eleventh Edition), vol. xxvi., p. 487.

282 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

and this leads to inconsistency in the meanings attached to
them. Certain kinds of teaching, moreover, are on the
border line between them and cannot be definitely assigned
to either. Hence it is important first to state clearly the
meanings to be given to them and, secondly, to dis-
tinguish the different kinds of instruction that are included
under the heading of Technical Education l in its wider sense.
Technical Teaching proper is perhaps best defined in
the words of the Act of 1889 :—

" The expression ' technical instruction ' shall mean instruction
in the principles of science and art applicable to industries and in
the application of special branches of science and art to specific
industries or employments." z

It is thus limited to the higher branches of knowledge
connected with a trade, which are mainly, but not exclu-
sively, utilized by those engaged in its upper ranks. The
study of them, therefore, must, at least so far as the average
man is concerned, be preceded by considerable knowledge
of the manual work.

Finally, Trade Teaching in a School which either precedes,
or is concurrent with, that of the shop corresponds to the
" manual instruction " of the above Act, as " instruction in
the use of tools, processes of agriculture, and modelling in
clay, wood and other material," which must not be confused
with the Manual Training of the Elementary Schools. The
vital distinction, therefore, is between classes for learning
the ordinary work of a trade and those for acquiring the

1 For the remainder of the chapter Technical Education refers to
this wide meaning and Technical Teaching to the narrower one.

2 An Act to Facilitate the Provision of Technical Instruction, 52 and
53 Viet. c. 76. The Clause continues : — " It shall not include the
teaching or practice of any trade, industry or employment, but save
as aforesaid shall include instruction in the branches of science and
art with respect to which grants are for the time being made by the
Department of Science and Art and any other form of instruction
(including modern languages and commercial and agricultural
subjects) which may for the time being be sanctioned by the Depart-
ment, on a minute laid before Parliament and made on a representa-
tion of a local authority that such a form of instruction is required
in its district."

THE SCHOOL AND THE SHOP. 283

necessary scientific knowledge connected with it, and though
in practice overlapping is frequent, this distinction must
always be kept in mind.

Technical Teaching proper is playing a growing part in
industry as more and more scientific knowledge is being
required of the workman. Its growth is no new thing.
That in the part played by Trade Teaching is both more
recent and more marked. Each kind, indeed, is becoming
increasingly important, but it is in relation to the actual
manual work that the development is greatest. Both
Technical and Trade Teaching, it may be added, are usually
given in the same institute or school.

We may now turn to consider the different branches
of Technical Education. First there is the teaching of the
different sciences bearing upon various industries and of their
application to them. The employers' demand for this is
not limited to the case of fully trained men, but extends in
some trades to learners as well. Thus certain Engineering
firms require two years' preliminary technical training from
their learners and Labour Exchanges receive orders for
youths or improvers " with some technical knowledge.'*

Secondly, there is instruction in what may be called the
General Principles of a trade. A firm often cannot do more
than teach the actual manual work and not also the " why "
and " wherefore " of it. The boy learns how to do it, but
detailed explanation of the principles which underlie it
is not possible. Thus more than one employer has said1 :
" We cannot sit round in a ring and hold a class ; we have
got to attend to business." Nor is it altogether necessary,
or even desirable, that they should do so, for instruction
in such principles, in the connexion between the parts of a
trade, and in the -character, qualities and working of its
materials, tools and machines, comprises one of the special
domains of the School. By lectures and in other ways it can
thoroughly impart these things and their relation to one
another and give each pupil individual tuition according
to his needs. The teacher is there simply and solely to
teach, with the foreman it is but one duty among many.

284 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Here, indeed, the dividing line between Technical and
Trade Teaching is narrowest ; but these last, together with
certain allied subjects, such as drawing and design, are
best classified as Higher Trade Teaching.

A word may be said about its relation to the manual work
of an industry. It does not, it is true, actually teach the
" use of the tools," but it nevertheless gives considerable
assistance to a boy in acquiring the "practical work."
He learns more quickly and more easily when he knows
the connexion between different things than when he
just learns each of them as it happens to come to him
at the bench. Hence, when the instructors have real
practical knowledge, the School is a most valuable adjunct
to the shop. The boy, having had these things explained
to him of an evening, grasps each new kind of job more
readily, and takes an increasing interest in what he is
doing because he understands it better. Last, but not
least, he has more confidence in himself and much that
formerly was hard he now finds to be easy. When
therefore they are in a position to give a good all-round
workshop training, the employers' contention is probably
right that the Schools should confine themselves to imparting
these branches of knowledge, or, as one of the instructors
said, referring to a certain firm : " They think, and quite
right, that they can teach the trade completely in the shop,
and so ask that the boys they send to us shall spend their
time on other subjects." Thus, where they are so circum-
stanced, such a division of labour as " the shop for practical
work, the school for general principles " is a sound one.

Thirdly, the Schools have a big part to play in teaching
the finer kinds of manual work, even where consider-
ations of space limit their utility in the more elementary
ones. The scale of Building, and more particularly masonry
and brickwork, requires room to put up and pull down walls,
and here the School is at a disadvantage.1 Work with

1 In certain cases the difficulty may be partially, but only very
partially, overcome. Thus in the School of Building at Brixton a
small cottage has been erected in the large central hall.

THE SCHOOL AND THE SHOP. 285

models is a poor substitute for actual bricklaying or masonry,
just as making "soap-boxes, brackets and that sort of thing"
in an Elementary School is of little use for the joiner's shop.
But the smaller scale and greater fineness and delicacy of
these higher branches make them far more suitable
for teaching in this way. One may instance gauge- work
in bricklaying, modelling and decorative work in plastering
and the finer display work in compositing. Moreover the
ordinary contract to teach does not always include these
things, but only the trade as practised by the average
journeyman. To learn them, therefore, a boy has first
to make a start for himself and show " aptitude " before he
gets his chance in the workshop, especially when the modern
contract leaves the employer so little margin against loss
that otherwise it would be impossible for him to teach them.
Consequently the boy must co-operate with his master by
getting " an insight into them " for himself, for where he
does so a decent firm will always do its best to give him
a chance to learn more.

Fourthly, there is the ordinary work of a trade and in
respect to it modern conditions are once more limiting
the power of the employer to teach and giving the Schools a
larger part to play in supplementing the workshop. As to
whether they can do this successfully, opinion is not unani-
mous, but it is certainly becoming more favourable to an
affirmative reply.

In the first place, each shop can only teach such work as
it gets, and every contract has an implied limitation to this
effect. Even without actual specialization of output the
business of many firms is limited in quantity or quality.
Thus in Silversmithing some confine themselves to large,
others to small, work and only a limited number do both
kinds. In this and other industries, again, some businesses
do not get the best qualities, or, as in Engineering, certain
machines may not be found everywhere. Sometimes, too,
industrial progress tends to divide a trade into sections or
branches. Thus in plastering solid and fibrous work are
often done by different firms, and whilst it is important for

286 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

the workman to know both, the employers may only be in a
position to teach one. Now for all these things the Trade
School can provide a remedy, and can enable a lad to learn,
or at least to make a start at learning, these parts of his
business '; and in addition to this they give him a general
widening of experience. ' You get to see and know other
chaps," said one young silversmith, " who are doing different
sorts of work to what you are."

Further, the Trade School or Class can set about teaching
particular pieces of work far more thoroughly than the
workshop can. In the latter the boy's progress is quite
legitimately influenced by business considerations, and
he has to learn his trade bit by bit as the orders come in.
In the former he can go right through a job from the begin-
ning, making the designs, and then and there doing the whole
thing. He thus sees it and his trade far more as a single
entity than when he is learning it piecemeal, and nothing
could be more valuable. Moreover, by undertaking elaborate
things, he can exercise his artistic and constructive powers.

Finally, apart from its actual teaching, the School
exercises a valuable influence, not only on the employment
and instruction, but on the general conduct and outlook of
its students. It can guide the boys as to what work they
take up and rectify mistakes more readily than is possible
in the workshop. Direct influence upon employers it can
seldom exert, but it can help and encourage learners to
assert themselves and press their claims, and in this and
other ways keep the learning of a trade clearly before them,
so that its regular students at any rate seldom throw away
their chances from mere restlessness or for the sake of
immediate high wages.

This influence is specially helpful to those who have no
agreement or understanding. Migration is most likely to
be successful where the improver has the expert help and
guidance that the Schools can afford. So too they can do
something to persuade those who are " Working and Learn-
ing " to stick to decent jobs. Their opportunities, how-
ever, are perhaps even greater in the case of Following- Up,

THE SCHOOL AND THE SHOP. 287

because sometimes, and notably in Plumbing, they have
specially good facilities for teaching the actual work of a
trade. Further they can do something for the exploited
apprentice and a good deal for the over-specialized worker,
whom, as in the Boot. Trade, they may enable to gain ex-
perience of several processes instead of being confined to one
or two only.

The value of their work in these respects, indeed, is
limited by the small proportion of the boys who attend them
and particularly of those who most need to do so, and it
would probably be increased enormously under a system of
compulsory attendance. Even, however, if their practice
falls far short of the ideal, they already do good work.
Even the cleverest need control and guidance. The average
boys get much that even a good shop cannot afford, and
especially an amount of individual attention, which an
instructor, who is there solely to teach, is able to give.
Greater breadth of view and wider experience they can
hardly fail to supply, simply because they are not the shop,
and they may sometimes lead a lad to appreciate more
fairly the treatment he is receiving from his employer.1
Finally increased realization of what a fine thing a skilled
trade is leads to increased interest, especially where diffi-
culties are removed in advance, and new jobs in the work-
shop are found to be easy instead of hard. Similarly one
of the greatest advantages of the Day Trade Schools, the
work of which will be described more fully in the next
chapter, lies in the control they keep over their students in
the two first and most dangerous years of their working life.

To sum up, therefore, the work of the Technical and
Trade Schools has several branches : first, technical and
scientific teaching in the narrower sense ; secondly, Higher
Trade Teaching ; thirdly, instruction in the finer or more
special branches of the manual work ; fourthly, that which
supplements the skill imparted day by day in the workshop,

1 Thus the Head of one Department would hear boys saying :
" Well, the old guv'nor isn't a bad sort after all ; but that fellow's got
a rotten guv'nor."

288 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

and, lastly, such control and supervision as has just been
described, which is as necessary as the actual training and
no less for the artisan than for the low-skilled worker.
The first of these is especially valuable to those who are
entering the higher ranks of industry, the second and third
to those whose workshop training is otherwise ample, and the
fourth is chiefly useful to the average boy. The last is
essential to all ; and for all alike it may be said that the aims
and results of Technical Education should be to set right
defective training, to complete what is unfinished, and to
make what is good and adequate to be better and more
adequate still.

The actual value of the Schools as it appears to those
chiefly concerned may now be shortly considered, and be-
tween them, and between different trades, striking points,
both of similarity and contrast, will be found. Employers
and their foremen, as is perhaps natural, attach least im-
portance to the manual training. Usually they regard the
shop as able to do all that is required for the latter and
further use of the tools after working hours as neither
necessary nor beneficial. Not too tired to profit by evening
classes, the boy nevertheless requires a change, " something
recreative to interest him after his day's work." Or again,
" the boys are all happy and contented and quite fresh : for
after all their work at the Schools is a change for them, not
a continuance of their shop work." l

It is in reference to such matters as scientific and higher
trade teaching, therefore, that they regard most favourably
the work of the Schools. Frequently they admit them to
be in a better position than the workshop to teach these
things. They even propose co-operation on the lines that the
School shall impart in the evening the principles governing
the work which the boy practises during the day time, the
sciences which bear upon it, such as mechanics and geome-
try for engineers and boilermakers, chemistry for tanners

1 In this case the boys were employed in an engineering workshop
and spent their evenings learning the science and general principles
of their business.

THE SCHOOL AND THE SHOP. 289

and leatherworkers, and also certain forms of knowledge,
allied to different trades, which are an advantage to, though
not absolutely a necessity for, the artisans concerned.
Such are Drawing and Design, Building and Machine
Construction, and Modelling, more particularly the two
former, to which they are particularly favourable. More-
over the general principles will include not only those of the
particular craft, but those also of the whole industry to
which it belongs.

Now these things fall to a great extent outside the scope of
the workshop and are not included in what the average
employer undertakes to do for an apprentice — namely, to
make him a good workman, which is all, as a rule, that
he has the means to do. But by learning these other things
boys are enabled to become better workmen, and many
employers, therefore, encourage them to use the Schools for
these purposes. Not a few of them, indeed, regard their
value as limited to this.

Nevertheless masters and foremen, on the whole, though
with less unanimity, admit within certain limits that they
can teach parts of the manual work or assist boys to learn it.
Most of them regard the shop as, in the Aristotelian phrase,
" prior in nature " to the School, and hold that for work in
the latter to precede work in the former, or even for it to
begin at the same time, is simply to try to teach the
advanced subjects before the rudiments.

The workshop teaches the latter ; often it alone can do so.
Later on the School steps in to help with the former, and
especially with the finer branches of the trade, such as gauge-
work in bricklaying,1 which only a few get a chance of doing
on the building. These subjects it can teach, not indeed
completely, yet sufficiently to enable a boy to make a start
and later on to get a further chance at his job. Modern
conditions, in fact, often render the latter possible only
where a boy has already some knowledge of a process,
so that to teach him the rest of it will be less costly to the

1 This is paid at the rate of £ d. an hour above the ordinary rate for
Bricklayers.

290 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

employer. Similarly, where certain things do not come
into his workshop, the insight into them and the wider
experience which the School gives help a learner to obtain
an improver's job in some other firm in which they
do.1

But employers and, to an almost equal extent, their fore-
men resist any attempt to replace the workshop by the
Trade School. They are prepared to admit its value for
the purposes already described, or even to assist those
who have been exploited or failed to use their chances to
make a fresh start. But to anything beyond this they are
steadily opposed, except sometimes for preliminary training,
for which there is a considerable demand in Engineering
and a growing one in some other industries. But to " teach
a boy to use the tools," i.e. to do the ordinary work, the
proper place is, they maintain, the workshop, which the
School can supplement, sometimes largely, but which it
cannot replace.

Some employers, moreover, value the Trade Schools
mainly or even entirely for their general control over the boys
or for the incentive they give to further effort, increasing
their interest in their work and keeping their minds fixed
upon it instead of upon other things. Thus it is often said,
for instance, that " the boy who is going to get on attends
a Technical School," whilst the Manager of a large Furnishing
Firm declared that what they taught was of little use, but
that attendance at them was encouraged because they
" kept a boy's thoughts fixed upon his trade."

The boys, on the other hand, attach the greatest import-
ance to drawing and design, more particularly in combination
with definite pieces of work, when " you take a job and

1 On this point the Foreman of a firm of Braziers was emphatic.

" Their [the Trade Schools'] great value is for a boy to learn cutting
out, a thing of which, owing to the great value of copper, we cannot
afford to give a boy much, at any rate until his last year. For if
he does it wrong, he may easily spoil a lot and cause a great deal of
loss. They, therefore, by enabling him to learn just when he will
bungle most, get over this difficulty and enable him to learn it so
far that he will get a better chance in the shop."

THE SCHOOL AND THE SHOP. 291

work right through it, making the drawings and all." * Of
those I saw three out of every five gave one evening a week
entirely to it, and of the rest some intended to do so later,
or were studying it not as a separate subject, but in
connexion with whatever else they were doing.2

Second in importance comes the chance of obtaining
increased variety or better qualities of work as compared
with the workshop, or of getting " general work," as they
themselves say, whilst they can broaden their experience
and outlook by meeting and talking with " chaps from
other shops." Thus a young Brass Finisher, who was not
employed under any agreement, said —

" In the shop you only do one thing ; here you do every-
thing " ;

and a boy learning Cabinet Making with his father, a
small master —

" With my father I get a medium class of work and here
the best."

Others described themselves as " practically learning the
trade," or as getting " practice " and " practical work."
One boy had got promoted by his employer as a result,
and another, engaged at " filing-up " at a silversmith's,
had been promised a chance to do " raising " and " hammer-
ing," if he would obtain an insight into them first at a certain
Technical Institute.

Third place is assigned to the continual presence of an
instructor to remove difficulties, correct mistakes and
explain matters clearly, combined with the power to choose
one's own work —

" You can do what you like in the School. In the shop
you are only given what you can do ; but here, if you don't
know, you are shown, or if you are in difficulties you ask the
instructor and he tells you."3

1 By the kindness and courtesy of Principals and Instructors I
was able to interview a considerable number of boys at various
Schools and from them obtained the opinions quoted in the text.

2 In some of the Artistic Trades modelling occupies a similar
position.

3 In this case the speaker was not a learner under an agreement,
but a young wage-earner " picking up " his business,

292 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Others spoke of power " to take your time and make
experiments/' of " increased confidence " and of " work
made easier." A few were learning an allied trade or branch
to supplement their own, usually where modern develop-
ments were separating processes that were formerly united.
Thus engravers were learning die-sinking, a silver spinner
silversmithing and bookbinders both forwarding and
finishing.

There is, therefore, much both of similarity and of differ-
ence in the attitude of employers and learners. The most
remarkable divergence was shown by the small number of
boys who attached importance to purely technical and
scientific instruction. This is partly due to special reasons.
Trades like Engineering were not well represented among those
whom I saw, many of them being engaged in the artistic
crafts and other occupations in which manual dexterity
is still vital. Secondly, many of them were wage-earners
teaching themselves, or came from firms whose output was
largely specialized. Thus they had still much to learn at
the School in the way of " practical work." The employers,
on the contrary, mainly represented the best and most
regular methods of teaching, which leave less scope for the
School in this direction and make its chief spheres the finer
branches of a trade, its science and its principles.

Nevertheless the small importance attributed by the
former to these two last matters does illustrate their failure to
appreciate them properly. It is perhaps inevitable that
they should use the Schools more for the sake of immediate
assistance in earning wages than for the purpose of mastering
the broader principles that underlie their employment.
What is disquieting is their failure to grasp the connexion
between the two things or to take an interest in the latter.1

Apart from this the chief difference consists in the far
greater appreciation by the boys than by the employers of

1 Thus at some Institutes attendance at lectures on theory and
principles of a trade used only to be secured by making it a condition
of attendance at the " practical " classes. This object is now likely
to be more fully attained by the adoption of the course system by
the County Council,

THE SCHOOL AND THE SHOP. 293

the instruction in " practical work," which again is likely to
be especially useful to those who are teaching themselves.
Other differences are mainly in details. Points of agreement
are also numerous. Among them are the importance attri-
buted to drawing and design, the value of the School in
imparting the finer branches of the work and in filling gaps
in workshop experience, and its power to give wider experi-
ence and adaptability or greater variety. From both sides,
too, it is regarded as a supplement to, not a substitute for,
the shop, and, apart from the two main points of
disagreement, it may be said that both parties recog-
nize the same elements of value, though they view them
from two different standpoints.

The opinions of the teaching staff, on the other hand, often
go much further than those either of the employers or of the
boys. They likewise rely upon Technical Education as a
means to improve still further those who are well taught and
to perfect those who are not, but many of them regard work-
shop training as in itself so narrow and insufficient as to
compel a learner to look elsewhere for almost everything of
value. Hence in their view the only real chance for many
lads is provided by the Trade School. Such an attitude,
indeed, is not universal among them, and in their extreme
form such views very much exaggerate both the evils that
exist and the part which the Schools take and can
take in Industrial Education, much as the employers are
liable to under-estimate both. The truth probably lies
between the two — -namely , , that the workshop still remains the
centre and basis of trade teaching, but that the School is an
auxiliary to it of great and always increasing importance.

The scope of the latter also varies greatly from trade
to trade, and is largely determined by two things, the size
and value of the product and the amount of craftsmanship
involved ; and so the three most necessary conditions are : —
the production of an article of small or moderate bulk, the
need of artistic ability, or at least of manual dexterity, in
the worker, and the use of a cheap raw material.

The matter may be illustrated by the case of two trades,

294 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Cabinet-Making and Silversmithing. In many of its
branches the former secures all three advantages. Furni-
ture only requires a shop of moderate size, so that diffi-
culties of space do not arise to any great extent. A single
piece of work provides considerable variety, takes time to
make, and thus gives the means for much instruction.
Finally the raw material is not expensive, and the finished
articles are easy to dispose of. As a rule the boy is allowed
to keep the latter on paying for the former.

Again, in spite of an increase of machine production in
the cheaper lines of goods, Silversmithing is as regards size
and craftsmanship even more favourably situated. The
value of the material too causes employers to prefer boys
with some previous experience, who have, in short, been
" licked into shape " elsewhere ; and they look with
greater favour on the Day Trade Schools than they do in
other industries. It suffers, however, from one great
disadvantage. Silver is too expensive for Use in the classes,
and base metals, usually brass, have to be substituted.
Now silver and the base metals require somewhat different
methods of treatment, and so, after working on the latter, a
boy " will sweat silver down to absolutely nothing." But
even so Silversmithing and the other artistic crafts provide
an unusually favourable field for manual trade teaching.

At the other end of the scale are industries in which such
instruction is difficult to give, at least until the later stages.
Sometimes, as with the manufacture of light leathers, there
are a number of closely related processes which it is not easy
to teach separately, or indeed at all, except by establishing
a whole factory for the purpose. Again, questions of space
may render it impossible. With semi-manufactured articles,
or such goods as brushes, of which very large quantities
are turned out in a short time, difficulties in disposing of
the product may be insuperable. Finally, high prices of
material, as with saddlery, or as already mentioned in
Silversmithing, are sometimes a great obstacle, but at
others it can be partly or wholly overcome, as by the use of
cardboard patterns in connexion with coppersmithing.

THE SCHOOL AND THE SHOP. 295

In reference to the possibilities of trade teaching, therefore,
London industries appear to fall into some five classes :—
first, those in which either it is not possible, or, as with
many branches of Pianoforte Manufacture,1 has not yet been
developed ; secondly, those in which it is confined to science,
theory and general principles ; thirdly, employments in
which the Schools can do much to teach the manual work
after its earlier and easier stages have been passed but not
until then, and which include many of the Printing and
Building Trades ; fourthly, those in which conditions are
specially favourable to them, as in the instances just given,
and lastly those, like Engineering and Boilermaking, in
which the value of the manual teaching is great, but that
of the technical and scientific training very much greater.

It is now possible to summarize the present relations of
the School to the workshop. Two facts of special importance
emerge. First, there is much that the latter formerly gave
which it can no longer guarantee, so that the former is
required, and is in a position, to take its place and to do
much that was regarded as entirely within its sphere.
Secondly, the School cannot by itself teach a trade, so that
its instruction still only supplements, though to a greater
extent than formerly, that of the private firm. The work-
shop remains the proper place in which to learn, and round
it the teaching must still centre. For a man has to work
in the shop, and as a boy must learn to do so according to
the methods, principles and conditions that prevail there.
Therefore the training of the shop, by the shop, for the shop
and in the shop is fundamental. It is one thing to learn at
the School what the shop cannot teach, another to learn
at the latter independently of the former. So, too, the Day
Trade School teaches a boy the elements of his business, and
on the whole under better conditions, before he starts in the
factory, combining extended general education with elemen-
tary trade teaching. It also guards him against the special

1 The establishment of a Pianoforte Trade School is at present
under consideration by the County Council.

296 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

dangers of early adolescence, but in no sense does it claim
to teach a trade throughout.

Now in these cases the School does important work, but
in all of them it is supplementary to the workshop and not a
substitute for it. To a great extent this is inevitable. For
a boy spends only from four to eight hours weekly
for part of the year in the one and from forty-eight to fifty-
four for the whole of it in the other. But even where,
as in the Day Trade Schools, the former occupies a larger
share of his time, the general position is substantially the
same. The two continue to co-operate, only the School
sometimes plays a larger part than it does at others. But
its place is still subordinate and that of the shop prepon-
derant. For the boy has to be trained for the purposes of the
latter, and therefore any attempt to upset seriously this
relation between them would be of doubtful value.

For, as explained in an earlier chapter, what is learnt
indirectly and instinctively is often as important as what is
definitely taught. Much of his trade a boy acquires un-
consciously by working with and among skilled men, and
keeping his eyes open to see what they do and how they do
it. The extent of this, indeed, is seldom realized. It is
a thing that only the workshop can provide ; and this alone
gives it an enormous advantage. Moreover, even where
" in the shop a boy gets taught to work only one machine "
and in the School " he can come and learn all," yet the part
of the former in showing a lad what he requires to know and
by what methods he shall work, is none the less vital. For
at the School he has to choose his work according to the
conditions of his trade, and he can only make the right choice
by first getting workshop experience. In short, his work
at the School has to be properly co-ordinated with his
work in the shop, and this can only be done by making the
whole of the teaching in both alike centre round the needs
of the latter.

Finally there remain to be considered the difficulties
that face the Trade and Technical Schools in carrying on
not only their present work, but the large extensions of it that

THE SCHOOL AND THE SHOP. 297

may legitimately be expected. In this chapter only those
which hinder them from actually doing this will be con-
sidered, and treatment of the causes which prevent boys
from fully utilizing the facilities they provide must be
postponed to the next chapter.

Perhaps the greatest of the difficulties in question is that
of keeping their teaching and methods in touch with work-
shop conditions. In the past their failure to do this has been
one of their greatest mistakes ; and even now complaints to
this effect are not infrequent. For the newrer Schools more
particularly have still got to buy their experience and learn
from their errors. The need, however, has never been so
fully realized as it is now.

The difficulty arises partly from the fact that trade, as
opposed to technical, teaching is not suited to, or has not been
developed to suit, some industries, and that it is only
available in certain branches of these, or at a later stage.
Now the harder it is to give any teaching at all, the more
easy will be its divorce from that of the shop, and where
the methods of the Schools cannot be upon the same general
lines, their value is correspondingly limited.

Again, in a class, a boy does not always work under
competitive conditions ; and this constitutes a second
obstacle. At the machine or the bench he has to produce
within a certain time and at a certain price. In the Schools
he proceeds rather on educational lines, taking his time and
not hurrying and often aiming primarily at artistic per-
fection. The workshop, on the other hand, requires this less
than to have the work carried out both well and rapidly,
combining, in short, speed and accuracy. The most valuable
results, therefore, will be obtained by the former in pro-
portion to their power to teach work under the conditions
required in ordinary production and to their success in
avoiding unsuitable methods.

The responsible authorities are fully alive to this and
have taken steps to meet it, and the most successful Trade
Schools attain this object and at the same time reach a
high standard of workmanship. Thus even when the diffi-

298 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

culty has not been completely overcome, their teaching
retains a high practical value and acts as a corrective of
bad workshop influences. Nevertheless a difficulty of this
sort does not cease to exist when it has been removed for
the time being. Workshop methods are continually
changing and developing and great vigilance is necessary
to ensure that those of the School shall continue to keep
in touch with them.

Thirdly, want of space often prevents the latter from
doing the work of a trade as it is ordinarily done : for they
cannot always work to scale. This matter has already
been dealt with, but one or two examples may be given.
Thus a joiner's foreman told me : " Originally the boy
goes to the top shop where the deal work is. This is where
the Technical Schools are at a disadvantage since they do
not and often cannot operate upon deal, but only use the
smaller woods and work on a smaller scale." Again, a
foreman stonemason said : " The Schools cannot teach
practical work as the workshop can. For one reason they
do not work to size, and you cannot learn to work from
models and a one-inch scale. The School cannot — partly
from want of space — teach the plain, simple work which
you must learn first and therefore in the workshop. What
the School does teach is the finer and more intricate work,
which is specially useful to those who want to rise in the
world."

Other considerations restrict not so much the amount
that a School can teach, as its power to do so to the best
advantage. The first of these concerns the supply of
instructors. The latter require a special combination of
qualities and need not only to be good craftsmen, but to
be versed in the theory and principles of their business,
and to possess capacity to teach. Now all these powers
are not found in a very large number of men, and thus failure
to satisfy one or other of these requirements excludes or
unfits many for the task. On the other hand, the number
of available foremen and leading hands is not very large,
and some of them do not believe in a Trade School or do not

THE SCHOOL AND THE SHOP. 299

wish to teach in one. Hence the supply of good teachers
is limited.

Moreover they should maintain as much as possible their
connexion with the actual work of their trades in order
to keep the practice of the Schools abreast of industrial
development. It is best, therefore, if they can continue
to work at them. This particularly affects the younger
men. When teaching only in the evening they can, and
often do, spend the day at the bench, and a few evenings
a week at the class. When teaching in the daytime, how-
ever, they can at best only put in part of it in the shop,
and eventually cease to work there at all, since an employer
will naturally prefer a full-timer. On the other hand, if
he is not actually working at a trade, a man requires a wide
experience if he is to keep in touch with all its changes, and
this experience the younger teacher naturally cannot
possess. Hence their capacity is limited as well as the
supply of them.

Lastly, the fact that attendance . is voluntary further
hinders the Schools. This matter will be dealt with more
fully in the next chapter, but its chief results may be briefly
mentioned here. First, it is difficult to induce boys to take
up anything but what bears directly on the manual work
of their trades, and they often refuse to attend classes
upon the theory and general principles. This has now been
partly overcome by making " courses " compulsory in
Junior Commercial and Technical Institutes, but the change
has been accompanied by a serious drop in the number of
students. Secondly, there is not sufficient hold over them
to render possible an organization of different kinds of
teaching according to the ages of the students. This
difficulty also the new re-organization scheme of the Lon-
don County Council is attempting to overcome. Thirdly,
a very large number drop out in the course of a single
session or fail to keep up attendance for more than one.

These do not exhaust the difficulties in the way of
technical and trade teaching in the Schools. Others will
be dealt with in the next chapter, and more particularly

300 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

those in which the special conditions prevailing in London
are of importance. To sum up, therefore, their activities
are necessarily confined to supplementing and perfecting
the training of the workshop. But within this limitation
they have a great and growing part to play. Much as
they have done in the past, in the future they can and
should do more. If they can only supplement the work
of the shop, they are doing so to an ever-increasing extent.
They can continue to impart those higher branches of
knowledge which have always been their particular field ;
they can supply deficiencies and remedy defects in work-
shop teaching, and can often give a better preliminary
training between fourteen and sixteen than the latter can.
But to fulfil these functions completely, they have still
far to go and possess as yet neither the organization nor
the facilities required for the purpose. Moreover, their
future development will be even more extensive than
intensive. Much as they may improve their teaching,
they will do even more by increasing the number to whom
they give it from the present small fraction of the juvenile
population until they come to embrace the whole.

CHAPTER XIII.
TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON.

Object of the Chapter — Manual Training — Its Establishment
— Children to whom it is given — Its Real Object — To increase
General Intelligence and Dexterity — Objections urged against
it — Unpractical Character — Over- Stocking — Its Merits — Better
Choice of Employment assisted — Early Test of Capacity.

Establishment of Central Schools with Industrial or Com-
mercial Bias — To provide for abler Children up to the age of
15 — Entry into such Schools — Their Object and Curriculum.

The Day Trade Schools — The number and age of their
students — The Character of their Teaching — Relation of
General to Trade Education — Their Objects — Aim at Fitting
Boys for Higher Posts in Industry — Their Advantages over the
Workshop — Criticisms of their work similar to those of Manual
Training — Growth of support from Employers — Care required
to avoid repetition of early mistakes.

Continued Education — Its two parts — Number of Classes
and Students — Proportion of them dealing with Literary,
Commercial and Industrial Subjects — Proportion of Boys
under twenty in attendance : in all subjects, in Skilled
Trades — Numbers attending at each year of age.

Proportions at different ages — Proportions earning Grants —
Large Proportion who receive no real continued Education
at all.

Re-organization of London Evening Schools — Its Salient
Features : Grading of Institutes ; Adaptation of Teaching to
Ages of Students ; the Course System — Value of the Scheme —
Its Prospects.

Recent growth and present position of Evening Trade Schools
proper — Enthusiasm of many Students — Gradual Creation of
"Habit of Attendance" — Means by which Students are
attracted — Influence under a Voluntary System of Students
and others — Part played by Voluntary and Official Agencies.

Attitude of the Parties concerned — Stages in the Development

301

302 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

of an Institution — The Employers — Little either of Root and
Branch Opposition or of Enthusiastic Support — The Great
Majority give a Moderate Support, and try to influence their
boys to go — Actual Compulsion considered inadvisable.

The Question of Time off — Usually Refused — Reasons for
this — Employers not convinced of its benefits — It is con-
sidered unnecessary — Difficulties of granting it not realized —
It is not always beneficial to the boys.

Forms taken by Time-Off — Two afternoons per week — More
than employers are prepared to grant — Half an hour or an
Hour before the ordinary time — Excusing from working over-
time— The latter much more frequently granted and much
more practicable.

The Boys — Enthusiastic Minority — The " Ins and Outs " —
The Majority that fails to attend — The Sacrifices Involved —
Difficulty of reaching the Schools — Influence of Overtime —
The Arrangements of Ordinary Hours of Labour.

Are Hours such that boys cannot profit by attendance ?
Conflicting Opinions — Many foremen answer the question
in the negative- — -The answer varies with length of hours and
character of work — As regards a great many an affirmative
reply is necessary.

Other Influences preventing attendance — Competition of
Clubs, Brigades and Scouts — The Control they exercise — The
Counter-Attractions of City Life — Natural Attitude and
Instinct of a Boy of fourteen — The " Bread and Butter " view
of Education.

Failure to keep up Attendance — Decreasing leakage among
Older Boys — Long Summer Vacation — Failure to grasp instruc-
tion— Inability to find suitable Classes — Getting Tired of
Attendance.

Problem to this extent rather that of keeping boys at School
than of inducing them to go — Much has been done to promote
"habit of attendance" — Future Requirements.

THE last chapter considered the general work and
position of Trade and Technical Schools, and the present
one is concerned with the provision of them in London,
and the extent to which it is taken advantage of. It
deals broadly with all forms of Continued Education,
including the Manual Training that is given in the Ele-
mentary Schools themselves. Such teaching, therefore,
may be divided into five classes — namely, Manual Training,
Instruction with a Commercial or Industrial Bias in the
Central Schools, Day Trade Instruction for those who have
left School, but have not yet started in the workshop, the

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON. 303

ordinary Evening Continuation Schools, and Trade and
Technical Schools proper.

Manual Training was started in 1888, During the first
two years of the experiment there was no authority in the
day schools' code for expenditure on this subject. The
cost of conducting the work, therefore, could not be under-
taken by the Education Authority and the necessary funds
were provided by the Worshipful Company of Drapers
and the City and Guilds of London Institute. In 1890 it
was recognized as an elementary schools' subject, and passed
to the control of the School Board for London, and when it
was transferred to the Education Committee of the County
Council by the Act of 1903,! a very large number of children
were already receiving it. The work done consists almost
entirely of woodwork, though there is a small amount of
metalwork.2 A number of Schools are grouped round
a Centre, and each sends classes of its children to them
on one morning or afternoon in each week. The num-
ber of available places is not yet sufficient to receive all
who are qualified, but the deficiency is being steadily
reduced.

At first all children who had reached the fifth standard,
and all over twelve years of age in the lower ones were
eligible to attend : but in 1907 a uniform age was fixed
—eleven for the upper standards, and eleven-and-
three-quarters for the lower. Thus the intention is that
all pupils shall receive ultimately at least two years' instruc-
tion, whilst lighter manual work has also been introduced
into the lower standards of the Elementary Schools them-
selves.

The development of Manual Training in the Elementary
Schools, since it was taken over by the London County
Council in 1904, is shown by the following table, from which
it will be seen that the numbers receiving instruction have
been largely increased and the deficiency of places as
steadily diminished.

1 3 Edw. VII. c. 24, Education (London) Act, 1903.

2 About 3,000 children receive instruction in this.

304

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Year
ending

Number of
Centres.

Approxi-
mate
Number

Total
Number
of Boys

Propor-
tion
(per cent.)

Deficiency
of

March 31.

Wood
Working

Metal
Working

of Boys
on Roll.

eligible to
Attend.

of (4) Places.

to (5).

(i)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

1905

192

61,500

86,000

7°

24,500

1906

202

63,500

85,000

21,500

1907

204

65,000

81,000

16,000

1908

210

67,000

81,000

14,000

1909

216

69,000

81,000

12,000

1910

223

70,000

81,000

II,OOO

1911

231

71,000

81,000

IO,OOO

1912

235

72,500

81,000

8,500

1913

237

21 74,000

81,000

7,000

Much misunderstanding still exists on this subject.
Manual Training does not profess to prepare boys for
definite industries, still less does it pretend to teach a
trade. It has two main objects. One of them may be
called purely educational, and it is this one that is most
insisted upon now. The result aimed at is to assist and
further mental development by means of manual work,
which is thus made to serve the same objects as the more
purely literary subjects of the curriculum. " Learning
by doing " it has been not inaptly described, and it thus
seeks to increase knowledge and broaden the mind through
the hand and eye.

Secondly, it is claimed that boys who have had the benefit
of such Manual Training are likely to have improved
chances of making their way in the workshop. These it
will give them, not by fitting them for any one thing, but
by giving a general training to the eye and hand, which
will help them to fit themselves for anything. So, too,
that broadening of the mind, which has just been mentioned
as one of its educational results, has also its value indus-
trially. For it will assist them to adapt themselves in later
life to changes in industrial conditions. To do this a higher
level of general rather than of special capacity is required,
so that when one thing fails him a man can turn more

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON. 305

easily to something else. In this respect, however, Manual
Training can do little more than pave the way for further
work in Continuation Classes.

On the other hand, employers and foremen are almost
unanimous in saying that this Manual Training gives little
or no help in teaching any particular trade. A slight
knowledge of tools and their uses is about the best that is
credited to it, and generally the verdict is even less favour-
able. " Such training," one employer said, " ought only
to teach boys how to handle the tools, and by professing
to teach them to make things it does harm, by giving the
boys inflated ideas of how much they know " ; and a fore-
man said that the little it could teach would be very
quickly picked up in the shop in any case. Others, again,
regard it as valueless to "give them [the boys] a few tools
and some small bits of wood to play about with," or point
out that " the work is too small and the boys are helpless
when they have to work on abroad plain surface," or say
that " the boys learn a little at the Elementary School,
but not much, because it all has to be unlearnt." When,
moreover, they get a wrong idea of their own capacity, and
try to set up their knowledge against that of the foreman,
it renders them positively less teachable than an absolutely
raw boy, and consequently the latter is often preferred.

Admitting the seriousness of this last complaint, however,
the answer to these strictures has already been given that
Manual Instruction is not intended to equip boys for parti-
cular trades. It may be frankly admitted, indeed, that
the danger of giving them a wrong idea of their capacity
is a real one, and that in other respects improvement is
still possible, but any such slight difficulties are more than
compensated for by the benefits that have resulted from it.

It has also been attacked from another point of view as
tending to cause too many boys to enter certain industries,
some of which seem specially to attract them for other
reasons, or on what may be called general social grounds.
But less is now heard of this objection than formerly. Yet
undoubtedly it has occasionally resulted in boys taking up

306 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

woodworking who might not otherwise have done so. But,
so far as my experience goes, these are usually possessed of
a real liking and capacity for it, and when this is so, Manual
Training has had the entirely good result of causing the right
sort of boy to enter the right sort of trade. Nor will this
necessarily cause the latter to be overstocked. For if the
number of vacancies is limited, these lads will simply obtain
them in place of others who are probably less capable.1 If,
on the other hand, overstocking does result, this is less the
fault of Manual Training, which provides a better class of
boy, than of lack of proper organization in other directions.
i Secondly, the effect may be not to cause boys to enter
a particular trade, but to prevent them from doing so.
One result of the haphazard way in which employment is
so often selected is that frequently after a year or two a
lad finds himself unsuited to his work and has to find some-
thing else. Now in the case of woodwork two or three
years of Manual Training at School will give him some idea
as to whether he is fitted for it ; and, if he is not, will cause
him to avoid it. Probably a more serious danger is that
some, with real capacity for manual work, will be quite dis-
heartened by its initial difficult ies, and this is a further rea-
son for giving a long spell of such instruction to every one.
When all due allowance is made, moreover, the assistance
given by it in the choice of an occupation is one of its
greatest merits, and it will probably play a considerable part
in carrying out any comprehensive scheme of After-Care.
For whilst it cannot test a boy's fitness for individual
trades, it can show to which of the chief branches of
employment, manual or clerical, he should go. In this
matter mistakes are very often made, but Manual
Training soon makes it clear whether " a chap is any good
with the tools," and, if he is not, he quickly finds it out for
himself. It may also do something to bring other latent
capacities to light, especially in the case of drawing or
design. Similarly, harm is often done when a boy of

1 Or again, if the trade is largely recruited from outside London,
the result may be to increase the proportion of London-bred workmen.

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON. 307

moderate ability attempts to enter a skilled trade, and
only becomes an inferior mechanic — " a good labourer
spoilt " — and here again his level of ability is likely to be dis-
closed in time. This Training, in short, helps to produce
a preliminary classification of the boys, though as regards
particular industries only woodworking and occasionally
metalwork are directly affected, and in them the value of
the actual teaching is not very great. Its real work, there-
fore, is to fit boys generally for industrial life, and to assist
them to discover their right place in it.

During the last few years, moreover, a far more definite
step in the direction of a general preparation for employment
has been taken by the establishment of Central Schools by
the London County Council, " with the view of giving suitable
pupils a course of instruction with a definite bias towards
some kind of industrial or commercial work ! " x These
are conducted under the Board of Education code of regu-
lations for public elementary schools, but the curriculum
is organized on the assumption that pupils will stay at
school till between fifteen and sixteen years of age. Some
of them are intended to prepare their pupils for business
or clerical occupations, and give special attention to modern
languages, book-keeping, shorthand, typewriting and
commercial correspondence ; others to fit them for indus-
trial employment, and in them importance is attached to
science, drawing, handicraft (for boys) and domestic economy
(for girls) ; and a certain number take pupils of both
classes. The three types of School are said to have a com-
mercial, an industrial, and a dual, bias respectively. The
curriculum of each type has to satisfy a certain minimum
of requirements, but otherwise may be varied according to the
needs of different districts. In all the establishment of sixty
of these schools has been approved by the Council, and at the
end of January, 1914, forty-eight of them were in existence.

Entry into a Central School is at the beginning of each
educational year (April) and to be eligible for admission,

1 Handbook Explanatory of the Duties of the Special Selection Com-
mittees appointed in Respect of the Central Schools,

308 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

a boy or girl must be less than twelve, and not less than
eleven, on the following July 31, and must have reached
a class corresponding to Standard V or a higher one.
Normally, therefore, pupils will be between ten years
and eight months, and eleven years and eight months
at the time of admission, though certain exceptions are
allowed. The Schools are organized on the basis of a
four years' course, the parents undertaking that their
children shall remain at school till between fifteen and
sixteen. To meet the difficulty of keeping them there
after the age of fourteen, however, the Council is awarding
a limited number of junior county exhibitions to those in
attendance at a Central School as from the time they attain
fourteen years of age.

The selection of pupils is in the hands of special Com-
mittees and will be determined by a number of considera-
tions— namely, the recommendations of head teachers and
district inspectors, the percentages of marks obtained by
children at the previous terminal examination, the results
of junior county scholarship examinations, the probability
of the children remaining at school long enough to justify
the change, and, in the case of Schools with an industrial bias,
specimen drawings and other evidence of manual dexterity.
Special importance is attached to the latter, and the Council
has determined that —

" A lower percentage of marks may be accepted in respect of
pupils who show exceptional ability in drawing or unusual
dexterity in handicraft, provided that the general education is
such as to enable them to profit by the instruction given in the
Central School." 1

The Central School thus gives " an educational course
not provided in the public elementary graded schools or
in the secondary schools." 2 In each type it seeks to give
definite preparation for one of the two main branches of
employment, manual and clerical, and in each case a certain
proportion of the week has to be devoted to definite occupa-
tional teaching. Thus throughout the course schools with

1 London County Council : Explanatory Handbook, p. 7.

2 Ibid., Appendix II, p. 20, quoting from Chapter XV of the Ele-
mentary Schools Handbook.

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON. 309

an industrial bias are to give not less than ten nor more than
twelve hours a week to practical work, consisting, in the case
of boys, of science (including mensuration), drawing, clay-
modelling, wood and metalwork, and, in special cases,
leather- work and printing and other approved subjects.1 The
attempt is thus made to give a general preparation either
for industrial or commercial employment, but without an
attempt, such as is made in the Day Trade Schools, to give
a preliminary training in particular trades. Thus the
County Council claim

" The chief objective is to prepare boys and girls for immediate
employment on leaving school, and the instruction should there-
fore be such that children will be prepared to go into business
houses or workshops at the completion of the course without
any intermediate special training." 2

These Schools, therefore, are intended to provide for the
abler boys and girls something better than the ordinary
elementary school can give them, ability being interpreted
in a wide sense. Thus only those who have reached a cer-
tain standard of attainment are eligible, and from among
these the selection is made. Further, such provision for the
abler children will do much to make the best of their talents,
and it is rendered all the more necessary by the fact that
employers do not in many cases engage them for their
better posts till fifteen or sixteen years of age, The Central
Schools thus enable them to prepare for this time and to
avoid the dangers of the intervening period.

When we come to the Day Trade Schools we find definite
efforts being made, and with growing success, to provide
preparation and a definite preliminary training for parti-
cular trades. The number of schools which take their boys
for this purpose at thirteen or fourteen — that is, at, or a
little before, the time at which they would normally leave
School — and keep them to the age of sixteen or seventeen, is
being steadily increased. Moreover one or two industries,
notably Engineering, are demanding boys who have already
received two years' Technical Training, and in them the
policy of not taking learners before the age of sixteen is

1 Explanatory Handbook, p, 22, 2 Ibid., p. 20,

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

particularly common. In Building again, where far fewer
are taken, some of the bigger firms do not start them before
they are fifteen or sixteen, and they are stated to " come
usually from a class who do keep, and can afford to keep,
their sons at school till this age." Many of them, indeed,
both in Building and Engineering, are destined to fill higher
positions than that of the mechanic.

The Day Trades Schools proper combine this preparation
of boys or girls for particular groups of trades with an
extension and improvement of their general education.
Their pupils consist partly of those who have obtained
Scholarships carrying with them a maintenance grant and
partly of others whose parents can afford to keep them at
school without assistance and pay a fee for their attendance.
This side of the work of the County Council has developed
rapidly during the past few years. Thus in a report pre-
sented to the Education Committee on February 24, 1909,
the following statement was made —

" The total number of trade scholarships for boys is 142, of
which thirty are not yet awarded, although authorized. (The
age at which pupils are admitted is given in brackets against the
name of each school) :

School.

Trade.

Number of Pupils.

ISt

Year.

2nd
Year.

3rd
Year.

Total.

Borough Polytechnic (12 and
over)

General .
Silversmithing

Engineering .
Building .

Engineering .

Cabinet-Mak-
ing . .

Total . .

52
9

22
40

41
40

71
II
16

16
30

471
4

352

170
24

38
40

57
105
434

Central School of Arts and
Crafts (14-16) . . . .
Paddington Technical Institute
(14-16)

School of Building (13-16)
School of Engineering and
Navigation (13-14) .
Shoreditch Technical Institute
(13-16)

204

144

1 Including five 4th year pupils. 2 Including fourteen 4th year pupas.

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON. 311

This development has been continued since the date of
this report, and instruction under similar conditions is also
given at other institutions such as the Northampton Insti-
tute.

The above does not, however, exhaust the number of
those who are receiving some form of day trade instruction.
In the thirteen Institutions maintained by the County
Council alone the numbers of students of both sexes and
of all classes were as follows : —

Day Students.

Session

Numbers

September i
to March 31
or February 28.1

Number
enrolled.

Increase.

making at
least one
attendance

Increase.

Percentage
(3) of (2).

in March or

February.

(i)

(2)

(3)

(4)

1904-5

878

—

6-80

—

1905-6

1,109

+ 231

847

+ 167

1906-7

L456

+347

1,109

+ 262

1907-8

1,702

+247

i,337

+ 228

1908-9

2,057

+ 355

i,593

+ 256

1909-10

2,283

+226

1,966

+ 373

1910-11

2,673

+ 390

2,203

+237

1911-12

2,722

+ 49

2,272

+ 69

1912-13

2,884

+ 162

2,387

+ H5

These figures, however, cover all day students, and include
those in art and domestic economy. Many of them are
only attending particular classes for two or three hours a
week. In the Day Trade Schools proper they give their
whole time during a course, usually of three or four years,
though in one, the School for Waiters, it lasts for one only.

Entrance into them is secured either by passing a
qualifying examination or by obtaining a scholarship,
the former providing for those whose parents can
keep them at school till sixteen without assistance,

1 The returns covered the period to the end of March and attend-
ance during-March from 1904-5 to 1908-9 inclusive, and the period
to the end of, and attendance during, February subsequently.

3i2 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

and the latter for those who must have help. Literary
education and trade teaching are combined in different
proportions during each year, the former occupying a larger
part of the time in the first than in the second or third. It is
given, however, with special reference to the needs of the
workshop and particularly of the industries concerned.
Thus, drawing, and design are so taught and arithmetic
takes the form of workshop arithmetic. Secondly, the
trade teaching is based on a group of trades, the boy on
entry having to declare his intention to enter one of them,
but not as a rule selecting that one until later.1 For two
years he is instructed generally in the principles, methods
and tools appropriate to the whole group and only specializes
in the third.

The Day Trade School has, therefore, several objects.
It seeks to give a wider outlook and greater adaptability to
the changing conditions of industry than can be derived
from learning in a single firm. Within the trade group
with which it deals, it strives to apply the principle of selec-
tion more carefully and to fit each boy to the exact position
for which he is best suited. Moreover, by compelling him
to declare his intention to enter such an industry, it does
something to ensure that the students shall be those who
would have entered it in any case. Thirdly, not merely
does it aim at putting children of the well-to-do working
classes into good positions, but it seeks by means of its
system of Scholarships to do the same thing for the able
children of poor parents, thus rendering possible a wider
range of choice in filling the better positions. In this way
it provides a superior form of education for those who must
enter the higher ranks of industry, if they are to do so at
all, by way of the workman's bench, and gives them also a
better start in life than they would otherwise be likely to
obtain.

Thus the Schools do not, as a rule, limit themselves to

1 E.g., at the Shoreditch Technical Institute, the wood-working
and allied trades — Cabinet Making, Carpentering, Carving, Coach
and Van Building, Coopering, Upholstery, and so on,

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON. 313

teaching the elements of manual work. They do teach this,
but usually with the hope that their students will even-
tually go further. " We seek to bring on boys," one of their
Principals said, " not as ordinary mechanics, but to rise
higher than this." Now the broader and more general
education, the more complete knowledge of the rudiments
of a trade, and, above all, the early habituation to attendance
at Technical Classes, not only give a better start in learning
the actual work than the average boy gets, but often incul-
cate better industrial habits and more favourable methods
of working. The students of the Trade School possess, as a
rule, an advantage in capacity, and add to it the further
superiority given by a training that is peculiarly suited to
their purpose. Moreover, as one foreman insisted, it is
not so much the best craftsman who rises to fill the higher
posts, but the man who has the best grasp of an industry
in all its bearings — commercial, practical, and scientific—
and in this respect these students get a considerable initial
advantage.

Nor must their advantages in learning the manual work
be forgotten. In the shops many boys can only get labouring
jobs for the first two years after they leave the Elementary
School. Others, where there is no contract, are either over-
specialized or allowed to run wild. The Trade School, on
the other hand, substitutes two or three years of careful
preliminary training under definite and adequate super-
vision, which often renders possible a higher level of crafts-
manship later on, and this fact employers are beginning
to appreciate. Finally, at fourteen the boy has to fight
his battles alone, ignorant, ill-equipped and often unguided,
knowing neither what he wants nor how to set about getting
it. At sixteen or seventeen, after his two or three years'
course, he at least knows not only what he wants but what
he ought to avoid. Better able to look after himself, he
is better looked after, and possesses sufficient knowledge to
make him of some value to an employer.

Criticisms emanate from various quarters. It used to
be urged against the Schools by some Trade Union officials

314 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

that they produced a surplus of cheap half-taught labour,
which could be used to cut wage rates ; but far less
is now heard of this complaint. In view, moreover, of the
small number taken, of the care exercised in selecting boys
who would have entered the industries concerned in any
case, and of the thought devoted to finding good openings
for them, this contention is scarcely tenable. Sometimes,
again, it is argued that certain trades are overstocked, and
that additional boys should not enter them. Against this
it can be urged that it is the mode of entry rather than the
number who enter that is affected by the Schools, and that
by entering in this way boys have often a better chance of
full employment later on than they otherwise would have
done. Above all it is unfair to deprive the abler children
of the present generation of their chances in those industries
which, if temporarily overstocked, are likely to provide
full employment again in the future.

Speaking from a somewhat different standpoint, many
employers and foremen maintain that the work is unpractical
and that it unfits boys for the workshop, and not a few of
them insist on getting their learners direct 'from the Elemen-
tary School. Certainly the methods of some Day Trade
Schools have not always been sufficiently adapted to the
needs of the workshop, nor even now is the danger entirely
an imaginary one, and undoubtedly some of their boys,
when they start at the bench, presume too much on what
they have learnt at them.

Nevertheless the Schools are living down the prejudices
of the past and are even creating a demand for their pupils.
" Twenty good firms send to us when they want a boy "
" Only one of the boys who have passed through the School
is out of a job and this entirely his own fault " " Once you
can get an employer to take one boy he often comes for
another," are among their more favourable experiences ;
and some firms refuse to engage their students simply be-
cause they have methods of getting learners as, for instance,
from among their workmen's sons, which prove satisfac-
tory and provide as many as they require. On the other

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON. 315

hand, there is a definite demand in some trades for those
who have had this preliminary training. The case of
Engineering has already been mentioned, and in Silver-
smithing and other Art Metal Work the value of the materials
causes employers to prefer those who have had " the rough
edges knocked off them " and know a little about the tools
and processes. The Schools, moreover, are still in their
infancy. They have corrected many of their initial mis-
takes, and are beginning to gain the support of employers,
though they have still ample scope for greater development
in the future.

Continued Education has already been described as falling
into two parts — Ordinary Evening Continuation Schools,
which aim either at extending and developing general
education or at preparing for commercial employments—
and Trade and Technical Schools. For the year ending
July 31, 1912, * the Board of Education returned the
students enrolled in evening schools of any kind in the
County of London as 96,247 men and boys and 80,965 women
and girls, of whom 70,508 and 56,744 respectively qualified
for the grant ; that is to say, made a minimum attendance of
fourteen hours during the session.

No separate return is made for London of the number
of classes in different subjects, but in the whole of England
and Wales, well over 80,000 2 were held in that year. Of
these nearly one quarter gave literary,3 and over one-fifth
commercial, instruction.4 Those bearing upon crafts
and industries5 were less than one-fifth of the whole, and
in addition to them some of the 5,665 science classes are
used for acquiring technical knowledge.

1 Statistics of Public Education in England and Wales, Part I,
Educational Statistics, 1911-12 Cd. 6964.

2 For detailed figures see Appendix.

3 Including classes in Pure Mathematics, but not those in Practical
Mathematics.

4 Including Commercial Subjects (13,220) and Commercial Arith-
metic (2,381).

6 Industrial Subjects (7,413) Industrial Arithmetic (4,857),
and Manual Instruction (1,749).

316 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Altogether of the 96,247 male students in London, 55,344
were under twenty years of age ; and of the total number
less than three-quarters attained even the necessary modi-
cum of regularity to qualify for the Board of Education
grant. No separate returns of those earning grants at
different ages are given for this year, but those made in 1909
showed that the proportions were considerably higher in the
case of men over twenty than in that of youths and boys.
Now the recent Census gave the number of occupied males
between fourteen and twenty in the County of London as
196,660. Thus those who make any attendance at all are
about two in seven, and those who get any serious amount
of continued education in any one year not much more
than one in five. Probably the real proportions are even
smaller, since some of the students live outside the county
boundaries.

There are no means of estimating them in different branches
of work. Probably they are somewhat more favourable
in clerical employments and in the more highly skilled
trades, whilst few low -skilled workers appear to use the
Schools. The matter was dealt with in a paper read before
the Imperial Education Conference of 1911 by Sir Robert
Blair, Education Officer of the London County Council,
and from the figures given by him it appears certain that in
a few cases, notably with engineers' fitters and turners,
and in the photographic trades, the majority of the learners
utilize the classes, whilst in some others, such as brick-
laying, pianoforte-making, and the manufacture of leather,
only a very small proportion do so. On the whole, how-
ever, the proportion of those who are receiving some form
of continued education is probably somewhat larger
in the case of learners in skilled trades than in that of all
workers.

The age distribution of male students under twenty in
the County of London during the year 1911-12 and of
all occupied males below this age at the Census of 1911
is given in the following table : —

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON. 317

Ages.

Male Students.
(Educational
Statistics year
ending July 31, 1912).

All Occupied.
(Census of 1911).

Percentage
of
Occupied.

Under 14 .

1,082

2,878

14-15 . . .

12,586

21,366

15-16 .

II, 208

31,935

16-17 .

10,230

34,525

17-18 . . .

8,267

35,534

18-19 . . .

7,167

36,509

19—20

5,886

36>77i

Total . .

56,426,

199,518

Thus whilst between fourteen and fifteen nearly three-
fifths of all the boys at work made some sort of attendance,
the proportion had dropped to a little over one-third in the
following year and then fell steadily till it was barely one-
sixth between nineteen and twenty. As some consolation
for this, the regularity of attendance shows decided improve-
ment at the later ages. Hence the latest return1 we possess
of those qualifying for grant returns a little over one-half
as having done so between fourteen and fifteen, nearly
two-thirds between fifteen and sixteen and not very far
off three-quarters between nineteen and twenty.

The fact that so many juvenile workers receive no con-
tinued education at all or at best the merest smattering of
it promises to prove one of the most serious difficulties in
the way of establishing universal and compulsory Continua-
tion Schools. For to do this involves extending attendance
from the enthusiastic minority to the far larger majority
who are indifferent or hostile. On the other hand, trouble
at present arises not so much in securing attendance in the
first place, as in inducing the children to keep it up, and
probably this is largely due to the voluntary system. One

1 Unfortunately separate figures for those earning grants at
each year of age have not been given since the volume of Statistics
of Public Education for 1908-9. See Appendix V. The proportion
of the whole number who qualified for grant was considerably higher
in 1911-12 than in 1908-9.

318 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

may hope, therefore, that, once it is made compulsory, such
attendance will soon be taken as a matter of course, and that
it will grow into a habit, which in many cases will continue
after the close of the period of compulsion.

This will be the most convenient point at which to con-
sider the re-organization of its Evening Schools1 which was
sanctioned by the County Council in June, 1913, and brought
into force in September of that year. By this numerous
changes were introduced, including large modifications and
improvements in the position of the teachers. Perhaps the
most important of those affecting the attendance and in-
struction of the pupils are connected with the re-grading
of the different Institutes, by which name the various schools
and centres are for the future to be known, and with making
the course system compulsory in many of them.

The former has resulted in the following classification :—

I. Polytechnics, Technical Institutes and Schools of Art

providing for all advanced technical students, their
number for the time being remaining unchanged.

II. 222 Junior Technical Institutes closely linked with

them and giving (i) the rudiments of technical
education for those who want no more, and (2)
a preparation for young students who propose
to attend the higher institutions later on.

III. 30 Commercial Institutes, estimated to have some

30,000 students in attendance, providing advanced
commercial education for young men and women.

IV. 5o2 Junior Commercial Institutes for those seeking

elementary commercial instruction at some school
easily accessible to them. Where necessary pre-
paratory courses will be provided.

V. 302 Women's Institutes dealing with domestic subjects,

health, and needlework and providing teaching in
non-vocational subjects. Special women's insti-

1 See the Minutes of the Meeting of the London County Council
on June 3, 1913, and that of the Education Committee on May 7,
for a detailed account of the scheme.

2 Approximate numbers.

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON. 319

tutes will also be developed in connexion with the
three Girls' Trade Schools.

VI. 251 Institutes with more than one department in

districts which are not large enough nor sufficiently
well defined to demand one or more schools with
a single objective. Such may combine the func-
tions of, for instance, junior technical and com-
mercial, or of junior commercial and women's
institutes, and so on.

VII. General Institutes not to exceed 40, to provide

for all classes of students. Upon these only the
minimum of restriction will be placed as regards
age and curriculum.

VIII. 25 x Free Institutes, giving a general but not a com-
mercial education.

IX. ii 1 Schools for the Deaf, which will be continued as

at present.

X. 12 Institutes giving instruction in non-vocational

subjects, confined to students over eighteen years
of age.

XI. Post Office and Police Classes and those held in business

houses or clubs will remain undisturbed for the
present.

The Junior Institutes are to be closely linked up with
the corresponding Higher Institutes and will in fact form
branches of them ; and it is hoped to keep the connexion
between them clearly before the younger students by arrang-
ing for periodical visits of their classes to the latter, and
thus to assist and encourage their transfer to them at the
proper time. This re-organization further provides as far
as possible separate Institutes for the different grades of
students, Commercial and Junior Commercial for clerical
workers, Technical and Junior Technical for the artisans
and higher ranks of semi-skilled, and Free and General
Institutes, both for the low-skilled and for some of the
others. The Preliminary Courses will also provide for those
who have difficulty in grasping or assimilating the teaching,
1 Approximate numbers.

32o INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

either because of defective elementary education or because
they have been absent from school for some time and
forgotten much of what they learnt there.

No higher institution of any kind, commercial or technical,
will admit any student unless he is seventeen years of age,
or has attended a central or secondary school for not less
than three years, or has completed a course at a Trade School,
or produces a certificate of having satisfactorily attended
a two years' course of study at a junior institute of the same
type, or satisfies a test of fitness to take full advantage of
the education offered. On the other hand, no Junior In-
stitute shall admit or retain pupils who have fulfilled the
two years' course just mentioned, or who are over eighteen
years of age on August i of the year in which the evening
school session opens. The overlapping year is intentional.
Such a scheme, therefore, is a long step in the direction of
properly adapting the teaching to the ages of the students
and confining them in their earlier years to preparatory
courses or general instruction which will lead up to the higher
branches of knowledge later on.

Finally the new organization insists strongly upon the
course system and largely bases itself upon it. Courses are
obligatory on all pupils under eighteen in Junior Commercial
and Technical Institutes and on those who are taking com-
mercial and technical subjects in General Institutes.

1 The courses (two hours each night) would, in the main, be
for three nights' instruction, one night being devoted to tutorial
work, some preparation or home work, and some light physical
education, and possibly some music or drawing, the fee for a
single subject to be not less than the fee for the course. There
should be a variety of courses suitable for those engaged in
selling and distribution as well as for those engaged in the count-
ing house or workshop. The courses would, where necessary,
include preparatory courses in English, arithmetic, drawing and
light physical education . . . When the student has not been in the
seventh standard of an elementary school, or class of similar
standard, or where, having been in such class, he has been absent
from school for over a year, he must join the preparatory course
or submit to a test by a responsible teacher. ... A student under
eighteen years of age, who fails to make satisfactory attendance

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON. 321

in any one- subject of the course, except in the case of a non-
vocational subject, and who cannot produce reasonable grounds
for absence, should forfeit his fees and be excluded from the
institute." 1

Certificates are also to be granted to those students who
satisfactorily attend a full course. Such, however, will not
be obligatory in the case of Free Institutes, and as already
stated a two years' course at any Junior Institute is one of
the conditions of admission to a higher one before the age
of seventeen.

Such are the main outlines of the new scheme. In addi-
tion to them, the fees have been raised, but the number of
exemptions from payment increased. Special efforts are to
be made to enlist the sympathies and support of employers,
and the Managers of Evening Schools are to be replaced by
Advisory Committees, who will carry on with important
extensions the After-care work of the Care Committees of
Elementary Schools.

So far as a voluntary system can do so, the plan, though
not perfect, goes far to provide for the chief requirements
of the situation ; but it has not yet reached its final form.
Perhaps three of its changes are most important. One is
the organization of different classes of Institutes to suit the
needs of each grade of worker. Secondly, the provision
of different forms of teaching for younger and older students
makes it possible to compel them to take the kind of instruc-
tion adapted to their age and experience, and to prevent
them from attempting more advanced subjects without the
necessary preliminary equipment. Previously such an
arrangement had proved difficult to secure. Thirdly,
insistence upon the course system will do much to overcome
the difficulty that has hitherto arisen from the refusal of
boys to take up anything that does not bear directly on
their work ; for it makes the study of those subjects, whose
value they do not see, a necessary condition of obtaining
instruction in others to whose utility they are alive. Indeed,

1 Minutes of the Meeting of the Education Committee of the
Council on May 7, 1913, p. 887.

322 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

this last may prove to be the most far-reaching change
of all.

These improvements, however, have not been carried out
without some loss in other directions, and this indeed is
inevitable under the present voluntary arrangement. Thus
the first year's working has shown a decline of 20 per cent,
in the number of students, and so far there has been only a
slight increase in regularity of attendance of those who re-
main. Such, indeed, was inevitable and the course system
aJone is no doubt responsible for a good many losses. But
there is no reason to fear that a recovery will not take place
as soon as the scheme gets better known and understood.
Generally speaking, it is too early to pronounce a definite
judgment on its prospects or on the support it will gain from
employers and others : but it seems to be well conceived
and to hold out great possibilities of ultimate success.

Finally 'it is necessary to consider the smaller number
of schools or institutes which are engaged in the provision
of Technical Education. This was described in the last
chapter as being made up of two branches — technical teach-
ing proper in the form of the scientific and other purely
technical knowledge bearing on different industries, and
trade teaching of the manual work. Intermediate between
the two of them is the Higher Trade Teaching of the theory
and general principles of an employment.

The Polytechnics and Aided Institutions of the Council are
mainly occupied in giving either technical teaching proper
or higher trade teaching, though one or two of them are
really Trade Schools.1 The thirteen Maintained Institutes,
however, are engaged primarily in giving trade teaching
proper, together with such theoretical and scientific know-
ledge as is necessary to accomplish their main objects.
Their growth, therefore, as displayed in the following table,
may be taken to illustrate that of trade teaching generally
in London :—

1 Throughout the rest of the chapter the term Trade School will
be used to denote those institutions whose primary object is the
giving of trade teaching.

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON. 323
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL — MAINTAINED INSTITUTIONS.

Session.
September i
to end of
March or
February.1

Numbers
enrolled
to end of
March or
February.3

Increase
on
Previous
year.

Number
making at
least one
attendance
in March or
February.3

Increase
(+)or
Decrease
(— )on
previous
year.

Percentage
of figures in
Column 4
to those in
Column 2.

(i)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

1904-5

5-097

—

3,103

—

6o'9

1905-6

5,859

+ 762

3,954

+ 851

67-5

1906-7

6,215

+ 356

4,152

+ 198

66-8

1907-8

6,527

+ 312

4,436

+ 284

68-0

1908-9

7,518

+ 991

4,977

+ 541

66.2

igog-io1

8,425

+ 907

6,233

+ 1,256

74-0

1910-n1

8,684

+ 259

6,241

+ 8

71-9

I9II-I21

8,807

+ I23

6,198

- 43

70-4

I9I2-I31

9,299

+ 492

6,445

+ 247

69-3

This shows in less than ten years a very satisfactory im-
provement of "over 4,000 in the numbers enrolled and of
over 3,000 in attendance of some sort throughout the ses-
sion, and those who kept it up also increased from just over
sixty to nearly seventy per cent, of the total number. It
should be remembered, however, that these schools are
not confined to trade teaching, but have art, science ard
domestic economy classes. The latter train women and
girls for home duties, and their rapid development has no
doubt accounted for a good part of the increase. Similarly
the art students are not usually artisans, but are differently
engaged and have different objects. Still even so the
returns give evidence of a satisfactory increase both in the
numbers and attendance of the latter.

Like other branches of continued education, therefore, the
Evening Trade Schools have made considerable progress,
but as yet they do not nearly cover the whole ground nor
reach more than a minority of the boys. There are many

1 In 1909-10 and the following years 'the returns are made to the
end of February, and previously to the end of March. The result is
slightly to exaggerate the increases between 1908-9 and 1909-10,

324 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

whose attendance is spasmodic and short-lived, and more
who do not attend at all, and it is just these last who often
require them most. On the other hand, the minority of
regular students is a growing and enthusiastic one. The
success which the Schools have achieved has only been
attained after considerable effort, and they owe very much to
the energy and keenness both of present and past members,
whilst happily an increasing number of employers are now
encouraging their boys to make use of them.

Nevertheless their progress is at least steady, if not as
rapid as might be wished, and both employers and boys
are being made to realize their character, and are being
gradually convinced of their merits. In time it may become
the normal and natural thing for the latter to attend them,
but that is not so as yet. At the same time the work already
done has probably gone deeper than appears on the sur-
face, because at first so much of it must consist of removing
obstacles and objections.

(• The Trade Schools have also had to buy their experience
and to learn from their mistakes. This is necessarily a
slow process, but the " habit " of attendance is nevertheless
being slowly created and the creation of " habit '•' is one of
the roots of all real progress. Thus in one district attend-
ance at a School of Engineering and Navigation was coming
to be regarded as " rather a smart thing " ; whilst it is not
unusual for one boy to get another to " come along with me."
Now the growth of such a public opinion among the boys
themselves will in time be of enormous value to the Schools,
and though such a public opinion is still in its infancy,
sufficient progress has been made as to give considerable
promise for the future.

The information given to me by those whom I interviewed
as to how and why they came to attend a Trade School is
of some interest in throwing light upon the present situa-
tion. Exclusive of seven who were sent under special
arrangements by a single firm, I obtained answers from
seventy-four individuals, and the causes of their attendance
may be classified as follows :—

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON. 325

Sent by Relatives . . . . . . . -23

(Fathers 15, five being employers; Brothers 6, two being

employers) .
Sent by other Employers and by Foremen . . . .11

Through shopmates and other friends . . . 14

By Apprenticing Agencies ...... 6

Attended Day Trade Schools ...... 6

Other School Influences ...... 6

Accidental (Obtaining leaflets or circulars, hearing casual talk,

etc.) 8

Of the relatives and friends mentioned above only a very
few held official positions in the Schools, but four out of six
brothers, two of the fathers and some of the friends had
themselves received benefit from such instruction in the
past or were still receiving it, and as a result were trying
to induce others to take advantage of it. Similarly a young
foreman, whom I saw elsewhere, told me : "I got so
much good out of them myself that I always try to persuade
others to go in order that they may get the benefit too."

Two points stand out saliently. First, under a voluntary
system much must depend on the will and power of present
students and of employers and foremen thus to interest
others to attend ; and this, in turn, will vary with the capacity
of the Schools to provide the sort of instruction that is re-
quired. It is a pleasing sign, therefore, that so many boys
are keen to do this ; for valuable as may be the influence of
others, theirs is the most valuable of all. One boy appeals
most strongly to another, and his advice is often more
readily taken than that of foremen or " guv'nors," since the
latter may be thought to have objects of their own to serve.
Nevertheless their sympathy and encouragement are of
great importance ; and their assistance is not confined to the
giving of time off and other facilities, but arises even more
definitely from putting clearly before the lads the need and
advantages of attendance, and from convincing them that it
is the right and proper thing to do. This support is not so
general as could be wished, partly as a result of the early

326 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

mistakes of the Schools themselves. At the same time it is
certainly growing.

The second point of importance is the part that can be
played by various agencies, voluntary or official. Day
Trade Schools not only teach boys to rely on trade classes,
but to know also what it is that they can give, and similar
influence is sometimes brought to bear by ordinary Con-
tinuation Classes and by Manual Training at the Elemen-
tary Schools. The latter perhaps interests particularly the
keener boys and those who are good at manual work. Now
this interest and the influence of instructors causes them to
take with them, when they leave, the determination to join
a Trade Class, and so forms the bridge to carry them over
from the one to the other.

Apprenticeship Associations and similar bodies not only
exert a steady and continuous pressure in this direction,
but do something to secure facilities from the employers ;
and of all their work this is perhaps least open to criticism.
Their weakness lies in the fact that they reach only a very
small number, and the value of what they do consists
less in their actual achievements than in preparing the
way for a more general organization of boy labour. This,
indeed, is already growing up in the establishment and mutual
co-operation of Juvenile Labour Exchanges and Care Com-
mittees, who will in time come to do for all boys what these
Associations are .doing for a few ; and experience too gives
reason to hope that the wider system, absorbing and
strengthened by the personnel of these smaller bodies, will
steadily extend its influence.

The present position of Trade and Technical Schools, that
of the former more particularly, can now be shown by
a brief consideration of the attitude towards them of the
parties concerned. For in its growth every social institu-
tion or movement passes through a number of stages. The
first is that of public ignorance, when it neither enjoys sup-
port nor suffers from opposition, simply because its existence
is scarcely realized, much less reasoned about. The next
step forward is when prejudice, passive opposition, or even

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON. 327

active hostility are aroused, and a very salutary change this
often is. It leads outsiders to inquire into the merits of
the institution concerned, and condemnation, not always
undeserved, leads to inquiry from within to set right errors
and mistakes and to adapt it more fully to meet the needs it
sets out to serve. This has been abundantly true of the
Trade Schools, and as a result of criticism the faults of their
earlier teaching have been largely removed.

The third stage is one of passive acquiescence and sup-
port ; and it is this point that the great body of employers
and foremen have now reached. Active opposition has
ceased, and often the use of the Schools is recommended to
the boys. But only a minority have as yet advanced to
the fourth stage of active support and the provision of
facilities for attendance, though in a few trades, notably
Engineering and Printing, a very fair proportion have done
so. The last stage is covered when Compulsory Evening
Schools, with a corresponding reduction in the hours of
Juvenile Labour, are " accepted " willingly "as an integral
part of the industrial system." It has already been reached
in parts of Germany, notably in Berlin, Frankfurt, Leipzig
and Munich. In England, however, progress from the
third stage to the fourth is only beginning.

Root and branch opposition is found among a minority of
employers in many trades. .It comes either from inferior
firms, or from others who believe that they can " teach all
there is to be taught better than Schools can," or who have
had an unfortunate experience of their work in the past.
Often no action is taken one way or the other. Sometimes
there is no suitable School available. At others the em-
ployers consider they have no right to bring pressure on the
boys. " We do not interfere : we have no right to any
control over what a boy does in his own time." Or, again,
interference is considered inadvisable, because a boy must
go of his own free will or not at all : and some " won't be
troubled " or "do not concern themselves with what he
does in his own time."

In very many cases, however, an effort is made to influence

328 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

learners, if only to the extent of bringing the Schools to
their notice ; and usually something is done to encourage
them to attend. Some employers merely point out the
advantage they offer, others exert every influence short
of actual compulsion, and a few even impress on their boys
that their chance of rising or of keeping their places depends
upon attendance at them. ' We insist," I was told by one
large employer, " that if we are to look after a boy and teach
him during the day, he must go and learn for himself at a
Technical School in the evening. The boy who will not
look after himself in this way is of no use to us."

The success achieved varies from firms which with all
their efforts can induce few to go, to others which secure
their attendance almost without exception. The difference
is partly to be accounted for by the more obvious nee d for
technical training in some trades than in others. Again,
a special connexion between the firm and the School, as
when an employer is a member of the Council or a foreman
of the teaching staff, has also some effect. More depends,
however, on the way in which boys are approached. When
this is done in a haphazard manner or left to the foreman,
the result is not likely to be very favourable. Where it is
done carefully and systematically, it is often a great success.
Thus one employer said : " We talk well to each boy and
show him the need of using the Technical Schools, and this
so stimulates their interest that even if they do not go at
once, they soon follow their companions there."

Actual compulsion, indeed, is generally regarded as bad
policy and often influence and persuasion, properly exer-
cised, will do all that is necessary or possible. In other
places advances in wages are sometimes made to depend
on attendance and progress at the classes, and in London also
something might be done in this way. There, however, the
employers prefer to base increases, over and above any
agreed rate, upon general improvement and capacity and
not upon work at a Trade School only ; but where, as some-
times happens, a boy is told clearly that the latter will
" help him to get on," the effect is likely to be much the

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON. 329

same. A few firms also pay the fees for their boys ; but
this is not very often done.

Least success, as nearly all who have dealt with the matter
will agree, has been achieved in securing from employers
"time off" for attendance. For their refusal to grant this
there are many legitimate reasons, and these will have to be
fairly met. The idea is still a new one, and many, even of
those who regard the Schools as useful adjuncts to the work-
shop, are not yet convinced of the benefit of granting it,
especially where as much as two afternoons or half-days a
week are asked for. Many aJso honestly believe that during,
the daytime a boy is better employed in the shop than in a
School. Here, therefore, the Schools have to show that they
can provide something that will make it worth an employer's
while to incur the trouble and inconvenience involved, and
the more rapidly they can bring themselves into line with
the requirements of different industries, and the better they
can adapt themselves to the convenience of the masters,1
the greater will be their progress. Nothing but harm can
come from the habit of a certain type of person of con-
tinually grousing and nagging at those of the latter who fail
to see eye to eye with him.

Secondly, the opinion is widespread among employers
that time-off is unnecessary and that the boys have sufficient
time and energy for the purpose after the day's work is
over, and foremen are as a rule even more emphatic on this
point. Sometimes, however, exceptions are made for special
reasons or special occasions or in favour of those whose homes
are a long way from the workshop.

In some of the chief industries, too, hours are such as to
minimize the difficulties of attendance. In Building they are
only forty-four a week in the winter months, and fifty during
the rest of the year. In Engineering and the better-class

1 This is already done in some cases. Thus at a certain Class
connected with Art Metal Work the boys left their shops at 5
p.m. instead of 7 p.m., and the Class was held from 5.30 p.m. to
7.30 p.m. Thus the latter was held almost entirely during working
hours, but in such a way as to cause the minimum of inconvenience
to the employer.

330 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Furniture Trade they are from fifty to fifty-two and a half
throughout, work stopping at 5.30 or 6 p.m., as against 4.30
or 5 p.m. in the Building Trades. In Printing, Art Metal,
wholesale Cabinet-Making and some of the Metal Trades
it goes on till 7 p.m. or later ; and hours, except in the first
named, are often longer. From fifty-five to fifty-seven a
week are quite common in parts of the woodworking trades.
In these cases, therefore, attendance involves going straight
from shop to school, and a boy has to stick at it almost
continuously from the time he gets up until bedtime. In the
Building Trades again an early stoppage involves a corre-
spondingly early start and the long distances that have often
to be travelled from home to work largely neutralize the
benefit of shorter hours. The stronger and keener boys
make the necessary effort, often with advantage to them-
selves, but this is beyond the powers of many. The con-
tention, honestly raised by employers and foremen, there-
fore, does not appear to be altogether tenable. As yet,
however, the matter has not been laid as clearly before
them as it might have been, or as it will need to be if their
co-operation is to be secured.

Outsiders do not always appreciate the real difficulty in
the way of granting leave of absence that is caused by the
conditions of the workshop. Overtime is a case in point.
A firm may agree to excuse its boys from this, but will
sometimes find it impossible to carry out the promise com-
pletely, since circumstances will now and again arise when
they will have to be kept. Moreover each boy has his definite
place and duties. When he works in a squad or as mate
to a man, in particular, those with whom he is associated
have to stop when he does and if he stops early so must they.
But even when he works independently, trouble often arises
if he gets behind with his jobs and keeps others waiting,
and whilst large firms may be able to employ two shifts,
those of small or moderate size cannot afford to do so.

Again, to leave off in this way is not always an advantage
to the boys themselves. If there is an interesting and
instructive piece of work to be done, a boy is the better for

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON 331

staying to finish it. Otherwise the foreman may have to
hand it over to some one else. He will then have to be given
such jobs as will fit in with his hours of labour and so his
progress may thus be retarded more than it is accelerated
by what he learns at School. Finally, by working over-
time during a rush, he may get at the same time good
work, good experience and good pay, and desires, as little
as his employer does, to leave to attend classes, " and,"
the Head of a Department in an important School said,
" he would be a fool if he did go/'

Where a shop is doing its duty, moreover, a boy can and
does look to it for the greater part, and perhaps the whole,
of his manual teaching. These considerations do not in
my view constitute an argument either against the present
system of attendance at Trade Classes or against shorter
hours for boy labour and compulsory Continuation Schools.
Nevertheless care should be taken to avoid as far as possible
the loss of valuable workshop experience, and to adapt the
instruction and the hours of attendance to the needs of each
industry. Indeed, up to the present, the refusal of individual
employers to grant time off has often been justified by the
failure of the Schools to satisfy these requirements.

Hitherto the actual grant of " time off " has taken various
forms. Frequently some afternoons, usually two per week,
are asked for ; but so far only a few firms have seen their
way to grant so much, partly owing to the inconvenience
involved and partly because employers generally are not
convinced that the Schools can give them an adequate re-
turn for the trouble and loss they may incur in this way.
Results have been most favourable in the Engineering and
Printing Trades, but in the case of the former London con-
ditions sometimes render the policy unworkable. Thus in
ship-repairing yards overtime is frequent and unavoidable,
and in the case of many of the large number of small shops
scattered over a wide area, the time spent in travelling to and
from a School is often prohibitive. As an alternative, there-
fore, and to meet these difficulties, it is suggested that the
boys should be excused from work before breakfast on the
morning following the class:

332 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

More frequently employers are prepared to let a boy leave
half an hour or an hour before the ordinary time on the
days on which he takes his classes, and when work does not
cease till 7.30 or 8 such an allowance is essential. Here,
indeed, there is far greater willingness to grant the facilities
asked for. It is one thing to give a boy a whole afternoon,
and another to let him go a little earlier in order to get a
wash and reach the School in time ; and many employers,
who have never been asked to do so, appear to be willing
to make such an allowance.

The same is true of overtime. Sometimes it is absolutely
necessary to keep the boys, notably in ship-repairing ;
and in the Art Metal Trades great difficulty arises from the
fact that their busy season is in the winter and thus involves
the maximum of interference with the Schools. Probably
juvenile overtime cannot at present be entirely abolished —
even by legislation ; but where the matter is thoroughly
taken in hand, it can be enormously reduced, and much
better regulated. In this direction, the School of Engineer-
ing at Poplar has achieved considerable success.

It is interesting to speculate, indeed, whether even better
results might not have been attained if more attention had
been paid to such things and less to more ambitious schemes.
Indeed, since refusal of time-off does not in any sense involve
hostility to Technical and Trade Teaching as such, it might
prove advantageous if those concerned were for the present
to concentrate their attention on the abolition of overtime
for boys and on obtaining facilities for them to reach the
Schools in comfort at the ordinary hour for commencing.
Far greater sympathy and support are likely to be obtained
from the employers, and the desired object may be attained
sooner, if less is asked for at first and the pioneers of Trade
Schools are content to secure it bit by bit. Again, where
more can be asked, absence from work before breakfast
on the following morning is sometimes of most value, especi-
ally where afternoon classes cannot be arranged, and the
boys have long distances to travel. Above all every effort
should be made to meet the wishes of employers. Their

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON 333

attitude towards the Schools is critical rather than hostile,
and on the whole favourable to their general work, even
though they may not be prepared to give the large measure
of assistance involved in more comprehensive schemes.
It is up to the Schools themselves, therefore, to convince
them of their value, and so obtain this more active co-opera-
tion.

Turning to the boys themselves, there is a considerable
and enthusiastic minority who attend, and attend regularly,
at the cost of much trouble and sacrifice, involving, as
attendance often does, a very long day's work, sometimes in
face of passive discouragement or even active opposition from
their employers. Many others join the Schools for a time,
but fail to continue at them. The majority, however, never
reach them at all, so that those who use them regularly,
and for a considerable period, are a small minority.

Their difficulties and sacrifices are very real. In certain
industries there is as yet no special manual or technical
training available, though, as a rule, the ordinary Continua-
tion Schools can provide the boys engaged in them with
much instruction of value. Hard as it often is, however, to
make them realize their need of definite trade teaching, it is
far more so to induce them to join classes for the purpose of
improving their general education. Where they attend, it
is usually for the avowed purpose of bettering themselves
at their trades, and only where such a purpose is to be served
will they do so. Similarly the willingness of an employer
to let a boy off for Technical or Trade instruction will not
extend to more general subjects.

Moreover, even where the right kind of teaching is avail-
able, London offers peculiar difficulties, which are not present
in other towns to anything like the same extent. Its huge
size and its rapid expansion involve the travelling of longer
and longer distances, since the workers frequently live very
far from their work, and home, workshop and school may
even be in three separate districts. Thus a firm near the
Edgware Road had apprentices living at Neasden and the
nearest suitable Institute for them was in Clerkenwell.

334 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Hence time spent in travelling may be a very serious item.
Again, even if school and workshop are close together, there
may be a tedious delay between the close of the one and
the opening of the other. The position in Printing is com-
paratively favourable, since a large part of it is concentrated
round Fleet Street with St. Bride's and one or two smaller
institutions in the immediate neighbourhood, though firms
in the outlying districts are not nearly so well served. On
the other hand, the Building Trades are scattered all over
London, and in some branches every job may be in a
different place. The same trouble indeed arises to some
extent in the engineering trades. Further, where an
industry is scattered, the adoption of a definite policy by
employers is far more difficult to secure.

The more localized trades, on the other hand, afford better
facilities, especially in those cases in which the employers
prefer to draw their labour from the immediate neighbour-
hood or from adjoining districts. To this extent con-
ditions are especially favourable in the Pianoforte Trade
and in the Bermondsey Leather Trade, but with them other
difficulties have hitherto hindered the development of such
teaching. The Cabinet Trade is similarly concentrated
in East, and the Art Metal and Instrument Trades in Central,
London, and in both cases considerable provision for trade
instruction is already made.

Overtime is a further cause of trouble, even where the
arrangement of the ordinary hours of labour is convenient,
and leads to considerable irregularity of attendance, more
particularly as it is not always possible to tell in advance
when it will be necessary. The fact already noted that
the working of overtime is not always nor altogether an evil
further complicates the matter. Nevertheless its disadvan-
tages usually outweigh its advantages. Moreover, the
trouble is unusually acute in London, because the business
of a repairing centre frequently renders rushes of work
inevitable. This is especially true of ship-repairing, since
the ships have often to be got ready for sea at the earliest
possible moment. Under this and similar circumstances,

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON 335

therefore, overtime, both for men and boys, is practically
unavoidable. This fact must be taken into account, and its
result is not only to make attendance spasmodic, but to
decrease the number of students. The difficulty of learning
is increased, and the value of what is learnt diminished, and
so some of them drop out. The trouble is further
accentuated where the busy season, as in Silversmithing,
falls in the autumn, winter and early spring.

Thirdly, the ordinary hours of labour may prohibit, or
seriously restrict, attendance, though in this respect London
is somewhat better off than some other large cities. The
most palpable case is that of the vanguards, who have to
work as long as the carmen and may even put in as much as
seventy-two hours or more in a week. Many of the errand
boys employed in the delivery of goods are almost as badly
off ; and in many trades work in the lower grade factories
is continued far too late to allow of attendance at Trade
Classes. Moreover, even where they are not too long, hours'
are often so arranged as to render it practically impossible
without the co-operation of employers, and though such
co-operation is more frequently forthcoming than many
people suppose, they are not always able or willing to
modify them.

The Schools are usually open from 7 till 9.30, and many
boys cannot reach them before 7.30. Sometimes hours begin
and end early, and this difficulty does not arise, but in several
industries work in some shops continues till 8 or 8.30. Hence
where boys are not free till 7.30 or later, the value of
their school work is seriously diminished, whilst a 7 o'clock
stoppage involves great rush and strain, even when school
and workshop are close together. This point is not always
grasped by employers whose works close at this hour, and
many of them hold that in such a case a boy has ample
opportunity to attend in his own time. Apart altogether
from wider questions, therefore, the possibility of an
earlier start and finish, as in the Building Trades, is worth
considering.

It is even more important to inquire, however, whether

336 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

the hours at present worked by the boys are such as to
prevent them from profiting, or from profiting fully, by the
instruction they receive. In other words, " Are they too
tired, after an ordinary day's work, to attend an Evening
School as well ? "

Replies to this question are conflicting. Principals and
Instructors are almost unanimous that too great a strain
is imposed, and that of those boys who attend and profit
by it a greater sacrifice is required than they should be
called upon to make. Where, for instance, they have to
be in the workshop from 8 till 7, and then go straight on at
the School till 9.30, they have hardly a spare moment to
themselves from the morning of one day till the evening of
the next ; and this often happens not once, but several times,
in the week. Even under these conditions, boys engaged
in manual work often appear to be bright and lively, but
with the more technical subjects, and at all kinds «of book-
work, many cannot keep awake, and others who can fail to
grasp the instruction they receive.

Many foremen, on the contrary, declare that the boys
are not too tired after the day's work to get full value from
what they are taught, and that the classes themselves form
a change and relaxation after their day's employment.
They suggest, however, that they should not continue to do
the ordinary work of their trade, but something bearing upon
it, which is at the same time " interesting and recreative."
Its general principles, and the applications of science to it,
are usually suggested, because by the light they throw on
their daily work they will interest and instruct them at the
same time. Many foremen will add that " they are never
too tired to go to a music hall."

It is necessary, moreover, to guard against exaggerating
the amount of strain involved in a boy's work. Some
undoubtedly are kept hard at it all day, but this is not the
case with all. " They are not driven as hard as all that,"
one foreman said. With many, and with young boys in
particular, much of the work is light and easy, and its faults
in many cases lie rather in monotony and lack of interest,

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON 337

as with semi-automatic machines, or in the mere length of
the hours. Others, such as those who wait on the men
generally and run messages, have intervals of rest or idle-
ness and, as one employer put it, " they are out in the air
all day delivering messages, and they take their own time
about it."

Probably, therefore, where the hours are reasonable, and
the work not too hard, a boy can attend with profit to him-
self and the sacrifice involved is not more than sufficient
to prove a fair test of his keenness. " The boy who is eager
to get on will go," it is often said, or " the boy who will rise
in life is the one who attends a Technical School." On the
other hand, where hours are long or the work heavy, only
the strongest and most energetic can stand the strain.
Whilst, therefore, in the view of some the classes benefit
by being confined to those who are keenest, and might suffer
if attendance were to be made too easy for the less keen,
there can be little doubt that conditions are often, though
not always, such as to put evening instruction beyond the
reach of a great many.

'If, however, numerous failures to use the Schools result
from such industrial conditions, they are frequently due
to quite other reasons. Many boys show little interest
in their trades outside their work in the shop, and this lack
of interest is not confined to those who get no direct encour-
agement from their employers, In not a few cases, indeed,
definite offers of facilities for using a Trade School are re-
fused, and employers have stated that they have had plenty
of requests for leave of absence for other reasons, but never
one for this purpose. Other boys, too, feel that they are
learning all that is necessary in the workshop, and that
they do not require further instruction, and many of the
teachers insist that failure to utilize the Schools is frequently
the result of not realizing their value rather than of any lack
of energy or willingness.

Trade Classes, again, have to compete, on the one hand,
with legitimate substitutes, such as Clubs, Brigades or Boy
Scouts. Many energetic members of the latter never put a

338 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

foot inside an evening school. Such bodies exercise much
valuable supervision and control and often the boys are kept
under a considerable amount of discipline. Indeed, where
they are not learning a skilled trade, membership of such a
body may even be preferable to that of a school or class,
and if it gives less of some things, it can give more of others,
— of discipline, of control and, above all, of corporate life
and responsibility. Both are necessary parts of our social
life, but in some cases only one of them can be utilized and
not both.

On the other hand, there are many counter-attractions,
which keep boys away from the Schools, and do nothing
to fill their place. Such things as music halls, picture
theatres, and the various delights and attractions of the
streets themselves, are especially numerous in London, and
their influence, considerable in most large towns, is peculiarly
great there. They form a great stumblingblock in the
way of the full use of opportunities for trade teaching :
and in small towns and country districts boys pay far greater
attention to learning their business, because the counter-
attractions are so much less common. ;f Two boys in the
country," one foreman said, " will often be found talking
together about their trades, having little else to talk about.
In London you rarely or never find them doing so." This,
in fact, is another of the special difficulties of town life, and
of that of London in particular, that whilst there are far
better facilities for obtaining instruction than elsewhere,
other conditions reduce the will and desire to take advantage
of them.

These, therefore, are the chief external causes which limit
the use of Trade or Evening Schools, and which hinder
and cut short attendance at them, or even prevent it alto-
gether. A further internal influence arises from a boy's
own attitude towards work and school. When he leaves
School, he reaches a point at which the earning of wages
first takes a definite place in his life and learning, even in the
case of an apprentice to a highly skilled trade, occupies at

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN LONDON. 339

most only a part of his mind.1 It is apt, indeed, to get
thrust into the background altogether, more particularly
with those who are doing only labourer's work. A lad's
attitude often is that, having left school, he is finished
with bookwork and henceforth his business is to earn wages.
Moreover a very large number, on leaving school, enter
temporary jobs in which they are not likely to remain, and
not knowing their ultimate destination have little incentive
to attend classes. For these reasons, therefore, many either
fail to see the need of keeping up their schooling, and drop
it entirely, or, even if they only do so temporarily till they
find out their walk in life, they may for one reason or another
come to do so permanently.

One may add that the attitude of the Public School Boy
is often much the same, with the difference that he stays
at school some years longer. Hence at fourteen a boy, how-
ever well he may have been taught, has not assimilated his
knowledge as he will have done by seventeen or eighteen, and
is far more likely to forget what he has learnt. More-
over the occupations of the Middle Classes practically com-
pel many of them to acquire further knowledge. For the
reasons given, therefore, the instincts and feelings of lads
of fourteen are naturally unfavourabte to a continuance of
their education, and the temporary enthusiasm for Evening
Classes, which has been aroused in many of them during
their last few months at the Elementary School, is evanes-
cent and quickly wears off.

Secondly, some difficulty is also caused by the purely
practical or " bread-and-butter " view that is taken of their
functions. This, indeed, is inevitable, since boys of fourteen,
or even older ones, have little chance of taking a wide view.
So they go to a School in order to learn their business better
and to earn higher wages, not to acquire craftsmanship for
its own sake or the scientific principles of their trades. This,
indeed, is only natural ; but many of them take too narrow

1 This is true of the great majority of boys. Those who have
engaged in street trading or who have worked out of school hours
have already started to earn before they leave school.

340 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

a view of what will help them to achieve their objects. A
knowledge of general principles and of the application of
science to their employment will assist them not only to
learn the details, but to advance themselves to higher
positions at their work. This, however, they fail to see. In-
structors complain that many will only attend for purposes
of manual instruction, and that their presence at other classes
is only secured by making it a condition for obtaining this.
Moreover, this attitude is naturally far more marked in the
boy labourer than in those learning a skilled trade. The
latter sees even less clearly the value of schooling which bears
only indirectly on his work. When, say, a cabinet-maker
goes to a Trade School and learns to make a better piece
of furniture there than he makes in the workshop, the benefit
is clear to him. The advantage which a messenger or
general factory boy can derive may be no less great, but it
is far less obvious. Hence for the successful extension of
Continuation Schools a change in the mental attitude of
parents and children is of little less importance than an
alteration in the conditions of labour.

In this connexion, therefore, some account must be taken
of those — and they are many — who start to attend a school
and fail to continue.1 One satisfactory feature here is that
the leakage of this sort, which is very great among the
younger boys, grows appreciably less as their age increases.
Between fourteen and fifteen, indeed, the numbers enrolled
are much larger than in later years. But as the enrolments
decline, there is a steady improvement in the proportions
qualifying for grants, and from a little more than one-half
between fourteen and fifteen, these rise to nearly three-
quarters between eighteen and twenty-one. It is true that
a minimum of fourteen hours during a session gives this
qualification, but it is something that a larger percentage
should achieve even this modicum of regularity.

One important cause of these failures, as also of neglect
to make any attendance at all, is as follows. Education
Authorities, Teachers and Care Committees do much to

1 Appendix III,

TRADE AND TECHNICAL StHOOLS IN LONDON. 341

popularize the Evening Classes, so that many boys leave the
Elementary Schools with a real desire and intention to use
them. Sometimes this enthusiasm is unlikely to be per-
manent in any case, but often, if properly provided for, it
might become a real and lasting thing. Unfortunately
many of them are allowed to " go by default." The Even-
ing Classes close for some months in the summer, and for the
weeks before they do so, knowledge of this fact deters
students from entering them.1 As therefore boys usually
leave school immediately after their fourteenth birthday,
several months may elapse before any classes are available,
and by this time they may have forgotten all about them
or acquired new interests. This also causes considerable
loss of students between one session and the next.

Other influences further increase both irregularity of
attendance and failure to continue it throughout a single
session. Many boys fail to grasp the instruction given,
especially that of a more technical character, and so grow
disheartened. Sometimes the fault lies in defective Ele-
mentary Education ; at others an interval elapses before
they reach the evening classes, and they have forgotten
much of what they have learnt. This difficulty the County
Council are attempting to overcome by means of pre-
liminary courses in Junior Institutes. Others are too tired
to grasp the teaching, or too frequently absent from over-
time and other causes to follow it properly when they are
there.

Again, it is not always possible for the classes to suit the
requirements of all the boys ; and another and even more
potent source of irregularity consists of their frequent
changes of job, especially where these involve also changes
of hours. To take one instance, a boy left school very
keen on attending an evening class, and threw up his first
place partly because he worked too late to do so. In his
next position, as bookstall boy, he was for a time able to

1 The reason for this practice is the difficulty of keeping the stu-
dents together during the summer, and this difficulty will probably
be overcome only by compulsion.

NI
342 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

get off at 6, but, being promoted, he had to stay till 8
and abandon the class. Many also simply get tired of the
work, and some have never had any real enthusiasm for
it, and only go because among their friends it is " con-
sidered rather a smart thing to do." Upon others, again,
the importance of attending the classes has not been
properly impressed whilst they were at the Elementary
School. Each of these causes, therefore, inevitably leads
some to fall out of the ranks, as difficulties arise or counter
attractions prevail, and in the aggregate the number is
very considerable.

Whilst, however, attendance for a few weeks or months
only is in itself almost valueless, it holds out some promise
for the future. For the problem of keeping boys at school,
once they have started to go, should be simpler than that of
compelling or inducing them to go de novo. For it is less
unwillingness or hostility that has to be overcome than lack
of perseverance. So far, therefore, there is better ground-
work on which to build a compulsory system ; and the task
will be easier if improved opportunities are given to the
boys in the form of shorter hours of labour or the restriction
of overtime. In short, the Schools have reached much the
same stage with the boys as with the employers. They
have made some progress in creating a " habit " of attend-
ance ; and if there is much still to do, much has already
been done. There is already a considerable body of earnest
and enthusiastic students, and many others are ready to
give them a trial, even if this trial leads to nothing. This
" habit " of attendance, too, is the more valuable because
it means that in time such attendance will be made, as in
some parts of Germany, as a matter of course. For this,
however, compulsion will probably be required. Thus the
present situation is by no means without promise.

In conclusion may be mentioned the different changes
that are likely to be required. From what has been said,
various improvements in the conditions of boy labour appear
essential. The raising of the school -leaving age to fifteen
may be necessary for many purposes, including that of

TRADE AND TECHNICAL SClipOLS IN LONDON. 343

linking up the teaching of Elementary and Continuation
Schools. There will also be numerous detailed alterations
which cannot be discussed at present. But if there is
to be compulsory attendance some reduction in hours is a
sine qua non. The system, when established, will need to
be carefully organized, more general education occupying
the earlier part of the course, and a larger proportion of
specialized training being introduced later. The period of
compulsion will probably be one of three years, and with
this rough outline the matter must be left for the present.

CHAPTER XIV.

SOME PROBLEMS OF RECRUITING.

(a) THE TYPE OF WORKSHOP.

(6) MACHINERY.

(a) The Type of Workshop. — Advantages of the Large Concern — Its

More Careful Organization of Teaching — Its Disadvantages —
Over-Specialization — Work taken over by Machinery — Repeti-
tion Work — Want of Personal Intercourse between employer
and learner.

Advantages of Smaller Firms, and their disadvantages —
Those of moderate size most favourably situated — Special
Disadvantages of very small firms — Good Partial Teaching in
some cases.

Two other Conditions of Importance : the Type of Shop
Predominant in a trade ; Character of the Work often more
important than actual Size of the Business.

(b) Machinery. — Forms which its influence takes — Reduces range

of skill, but leaves process a skilled one — Its operation in this
case not uniform — Creation of new Semi-skilled Processes —
Substitution of Female or Juvenile labour for that of men —
Variations in its influence : London less affected in some respects
than other places — Tendency to render labour less arduous
and in certain cases to an actual increase of Skill.

Reduced Demand for labour for a given output — Usually
compensated by increased demand in the same or some other
trade — Circumstances peculiarly unfavourable to London —
Influence of Machinery in particular industries.

it — Presence of able men with ambitions — How they reach
London — Superior energy and application claimed for them —
The Pick of the Provinces competes with the Average of Lon-
don— Influx of labourers : its results — Industrial and Social
Advantages of provincial workmen — Better Health — Fewer
Counter-Attractions — Smaller Size of normal firm — Position
of small firms in London — London Methods of Training often
inferior — Greater Expense of teaching there — Employers'
Reliance on the Influx.

344

SOME PROBLEMS OF RECRUITING. 345

Trade Distribution of the Influx — Greatest where both its
main causes are in operation — Small : Printing, Bookbinding,
Art Metal Work — Intermediate Position of Engineering and
the Leather Trades — Large, with some exceptions, in Building,
Wood -working and Furniture Industries — Information sup-
ported by Proportions of Foremen in these trades who are or
are not Londoners — Influx not limited to special areas.

Its Causes — Some Irremovable — Others remediable — Means
of effecting improvement — Summary and Conclusion.

THE question of Recruiting, or of the sources from which
employers get their boys, is closely allied with that of
training, and is specially important in London, because her
employers obtain a greater supply of labour from outside
her boundaries than do those of other large towns. This is
partly due to natural causes, such as the desire of the better
workmen in the country to improve their position, partly
to the general conditions prevailing in London and the
methods of production adopted there, and partly to more
or less remediable defects in its system of teaching. In
relation to these latter, however, two other questions have
to be considered, the position in connexion with Industrial
training of large and small shops, and the influence exerted
upon it by the increasing use of machinery. The chances
of the London boy are affected by both, and they need to
be considered if the problems associated with the provincial
influx are to be fully understood.

(a) The Type of Workshop. — Uninformed opinion often
favours the large firm for the purpose of teaching a trade,
but many experts prefer one of small or moderate size. The
value of each of them varies from industry to industry,
and often it is less the size of a shop, than the character of
its business, that is important. The large concern possesses
numerous advantages. Usually, though not always, it
obtains work of a finer quality, of greater variety, and of
a more important nature, whereas a smaller one may only
get a succession of odd jobs. It can afford to employ the
best foremen and the most experienced men. Moreover
employment, at least so far as the boys are concerned, is often
more regular ; they are more likely to be kept on during

346 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

slack seasons ; and they are, as a rule, more highly paid.

Lastly, the teaching itself is more generally organized
upon some definite plan. The number of learners and
the conditions of their work are more systematically
arranged and fewer boys are employed casually and dismissed
at a moment's notice. Large firms, therefore, have many
merits, and sometimes it is only in them that a lad can learn
the finer branches of his business, so that he may have to
spend at least part of his time in one of them.

These merits, however, are frequently offset by serious
disadvantages. The first arises from the specialization
of processes and the division of the trade into a number of
branches. The large Engineering shop, for instance, has
separate classes of erectors, fitters and turners, and the large
Builder of joiners and carpenters. Hence their organization
often renders it necessary for the learner to confine himself
to one of these, and at this he becomes very expert. In
London, moreover, the number of firms which require skill
of this character is often small, and thus a lad who has been
taught in one of them is at a disadvantage in competition
with those who have received a more all-round training in a
smaller firm. Secondly, without specialization being carried
so far as this, parts of a trade may be taken over by
machinery. Now if these are the rougher and simpler ones, the
boy may be deprived of just that sort of work upon which
he can most easily start to learn. Or some of the more
difficult and important processes may never come his way,
so that, without being exactly specialized, his knowledge
is not complete, and will not be completed, unless he takes
steps specially to remedy this by attendance at a Trade
School or by other means.

Again, whilst getting great variety in many ways, a big
firm, working on large orders, often has much repetition
work, the same job having to be repeated over and over
again. Hence the learner does not obtain sufficient variety,
nor as much as he will do in many smaller ones, whilst
in repair shops and in those working on retail orders
this variety is almost infinite. At the same time, this is

SOME PROBLEMS OF RECRUITING. 347

not true of all large firms, and important instances, pointing
in the opposite direction, can be quoted. Nevertheless,
taken as a whole, and especially when producing for a whole-
sale market, they do get a considerable amount of repetition.

Finally, in the biggest concerns close personal relations
between employer and learner are far more difficult to secure.
The former is mainly occupied with the commercial side
of the business and spends his time in the office, and not in
the workshop. Frequently he is " not a practical man " and
so cannot himself teach. At best he can only exercise a
general supervision, and the boy has to be put in charge of
a foreman or be by him delegated to the care of a man.
Moreover, in these conditions, it may be difficult for a fore-
man to find sufficient time to teach the apprentices, though
this is not common. Some, however, " won't be troubled "
and others are unduly nervous of spoilt work and are apt
to keep the boys back ; or, again, the lad may not be put into
the charge of any one in particular, and what is every man's
business is no man's business and so no one takes special
care of him.

Above all, the tie of a close personal intercourse is almost
necessarily lacking. It is not that the larger employers
fail to take an interest in their boys. Indeed, many big
firms take a pride in turning them out well. But the
smaller master constantly sees and supervises, and may
even work with, those he has ; and from continuous associa-
tion acquires a personal interest in them and in pushing
them on ; and this is most valuable when it is thus
acquired. For the interest that is practically a habit is of
more value than that which is merely a virtue ; and so that
which is taken by the small man may produce better results
because it is necessarily greater and more persistent.

The advantages possessed by shops of small or mod-
erate size may now be considered. First, provided that
they get sufficient work, they often give a more general
all-round training, since in them division and specialization
of labour cannot be carried so far. Many also get considerable
variety and have less repetition work, so that a boy has

348 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

to be put to all kinds of jobs and be ready to turn his hand
to everything. Usually there is less elaborate machinery,
and the proportion that is done by hand is greater. In the
wood- working trades, however, some small hand-shops are
such only in name, for they buy all their parts already cut
and do little more than fit them together. The boy's more
intimate relations with his employer in a small firm have
already been touched upon.

As with large ones, there is a balance of advantage and
disadvantage, and it is not every business that enjoys all
of these benefits. Here the conditions in the small, and
especially in the very small, shops are different from those
prevailing in firms of moderate size. Many of the former
do not get much good work or are engaged on making cheap,
common stuff, the learning of which is of little value. Some
can give no more than a general grounding in the trade which
can be followed up elsewhere. Others do not even do this.
A^ain, some of them are as highly specialized as any large
business. Indeed specialization of product or output is
often most common where small masters are most numer-
ous, as, for instance, in the wholesale Furniture Trade. Fre-
quently only a very few articles ever come into the shop at
all, though one such firm will teach more than another. Thus
if it is engaged upon one elaborate article, a boy may learn
a large part of the work. If not he may barely acquire
its rudiments. Further, if, as some do, it subsists mainly
on small odd jobs, it may never be able to give him any pro-
per idea of the trade as a whole, and to such a one what has
been said about larger repair work does not apply.

Moreover some small employers either lack ability as teach-
ers or are themselves incompetent workmen. In a large firm
such capacity in the employer is not so essential, for it can
afford to engage competent foremen and men, some of
whom are almost certain to be able to teach. The small
man, on the other hand, having only a few employes, has
much less chance of finding such a one, especially if he is
engaged on cheap second-class work, when they are probably
inferior workmen. At the same time, many small shops

SOME PROBLEMS OF RECRUITING. 349

do teach a trade exceedingly well, though whether they can
do so or not will often depend upon the personal abilities
of the " guv'nor."

Finally, certain abuses are specially prevalent among the
smallest firms, such as the practice of the " premium-
hunter," who, without proper means or capacity to teach,
takes a succession of apprentices for the sake of the money
to be obtained with them. Others take several boys,
nominally as apprentices, with only one or two men, and
they divide up the work among them and use them practi-
cally as labourers. Or, again, a lad engaged on certain
rough work, such as filing-up, may, in order to induce
him to stay, be led to understand that he will be taught
and then turned adrift, knowing nothing, after three or
four years.

These defects are far more marked in the smallest shops
than in those of medium size or in the moderately small
ones, and many of these are also free to a great extent from
the worst features of the larger firms. They may thus
combine most of the good, and escape most of the bad,
characteristics of either, and so are in the best position to
satisfy all the requirements of good teaching. Compared
with these others, their work is usually both good and
varied, and sufficiently regular to give continuous employ-
ment. They are less specialized than the large businesses,
and do more of their work by hand. They are of sufficient
size to ensure proper facilities for training and yet not too
big to allow of a close contact between employer and appren-
tice. Thus the best shop for learning a trade will, as a rule,
be one that is neither very large nor very small.

Some small shops, however, which cannot teach a trade
throughout, may yet be able to give an admirable grounding
in it. Small plumbing firms are specially useful in this way
to fill up the time till a boy is strong enough to stand the
heavier work ; and elsewhere those which make parts and
accessories may give him a good start by teaching him to
handle easy tools and machines. At the other end of the
scale, large shops doing only finer and more intricate work

350 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING

may be excellent to finish in, whilst lacking what is required
in the earlier years of training.

For such businesses, therefore, special provision is required.
Evening Trade Schools may help to fill the gaps by assisting
a boy to learn those kinds of work he does not get in the day
time. Even better, however, is the policy of starting in a
small shop to obtain a general idea of the trade and going on
afterwards to complete the teaching and learn the finer
qualities in a large one. To some extent this is already done
and with proper organization the practice could be con-
siderably extended, and so would meet the needs of a good
many boys, which under present circumstances are not
fully provided for.

In conclusion two points are worth noting. First, much
will depend on the type of shop which is predominant
throughout a trade. Where work is mainly carried out by
businesses of large or moderate size, these get most of the
better work, and the little firms subsist mainly on small
orders, repairs and odd jobs. Hence they are apt to lose
some of their advantages and consequently of the value of
their teaching. Where, however, as in the Art Metal Trades,
a smaller type of concern is usual, they obtain their fair
share of all kinds. So, too, in some of the smaller towns,
the scale of production is never very large nor is any single
firm very big, and here again the different qualities of work
are well distributed.

Secondly, the character of the work is often of more
importance than the size of a business, so that usually one
engaged upon a general trade or upon repairs of a good class
is best able to teach. Such businesses, indeed, are frequently
large, as in the case of Ship-Repairing in Millwall, and of
the large West End Furnishing houses employed upon
retail orders of a high quality Again, in Printing the least
suitable Offices are those, whether large or small, which
only do plain book setting, and the best those which do
book, jobbing, and display work. In this case quality is,
as a rule, the deciding factor, and here the bigger firms often
have a distinct advantage The size of an establishment,

SOME PROBLEMS OF RECRUITING. 351

therefore, is not the only influence, but it is an important
and frequently a decisive one. With some exceptions,
indeed, the shop of moderate size offers the best opening
for training, and the two extremes — large or small — the
least good, and London's position in this respect will be
shown later to have some bearing upon the provincial influx.

(b) Machinery. — Another important element in the pro-
blem consists of the continuous introduction of fresh labour-
saving Machinery, which affects the worker in various ways.
Its influence has already been considered in other con-
nexions, but the matter is sufficiently important to justify
its separate treatment here, even at the cost of repetition.
First, machines takeover parts of the work, being operated
either by an existing class of workmen such as the wood-
working machinists or by a new class such as the silver-
spinners ; whilst the old handworkers receive their material
in a more finished state than formerly, or do not have so
many processes to perform upon it. In a few cases they
even operate the new machines, as the compositors do the
Linotype or as sometimes happens in the Bespoke Boot
Trade. In such cases, therefore, the number of men re-
quired to produce a given output is reduced, but they retain
their position as skilled mechanics. Their range of work,
indeed, is smaller, but this more often means a concentration
of skill and not a loss ; for while they have to do less than
formerly, they are required to do it better, more rapidly
and with a finer finish.

The position is still further complicated by the fact that
in many London industries the introduction or develop-
ment of machinery is by no means uniform. Hence the
man who has learnt his trade in a machine-shop is often at
a disadvantage in competition with those who have done
so in hand-shops. Where wood is elaborately prepared
in a sawmill, for instance, the joiner has never learnt to cut
and prepare it in the way that many others have had to do,
and thus is in some ways a less dexterous and experienced
workman. In his own particular sphere he may possess
greater skill, speed and accuracy, but for the more all-round

352 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

workmen from the hand-shop to acquire these is often only
a matter of time. Again, the taking over of much of the
easier work by machines may actually render a trade more
difficult to acquire than heretofore.

Secondly, machine production may alter the character,
or grades, of the labour required. Processes forming one
skilled craft may be split up into a number of different jobs,
and the artisan be replaced by the semi-skilled machine-
minder. Thus in the factories, a boot is no longer made
by a single man but is divided up into parts, and each part
into a number of processes. The more important are per-
formed by men, the less by women, boys or girls : but each
worker sticks to his or her own. Most of the work is semi-
skilled, though some of the men earn high wages. A similar
development has taken place in Publishers' Bookbinding,
and in large Engineering shops there are growing numbers
who work each a single machine, and most of whom earn
wages about midway between those of a mechanic and
those of a labourer. In Engineering and Bootmaking,
indeed, specialization is less common in London than else-
where and has not been carried so far, but it has been
carried further in Bookbinding.

Thirdly, male adult workers are sometimes completely
displaced by boys, women or girls. In the boot trade, as
mentioned in the last paragraph, all four classes are found
working together. In brushmaking the process of boring
is done almost entirely by girls, In the cheaper forms of
tinsmithing and silversmithing boys are employed to
" stamp out " the parts and a few skilled solderers to fit
them together. In most trades, again, semi-automatic
machines are usually worked by boys. These changes also
have been further developed in other places than they have
in London.

Indeed, the influence of machinery generally varies from
place to place, and this in turn affects the character of the
provincial influx. It is little developed in country towns
and villages, and those brought up in them possess the
advantages that are associated with handwork, so that,

SOME PROBLEMS OF RECRUITING. 353

compared with them, Londoners, and those brought up in
any large town, are usually at a disadvantage. London
is most affected by changes of the first class, since the sub-
stitution for the artisan of other kinds or grades of labour
has not as a rule been carried so far there ; and in these
respects it is on the whole in a better position than other
large centres, notably in tinplate work and silversmithing,
and, to some extent, in engineering. Sometimes, on the other
hand, the fact that only a few firms have fully developed
this subdivision has created a special problem ; but as a
rule the London workman is in this respect comparatively
well placed.

Allowance must be made, however, for the benefits which
an extended use of machinery confers on the workmen. It
has taken over much of the heaviest, hardest and most
monotonous work,1 and in some cases has substituted a
higher for a lower grade of labour. On large buildings, or
where travelling cranes are used, the semi-skilled craneman
has replaced the unskilled hodman, porter or docker. The
compositor operating the Linotype is a more skilled man
than he was before it was introduced ; and the excessive
amount of boy labour required in certain trades has been
reduced by mechanical improvements. Thus in the rivet ting
of boilers only one boy is needed when hydraulic blasts
are used, instead of two when they are not.

To sum up, therefore, the effects of developments of

1 Compare the evidence of Mr. F. A. Moore, a Builder's Foreman,
before the Labour Commission (March 15, 1892 ; questions 18,828
and 18,829).

" Have you formed any opinion as to the value or otherwise of
machinery in connexion with your trade ? " — " I certainly think
that machinery is a capital thing from every point of view that I
can conceive, both from the point of view of the employer and from
that of the workman."

" It prevents a workman from being a mere beast of burden and
makes him a more intelligent and useful man ?" — "Undoubtedly
it relieves him of all the mechanical drudgery. I can distinctly remem-
ber, when I was a youth learning my trade, having to ' stick mould-
ings,' as it is known in the trade. Anyone who knows the thing
practically knows that that is a tremendously heavy physical labour.
The thing is perfectly unknown at the present day."

A A

354 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING,

machine production are as follows. Sometimes it merely
alters the character of the skill required, usually by concen-
trating it within a narrower range, but raising its level.
Sometimes it reduces its amount, whilst still leaving the
trade a skilled one. At others it replaces the mechanic
by the semi-skilled man or by female and juvenile labour.
Less frequently it substitutes a higher for a lower grade of
labour.

Lastly, it decreases in the trades concerned the total
amount of labour required to accomplish a given output, but
for this there are many compensations. It directly increases
employment in other directions, notably in machine making
and in the manufacture of iron and steel. Coal Miners
again benefit from the greater demand for coal which is
required for running the machinery and an increasing
number of engineers are needed to keep it in repair.

Normally, however, the output of the trade affected
does not remain the same as before. The lower cost of
production increases demand, usually to such an extent
as ultimately to offset or more than offset the economy of
labour due to improvements. Indeed, in some cases their
introduction is rendered necessary in order to cope with a
growing demand, whilst without it some articles could not
have been put on the market at a price within reach of the
great bulk of the consumers. In fact, it is only where the
demand is very inelastic that it does not show at least
some considerable increase.

Taking everything into consideration, therefore, develop-
ments of machine production tend to an expansion rather
than a contraction of the demand for labour. But for
the time being its results are often bad. A temporary
decrease until the greater cheapness has had time to take
effect may cause displacement or prolonged unemployment.
Occasionally, too, there is a permanent decline in the number
of artisans in a particular trade, especially where semi-
skilled men, women or boys are substituted for them, for
even where they can acquire the new processes of working
the change means necessarily a serious decrease in their

SOME PROBLEMS OF RECRUITING. 355

earnings. Moreover, London sometimes gets the disad-
vantages and few of the benefits of these developments. It
bears such loss as there is, whilst the increased production
of machinery and coal is carried out in other districts.

Their extent and character varies from trade to trade,
and those of Building, Woodworking and Furniture are
perhaps the most affected, whilst those of their branches
which are not so influenced suffer in other ways. Thus
iron and lead pipings are produced in more elaborate forms,
and this leaves a smaller amount of jointing to be done by
the plumbers. The substitution of electric light for gas
has decreased the amount of internal painting, and ferro-
concrete has seriously affected bricklayers.

On the other hand, the Engineering Trades in London
mainly require all-round men for the reasons already given.
Stamping-out of the cheaper work is very common among
silversmiths and metal-plate workers ; and the use of the
spinning lathe has created a new class of silver-spinners.
In the Art Metal Trades as a whole, however, much of the
work is done throughout by hand, and the makers of Optical
and Scientific Instruments have suffered little reduction
in skill. In the Printing Trades, again, the linotype has,
if anything, increased that of the compositor, and the use
of more and more elaborate machinery, coupled with the
enforcement of the Apprenticeship system, appears to have
done the same for the machine managers. In the opposite
direction the division of Publishers' Bookbinding and of
the wholesale boot trade into a number of semi-skilled pro-
cesses has already been described. The manufacture of the
lighter leathers has been similarly reorganized. Glazing and
finishing have in nearly all cases become semi-skilled machine
processes. At machine splitting high wages can be earned,
but fleshing and currying are almost the only skilled hand
processes, and the latter is feeling the competition of leather-
shaving machinery.

The influence of machinery, therefore, is varied. Sometimes
it increases the skill of the worker and sometimes it decreases
it, and not seldom it simply alters its character. On the

356 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

other hand, numerous processes have been taken over by an
entirely new class of workers. The phenomenon is not
peculiar to London, which is affected more in some trades
and less in others than other places are ; and all these facts
have an important bearing upon the influx of provincial
workmen.

(c) The Provincial Influx. — The problems created by the
migration into a place of labour which has been trained
elsewhere are common to all large towns, and not peculiar
to London, though perhaps felt most keenly by it. Where
a town has one or two localized industries, this influx is
less extensive, and such are usually recruited mainly from
their immediate neighbourhood. Instances of them are the
Pianoforte, the Art Metal and, above all, the Cotton, Trades.
Thus the big commercial centres, like Manchester, or those
with numerous industries of a moderate size, most nearly
resemble London in this respect, and it is in trades like
Building, which are found in every town and in almost
every village, that the big cities obtain from outside the
largest proportion of their labour.

The reasons for the influx are much the same everywhere.
The abler and more ambitious workmen go where wages are
highest and the chances of rising greatest, and whilst higher
cost of living may reduce the real benefit of the former, it
is probably the latter that means most to the ambitious
man. And London obtains a peculiarly large supply be-
cause of the ideas that are prevalent as to its wealth and
opportunities. Again, at the other end of the scale its
relief organizations and openings for casual employment
attract a lower class of men, but other towns with large
docks, such as Liverpool, are also affected in this way.

Most of the outside labour that enters London, however,
comes from the higher, rather than from the lowrer, grades,
and this is the first cause of the displacement of the Londoner.
Those who come in are mainly of a superior quality. I do
not mean that labour as a whole is necessarily more com-
petent outside London, but that usually the better and more
energetic men from each district come to it, in order to make

SOME PROBLEMS OF RECRUITING. 357

the best of themselves. Thus in the words of a foreman
stonemason : " I learnt my trade in the quarries in Cumber-
land, but did not stay more than a few weeks there after I
was out of my time. I knew my value, and I was not going
to stay there, getting $%d. per hour when I could get 9^.
in London." Some of those who come are young married
men, and they in their turn put their children into good
positions. Hence, with some exceptions, it is the pick of the
provincial workmen who are competing with the average of
those of London.

They come to London in various ways, some of their own
accord, though usually they have a place awaiting them,
which has been obtained through relatives or friends who
have preceded them. Secondly, employers and foremen
not seldom lay themselves out to fill vacancies in this way
and can generally find somebody among their workmen who
knows the sort of man they want. Thus in the Build-
ing Trade boom (1895-1900) actual shortage was rarely
experienced because " there were always men coming in
from the country." Finally, provincial firms obtaining
London contracts bring up men to assist in carrying out the
work. These are, as a rule, their best hands, and some of
them stay on permanently in London after the particular
job is finished.

Those who come, therefore, are usually above the average
in ability, and for this reason are sought after by London
employers, whether as fully-trained men or as improvers.
Sometimes they are also superior in energy, application
and knowledge of their business. Thus a foreman engineer
said, " In the North they do not work in collars, and they
look in every way more workmanlike. I used to be asked
when I first came to London if I was accustomed to working
with wild beasts. In the North the men and even the
women took a far greater interest in Engineering and had a
far greater knowledge of it than the men have in London.
I sometimes tell them, ' My mother knew more about
engineering than what you do.' '

The provincial workman, therefore, has an initial advan-

358 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

tage, and this is increased by the superior training that
he often gets. The stress falls mainly on those of average
ability or less, but is also felt by the more capable, more
particularly where London methods of teaching are not
good. Many of the ablest London boys, however, enter the
commercial and clerical employments in which it abounds.

The influx, moreover, includes labourers as well as arti-
sans, whom lack of opportunity in their homes, and, until
quite recently, agricultural depression have driven to
London. Usually of a higher social standing than the town
labourer and with their intelligence sharpened by country
life, they look for something better than a labourer's job and
recruit those skilled trades into which entry is most easy
for them. Thus experience of rough stone work, for instance,
helps them to make a start in the easier kinds of bricklaying,
an employment in which few London boys are engaged.

Further, it is sometimes argued that the men who come
from smaller towns and districts, apart from the proportion
of abler men among them, have all certain advantages over
the Londoner. Their conditions of life render them stronger
and healthier. Intellectually the latter may be sharper
and quicker ; but the variety of wood and field, of bird and
animal life, develops better the countryman's powers of
observation, whilst those of the Londoner are stunted by
the monotony of bricks and mortar. So whilst he may
pick up individual things more quickly, his country rival
has learnt to observe more deeply and therefore grasps better
the whole idea of a trade.

Again, the pleasures and excitements of town life often
unduly distract a boy's thoughts from his work, whilst
in the country this is often his chief interest. " In the
country," said a foreman who had learnt his business there,
" you often see two boys together talking about their
trades — in London never." And this disadvantage, common
to a great extent to all large towns, is not altogether com-
pensated for by the fuller provision for technical instruction
which most of them possess. Much of the influx, therefore,
is not only inevitable, but such as it would be impolitic

SOME PROBLEMS OF RECRUITING. 359

to try to stop ; and the presence of a body of picked men
from outside must be accepted. At the same time other
disadvantages in this competition from which the London
workman suffers can to a great extent be removed or
mitigated. In creating them three influences are specially
noticeable, namely, the organization of production, educa-
tional methods, and the expense involved in teaching boys.

As described in previous sections of this chapter, shops of
moderate, or of moderately small, size are usually best suited
for teaching a trade. The large machine shops, on the other
hand, give and require less all-round skill, but a higher level
of it concentrated within a narrower range. The best to
learn in, therefore, is one that is small enough to do a great
deal by hand and for the employer to be in close touch with
his boys, and large enough to get good and varied orders.
For in it the lad has of necessity to be put to all kinds of
work and an all-round training is practically ensured.

Now in small towns from which, as a rule, the influx
mainly com.es, this is the normal type of business. The
scale of production is generally small so that these firms
get the best work, whilst, when they are working among
a number of large ones, they often fail to do so. In London,
on the contrary, production is often on a large scale, much
machinery is used and, even where it is not, processes and
output are specialized. The big firms get most of the best
work and the smaller ones fail to obtain their share of it.
Thus frequently only a small proportion of them are well
situated in every way for the purposes of teaching. In a
few trades, indeed, like Printing and the West End Furniture
trade, London has an advantage over other places, but nor-
mally methods of production make the giving of an all-round
training difficult.

Secondly, in smaller places training is often more regular
and systematic because things lend themselves more easily
to definite conditions of service. A boy has less opportunity
to drift from firm to firm, since after a few dismissals he
acquires a bad character, whilst in London he may lose
place after place and yet obtain others without difficulty.

360 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Apart from this, moreover, the good results obtained in
smaller towns are often attributed to the survival of formal
Apprenticeship, which is still common in many of them,
particularly in Scotland.

This contention is both right and wrong. The advantage
of the small town lies less in the actual Apprenticeship than
in the definite and systematic methods of teaching of which
it is the outward and visible sign. In London trouble
arises from a combination of causes — the wage-contract,
uncontrolled migration, drifting from job to job, and so
on — or, in other words, from absence of system. Many
individuals are well taught, but there is no regular and
careful control over all of them. Often they regard them-
selves as wage-earners rather than learners and so their
training suffers still more. The disadvantage of London,
therefore, lies less in the decline of a particular kind of
method than in the absence of definite method of any kind,
and it is further increased by the legacy of past neglect.

Thirdly, considerable expense is often involved in teaching
a trade, and it is the best firms who are most affected in this
way. High rents and rates render bench room costly and
valuable, and apprentices or learners who are producing
little displace the skilled mechanic, whilst in London they can
command a comparatively high rate of wage. When
there is plenty of simple work available to which they can
be put for the first year or two, their employment is still
profitable. But in many trades this is now done, by
machinery, and so they are a cause of expense rather than of
profit and are " more trouble than they are worth."
Employers as a rule " want men, not boys," and can usually
get them. So few are taken as definite learners and the
rest have to pick up a trade as best they can.

Together, therefore, these causes combine to render
London employers more or less averse to the engagement
of boys for the purpose of training them. Instead, they
have come to a great extent to rely upon and to prefer
the provincial supply of labour. Indeed, just in the propor-
tion that Londoners are difficult to teach and control, have

SOME PROBLEMS OF RECRUITING. 361

they been led to organize and develop it. Moreover, this
supply is likely in any case to be large. Not only do men
of ability and ambition tend to reach London, but in some
country towns more boys are taken into certain industries
than can be provided for locally. For instance, lack of good
openings in agriculture may cause too many to enter the
Building and Furniture Trades in their neighbourhood, so
that when they grow up some of them have to find employ-
ment elsewhere and usually go to a large town and particu-
larly to London. The result is therefore that in many cases
the employers actually find awaiting them an ample supply
of the labour which they require.

The effect of the influx on individual trades may next be
considered. It is found in almost every one, but in some
far more than in others, according to whether both its
main causes are in operation or only the first. Where
methods of training do not put the Londoner at a disadvan-
tage, the influx of ambitious or restless men is less marked,
and they do not obtain so large a share of the better positions.
Where the training is less good, the influx is greater, and
often much greater. It is likely also to be larger where the
trade is practised everywhere, less large where it is localized
or confined to the bigger towns.

In Printing the training given in London is about the
best available, and conditions generally favour the employ-
ment of apprentices. The refusal to allow them in News-
paper Offices guards against the most dangerous form
of specialization. Businesses doing jobbing and display
work get a good variety of it, and the bigger London Offices
get on the whole finer and more educative work than their
provincial rivals. Care is also taken to teach boys thoroughly
and to put them through all departments. Moreover,
apprentices have to get full money as soon as they are out
of their time, so that the boy from outside has not the same
chance as in other trades of completing his education as an
improver. The machine manager is even better off than the
compositor owing to the elaborate and intricate machinery
that is used ; and the subsidiary branches are little

362 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

recruited from outside London. The same is true of some
other industries. There are comparatively few provincially
trained workmen among optical and scientific instrument
makers. In the skilled processes of brushmaking better
work and better teaching give the Londoner an advantage,
and the high quality of London Saddlery excludes provincials
from many parts of the trade.

Bookbinding, again, gets comparatively little of its labour
from outside. The better class work is a separate branch
here, and its quality confines it to Londoners. In jobbing,
however, they have at most but a slight advantage, and it is
in this that such influx as there is mainly takes place.
Publishers' Bookbinding is semi-skilled work and does not
offer any attraction to the abler men. Again, in the boot
trade, with the high quality of the Bespoke work and the
specialized factory industry, the position is much the same.

In metal-plate and art metal work, machine production
has not been adopted to the same extent in London as in
some other important centres ; there has been much less
substitution of juvenile for adult labour, and handwork
has held its own far more completely. The process of
stamping-out parts in tinplate work is confined to a few
large firms, whilst in the art metal trades the chief trouble
arises from the large number of shops with a highly
specialized output. London, indeed, seems to get a larger
share of the better class handwork than its rivals do.
Similarly much brass-finishing in other places consists of the
production of cheap articles, which is usually carried on
by unskilled juvenile workers. In London it is mainly
engineers' work of high quality and of varied character and
requires skilled men, though even so there is a certain amount
of low-skilled labour. In all these cases, however, whilst the
provincial is hardly capable of competing directly with
trained Londoners, complaint is made that London firms
are undersold by the cheaper goods produced elsewhere.

The Engineering Trades themselves may now be con-
sidered. Their work in London consists largely of repairs
or renewals, many of them large and important ones, and of

SOME PROBLEMS OF RECRUITING. 363

small varying orders, and hence it is to a great extent
unspecialized. So the all-round fitter and turner is common,
and men who are specialized on single machines are not
numerous, except in a few large shops, whilst some little
firms get chiefly such a succession of small odd jobs
as does not give sufficient insight into the trade as a whole.
London, therefore, requires a special class of workmen
different from that needed in big constructional centres :
and this fact limits the influx from outside.

It is nevertheless considerable. In part it consists of
men from small towns or from the numerous small firms
in the big ones, whilst sea-going engineers often get tem-
porary work in London in the intervals between voyages.
Finally, the large amount and important character of the
work done in the larger centres sometimes enables the work-
people to obtain a greater general knowledge of the. trade
and its principles and of the applications of science to it
than is within reach of those whose work is mainly repairs ;
and this fact has to be set against the advantages which
the Londoner enjoys in other directions.

So far, therefore, the influx has usually been small, only
occasionally considerable, and never preponderating, and
this is true also of the Leather Trade, in which there is some
interchange of labour between London and other places.
Elsewhere matters are very different, more particularly in
the Building, and Woodworking and Furniture, Industries,
in which specialization, machine production, haphazard
methods of engagement and teaching, and the expense
involved have had a far greater effect. Hence, whilst
exact returns as to how many of their men have learnt the
trade elsewhere cannot be obtained, the number is un-
doubtedly considerable and the learners employed by London
firms are proportionally few.

Joiners, cabinet makers and woodworkers of all kinds
appear to be most affected. The chief exception is the
Pianoforte Trade, which is practically self-supporting.
A considerable numberof boys are also found in the wholesale
cabinet trade, but few in the better-class retail work, in

364 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

joinery or in coach and van building. In other branches,
also, the influx is appreciable. The quarrying districts, in
some of which excessive numbers of boys appear to be em-
ployed, send many masons to London. Even fewer London
boys learn bricklaying. In painting the lower grades of
workmen are mostly of local production, but only a few
of the more highly skilled decorators learn their business
here. Finally in upholstery there is much specialization of
output, and once again the better firms mainly recruit their
labour from elsewhere.

Plumbing and plastering are exceptions to this general
tendency, and in both the number of young workmen
employed shows that the influx, even if considerable, is not
very great. On the whole, the training given in them is less
good in provincial than in London firms. In plumbing, the
larger and heavier piping, that is found chiefly on the bigger
buildings, provides the better work and in the number of
large contracts London has a decided advantage. Little
of the finer ornamental plastering is done in country shops.
So the countryman seldom sees some of the best qualities
of work and in plumbing London methods of teaching
appear to be more regular than in other branches of the
Building Trades. Hence the provincially trained workman
is less sought after, at any rate in the best shops.

Thus the influx obviously varies with different industries.
Large-scale and machine production often make it difficult
to get all-round knowledge in a single firm. Irregular
methods of learning and the absence of permanent engage-
ment also have important effects. Where, therefore, all
these causes are in operation at once, the immigration is very
great, the more so as they cause employers to depend more
and more on the outside supply. Where, however, they
are not, it is much less, though the high average capacity of
the provincial workmen ensures their presence to some extent
in practically every trade. For even when the London
training is better, this still enables them to make their way
and establish themselves in a secure position.

These conclusions are supported by the evidence available

SOME PROBLEMS OF RECRUITING. 365

concerning the question as to whether the higher posts in
London are filled mainly by men from other places. This
point I attempted to verify and found that where there was
a large influx, many, perhaps most, of the foremen had not
learnt their business in London. This was most marked
in Building and in the better class Furniture Trades, in
which those who were Londoners had usually had some
special opportunities, such as being themselves the sons of
foremen. Where, however, the influx was not great, these
conditions were reversed, and in Printing, and, to a lesser
degree, in Engineering and Boilermaking, in the manu-
facture of Leather and in some smaller trades, foremen's
jobs and similar posts were mostly filled by men who are
Londoners both by birth and training.

The sources of the influx are not, as a rule, confined to
any special area, and it is determined far more by the size
and industrial character of towns and districts than by
their situation. There are some exceptions. Masons come
largely from the neighbourhoods of the quarries, engineers,
for the special reasons already given, from big construc-
tional centres in the North, and joiners from Scotland and
the West of England. But usually the supply is provided
mainly by small towns and country districts and not to any
great extent by the big cities. These often have a similar,
though smaller, immigration of their own and their workmen
have less to gain by the move. A good many, moreover,
naturally come in from the Home Counties, and apart from
them those districts, which possess few large towns and
numerous small ones, are likely to send the largest
number.

Finally, this influx is partly inevitable and partly due to
remediable causes. So far as it is due to the presence of
abler men from elsewhere, it would be unwise and probably
impossible to prevent it : and to this extent it is on the
whole beneficial. No improvement in teaching can get
rid of it, and the best men of another place have necessarily
some advantage in competition with the average Londoner.
To prohibit them, therefore, from utilizing the oppor-

366 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

tunities which London offers is a policy that could hardly be
defended seriously. But apart from this, everything possible
must be done to give the Londoner chances equal to those
enjoyed by his rivals. For the latter often have advantages
over men of equal or greater abilities, and these can be
reduced or even in time removed.

The preventable disadvantages under which the London
boy labours have alread}^ been classified under the three
headings of organization, method and expense. First,
shops which give a good all-round training may lack quality
and variety of work, and big shops may from no fault of
their own find numerous difficulties in their way, particularly
in teaching the simpler rudiments of a trade. Thus each
class of business is often well fitted to do a part of what is
required, but not the whole. Here two remedies are
available. First, the Trade Schools can help to provide
what the workshop cannot, " giving an insight " into the
work that is taken over by machinery in large shops or in
other cases helping a boy to learn the better qualities.
vSecondly, where the smaller shops can teach the rudiments
but not the finer work, and the large ones the finer work but
not the rudiments, employment in each in turn could be
provided for, first for three or four years in a small firm and
then for a further period after transference to a larger one.
To some extent this is done already and the difficulties of
extending it are not insuperable. Indeed, the practice
might in time grow into an organized system of Short
Apprenticeships followed by Migration.

Defective methods of teaching present even more obvious
opportunities for improvement, and here perhaps the greatest
need is for systematic care and control of the individual
boy. When the right boys are put into the right jobs,
employers have more incentive to take trouble over them,
failures are fewer and the demand for learners is stimulated :
and where an employer can be assured of competent ones,
it is worth his while to regularize their conditions of employ-
ment and even to take more of them. This in turn will
make it possible to reduce the number of those who pick

SOME PROBLEMS OF RECRUITING. 367

up their trades casually, a result which can also be
promoted directly by increasing the number of regular
engagements and, where this is impossible, controlling
their movements from firm to firm. Further, their needs as
learners must be kept clearly before them, so that their
future prospects shall not be sacrificed to immediate high
wages. In another direction, also, there are ample oppor-
tunities for improvement in the provision of increased
facilities for trade teaching.

Finally, the expense involved in teaching is less susceptible
to direct attack, but anything that improves the character
and conduct of the boys renders them more profitable to
their employers, and makes it more w7orth their while to
engage and teach them or to promote more frequently the
most capable of their boy labourers : and so this difficulty
will to some extent be overcome.

Above all, anything that reduces the expense of teaching
or improves the character and conduct of London boys will
check the tendency of employers to look elsewhere for
their younger workmen. At present, «as in the past, their
reasons for doing this are probably adequate, but a general
improvement in the supply of labour would remove much
both of the need and of the justification. Something has
already been done and much will depend on the success
of the Labour Exchanges in supplying them with better
lads than they have hitherto been able to get. If they can
fill situations with the right sort, they can appeal with the
best of all arguments — that of good business — and the
employers will be quick to respond.

Indeed the question of dealing with the influx raises
again the whole wide problem of Industrial Training, except
that, generally speaking, it affects only the skilled trades,
since with some exceptions semi-skilled and unskilled pro-
cesses do not exercise the same attraction. To sum up,
therefore, part of this influx is inevitable so far as it is due
to the presence of abler men who desire to better themselves.
Partly it is avoidable, and provincial workmen now get a
greater advantage than their abilities alone would warrant.

368 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

But industrial and educational handicaps can be removed
slowly but surely till the men of London and of the pro-
vinces compete on equal terms ; and then the latter will
only succeed, if at all, by superior capacity.

CHAPTER XV.

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR.

(a) THE BLIND ALLEY.

(b) THE PARTIAL BLIND ALLEY.

(d) CONCLUDING SUMMARY.

Real Meaning of Boy Labour — Various senses in which it is used :
jobs which only last during boyhood (Blind Alleys), failure
to acquire a permanent occupation — The Blind Alley Char-
acter— Danger of latter greatest in Unskilled Work — Bulk of
Boys under fifteen in Blind Alley jobs — Illustration — Steady
increase in number of learners after fifteen — Nature of chief
Blind Alleys — Position of Junior Clerks and Office Boys.

(a) The Blind Alleys — Their varied character and origin —
Messenger Work — In the Post Office, under the old conditions
—The Reorganization there — Shop Boys : in large and small
businesses — Factory errand boys : their superior prospects —
Office Boys— Vanguards — Productive Blind Alleys — Sections
of a Trade carried out by Juvenile Labour — Instances — Trades,
the whole of which are mainly so carried out — Extent of the
Excess in them — Improvers' Blind Alleys — Their Causes — Real
Crux of Blind Alley Work.

Directly Injurious Conditions of Labour — Street Trading
— Indoor and Outdoor Work — Rarity of Ordinary Seasonal
or Cyclical Irregularity of Employment — Monotony of much
Indoor Work — Influence of absence of Aim or Object in Blind
Alley Work.

Real Evil of Blind Alley springs from creation of type of
character or conduct — Influence of this on the Employer —
And on the Boy — Rough Character of Boys — Tendency of
Conditions to conceal the fact that a surplus of boys is being
employed — Tendency to increase gap between Juvenile and
Adult Labour — Similarity of and Differences between Total
and Partial Blind Alleys.

369 BB

370 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

(b) The Partial Blind Alley. — Usually a Skilled Trade —
Problems Peculiar to it — Two species of Partial Blind
Alley — In Following-Up — Proper Proportion of Boys to Men —
Leather-Splitting — Wire-Weaving — Rivetting of Boilers —
Dual Character of the Surplus — Its Special Difficulties —
Plumbing and Smithing — Their Special Problems — Second
Species — Trades employing a Moderate Surplus of Boys for a
variety of reasons — Illustrations from Woodworking Trades
— Contradictory Character of Statistical Evidence — Reasons
for this — Causes of the Excess — Processes or Jobs Reserved
for Boys — Their Employment by Small Masters or Sub-Con-
tractors— Employment of Boy Labourers in addition to Learners.

The Partial escapes some of the evils of the Total Blind
Alley — It Creates Special Problems of its own, which require
a definite organization.

(c) Wasteful Recruiting of Trades and Occupations.- — Surplus
of Boys, not Required by the Nature of a Trade, may grow
up through Numerous Failures to Learn it properly — Meaning:
of Wasteful Recruiting — Its Causes — Wrong Choice of Trade-
or Situation — Leaving of One Trade for another — Its Fre-
quency— It may be the Result of Unemployment — Influence
of Defective Training — Sacrifice of Prospects to Immediate
Wages — Failure of those in Unskilled Jobs about a Trade to
Utilize their chances — Summary.

The Reserve of Boy Labour — How Composed — An Educa-
tional, not an Industrial, Reserve — The Reserve (Industrial)
of Adult Casual Labour described — Comparison with it of
Reserve of Boy Labour — Hypothetical Illustration of Latter
— Its Comparative Smallness — Its Presence in Blind Alley
Employments — Its Composition : (i) Those who drop out
altogether ; (ii) Casually Employed Mechanics ; (iii) Specialized
Mechanics Employed Regularly for Part of the Year; (iv)
Mechanics Regularly Employed at a Low Rate of Wage —
Indirect Effect of Reserve in Encouraging Irregular Methods
of Employment — Summary of Its Results — Effect on it of
Provincial Influx — Comparison of its Results in Skilled Trades
and in Boy Labouring.

(d) Concluding Summary.

WHEN it is spoken of in relation to Industrial Training,
the term Boy Labour is used primarily in contrast to adult
labour and means, therefore, such as only lasts through
boyhood or youth and comes to an end in early manhood.
The boy labourer, in short, is distinguished from the boy
learner in this, that the latter acquires gradually the trade
or occupation at which he will continue to work as a man ;

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 371

and the former, on reaching manhood, has to leave the job
in which he has been engaged — or rather it leaves him —
and find another. Thus the most salient characteristic of
Boy Labour is this gap or hiatus between work in youth
and in manhood which is involved in the shifting out of one
thing into another of a different kind. The change usually
has to be made about the age of eighteen, though sometimes
it comes later, and at others as early as sixteen. But,
sooner or later, it is inevitable.

As noted in an earlier chapter, the phrase has to be used
in more than one sense. First in certain employments the
work of boys is divorced entirely from that of men because
they only employ, and are only fit to employ, boys. Of
necessity, therefore, those who are engaged in them have
sooner or later to find some fresh occupation, and so these
jobs are more definitely and obviously Boy Labour than
others. They are aptly described as Blind Alleys. Normally
they not only fail to lead, but are not expected to lead, to
permanent engagements, and by their very nature it is
impossible that they should. Others, again, give a definite
livelihood to some only of their boys, and compel the rest
to make a change. They may be known as Partial Blind
Alleys. In this sense, therefore, Boy Labour may be
described as such as continues through boyhood and youth,
but no longer.

The Problem, however, is not limited to this, but covers
all cases of lack of success in acquiring a permanent place
in industry. Hence Boy Labour denotes also the failure
of a boy's work to qualify him for any kind of occupation,
and in this sense the skilled trades have their own problem.
It is not that they cannot provide employment for their
boys, for usually they are able to do so. But under modern
conditions the number of failures in them is so great as to
constitute a third form of Boy Labour in the Wasteful
Recruiting of Trades and Occupations. In other words,
with education as with physical nourishment, there can be
malnutrition as well as want of nutrition. Thus the
questions involved are concerned, not merely with those

372 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

jobs which lead nowhere, but with all cases of failure to
acquire an occupation, whether from lack of opportunity
or inability to utilize it. Among them must be included
such partial failures as produce inferior workmen. This
secondary meaning of the term, therefore, perhaps signifies
best the whole of the problem.

Nevertheless, the first of its three forms, the Blind Alleys,
pure and simple, may be described as Boy Labour par
excellence, since they are boys' jobs and nothing more.
After adolescence they fail necessarily as a means of liveli-
hood ; and both they and the Partial Blind Alleys differ
from Wasteful Recruiting in the fact that with the latter
some defect or mistake is required to produce failure, and
with the two former such is almost inevitable in many cases,
unless definite steps are taken to avert it.

Moreover, Boy Labour of any kind produces its effect
not only from the nature of the employment itself, but from
the type of industrial character which it creates. In short,
there is not only Blind Alley work, but the Blind Alley
character as well. If a permanent livelihood is to be found
in manhood, a job must not only lead to a definite occupa-
tion, but must fit a person to fill one. In other words, it
must bring him up as a steady, regular and disciplined work-
man. This, indeed, is the crux of the whole matter. It is
less important that a boy's work should lead direct to a
man's work, than that it should prepare him properly for
it. If it does, the shifting should not be difficult when the
right time comes. The great evil of Boy Labour is that
it produces a type of character, which unfits him for it,
and tends to make him casual and undisciplined and lack-
ing in steadiness and perseverance. This is true of all its
forms, and of all kinds of employment, whether skilled or
not, though it is more marked in some trades than in others,
with vanguards, errand boys and rivet boys, for instance,
than with the Post Office messenger.

The danger, however, is far greater in the Blind Alley
than in a skilled trade. The boy needs, it is true, to grow
up steady and disciplined in the latter no less than in the

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 373

former. But the learner is more under control, has a more
definite objective and will have his skill to fall back upon.
To the boy labourer of the Blind Alley, his steadiness and
regularity are likely to be his all. Hence we have to face
not only the problem of the Blind Alley trade, but the
derived one of the Blind Alley character in all trades.

An occupation, therefore, must not be classed as boy
labour simply because it does not lead to skilled work, but
only when it fails to fit a lad for any kind of employment
at all. For under modern conditions many workmen must
go, and continue to go, into low-skilled jobs. Moreover,
the work of many Blind Alleys has to be carried out and
to be carried out by boys. If, therefore, they are to work
at all, a great many have to do it and for not a few, parti-
cularly between fourteen and sixteen, it is the only thing
they can get. Without such work there would not be
enough jobs to go round. The recent Census, for instance,
returned 21,366 boys between fourteen and fifteen as engaged
in occupations in the County of London and 33,174 l in the
Urban Districts of Greater London. Of these the two chief
Blind Alleys, those of Vanguards and Messengers,2 and
Junior Clerks and Office Boys, whose work often reveals
traces of a Blind Alley nature, account for nearly 12,000,
and over 17,000 respectively. On the other hand, compara-
tively few are employed between these ages in the chief
skilled trades. This may be illustrated by the following
table :—

1 Estimated by the method described in Chapter I.

2 The Census heading is Messengers, Porters, Watchmen (not
Railway or Government). Railway messengers are not separately
returned and with the changes in the Post Office the work of the
chief class of Government messengers has ceased to be a Blind
Alley, and they also are excluded from the table.

374

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

BOYS AGED 14-15 (AS RETURNED IN THE CENSUS OF

Boys' Jobs and Blind Alleys.

Selected Skilled Trades.

County

r»f

Greater

County

Greater

<JI

London.

of
London.

London.

Junior Clerks and

Fitters and Tur-

Office Boys. .

1,563

2,457

ners

5°

Vanguards and

Blacksmiths

Junior Carmen

1,475

*,923

Electrical Appar-

Messengers and

atus Makers .

217

378

Porters .

8,848

13,175

Precious Metal

and Instrument

Trades .

345

528

Carpenters and

Joiners

Plumbers

109

Cabinet Makers .

143

215

Upholsterers

Printers and

Lithographers

73i

1,130

Bookbinders .

Total . .

n,886

!7«555

Total . .

1,712

2,716

After fifteen or at least sixteen the excess of boys employed
in the chief Blind Alley jobs diminishes rapidly, whilst
the numbers in skilled work and in clerical employment
steadily increase. This will appear from the following
table, giving the total engaged in these groups for each year
from fourteen to seventeen, and for purposes of comparison
between nineteen and twenty, and their percentage of all
occupied males at these ages.

1 In most cases labourers are included, as they are not given
separately in the Census. Probably their numbers are not large.

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR.

BOYS AT VARIOUS AGES (CENSUS OF 1911).

375

14-15-

15-16.

16-17.

19-20.

County
of
London.

Greater
London.

County
of
London.

Greater
London.

County
of
London.

Greater
London.

County
of
London.

Greater
London.

All occupied .
Chief Blind Alley Jobs

21,366
10,321

33,174
15,098

31,935
10,909

49,246
15,608

34,525
8,005

53,675
11,169

36,771
3,251

56,026
4,190

Clerical Labour .

1,563

2,457

3,714

5,879

4,956

8,140

5,6l7

8,989

Selected SkilledTrades

1,712

2,7i6

3,157

4,848

3,733

5,753

4,086

6,097

Percentage of Total

Occupied —

Chief Blind Alleys.

48-3

45-5

34-2

31-7

23-2

20-8

8-8

7'5

Clerical ....

7'3

7'4

10-6

u-9

14-4

15-2

I5'3

16-0

Selected Skilled

Trades . . .

8-0

8-2

9'9

9-8

10-8

10-7

II-I

10-9

Thus in the Blind Alleys the excess after fifteen continues
for a time to be considerable, but is much less marked, and
the proportion in them of all the boys employed is less than
half between sixteen and seventeen of what it was between
fourteen and fifteen. In the earlier years the gross excess
is far greater with messengers than with vanguards, but
it must be remembered that some of the former are in
positions which will be practically permanent if they show
sufficient capacity, or in which they will have a good chance
of working their way up. The messenger's job, moreover,
fails him sooner than that of the vanguard. , The actual
number of the former falls rapidly after sixteen, and begins
to decline after fifteen. It is not till after seventeen that
a diminution begins among the latter. There is a similar
tendency in other jobs of this class, and in Rivetting, for
instance, many leave the trade at, or just after, sixteen.

On the other hand, the selected skilled trades show a
regular increase typical of all work of this kind, and employ
nearly n per cent, of the total between sixteen and seven-
teen as against just over 8 per cent, between fourteen and
fifteen. Similarly clerical workers more than trebled their
numbers and nearly doubled their percentages between
fifteen and seventeen. For many boys, therefore, it is

1 Including labourers, when they are not separately specified.

376 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

obvious that employment in unskilled boy labour is only
necessary as a temporary resort between fourteen and fifteen
till they can find better places or reach an age at which
employers who have such to offer are prepared to take them
on.

Before leaving the matter, a word must be said as to the
character of the junior clerical jobs. The returns suggest
a deficiency rather than an excess of boys, which would
lead to the conclusion that they are the antithesis of boy
labour. On the other hand, there is little doubt that there
are not a few firms which offer little or no prospect, so that
as far as they are concerned the work is a Blind Alley.
Moreover, it often gives little steadiness and discipline, and
leads to much irregular movement from firm to firm, and
so produces the Blind Alley character. It is necessary to
reconcile, therefore, this deficiency of boys, taking the
occupation as a whole, with the presence of a certain amount
of Blind Alley employment in it.

In the first place, it is probable that many office boys
will have been classed in the Census as messengers and not
as clerks. Secondly, the employment is largely recruited
from those who do not start work till sixteen, seventeen, or
later, or from other older persons. Places, therefore, are
not filled directly from the younger boys, and some of them
may be dismissed at the same time that vacancies in the
same firms are being filled from other sources. Thirdly,
junior clerks in the bigger businesses often get an excellent
chance of promotion, but in the smaller ones they are bound
to be dismissed sooner or later, and often cannot get taken
on elsewhere. Frequently, indeed, the lower grade of office
boy is found not to be suitable for promotion. A good
many, therefore, have to transfer themselves to something
else.

I. THE BLIND ALLEY.

It is now possible to consider in more detail the different
forms of Boy Labour and a commencement may be made
with the Blind Alleys, These originate in various ways,

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 377

First there are those branches of the work of a skilled
trade which are set apart to be performed entirely by boys
and girls, such as the working of semi-automatic machines.
Secondly, there is a considerable amount of unskilled factory
labour which is mainly carried out by them. Thirdly, there
are those employed in errands and messages, in porterage,
in warehouse work and in various branches of general labour.
Blind Alley Occupations, therefore, include a few jobs that
require a large number of boys, and many more that only
employ a few each, and we may begin by considering the
effect of each class upon those who enter it.

That of shop, errand and messenger boys is a very hetero-
geneous one, and the conditions under which they are em-
ployed are correspondingly varied. Previous to the changes
of the last few years the work of the telegraph messenger
in the Post Office was a very marked Blind Alley indeed.
The pay was fair and included a uniform. The boys were
kept under some discipline and control. The hours, though
apt to be irregular and spasmodically long, were on the
average short. As a purely temporary job, therefore, it
had many advantages, and had the recommendation that
it kept boys in the open air and improved their health,
and that it smartened them up generally and kept them
under some discipline.1 On the other hand, only a very small
proportion used to be absorbed in the regular service, and
thousands had to be dismissed annually. Hence, though in
some respects of a superior kind, the job was in many ways
typical of Blind Alleys generally.

Recently, however, pressure has been put on the
authorities to re-organize the work. As a result the boys
are employed as messengers for a longer period. In this and
other ways the numbers required have been reduced, and
the openings for permanent employment have been in-

1 See the First Report of the Standing Committee on Boy Labour
in the Post Office. " Whilst the more or less intermittent nature
of a messenger boy's work and its lack of any directly educational
influence no doubt tend to reduce, they do not destroy the value
of the strict discipline and physical training under which the lads
pass their service."

378 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

creased. Already those whom it is necessary to discharge
annually for lack of prospects have been reduced to a few
hundreds, and it is hoped that in a few years permanent
vacancies will be available for all who possess sufficient
capacity and who wish to stay in the service of the Post
Office.1 Some of the large Messenger Companies and such-
like bodies also provide good general conditions for those
they employ, similar to, and sometimes rather better than,
were given by the Post Office, previous to the reorganization.
The same is true of Railway Bookstall boys, except that
the hours are usually longer.

With shop boys the position varies considerably. In
large firms some at least get the opportunity to work their
way up ; the work itself is often interesting, even if it is not
skilled, and they are well controlled by the heads of their
departments. At its worst, therefore, such employment
is not actively harmful. The best boys get promotion and
the less able are at least kept steadily at it. In smaller
businesses, however, conditions are not nearly so good, and
with the little shopkeeper who employs only a single errand
boy, there are no prospects at all. The lads are not kept
under much control, many of them spend most of their time
knocking about the streets, and their hours are often
extremely long.

Thirdly, there are the boys employed on the errands, and
in making themselves generally useful, about factories and
workshops. This is mainly indoor work, and involves less
danger of getting on the streets, and where they are occupied
in serving and helping the men, there is some variety about
it. In many cases, no doubt, there is no chance to rise,
but in others the job is not really a Blind Alley at all. Smart
lads are promoted to the bench, and many firms at
the present time take their boys first of all on trial in this
capacity for six months or a year before putting them to the
trade. For this often provides a better test of their suit-

1 For a fuller description of these changes, see Appendix V,
"" The Telegraph Messenger and the Vanboy."

THE PROBLEMS <QF BOY LABOUR. 379

ability than can otherwise be secured. Frequently it is a
boy's own fault if promotion does not follow ; and the dis-
missal of many is due to bad conduct or lack of capacity.
Even among messengers alone, therefore, prospects differ
very widely indeed, and their case has been treated in
some detail to show the care that must be taken before
writing down any particular job as entirely a Blind
Alley.

The position of the Office Boy and Junior Clerk has already
been dealt with. It has been pointed out that a great
many of this class have excellent prospects of permanent
employment, advancement being sure, if slow. In the
smaller firms, on the other hand, and especially in the
smallest ones which perhaps have only an office boy and no
clerks, promotion is often practically impossible, and boys
come and go in the most haphazard way. The employment,
therefore, is a Blind Alley, at least so far as the particular
firm is concerned, and though sometimes openings can be
found elsewhere with comparative ease, this is not always
the case. Hence the job is a blind alley in these cases,
though not in the sense that promotion anywhere within
the business is practically impossible. Thus in many
respects the work should be classed rather as a Partial
than as a Total Blind Alley.

Conditions, however, are most unfavourable with the
vanboys or, as they are called, vanguards, though their
prospects are rather better than those of some kinds of shop
boys. Hours, which are those of the carmen, are long,
often unreasonably so, and render attendance at evening
schools impossible. The boy is exposed to a marked degree
to the temptations of the streets. His work demands little
intelligence or sustained effort, and is apt to breed careless
and lazy habits. With some exceptions the chances of
promotion are not many, and before the increases in wages
obtained in 1911, the job offered no such attractions as
would induce boys to stay in it. The Railway Companies,
it is true, succeed in providing for all of their vanguards in
other departments of their work, as do some other large

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

employers. Elsewhere, however, a great many have to
seek'fresh occupations.1

Finally, there are the Productive Blind Alleys, that is to
say, those forms or processes of manufacture which employ
mainly boys. Their extent varies. Where only particular
processes or jobs are affected, the result may be to give the
trade as a whole a comparatively small surplus of Boy
Labour and constitute it a Partial, but not a Total, Blind
Alley, and such will be more fully considered later. The
Productive Blind Alley proper is found where certain
sections of an industry, or even whole trades, are carried
out mainly by juvenile labour.

Typical instances of such sections of a skilled trade are
not difficult to find. In brushmaking, except in some
smaller firms, the work of boring is carried out entirely
by girls, whilst skilled men are still required for the ' ' Pan
and Hair " process. In tinsmi thing, also, and in the
cheaper lines of silverware, some large businesses have
all the parts prepared by boys, and the only skilled men
engaged are the solderers who fit them together. Makers
of engineers' accessories and parts, again, often rely largely
upon juvenile labour, and in the manufacture of light leather
certain departments are almost entirely given up to it.2
Finally in brass finishing the work appears to be done
mainly in this way in Birmingham, but less frequently so in
London, owing to its more varied character and, as a rule,
its better quality.

Lastly, there are those trades in which the work consists
in great part of unskilled juvenile labour. Most of them
individually are small, but together they employ a consider-
able surplus of boys. Below are given the numbers engaged
in them in the County of London at different ages, as re-
turned by the Census of igoi.3 The figures in the first

1 See also Appendix V, " The Telegraph Messenger and the
Vanboy," and the recent Report of the Departmental Committee
of the Home Office on the Labour of Van and Warehouse Boys.

2 See Chapter VIII.

3 The returns for this census are quoted as the Census of 1911

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 381

table are the average number employed in each age group
for each year of age 1 :—

Trade
(figures in brackets represent

14-15
Num-

15-19
Av. No.

20-24
Av. No.

25-34
Av. No.

35-44
Av. No.

total employed in trade).

ber.

Leaden and Zinc Goods (1,357)

Dve, Ink, Paint, etc., Makers,

(1,382)

Cartridge, Fireworks and

Matches . . . (1,968)

120

IOO

Candles and Soap . (1,383)

Paper and Stationery Manu-
facture .... (6,489)

219

264

1 88

1 66

107

Rope Making . . (882)

Jam and Chocolate . (1,243)

General Factory Labour and

Other Workers . . (7,184)

195

308

241

157

126

721

916

651

374

The total numbers employed in each age group were :

14-15
15-19
20^24

25-34
35-44

721

4,581
3,255
5,138
3,745

The surplus of youthful labour will perhaps be brought
out best by a comparison with the annual average of all
occupied at different ages in London and in the whole of
England and Wales. The numbers are given as percentages
of those employed between twenty and twenty-four.

does not give separate figures for all the trades concerned. In the
earlier one separate returns are only given for the County of London.
In those for which information is available, the recent census shows
on the whole a less marked excess than that of 1901, but still a
considerable one.

1 That is to say, from fifteen to nineteen is a period of five years.
The number given is one-fifth of the total in this group, from twenty-
five to thirty-four is ten years, and the number taken is one-tenth
of this,

382

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Percentage.

Unskilled
Blind
Alley
Trades.

All Occupied
Males.
London.

All occupied
Males.
England and

Excess ( +) or
Deficiency ( — )
of these trades
compared with

London.

Wales.

England

and Wales.

14-15

60 (58)1

76 (76)1

+ 83-3

+ 447

15-19

140

90 (95) l

103 (I03)1

+ 55-6

+ 35-9

20-24

100

IOO (lOO)1

25-34

87 (97)1

85 (95) l

- 9-2

- 7'1

35-44

65 (79) l

66 (78)1

-12-3

-13-6

This shows a very considerable excess of boys and youths
in these trades between the ages of fourteen and twenty,
which may be further illustrated in another way. If we
compare those actually employed from fourteen to twenty
with those who would be if the proportions were the same
as for the whole of London, we should get the following
results : —

Actual Number
Employed.

Normal Number
Employed in pro-
portion to those in
Age Group 20-24.

Excess.

14-15
15-19

722
4,606

395
2,965

327
1,641

Total . .

5,328

3,360

1,968

These figures suggest, therefore, that something like one-
third of the boys in these employments cannot in any case
remain permanently in them. It may be said, however,
that in them there is no such marked provincial influx
as there is in the skilled trades, but even in comparison with
the whole of England and Wales there was an excess of
nearly 1,500 or more than one-quarter of the whole.

Moreover, allowance must be made for the fact that the

4- Figures in brackets are those shown by the Census of 1911.,

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 383

men in these industries may not be recruited entirely or
even mainly from those who enter them as boys. It some-
times happens that youths and young men of from eighteen
to twenty-two are not much in demand, and that older men
are required. Hence a definite break and change in em-
ployment is necessitated. Even where this is not so, many
boys do not stay continuously at one kind of work until
manhood, and one of the great difficulties arises out of
their failure to stick to their jobs. Hence the number for
whom they are likely to prove a Blind Alley is apt to be
far greater than the actual surplus of those employed. For
not only do those for whom there is not room have to leave
at the close of adolescence, but many for whom there is
do so also or pass continually in and out of them.

Finally, there are certain kinds of improvers' work, which
clearly display the character of a Blind Alley. They are
found in certain skilled trades and need such an amount
of knowledge and capacity as a youth with a year or two's
experience will possess, and pay wages in proportion. Now
as a general rule improvers can hope to go on to better
and better work till they have made themselves tradesmen.
In these cases they seldom or never do. The job teaches
little or nothing new, and those engaged on it never get
more than a youth's money, or at best that of a low-skilled
man, and as a rule they leave the trade. Such jobs, there-
fore, may rightly be described as Improvers' Blind Alleys.
They continue to give employment somewhat longer than
those previously described, usually up to twenty- two or
twenty-three, but then they fail just as the ordinary Blind
Alley does. A few instances may be given. In machine
cabinet -making the commonest work is " knocked together "
by improvers, to whom it gives neither training nor per-
manent employment that is worth keeping. The Chipping-
Up or rough-toning of pianos is likewise done by youths,
who have to leave the trade unless they can rise to be tuners ,
which is not possible for all of them.

Whilst, therefore, the characteristics of Blind Alley jobs
differ in detail, their general results are much the same, in,

384 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

that they leave a youth on the threshold of manhood with-
out trade or occupation. Moreover, since Boy Labour in
them is interchangeable to a great extent, the actual excess
in particular cases is not their most important feature.
The decisive factor is that as a whole they use far more
lads than they can find permanent employment for, and
are therefore liable to lead them nowhere, as under our
present haphazard organization they frequently do. Thus
what is necessary is to provide that after they come to
an end there shall be something definite to follow.

In addition to this, they display a general tendency to
create what I have called the Blind Alley character, and
certain dangerous or injurious conditions attach to some of
them. These last are, on the whole, less marked in the
more regular indoor employments and in the work of the
Post Office than in a great deal of outdoor and distributive
work.

A few have a definitely bad influence, morally as well as
industrially. In the case of the selling of newspapers in
the streets it is often difficult to get back into regular habits
of work boys who have spent any considerable time at it.
Sale of betting news makes them gamblers, the work itself
is apt to create irregular, loafing habits, and the proportion
of petty criminals among them is larger than in any other
boys' job. Other forms of street trading, but not all of
them, are almost equally injurious, and many of the hair-
dressers' lather boys come under similar bad influences.
Vanguards, again, suffer from long hours and absence of
sustained effort.

Perhaps the most frequent and most serious trouble arises
in the case of those who are always about the streets and
not employed steadily indoors. In some of the cases just
mentioned this is especially acute, but many shop and
errand boys are also exposed to it. Factory lads, indeed,
often spend some time outside delivering goods or messages
or fetching materials, but, as a rule, are mainly within. In
any case they appear to be more strictly controlled, and
to come less under the injurious influences of the streets.

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 385

Upon those who are always about them, the evil shows
itself in many ways. The boy is apt to get roving and
unsettled habits, and a dislike of steady and regular
industry, he loses all sense of responsibility, and in the worst
cases develops into a casual, not only by habit but
by preference. That careful control by the employer can
obviate such results seems to follow from the cases of the Post
Office Telegraph boys, the District Messengers, and a few
others.

The worst of all is, perhaps, that lads come to shift con-
tinually from job to job. Sensational cases are best avoided,
but for this to be done twice or even thrice a year is by no
means uncommon, and the danger of unemployment grows
in proportion. Such shifting, moreover, enormously in-
creases the difficulty of fitting them for future life. For
those who stay in one place, or only change occasionally,
a great deal can be done because they are at least accustomed
to work steadily, but for those who never stay long any-
where, little or nothing is possible. So, too, an employer
has some inducement to promote the former ; he is not
likely to have either the will or the power in the case of the
latter.

Except with rivet boys in boilermaking and one or two
other classes, ordinary irregularity of engagement and
employment is not common in the Blind Alleys, and far
less so than with improvers in the skilled trades. Low-
skilled factory labour is often comparatively steady. The
work of errand boys, again, usually does not vary as much
as that of men, since as a rule -nearly as many are required
for busy as for slack seasons. A far more potent cause of
the irregularity is to be found in the restlessness of the lad
himself. His work is easy to get and as easy to change.
Hence there is little to keep him in a particular place, and
he leaves upon any small pretext or upon none at all. As
a result, employers have no inducement to regularize their
boys' work, and every temptation to employ them tem-
porarily and put them off as soon as business declines. Even
so, however, it is only a certain proportion of the firms who

386 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

do this, and such irregularities are small in comparison with
those caused entirely by the boys themselves.

Finally many Blind Alleys, and not least those carried
on inside a factory, suffer from their failure, not merely to
teach anything, but even to exercise the full capacities of
those they employ, especially where the work is both hard
and monotonous. The boy not only learns nothing new,
but is apt to lose what he has learnt already. Matters are
rendered worse than they otherwise would be because such
jobs are usually taken without aim or object beyond the
immediate earnings. So their monotony is increased when
there is nothing to look forward to, and their evil influence
accentuated where there is no interest in them or in pre-
paration for something better. Definite aims and ambitions
are absent, and their absence causes many to fail to fit
themselves for adult life, and sometimes never even to give
themselves the chance.

Blind Alley employment, therefore, leads to its worst
and most far-reaching results not so much by producing
specific evils as by creating a type of character and conduct,
and this it is apt to do for one reason or another in almost
every kind of Blind Alley. A job itself may give some
discipline and control, but the boy, being in a position of no
responsibility, does not profit by it. Moreover, no one has
any further duties towards him than to see that he earns
his wages. With learners and apprentices there is some
obligation to teach which only the worst employers evade.
But the boy in the Blind Alley is simply a wage-earner paid
a certain rate, and is replaced if he does not earn it, and
the employer's influence for good is minimized.

This, again, reacts upon the boy. Apart from seeing that
he does his work, he is nobody's business. He is left free
to stay or go as he pleases, controlled only by fear of a " row "
at home if he loses his job, and this fear causes some to
stay on in a place long after they ought to have left it.
Being treated as a worker, therefore, it is natural that what
he can earn should become his first, and perhaps his only
concern. Already liable to acquire casual habits, this new

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 387

influence makes him even more so. Work that is easy to
obtain is as easy to leave, and so if he is restless, or lazy or
inclined to loaf and frequent the streets, these bad tendencies
are encouraged, and if he is not, he is liable to acquire them.
No one place has any particular attraction to him, and so
instead of a steady regular workman, he grows up at best
a casual, or low-skilled labourer, without much steadiness,
and at worst a man who " can do anything," which means
nothing.

Moreover, the frequent complaint of employers that
" the boys are a rough lot who do not want to be anything
more than unskilled labourers/' illustrates this in a signi-
ficant way. Whether the absence of responsibility actually
produces this characteristic, or whether it is simply that
like attracts like, may be open to question ; but it is beyond
dispute that employment of this kind keeps them not
only from possessing any wider aims and ambitions, but
even from applying themselves steadily and regularly to
anything. It is in these ways that a Blind Alley trade
breeds and multiplies the Blind Alley character.

Last of all, these conditions conceal from the employers
the fact that they are using excessive numbers of boys.
If the latter stuck steadily to their jobs, this would at once
be obvious. When they are always coming and going,
however, firms often experience difficulty in finding enough
who are suitable, or sufficiently experienced, for promotion
to the few openings they have available. Thus Mr. Cyril
Jackson remarked in his Report to the Poor Law Commission
on Boy Labour :

' There appears to be no doubt that the restlessness of many
of the boys doing more or less unskilled work obscures from
some employers the fact that they are using a greater number
of boys than can evidently be employed in their trade as men.
The employers who have filled up forms often state that they
' never discharge a boy who is willing to stay,' or that ' boys
are only discharged for misconduct ' when it is evident from
the figures appearing in the same form that there must be a
considerable number of boys passing out of the trade each year,' '

388 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Again, in my own experience, a firm of tinsmiths had their
parts made by boys and soldered by the men, recruiting
the latter from the former. Only a very few openings
occurred, but even so it was difficult to fill them. More-
over, a further cause of trouble is that little or no time is
given to employers to test a boy's suitability. The more
capable ones are often as restless as any, and are gone before
a chance of promotion,, or even certain knowledge of their
fitness for it, can be obtained.

Similarly, this restlessness increases what I have called
the hiatus between juvenile and adult labour, or at least
the separation becomes more clear than it otherwise would
naturally be. The lad who sticks to his job sometimes fits
himself for another that is allied to it, whilst the one who
is always moving will not fit himself for anything ; and if
his employment should give him merely discipline, steadiness
and application, these will stand him in good stead. Rest-
less habits deprive him even of these qualities, and so in-
crease still further the separation between his occupation
in youth and manhood. For even in the Blind Alley there
is some small amount of promotion of boys within a factory,
either in the same or in other departments, and not quite
all have necessarily to seek fresh employment.

So far as this is the case, the distinction between Total
and Partial Blind Alleys is obliterated, but the differences
between them outweigh the resemblances. The Blind
Alley only provides a few with a permanent opening, the
Partial Blind Alley finds room for a considerable number.
Secondly, many of those engaged in the latter are in a posi-
tion to learn a man's work in the course of their employment.
In the former promotion depends on the employer making
a place for them, as he usually tries to do if they show any
capacity. Thirdly, in a Partial Blind Alley a boy remains
in the same trade or job (the plumber's mate, for instance,
becoming a plumber, the hammerman a smith, and so on),
but in a Blind Alley he is usually transferred to a different
one, working still for the same factory but in a new capacity.

A few instances may be given. Some printing and stereo-

THE PROBLEMS OE BOY LABOUR. 389

typing offices employ many errand boys, of whom a propor-
tion, varying perhaps from one quarter up to one half, are
either put as apprentices l or raised to be clerks or, if less
competent, provided for in semi-skilled work. Again, in
the metal plate and art metal working, solderers are some-
times recruited from boys who are stamping-out. The
case of the glue boys in joinery and cabinet shops is some-
what similar, but there are so few of them even in a large
firm that a chance of promotion to the bench can nearly
always be found for any capable lad. In all these instances,
however, present conditions result in fewer boys rising in
this way within the shop or office than the opportunities
available would allow. They do not go direct to the better
work, but will be transferred to it after some time at labour-
ing, and for the various reasons already given they miss
their chance.

II. THE PARTIAL BLIND ALLEY.

Unlike the first, the second form of Boy Labour — the
Partial Blind Alley — is, as a rule, a trade in the sense of
requiring a high level of skill, and provides a natural opening
for a good many of its boys ; but there is always a larger
or smaller proportion who have to seek other occupations,
and for them the job is a Blind Alley. The problem, there-
fore, differs in many ways from that hitherto considered.
Instead of a number whose employment must almost cer-
tainly fail them in early manhood, it is often impossible
to say whether or not any particular one will or will not be
permanently provided for. For, whilst every boy cannot
learn the trade, every boy has his chance, and it is not
possible to tell at the outset whether or not he is going to
take it. In some ways, therefore, it is far more difficult
to remove a lad in time to other work, and there is a danger
that it will not be the right one who is removed. In a
Total Blind Alley the change cannot very well be for the
worse, in a Partial Blind Alley it very well may.

1 The Indentures in these cases are usually dated back for one
year.

390 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Partial Blind Alleys fall into two groups — those where
Following-Up prevails, and those which adopt other methods
of training and for a variety of reasons get an excess of
juvenile labour. In the former these characteristics arise
naturally as a result of the number of boys or youths who
are required to assist the men. In them the problem varies
in character and extent from trade to trade, as already
described.1 Where each workman has one assistant he
may be in every case a boy or youth, or he may sometimes
be an adult and not a boy at all, and thirdly, the work may
be done in squads with a smaller proportion of juvenile
labour.

The right proportion of boys to men in a trade is not easy
to determine, and varies, among other things, according
to the greater or less rapidity of its development. In
London as a whole at the recent Census occupied males
under twenty were about one to six of those over that age,2
and in skilled and semi-skilled employment the proportion
was usually somewhat larger. Obviously, therefore, where
it is one to one, there is a very large excess, and even where
it is not more than one to three, an appreciable one.

Trade Union rules seldom or never allow more than one
boy to three men, and permit frequently nothing like so many,
not as the average throughout the trade, but as the maxi-
mum in any one shop. Hence even in industries like Print-
ing, where firms have frequently as many or more than this
the average is decidedly lower. Some still take few or
none, and with compositors apprentices are not allowed
in Newspaper Offices. Even so there are complaints of
overstocking. The proportion of boys, indeed, is rather
larger in one or two cases, but for this there are usually
special reasons. Seagoing engineers, for instance, learn a
large part of their business on shore, whilst the pianoforte
factories train tuners not only for other parts of Great
Britain, but for the Dominions and foreign countries.

With Following-Up, therefore, there is necessarily a

1 See Chapter VI.

2 Under twenty, 199,518 ; over twenty, 1,204,744.

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 391

larger or smaller surplus, except where many of the helpers
are adult men. In Leather Splitting, probably from two-
thirds to three-quarters of the assistants have to find other
openings. These could, indeed, be provided in some fac-
tories either in semi-skilled processes like striking-out and
machine-finishing, or in low-skilled work such as lime-
jobbing. But whether the displaced splitters are actually
absorbed in this way I was unable to discover definitely.
Moreover, being engaged on this work between seventeen
and twenty, their absorption outside the factory is often
less easy than with a young boy. Again, in wire rope
weaving, many of the " watchers-out " have to leave the
trade, but as a rule they do so about sixteen, and in the
largest firm those who are to be taught the business are
usually selected for the purpose by this time. Or again,
to take an instance from semi-skilled work, there are those
sawmills which are confined to cutting the wood into lengths
and widths, and in which every sawyer has a boy to
" pull-out " for him.

These cases illustrate the state of affairs where there
is one boy to each man. Boilermaking is, perhaps, most
typical of their employment in larger squads. In some
provincial centres apprentices are very numerous, but in
London, except occasionally among the platers, the journey-
men are recruited almost entirely from the rivet boys, who
may rise in turn to be holders-up, rivetters and even even-
tually platers or angle-smiths. These latter openings slightly
reduce the excess, whilst in large constructional firms, which
in London are not numerous, the use of the hydraulic blast
dispenses with the boy at the fire. On the other hand,
several carriers are required to one squad in certain kinds
of shipwork.

The surplus of boy labour in this trade has a double char-
acter. Each normal squad consists of one rivet-heater —
a boy of from fourteen to sixteen — one rivet-carrier — an
older youth — and three men — one holder-up and two
rivetters. The carriers are recruited from the heaters and
the men from the carriers. Hence not all the heaters can

392 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

find places as carriers, and at about sixteen some of them
have to leave the trade, which is for them a Partial Blind
Alley, terminating at this age.1 Owing to the casual char-
acter of the work, however, more than are really needed
stay on after sixteen. Still many do go to other work, and
the excess after that age is correspondingly reduced. In-
deed, it is sometimes held that once a boy is a carrier, his
rise to be a holder-up or rivetter is assured, barring mis-
conduct or incapacity. This is too favourable a view, and
there is again an excess among the carriers just as there
was among the younger boys. A few of those who are dis-
placed appear to find some semi-skilled work, such as on the
drilling machines.

If, however, the excess, either before or after sixteen, is
comparatively small, the trade has some special drawbacks.
The work in London consists almost entirely of repairs,
though these are often on a very large scale. As such, it
is casual and irregular and that of individual firms varies
considerably, quite apart from the general state of business.
Squads move from firm to firm, and their boys follow them,
and often there is a reserve of the latter waiting round the
gates of a yard on the chance of a rush. This is the reason
why, apart from the necessary excess, there are more^boys
in this job competing for employment than are ^really
required to do the work. Secondly, this is itself apt to
unfit them for other things. Rough, dirty and irregular,
it recruits many of its boys and especially those who are
casually employed from a rough class, whom it tends to
make still rougher. Hence employers in other industries
only engage them for the heaviest and least skilled jobs,
and give them little else to look forward to after they leave
this one.

The trades, where each mechanic has an assistant who
may be either a man or a boy, have already been too fully
dealt with to need detailed treatment. In the two most
important, Smithing and Plumbing, considerable strength

1 This is due to the fact that a boy works at the fire for about two
years and for four, five or perhaps more as a rivet-carrier.

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 393

is required, and comparatively few young boys are employed
by the bigger firms. With hammermen, indeed, the work
is so heavy that any one below seventeen or eighteen is
rarely taken, except in small shops, or in those which have
apprentices. There seems to be some deficiency of young
workers in the trade, and it appears to be recruited from
outside London to an appreciable extent.

Plumbers' work, again, requires strength, but there are
a good many young boys in the smaller shops. The Census
of 1901 showed some excess of younger workers both be-
tween fifteen and nineteen and twenty and twenty-four,
and this in spite of a provincial influx that is considerable,
though less marked than in other branches of the Building
Trades. A good many young men, therefore, seem to leave
it, but, owing to the conditions of a mate's work, to do so
after rather than before the end of their twentieth year ;
and this excess is in spite of the fact that many of the mates
are grown men. As a result o? the depression in the Build-
ing Trades since 1901, however, it has disappeared for the
time being, but some such surplus seems to be the normal
condition.

These two employments, moreover, are liable to other
dangers. Instead of a small number having to leave them
and find other work, they may stay in them and overstock
them with labour. The result will be that, instead of a
few being utterly stranded, a large proportion of the men
suffer from irregular employment. This tendency is accen-
tuated by the fact that a boy who does not become a
mechanic can still get a permanent job as a mate or hammer-
man, and this also helps to increase the numbers of would-
be learners. For the mates are thus recruited from two
sources — from those who wish to rise and from those who
are content to remain where they are and get their livelihood
in this capacity. Further, the number of learners is less
easy to regulate than in other trades, because it cannot be
known for certain which, or how many, of them will rise.
This is perhaps particularly true of the plumbers, thanks
to the great facilities afforded to them by the Trade Schools,

394 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

and their continuously high percentage of unemployment
during recent years lends support to the view that such
overstocking is a reality. Among the smiths, on the con-
trary, the heaviness of the work appears to have prevented
a similar result.

Secondly, the prevailing conditions are apt either to cause,
or to increase, the amount of Wasteful Recruiting in these
trades. This is particularly true where the fear of over-
stocking renders the men hostile to the efforts and ambi-
tions of their helpers and causes them to put hindrances in
their way. Hence the difficulties experienced by the latter
cause many of them to fail to learn their business properly,
and there grows up a class of half-taught mechanics. This,
again, appears to be particularly true of Plumbing, and in
it we find a number of " good-mates spoilt " who are in-
ferior workmen, and who do not get regular work themselves,
but yet get enough to casualize the employment of abler
and better men. In other words, whilst the Blind Alley
produces the casual labourer, the Partial Blind Alley is apt
to create the casual mechanic.

Finally, the same influences are also apt to bring it about
that men who are fit for something better remain mates or
hammermen all their lives. Just as some are prevented
from learning properly, so others will be hindered from
learning at all. Some fail to learn from lack of capacity,
and to put it frankly, ought not to have attempted to do
so ; others possess the capacity, but never make the attempt.
In this case, therefore, there is once more a loss and waste of
valuable industrial abilities, and these results may be at least
as serious as those which normally accompany a Blind Alley.

The second group of Partial Blind Alleys is also composed
of skilled trades, but the methods of Service and Migration
are generally adopted in them. Thus the surplus of boys
is not due to the numbers required as assistants by par-
ticular men, but to the fact that in certain easier parts of
the work or in other jobs connected with it more are em-
ployed as boys than room can be found for as men. This
may not be true of each individual shop, but the whole

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR.

395

trade will have some excess. Such a phenomenon is chiefly
found in the Furniture and Woodworking Industry, and
must be distinguished from the Wasteful Recruiting that
is also prominent in it. The one, indeed, tends to produce
the other, and it is not always possible to distinguish the
results of the one from the results of the other.

In the industry just mentioned it is not altogether easy
to estimate the extent of the Blind Alley work of this kind
from the published figures. Boys in these trades will be
either learners or those who will have to leave them sooner
or later. Hence a deficiency of them may be quite consis-
tent with the existence of a certain amount of it, a small
excess of boy labourers being more than counterbalanced
by a marked shortage of learners. This difficulty is, to a
great extent, common to all Partial Blind Alleys.

A second and in many ways more serious one, is the
result of influences that have specially affected the Furniture
Trades. Like the Building Trades, they enjoyed a pro-
longed period of exceptional prosperity previous to the
Census of 1901, and an even longer one of no less exceptional
depression since, which has not long come to an end. The
result has been first to increase largely the numbers entering
them previous to the former year, and then to cause these
numbers to fall much below the average. This may be
illustrated by the following table :—

CENSUSES OF 1901 AND 1911.

Percentages employed at each year of age at certain age groups
(25-34 = ioo).

15-19-

20-24.

25-34.

1901.

1911.

1901.

IQII.

1901.

I C) I I .

London (All Occupied

Males) ....

102

115

102

100

Cabinet Making .

122

IOO

French Polishing

I36

143

IOO

100

Upholstery .

II9

120

101

IOO

Sawmilling

162

138

I4I

112

IOO

Wood Carving

151

130

IOO

100

396 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

The two periods thus show absolutely contradictory
results. Compared with the whole of London, all these
trades exhibited in 1901 a marked and sometimes a very
marked excess both of boys and young men, and in Polish-
ing, Sawmilling and Carving it appeared only to terminate
in early manhood. On the other hand, in 1911 only Saw-
milling showed any surplus at all. This was still large,
though not nearly so large as it was ten years earlier. In
Upholstery the proportions were about normal, and Carving
and Cabinet Making had a decided, and Polishing a very
large, deficiency. The latter is possibly due in part to the
increased employment of women and girls in the easier parts
of the work. Otherwise the decline in the numbers between
fifteen and twenty-five appears to be mainly due to a de-
crease in those of the learners who have been taken since
about 1902 or 1903 ; for other evidence points to the con-
tinued existence of some Partial Blind Alley work in these
trades. Hence the figures for 1901 probably represent more
nearly the normal conditions, though they undoubtedly
exaggerated the excess of boys and younger men. The
character and causes of the surplus may now be considered.

In some cases, certain processes and jobs are carried out
entirely by boys, who, at any rate in individual firms, are
employed in too large numbers to permit of the trade absorb-
ing the whole of them. Sometimes their work teaches
them little or nothing, as in certain large machine cabinet
factories in which it is highly specialized, and some of them
are confined each to a single small job and nothing more.
Other instances are the working of semi-automatic machines
in engineering and of the punch-press in tinsmithing and
art metal work, and perhaps the filing-up of silverware,
though here the lad has better opportunities of seeing,
though not of doing, other processes.

Cases, again, may be quoted in which there is a similar
excess of boys, but their work forms part of the trade and
helps them to make a start at it. Thus in French Polishing
they are engaged to " clean down " the woodware in pre-
paration for the polish, or even to put on the first coat, or

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 397

in wood carving certain things are reserved for them ; and
in both such jobs are a step towards learning the business.
The smarter, therefore, get to the trade, the others are
eventually dismissed, unless, as is more probable, they have
previously discharged themselves. Similarly, in processes
that are reserved for improvers, more are sometimes taken
than can be permanently retained.

Secondly, where sub-contractors are numerous, the em-
ployment by each of them of a few boys may lead to an
appreciable excess. Thus, in Pianoforte Manufacture, each
of them requires one to help him in the smaller firms, whilst
in the larger ones they may keep one or two on permanently
and engage a few more for the busy season only. At its
close these are turned off, perhaps to return for the next
season ; and the necessity of employing them in this way
often creates a further difficulty.

The same thing happens in other trades where small
masters are numerous. In Wood-Turning many of them are
working alone or with a single man and take and teach a
boy, or have two men and a couple of boys. The larger
firms, on the other hand, do not appear to take many, but
even so the Census of 1901 showed some surplus up to the
age of twenty. So, again, small cabinet makers can make
use of one or two boys and bring them on so far as they
are able, and thus cause an excess. For even if this is not
true of the whole trade but only of certain sections of it,
entry into other firms may not be possible owing to the
different character or quality of their work, or because the
latter get the men they require from outside London.

Thirdly, where firms employ both learners and boys for
other purposes, the work of the latter is apt to become a
Blind Alley. Some of them avoid this either by making the
younger apprentices run the errands or by promoting other
lads to the bench. But in other cases few or none of them
are thus provided for, and though they may get the chance
to work their way up elsewhere, some of them will be
compelled eventually to leave the trade.

In such ways, therefore, these trades employ a moderate

398 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

excess of boys, and though able to absorb most of them,
cannot find room for all. As a rule, this surplus is smaller
than where Folio wing-Up prevails, partly because it is only
in certain firms that it exists to a serious extent, and partly
because some of these lads can find employment elsewhere.
For the fact that certain shops have more than they can
keep on permanently does not necessarily mean that there
are too many in the trades taken as a whole. At the same
time, in those which we have been considering and in some
others, these causes have been sufficiently in operation to
constitute them Partial Blind Alleys. Hence there is some
excess, but this is not due, as in the first case, to any fixed
combination of boys and men in pairs or squads, nor is it
brought about solely by defects in methods of recruiting.
Its cause is that for a variety of reasons more boys need to
enter them than they can permanently keep and that those
who have to leave sonie firms cannot be entirely absorbed
by others.

Regarded as a whole, Partial Blind Alleys have created
a distinct problem of their own, different both from that
of the Total Blind Alley, and that of the Wasteful Recruiting
of trades and occupations. Compared with the former they
frequently provide work for a youth rather than a boy,
and where it can be done economically by an adult, they do
give at any rate permanent semi-skilled employment.
Moreover, the boy or youth attached to them is under
stricter discipline and control than the errand or van boy,
and often leaves the job, if he does leave it, a steadier and
more regular worker than when he entered it.

On the other hand, they have their own special difficulties.
They empjoy many older boys and youths and a change,
for those who have to make it, is more difficult at eighteen
or afterwards than it is at an earlier age. Again, some who
are fit for something better remain all their lives in semi-
skilled jobs. Thirdly, they are apt to become overstocked,
when, as sometimes happens, those who ought to leave
them contrive to stay on, and thus cause or increase irregu-
larity of employment. Finally, ior the reason just men-

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 399

tioned, youths liable to be displaced from a Partial Blind
Alley may be more than usually difficult to deal with. For
in a Total Blind Alley it is possible to know, with some
degree of certainty, how many will have to find other jobs
sooner or later ; but in a partial one, whilst comparatively
few leave the trade altogether, it is not easy to tell in advance
which these are ; and in those which need older youths,
the difficulty is all the greater.

This problem, therefore, requires a special organization
of its own to distinguish clearly those who are, or who are
not, to enter the trades concerned. Probably for this reason
the right to them may have to be confined to apprentices
or to others who are definitely accepted as learners, for
whom a reasonable period of trial, of as much as a year or
even more, should be allowed. This would help to guard
against overstocking and render more easy the improvement
in methods of teaching. On the other hand, those who
cannot enter them could then be drafted into other positions,
perhaps within the same factory. Lastly, such an organi-
zation will check the tendency to wasteful recruiting and
assist the supervision of the individual boy, and so help
to overcome these difficulties also.

III. THE WASTEFUL RECRUITING OF TRADES AND
OCCUPATIONS.

The occupations, so far considered, all have a natural
excess of boys, and fail to give employment after boyhood
is over to a larger or smaller proportion of them. In the
third phase of the problem, this surplus is produced by
other causes. The question of Wasteful Recruiting will
be considered mainly in connexion with the skilled trades,
where its importance is greatest, but it is also found in
many others. In such trades learners are taken in the ordin-
ary way, and the nature of the employment does not in
itself require an excess, yet more will enter many of them
than they can permanently retain, and what is more, they
will have to do so if a sufficient number of competent men
is to be provided. This surplus, therefore, is brought about

400 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

by the failure of a good many either to learn their trade at
all or to learn it properly, and they thus grow up without
proper command of any occupation. Hence this is caused
by failure to learn where the opportunity to do so exists,
and not, as in the two previous cases, by the lack of that
opportunity.

Some failures, indeed, there must always be in every trade,
and so Wasteful Recruiting does not consist in their exist-
ence, but in the fact that they are far more numerous than
can be accounted for by the sprinkling of lazy or incom-
petent boys who are found everywhere. In short, Wasteful
Recruiting implies the spoiling of much good material, and
that boys start to learn a trade— sometimes with the fairest
prospects — and fall out by the way. Hence, even after
allowing for necessary wastage, the production of a given
number of competent workmen requires the taking of a
considerably larger number of boys ; and so many skilled
trades have a reserve of boy labour. It is, nevertheless,
the extent of this rather than its mere existence, that
constitutes the problem.

As thus defined, Wasteful Recruiting falls into two classes.
Either a boy fails altogether to learn his trade, or he grows
up an incompetent or inferior workman ; and in either
case larger numbers enter it than can find full employment
later. The matter may now be considered in detail.

First there is direct mis-placement or the putting of boys
into unsuitable trades or situations— either into the wrong
trade or into the wrong shop in the right one. Both mistakes
are common ; and as regards the former, parents are not
seldom to blame, less for want of interest in their children,
than for want of thought and care. The first thing that
offers or that occurs to them is too often taken without
reference to the boy's tastes or abilities, and others try to
put their sons into positions that are beyond their capacity.
Often, again, nothing is done until they have actually left
school, and then work has to be found in a hurry ; and some-
times the thing is left entirely to chance.

Moreover, considerable difficulties face even the most

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 401

thoughtful. Good openings are scarce, and some of them
appear to be unpromising ; whilst a boy often does not
know his own mind, or may not be specially suited to any-
thing in particular. There is great danger, too, in their
remaining idle, and to this parents are quite alive. " There
are so many boys after jobs," said one mother, " that we
thought he had better take the first he could get." Finally
the right job is hard to find, and neither parent nor boy
knows how to find it, and, till recently, there has been little
organization to help them to do so. Anyhow, whatever
the cause, the effect is the same. Going to the wrong trade,
the boy fails to master it and either has to leave it altogether
or content himself with irregular employment.

Even in a suitable trade much the same result follows
from choice of the wrong type of shop. If it does inferior
work or lacks capacity to teach, or still more, if it neglects
to do so, a boy may come out of his time little better off
than when he entered it. Here, too, parents are, or have
been till recently, very badly off for expert advice ; but,
on the whole, this danger is not quite so great as the first.
Being suited by the trade, and possessing the capacity to
learn, the lads only need to get the chance, and the abler
of them make one for themselves by moving away to other
firms.

For these and other reasons, therefore, it is quite a common
thing ior a boy to leave one trade for another, as a result of
causes which sometimes are and sometimes are not under
his control. The change may come soon, or it may come
late, but sooner or later it does come. The chance way in
which he obtained his job often ties him to it less strictly
than if he had been more carefully and formally engaged.
So he goes to it for a few months, for a year, perhaps for
two, and learns a little. Then he gets tired of the work, or
thinks he is not learning quickly enough, or has a row with
somebody, or, in some cases, merely wants a change, and
off he goes. After this he may get another job in the same
trade, he may start in a different one or he may take purely
unskilled work ; and it is not unusual for a youth to nibble

D D

402 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

at several trades in this way with spells of boy labour sand-
wiched in between them.

Moreover, change from one trade to another is sometimes
the only alternative to long periods of unemployment.
Where there are marked seasonal variations, as in Pianoforte
Manufacture, or where the work of individual firms comes
in rushes, boys are sometimes treated much as the men are,
and are dismissed as soon as things fall slack, though many
firms try to avoid this. This forces them into other jobs
— skilled or unskilled — and some do not return with the
busy season and indeed soon contract the habit of wander-
ing about and sticking at nothing. Again, a long spell of
unemployment may have a similar effect, and so, for one
reason or another, many leave the employment which they
started to learn, or if they do not, work at it so irregularly
as to become inferior workmen.

Further, there are the results of defective training, and
more especially those connected with the casual picking-up
of a trade. Though not unknown, these are as a rule least
serious under the more definite forms of Regular Service.
They are more considerable under its other types and in
the case of Following-up, and probably most serious under
Migration. To a few of the abler boys, indeed, the latter
may give as good a training as, and larger earnings during
its course than, more regular methods, discontinuity in the
work being in their case compensated for by its greater
variety. But for the great majority its dangers outweigh
its advantages. They are peculiarly liable to unemploy-
ment, as they are compelled to move about from firm to
firm. They are left too much to their own devices and,
not being recognized learners, it is no man's business to
teach them ; whilst fear of cheap labour may set their fellow-
workmen against them. Many leave the trade and still
more, without dropping out altogether, grow up incom-
petent or only partially taught. " I object to a boy learning
as an improver," one foreman said, " because he picks his
trade, so to speak, in the gutter."

To learn properly by Migration, the improver has to

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 403

choose carefully the kind of shops he goes to and regulate
the time he stays in each ; but many stay too long at in-
ferior work, or select a new place mainly with a view to
what they can earn. Further, being paid as workers not
as learners, they have to be kept on what is most profitable
to their employers ; and, particularly when paid piece-
work, are liable to acquire wrong methods by turning out
inferior stuff rapidly and in a slipshod way. The necessary
changes of job, again, create the habit of continually chang-
ing, and lead to loss of capacity to stick steadily to anything.

Finally, the attraction of immediate high earnings causes
so'me to neglect to learn their business thoroughly. Finding
employers offering good money, especially when trade is
brisk, they fail to see the need for further improvement.
Thus between 1895 and 1900 foremen stonemasons in
London were putting on almost any one who could handle
a chisel, and young men were always changing firms to
increase their wages. Only when depression came did they
realize their shortcomings, too late to remedy them. In
Silversmi thing, again, young fellows may quickly become
worth 255. to 305. a week at a particular kind of work, at
which they will stick and never learn more.

For even when a youth is at pains to learn, the power to
earn comparatively high wages may make him think that
he knows more than he does, or that having learnt one
section of a trade well he has learnt sufficient. And if some
of the more thoughtful boys fall into this error, others
simply learn a part of the business and then sacrifice every-
thing to earning as much as possible. Indeed, some In-
structors in the Trade Schools are so alive to this danger
as to fear even the payment of such good rates. Here the
result is less frequently the generally inferior workman
than the man who can do only certain parts of a trade.
As the most serious, therefore, the case of Migration has been
described in detail, but much that has been said will apply
also, though in a lesser degree, to the various forms of
Regular Service, since these check, but do not always nor
altogether prevent, the creation of a reserve of boy labour.

404 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Further, there is often waste in connexion with those
unskilled jobs about an industry, which can and sometimes
do give a chance to learn it. For owing to incapacity or
bad behaviour or failure to stick to their work, boys allow
chances to go begging, and what might be the making of a
few boys merely provides a succession of temporary jobs,
which lead to nothing, for a much larger number. Again,
irregular employment of improvers often creates a casual
reserve of them, and in certain cases individual employers
find it to their advantage to overstock their business with
younger workers.

The same phenomenon is also present in the case of
unskilled boy labour, where it is largely a by-product of
Blind Alley employment. In the skilled trades far more
boys enter than learn, not because excessive numbers are
engaged, though in some trades this cause also operates to
a certain extent, but because so many fail to learn ; and,
as a result, a Reserve of Boy Labour has to grow up to ensure
a sufficient supply of men in the future. The chief elements
in this Reserve may now be briefly summarized as follows.
To begin with, there are those who have been wrongly
placed from the very first ; secondly, those who have started
in a suitable trade but failed to stick to it ; and, thirdly,
those who have failed to learn it fully. It is comprised not
only of youths who drop out before or after reaching man-
hood, but of many of those who stay in a trade as irregular
or low-paid workers * ; and whilst the share contributed
by each single cause may not be large, the total reserve
is often considerable. Its size varies from trade to trade.
Where methods of teaching are well regulated as in Print-
ing, it is small ; where the most haphazard ones prevail,
it is decidedly large, and it frequently reaches appreciable
dimensions.

Moreover, this Reserve is not simply an ordinary reserve
of casual labour, similar to that which occupies so prominent

1 Because, as will be described later, more of such men are re-
quired for a given output .than if they were well taught. Hence a
jeserve of boys sufficient to produce this greater number is required.

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 405

a place in the case of men. Such a one is sometimes found,
arising partly out of the irregular employment of improvers
and others and partly from the irregularity of the lads
themselves. Still, taking the skilled trades as a whole, it
is not important. The real Reserve of Boy Labour is an
educational one, and is composed of those who are seeking
education and training and not of those who are waiting
for employment.

A comparison of the two Reserves of Adult and Juvenile
Labour will perhaps most clearly explain my meaning.
The former may be described as follows. Different firms
in a trade employ a number of men which varies from day
to day, whilst each of them tends to be busy and slack on
different days. If, therefore, as is usually the case, they
do not get their less regular workers from a common source,
each firm attempts to attach to itself a supply of men
sufficient and even more than sufficient for its maximum
requirements. Hence the number seeking work is often
greater than can find employment even on the busiest day,
and some are unemployed more frequently than they are
employed. For instance, suppose ten firms require each
a number of men that varies from 50 to 100, then if each
gets its own absolutely independently of the others, they
will have altogether 1,000 men in attendance on them,
" either working or waiting for work " ; and as their busiest
and slackest days never correspond, the whole number is
never working on any one day. If, on the contrary, all the
men were drawn from a single centre, both the maximum and
minimum number would fall between these two extremes,
being say 800 and 600 men respectively. Consequently
on the busiest day there is only work for 800, but under
existing conditions the full 1,000 are required. With care-
ful organization, therefore, 200 of them could be dispensed
with, but as things are, with each individual employer
getting his own separate supply, they are necessary to
enable all the work to be carried out. In practice, indeed,
there is nearly always some interchange of labour between
different firms, though not nearly as much as there might

406 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

be, and so the reserve of labour is still considerable ; but if
the work were properly organized, this reserve would become
a surplus for which outlets would have to be found elsewhere.

Similarly, in recruiting a trade, a certain number of boys
are required to keep it up and to allow for any necessary
increase in it, and also for wastage by death and in other
ways. Now a Reserve of Boy Labour is found, when, in
order to recruit it, more than the requisite number have to
enter it. Under normal conditions, therefore, each trade
tends to take enough learners to provide an adequate supply
of workmen in the next generation ; and the actual
number of boys necessary for this purpose corresponds to
the men actually employed on the busiest day in the pre-
vious illustration. This represents also the total capacity
of a trade to absorb them and varies from one to another
according to its rate of growth, the expectation of life of
its members, and so on.

Now if the methods of training and organization were
perfect, just this number would be required, with a small
allowance for deaths and unavoidable cases of failure.
Actually under present conditions more, and sometimes
many more, boys have to enter the trade, since otherwise
sufficient journeymen will not be obtained. The cause of
these numerous failures has already been described, and
their number will be in proportion to the efficiency of
methods of training. As with casual adult labour, there-
fore, the additional boys ar^e a reserve and not a surplus,
since under present conditions their attempted entry is
necessary, and more have to try to learn the trade than
could find regular employment at it if all succeeded, just
as more casual labourers have to be seeking work than
could possibly find it on any one day.

This may perhaps be made clearer by a hypothetical
illustration. A trade requires so many learners to keep up
its supply of journeymen. Say, for instance, that the
number is 105, and that, allowing for natural wastage,1 100

1 By this I mean such wastage as is caused by death, illness,
accident, emigration and other unavoidable causes of failure.

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 407

of them become journeymen. But a considerable propor-
tion may fail to learn or to learn properly, and either leave
the trade early, fail to find employment as men, or only
obtain it when business is brisk and better men are not avail-
able. Instead of 100 journeymen, therefore, the trade
has only 100 less these failures. If, for instance, there are
20 of them, then the 105 learners only make 80 instead
of 100 journeymen, and to get the latter number, something
like 130 learners will be needed. These figures are given
purely by way of illustration and the size of the Reserve
can seldom be so large as this. Often, however, it is con-
siderable, and so long as it continues to be required, there
must, even in the skilled trades, be a special problem of Boy
Labour, and entry into one of them will be no necessary
guarantee against growing up without an occupation.

Compared with the Reserve of Adult Labour, indeed,
this juvenile one is small. For one reason, the proportion
of failures is more or less limited. Employers are not so
careful to provide a reserve of boys as of men, simply waiting
till the need arises. Then if those they have taken do
not prove sufficient, more are engaged or provincial workers
are got in. Nevertheless, the Reserve of Boy Labour is
both a real and considerable one, and until the causes of
Wasteful Recruiting are removed, the necessity of taking
sufficient boys for all emergencies will continue, and those
who fail to learn will have to be replaced. So long, there-
fore, as our methods of recruiting produce a large proportion
of failures, the number of boys required to enter a trade
will be permanently in excess of the number that can get
full employment at it. That is to say, modern conditions
bring into the skilled branches of a trade more boys than
can find that full employment in it as men, defining it for
this purpose as such continuity of work as the general
conditions of the trade, including its seasonal and other
fluctuations, will permit.

The same result, therefore, is reached as in ordinary Blind
Alley employments. Each alike leaves a boy stranded
in early manhood without full command of a definite occu-

408 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

pation, and the only resource left either to the mechanic
or the labourer is casual or low-paid work either within or
without his trade. The trouble, however, is not so much
that existing methods of recruiting cause more boys to
enter a trade than it can permanently absorb. This is but
a part of the evil, and, if they could be made to leave it
before it is too late, but a small part. Indeed some boys only
find the right trade after sampling two or three others. The
chief trouble, on the contrary, is either that they stay too
long in trades to which they are unsuited, until, that is, it
is too late to find another, or that they never stick to
any but continually chop and change and so learn nothing.

In conclusion, the elements of which this Reserve of
Boy Labour is composed may be shortly described. First
there are those who drop out altogether from their various
trades. Some do so after one or two years, and others
nearer the time when they reach manhood, whilst yet others
are forced out by stress of competition after they have
reached it ; and further there is a stream of boys continually
entering and leaving them. Secondly, some who are able
to continue in a trade after reaching manhood, have such
an inadequate knowledge of it as to form a fringe of casual
workers whom it is only worth an employer's while to
employ during busy times, or for a few days a week as odd
men ; and either lack of ability, failure to stick properly
to the work, or the desire for immediate high earnings, may
produce this result.

Thirdly, instead of a smaller body of fully trained
mechanics being regularly employed, a larger number who
are partially trained are engaged for parts of the year only.
This is sometimes the fate of the over-specialized workman.
In various trades different products are in brisk demand
at different periods of the year, and trade is busy in one
article and slack in another. Hence a man who can only
make one thing well, is kept during its busy season, but as
another comes into demand, some one else, who is equally
specialized, is taken on to make it, whilst an all-round man
would simply be shifted from one job to another and em..

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 409

ployed continuously. In short, the work is in this case
spread out among a larger number of workmen who are
employed regularly for a large part of the year, but unem-
ployed for the rest — four men, say, work for nine months
each instead of three men for the whole twelve.

Fourthly, Wasteful Recruiting sometimes produces in
a trade a class of low-paid but regularly employed workmen.
Setting aside those who can only do certain of the roughest
kinds of work, like the men who are paid about 4^. an hour
to paper up furniture previous to its going to the polishers,
there are others who can do a job throughout, but their out-
put is so poor in quantity or quality that they only get and
are only worth inferior wages. Thus in cabinet making
or upholstery, the labour cost of an article is estimated and
a. man is paid according to the time he takes to make it.1
Hence where each man's output is small, more men are
needed to get a given amount of work done, and the reserve
of labour takes this form.

Moreover, the growth of these classes of workers not
only creates a reserve directly, but indirectly also by its effect
on the methods of employment. Often, both in London
and elsewhere, the choice between the regular employment
of fully competent men and the less regular employment of
those who are not, is largely a question of supply. In most
trades both methods are open to the employer, who may
be in a position either to regularize his work and keep good
men steadily occupied, or to casualize it ; and which is the
more profitable process may be determined by the quality
of the labour available. If business is brisk and there is
an adequate supply of good men, regularization is likely.
Where, however, Wasteful Recruiting provides a large
reserve of inferior or not fully competent hands, especially /
if this is accompanied by some shortage of really good men/
casualization follows for the purpose of making the most

1 Say, for instance, the Labour Cost of upholstering a certain
kind of chair is estimated at IDS., then a man who will undertake
to do it in ten hours will be paid is. per hour, in twelve hours iod.,
in fifteen hours 8d., in twenty hours 6d., and so on.

410 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

profitable use of the labour supply. As a result both the
Reserve of Labour and its irregular training tend to in-
crease and perpetuate themselves.

To sum up, therefore, the Reserve of Boy Labour is not
confined to those who, in the course of learning it, are com-
pelled to leave a trade. It is composed in part of them,
and partly consists of the greater number of men who are
required to do the work when they are not properly
trained. Its size must not be exaggerated, but when all
its elements are added together, it constitutes, in many
trades, a problem of considerable gravity.

One special point remains to be considered. It has been
stated that when a boy drops out of a trade, another has
to be taken to fill his place, and similar allowance has to
be made in order to provide a sufficient number of those who
are only fit for casual or irregular work. This is the usual
course of events, though, in rare cases, an insufficient supply
of fresh labour may cause a shortage of it. Taking the
country as a whole, this view holds good, but in London the
provincial influx complicates the matter. Instead of
engaging other boys to replace those who fail, London em-
ployers frequently get in men from elsewhere, many of them
indeed relying mainly on provincials, and take very few
learners ; but it is only the source of supply that is altered,
and neither the waste nor the reserve of boys is appreciably
diminished, though the number of good openings may be.
Moreover, the causes that produce this waste still further
increase this preference for and reliance on provincial work-
men, and reduce the opportunities for advancement of the
London boy.

The causes and results of Wasteful Recruiting have been
treated mainly in relation to the skilled trades, but are
also at work upon unskilled boy labour, though here they
are perhaps best regarded as an incident of Blind Alley
employment. In the former these causes include defective
methods of teaching, wrong selection of a trade, restlessness
and lack of steadiness. In the latter there is little or no
teaching, little or nothing to look forward to, and both

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 411

responsibility and foresight are at a minimum. Employers
complain that they cannot keep their boy labourers, and
this " obscures from them the fact that they are using a
greater number than can be employed in their trade as
men." Continual movement from firm to firm creates a
reserve of labour in the group of Blind Alleys taken as a
whole, and also involves many lads in longer or shorter
spells of unemployment, whilst some employers have diffi-
culty in getting boys. Now many boys' jobs are themselves
steady and regular, and a smaller number might quite well
suffice to do the work of them ; but as it is, a Reserve
inevitably grows up.

(d) CONCLUDING SUMMARY.

It may now be advisable to sum up very briefly the main
features of the Problem of Boy Labour, as it has presented
itself in the preceding pages. The term, we have seen, is
used in two senses : to indicate first those jobs which con-
tinue throughout boyhood and youth but no longer ;
and secondly, to signify the failure of a lad's work in
any capacity to qualify him for any occupation at all.
Further, Boy Labour often creates what I have called
the Blind Alley character, the presence of which causes boys
to grow up without steady, regular and disciplined habits ;
and this is the result of the conditions under which they
are occupied during youth.

Boy Labour, moreover, falls into three main classes,
First, there are the Blind Alleys proper, which fail to provide
permanently for the great majority of their boys, and which,
unless definite steps are taken to prevent it, leave them at
a loose end about the age of eighteen. Usually the job is
of a low-skilled character. Such employment is most
common in distributive work, but there are also numerous
Productive Blind Alleys, in the shape of trades or branches
of trades which are carried out mainly by juvenile labour.
Some Blind Alleys are directly injurious in their effect,
either physically or morally ; others produce their evil
results indirectly in the creation of bad habits, and because

412 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

they themselves lead to nothing, and therefore do not of
themselves give a lad any definite objective. The resulting
difficulties can be dealt with best by thorough organization
and the provision of continued education specially adapted
to the needs of those concerned.

Secondly, Partial Blind Alleys are mainly skilled employ-
ments, and provide a definite livelihood for a large propor-
tion of those who enter them. To the rest they prove a
Blind Alley. Some of them are trades in which each man
works with a mate or assistant, and where many of the
latter are boys, some of them have to leave the business.
In others, numerous causes combine to produce a moderate
excess of young workers. Generally speaking, those affected
are far less numerous than in the first case, but are in some
respects little less difficult to deal with. The chief dangers
are either that the superfluous boys will remain in, and over-
stock, the trade instead of leaving it, or that capable lads,
failing to rise, will remain mates all their lives. Again,
the remedy consists of careful organization, and if possible,
the adoption of a policy of definitely recognizing certain
persons as learners.

Thirdly, there is the problem of Wasteful Recruiting.
This is, perhaps, most important in connexion with skilled
labour. Many workmen who enter an occupation, either
fail to learn it altogether, or learn so incompletely as never
to get more than irregular work at it. At its worst it causes
a considerable Reserve of Boy Labour to enter and try to
learn a trade, in order that a much smaller number of
skilled and competent men may be trained. This problem
is, indeed, a very wide one, and its solution raises in one
way or another almost every question of importance con-
nected with Industrial Training.

Thus, Boy Labour may be divided into three classes :
Blind Alley Trades, Partial Blind Alleys, and the results
of Wasteful Recruiting. In the first two the problem
is primarily that there is nothing to learn, and in the third
it consists of failure to learn what there is to learn. But in
all three the real difficulty is that lads do not acquire or

THE PROBLEMS OF BOY LABOUR. 413

master some definite trade or occupation, and the Blind
Alley itself is a problem, not so much because it leads directly
to no employment in manhood, as because the boys whom
it employs fail to prepare themselves for anything else
after they leave it.

CHAPTER XVI.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT.

I. THE INFLUENCE OF INDUSTRIAL TRAINING UPON UNEMPLOY-
MENT.
II. THE INFLUENCE OF UNEMPLOYMENT ON INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

(a) The Influence of the Long Period Demand for Labour.

i. On the Other Causes of Unemployment,
ii. On Boy Labour and Industrial Training.

(b) The Existing State of Employment.

i. Among Men.
ii. Among Boys.
III. CONCLUDING SUMMARY.

Importance of Connection between Training and Unemployment-
Different Views of the Influence of the former on the latter —
Insufficient Importance attached to Demand — Definition of
Demand.

I. Influence of Industrial Training upon Unemployment.

The Substitution of Methods : its Influence — Blind Alley
Employment does not of itself produce Unemployment in
manhood — Real Cause of Trouble consists of failure to acquire
good industrial habits — Results of this — Tendency to increase
irregular employment of boys — Summary of influence of un-
skilled boy labour in producing adult unemployment — Good
Training favours regularization — Effect of Excess of unskilled
boy labour checks growth of skilled trades, and favours that
of less skilled — This further increases the irregularity — In-
fluence of the Specialized Mechanic — Effect in checking Demand
for Labour — Direct and Indirect — Special Difficulty in London
owing to Provincial Influx.

Influence of Training on the Other Chief Causes of Unemploy-
ment, and particularly on Periodic Fluctuations — Its Influence
on the way in which these are met.

Extent to which Good Methods of Training can prevent or
mitigate Unemployment.

II. The Influence of Unemployment on Industrial Training.
A . The Influence of Long Period Demand for Labour.

(i) On the Other Causes of Unemployment.

The Waste of Labour — Its Meaning — Total and Partial
Waste — Waste on a Large Scale involves an ample supply of
Labour — Relation of the Demand for Labour to Seasonal
Fluctuation, to Cyclical Variations, to General Irregularity

414

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 415

of Employment, to Changes in Fashion and Methods of Pro-
duction— Summary,
(ii) On Boy Labour and Industrial Training.

Influence of Defective Demand appears in two directions —
Waste of Boy Labour — Its form — Boys who grow up without
an occupation — Wasteful Use in all kinds of work — Casualiza-
tion of Boys' Work — Creation of Boys' jobs to utilize the
Supply — Waste in Skilled Trades — Concluding Summary.
B. The Existing State of Employment.
(i) Among Men.

Ample Supply of Labour in recent years — View that exist-
ence of reserves not due to Defective Demand — Recent State
of Employment — - Views of Poor Law Commission — The Trade
Union Percentages — High Figures during the last decade (1901-
1910) — Smaller Increase in Bad Years — Influence of Increase
in Short Time — Increase in Superannuated Members — Evidence
of a Growth in Unemployment during Good Years — The Case
of 1906-7 — The State of Employment in 1912-3 does not
support this view — 'Unemployment and Unskilled Labour —
Dock Labour in London and Liverpool — Conclusion.
(ii) Among Boys.

Evidence of surplus of boys seeking skilled work in London
and of shortage of openings for them — Little difficulty in get-
ting boys — Evidence from other towns also suggests a surplus,
though a smaller one.

Evidence less definite regarding unskilled boy labour —
Some evidence of a deficiency of boys, but more to support
the view that there is a sufficiency or even a surplus of them
— Shortage, if any, is almost entirely confined to the Blind
Alleys — It is probably due to lack of organization rather than
lack of boys.

III. Concluding Summary. Influences exerted by Industrial Train-
ing and the Demand for Labour are inter-dependent, as are
their results — Both, therefore, must be dealt with and not one
only.

The relation of Industrial Training to Unemployment is
rendered more important by the close connexion that exists
between them. In some respects, indeed, they are indepen-
dent of one another, but in many others their mutual in-
fluence is considerable. The character and quality of the
teaching of boys largely affects their employment as men,
whilst in its turn the general relations between the demand
for, and the supply of, labour influence, for good or evil,
the methods by which they are trained.

One school of thought, indeed, attributes adult unemploy-
ment largely to the employment of juveniles in Blind Alleys,

416 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

to the character and habits produced by such employment,
and to its failure to fit them for more permanent occupa-
tions. " We regard," says the Minority Report of the Poor
Law Commission, " this perpetual recruitment of the
unemployable by tens of thousands of boys, who through
neglect to provide them with suitable industrial training
may almost be said to graduate into unemployment as a
matter of course, as perhaps the gravest of all the grave facts
that the Commission has laid bare." Adequate allowance,
however, is not always made by those holding this view for
the influence of demand and supply. Failure to acquire any
definite occupation may be due largely to the fact that
the number of permanent places is not sufficient. For
this reason alone, therefore, some boys may in manhood
have to swell the surplus of casual, unskilled labour.

An opposite view regards the influences that lead to un-
employment as operating to a great extent independently
of Industrial Training, so that the character of the latter
decides less whether a man shall be unemployed or not,
than upon which man shall fall the unemployment that is
produced by other causes. This, with certain reservations,
is the line taken by no less an authority than Mr. W. H.
Beveridge. Criticizing the contention that Blind Alley
employment is "an important, or the most important,
cause of unemployment in later life," he declares that in
several respects such an inference is over-hasty.1 Summing
up, he says :—

" The improvement of Industrial Training, like every other
increase of efficiency, must raise the general level of prosperity.
Its direct value as a remedy for unemployment is somewhat
limited. It cannot touch the causes of industrial fluctuation
or in practice prevent casual employment. . . . There is
needed beyond question to-day a revival ... of the principle
underlying apprenticeship, that . . . every youthful worker
whilst being employed should also be undergoing preparation
for a future career. The disregard of this principle, though it
does not create casual employment, undoubtedly facilitates it
by helping to swell the supply of unskilled labour." 2

1 Unemployment : A Problem of Industry, p. 127.

2 Ibid., p. 131.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 417

Moreover, the influence of partially trained workers in
increasing irregularity in the skilled trades is often consider-
able ; whilst the industrial qualities of the workmen have
seri'ous effects in promoting or retarding the success of one
town or country in competition with others, and sometimes
alter for better or worse the development of individual trades.

Neither view, however, attaches quite sufficient import-
ance to an influence which may be described briefly as
that of the Demand of Labour, or, to be more exact, of the
relation that exists over a period of years between the
Demand and the Supply. Provision for an increasing
population can only be made by means of such an expan-
sion in industry as will provide the necessary employment,
and so the relation that exists between Demand and Supply
over a long period may have very important effects. Demand
may increase more rapidly than Supply : it may increase at
the same rate or it may fail to increase so fast ; and in either
case an influence will be exerted upon employment which is
in addition to, and to some extent independent of, that which
springs from the periodic fluctuations of trade. Hence
the expression Demand for Labour will, for the sake of
brevity, be used in this chapter to denote this relation between
Demand and Supply. When, therefore, it is said to be
" good " or " bad," " brisk " or " dull," " ample " or " de-
fective," the meaning is that in one case there is enough
employment to occupy fully the whole supply of labour
and that in the other the amount is insufficient to do this.
In this sense, moreover, the Demand for Labour affects the
extent and character of the unemployment that is the
result of other causes, and helps to produce or mitigate
defects in Industrial Training.

Two vital questions, therefore, have to be asked and,
if possible, answered in the present chapter. First, how
far does Industrial Training or the lack of it affect the amount
and regularity of employment ? Secondly, how does the
Demand for Labour, as defined, affect the character of
Industrial Training by rendering necessary greater or less
care in teaching the workmen ? Each of these influences will

4i8 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

be found to be considerable, and they react upon one
another. We may first consider the former.

I. THE INFLUENCE OF INDUSTRIAL TRAINING UPON
UNEMPLOYMENT.

It is sometimes assumed that in many, if not in all,
industries, practically only one method of production and
training is possible, and that, therefore, skilled, or at least
adequately trained, workmen are a necessity to them.
Starting from this hypothesis, therefore, it is argued that
employers in their own interest will be compelled to teach,
and to teach properly, a sufficient number to keep up their
trade. Were this reasoning sound, indeed, the influence
of Industrial Training would determine only which men
should be unemployed, and not whether a man should be
unemployed or not. In practice its influence is often very
much greater and helps to determine the amount as well as
the incidence of Unemployment.

The cause which brings about this result may be
described as the Substitution of Methods. Employers
in many cases are able to choose between having
their business carried out by skilled mechanics, dividing
it up among a number of less skilled hands, or even
replacing adult men altogether by women, boys or
girls. Hence fully skilled workmen are not an absolute
necessity, and, if enough of them are not forthcoming,
methods of production can be adapted to the labour supply.
Again, qualities of work are often in competition with one
another, whilst the grade of labour employed varies with
the quality. So a large supply of those who are low-skilled
or badly taught may cause lower grade goods to form a
bigger proportion of the whole output. Similarly different
trades are competing for the supply of labour, and where a
large amount of it is of poor quality, a stimulus will be given
to the development of those in which this can be utilized
to the best advantage.

The mere fact of putting boys to Blind Alley work does
not in itself produce unemployment in manhood. A

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 419

considerable number of them must eventually content
themselves with low-skilled jobs, since the skilled, and the
higher grades of semi-skilled, trades cannot find room for all.
So boy labourers, apart from those who are waiting for
better positions, will in time become adult labourers,
though they have often to make a change from one thing
to another. Hence the fact that they start life in a Blind
Alley is not itself the cause of their unemployment, and
this cause has therefore to be sought for elsewhere.

Now the greater specialization of the present day requires
even of the lowest grades a certain modicum of knowledge
and capacity, and that they should be regular and disciplined
workmen. In short, there is less room now than formerly
for the absolutely unskilled man. But habits of regularity
and discipline are just what the ordinary boy labourers often
do not acquire. On the contrary, they grow up casual and
irregular, and thus unfitted both physically and mentally
for regular employment of any kind.1 In short, many of them
have become permeated with what in a previous chapter
I called the Blind Alley character. They know nothing,
not even how to work steadily ; and this is the real reason
for their lack of success later on. Moreover the quality
of much of their labour is very poor even during boyhood.
" Boy labour," says Mr. Cyril Jackson, " can seldom be said
to be really efficient. When boys leave school they are
too young and unformed in character to give steady appli-
cation to their work, and some employers say they lose
more by the character of their boys than they gain by their
cheapness." 2

Hence as a result of these influences a low grade of labour
grows up and employers in their turn are less ready and
able to take trouble to push on those whose capacities,
do not justify promotion and many of whom do not stick
to their job long enough to make it possible. Thus as boys

1 Not so much in the sense that they could not take regular jobs,
if such were offered them, as that they would not prove themselves
good workmen in them, especially at first.

2 Report on Boy Labour. Poor Law Commission. Appendix XX,
P- 13-

420 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

are themselves continually moving out of one thing into
another, their employment becomes .casual and irregular
even in their earliest years. A good deal of time is lost
between jobs, and these intervals grow longer and more
frequent as they grow older.

The tendency, therefore, to employ a larger number
irregularly rather than a smaller number regularly, though
less marked than with men, is considerable, and is probably
increasing. Moreover the demand for boy labourers is
often far keener than the demand for learners, and so attracts
them from learning to labouring. Thus excessive numbers
enter those occupations which are least permanent, and
they in their turn, when they grow up, of necessity over-
stock the market for adult unskilled labour and render it
more irregular and casual than it otherwise would have
been. In other words the surplus of the latter is due mainly
to the facts that more boys than are required to do the
work enter Blind Alley employments in the first place, and
that others whilst in them fit themselves for nothing better.
Its irregular character also is largely the result of in-
fluences that have been at work during this time. In the
skilled trades, too, similar causes are producing similar
results.

Unemployment of this origin is probably far more frequent
and far more severe than that created by an agency which
bulks much more largely in the public view — namely, the
direct displacement of men by boys. The amount so pro-
duced is, as a rule, much exaggerated, though in individual
cases it may be considerable. Single processes are usually
affected and not whole trades. Such displacement too is
often part of a general extension of specialization and is
accompanied eventually by an expansion of the trade that
in the end increases its demand both for men and boys.
Temporary displacement, indeed, there often is, but the
amount of it that is permanent is not very considerable.

To sum up, therefore, the conditions under which unskilled
boy labour works are responsible for much unemployment
among adult men. First the excessive numbers so em-

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 421

ployed, reinforced by those who for various reasons fall
out of skilled industries, overstock the unskilled labour
market and create conditions leading to irregular employ-
ment.

Secondly, the resulting defects of character unfit many
for steady and regular work, or, at least, leave them either
with no particular job to which they can turn their hand,
or, if they do know one job, with their powers so little
developed as to render them quite incapable of adapting
themselves to anything else if this should fail them.

Further, the result of the competition between the more
and the less regular methods of employment depends largely
on the number and competence of the workmen available.
Regularization is likely to be profitable where the men are
steady, disciplined and competent, each in his own business,
and especially where the supply of them is not more than
sufficient for the demand. Casual and irregular employ-
ment requires a larger number to accomplish a given output
than do more regular methods, and the quality of their
work is somewhat less important. Now the conditions
just considered do provide an ample supply of labour, much
of it of poor quality, and so favour the adoption of the
latter system rather than the former.

This excess of boy labour, however, does not appear, at
any rate in London, to produce directly a shortage of
mechanics, partly because of the- possibility of obtaining
them from other places. Indeed in the skilled trades,
whilst men may be difficult to obtain in one or two dis-
tricts, defective methods produce more than a sufficiency of
skilled labour, though there may be a shortage of really
good men. Indirectly, however, owing to the substitution
which has been described, it appears to retard their growth.
The development of industries and the investment of
capital in them depends largely on the men available. Now
Blind Alley Employments and Wasteful Recruiting cause
so many of them to be unskilled or inadequately trained
as to make for the more rapid development of those in-
dustries which require and utilize a lowrer level of skill.

422 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

The result, therefore, has not been to check the higher
branches directly by creating a shortage of men in them,
but indirectly by encouraging the investment of capital
in these inferior grades.

Moreover, the methods prevailing in many skilled indus-
tries have created or increased unemployment in them,
much in the same way that the conditions of Blind Alley work
have done among unskilled workers. The result of what
has been called Wasteful Recruiting has been to compel
more boys to enter, or to try to enter, a trade than could
find full employment at it if they were all successful. Hence
it comes to possess a Reserve of Boy Labour. Some leave
it altogether and so further increase the excess of unskilled.
Others grow up partially trained mechanics who can only
_ obtain, and may only be fit to obtain, casual or otherwise
irregular employment. Now, because of this, more of
them are required than if well-trained men were engaged
and kept on regularly, whilst the supply of them is often
very ample indeed, and even in excess of these require-
ments. Further, not only do existing methods encourage
casualization generally, they also, as just stated, cause the
cheaper and inferior branches to be developed at the expense
of the more skilled in order to utilize the available labour
to the best advantage. Hence in skilled work bad methods
of training produce unemployment in two ways : by making
it more profitable to casualize than to regularize, where either
alternative is open, and by encouraging those branches in
which, in any case, employment is likely to be least regular.

For it must not be forgotten that the lower the grade of
work, the greater is likely to be the irregularity, especially
with an ample supply of labour. Good men are often
scarce, and with a high-class output it may be worth while
to make considerable sacrifices to keep them. With the
inferior qualities, this is less necessary. The men are more
easily replaced, there are more of them to select from, and
far from making efforts to retain them, employers may
even be glad to get rid of the less efficient as early as possible.

Similar effects result from the production of the incom-

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 423

pletely-trained specialized mechanics who can do only part
of a trade well. Certain trades are busy on different articles
at different seasons of the year. Hence the all-round man
is at work throughout, first on one thing, then on another,
but the specialized worker must wait for employment
until his particular branch is busy. So a class of men grows
up who are employed, not indeed casually, but regularly
for a portion of the year only. Likewise where a change in
demand requires a different class of article, the latter are
far more likely to be displaced. Finally, the substitution
of female or juvenile labour is likely to be most considerable
where that of the adult men is of an inferior quality. In
these ways, therefore, bad methods of training increase the
amount of casual and irregular employment, and are apt to
do so even more than in proportion to the increase in the
number who are competing for it.

Moreover, in the last resort regular employment depends
on whether the Demand for Labour can keep pace with the
Supply, and its failure to do this may be an important cause
of unemployment. Thus the effect of Industrial Training
on the development not only of particular trades but of the
National Industry as a whole is important. For it helps
directly to raise or lower cost of production. The better
and more skilled a workman is, the larger and the cheaper
will be his product. Well- trained workmen, therefore,,
are relatively cheap, and badly trained workmen propor-
tionally dear ; and where the latter are numerous, cost is
increased, manufacturers are less able to compete with
foreign rivals, or are deterred from developing their business
by fear that sufficient skilled labour may not be forthcom-
ing. Thus the progress of«a trade may be checked. Manu-
facturers may be vainly seeking for competent workmen
whom they cannot find, whilst men are unemployed because
they are not sufficiently skilled for the purpose, and so
a shortage of really good men may accompany a general
surplus.

Indirectly, too the production of inefficient workers
checks industry. Those who are poorly trained are also

424 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

poorly paid, either because their rate of pay is low or because
their employment is not regular. But low earnings mean
low purchasing power and a smaller demand for the pro-
ducts of other industries, so that the development of the
latter is retarded. Hence when bad methods of training
are general the aggregate national demand is correspondingly
reduced, and this affects not only those immediately con-
cerned, but almost every trade and every class.

In London, moreover, the common practice of obtaining
from outside men who have already learnt their business,
renders possible an unusually large waste of boy labour,
since any shortage can be made good in this way ; and
on the other hand, the difficulties of training, and the inferior
industrial quality of many after they have been trained, cause
employers to rely more and more on the provincial supply.
So the influx leads to worse methods of teaching in London,
and these in their turn encourage and increase the influx.
Thus the openings that exist for London boys are not all
fully utilized, and the reserve both of skilled and unskilled
is still further enlarged.

So far bad methods have been shown to influence directly
the amount of unemployment. Many of its chief causes,
however, come to exist independently of the quality of Indus-
trial Training, but even these can be, and are, aggravated
or mitigated by it. They fall into four classes — Seasonal
Variations in employment within the year, Long Period or
Cyclical Variations over a number of years, General Irregu-
larity and Casual Labour, and the Displacement brought
about by Changes in Demand or in Methods of Production.

Of these the first is due largely to climatic and social
influences, and the second to general causes affecting often
the whole world, and both will exist whatever the character
of the teaching that is given. Similarly the last cause is
to a great extent inseparable from the progress of industry.

Again, the present organization of labour often necessi-
tates a considerable amount of casual and irregular employ-
ment, if it is to be carried out efficiently upon existing lines.
Here, however, the connexion between training and unern-

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 425

ployment is far closer. The present chapter has already
attempted to show how defective methods may increase and
largely create casual employment both in skilled and un-
skilled trades. This they do by producing a supply of
labour which does not possess habits of steady and regular
work, and which therefore an employer does not find it
profitable to employ continuously. This influence fre-
quently makes casualization necessary. Moreover the
supply of such labour is often ample compared with the
demand and so makes casualization profitable. Hence
casual labour becomes more common than the needs of
industry require, and those branches which utilize it most
freely are the most rapidly developed. Improved methods
on the other hand by making better workmen make it
more worth while to regularize their employment. At the
same time they lower cost of production and increase the
demand for labour, and so further encourage regulariza-
tion.

As regards Displacement, the influence of Training
varies. A change of fashion may require a totally different
kind of goods, and here a workman's capacity will make little
difference, except that a well-trained man may prove himself
more adaptable and so fit himself more readily for something
fresh. With less fundamental alterations, however, its
operation is far more direct. The good man is worth
keeping and initiating into the new work, even at the cost of
some trouble and expense. The inferior man will be put
off at once and another taken in his place, or the employer
may prefer to train a youth to do the work. Semi-skilled
and unskilled workmen are chiefly affected in this way,
since in the case of the mechanic the change often means a
greater reduction in earnings than he is prepared to accept.

With seasonal and cyclical depressions, again, industries
and districts, in which the workpeople do not know their
business well, compete at a disadvantage, whilst an im-
provement in their capacity may so stimulate trade as to
mitigate their force and extent and increase the briskness of
good times. More overtime is worked when things are busy,

4^6 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

and there is less short time or unemployment when they
are slack.

Moreover, Industrial Training exercises a still greater
influence over the methods chosen to meet a depression.
Where labour on the average is inefficient, dismissal of the
less skilled hands takes place, whilst the better men are kept
on, and the former are often got rid of at the earliest possible
moment. Where, however, the level of skill is high, it is
important to keep a good staff together and the employer
uses every means in his power to do so.

Here he has several alternatives. First the whole shop
may be put on short time during slackness, and heavy
pressure may be met as far as possible by overtime. The
men thus share out whatever work is going. The second
alternative is to make for stock in the slack season, the
stocks being cleared during the busy period. This method is
not uncommon in the Furniture Trades. It requires that the
articles made shall be in constant demand, and if they are
of a bulky character the cost of storage is apt to be prohibi-
tive. Some firms utilize both devices at the same time.
Thirdly, but less frequently, other kinds of goods are
produced during the slack months. Lastly, where climatic
or social influences make work inconvenient but not im-
possible, effort and expense are incurred to regularize it
and keep it going throughout the year.

The adoption of these devices, therefore, is likely to
depend on circumstances. On general grounds, regular
employment is more profitable to the employer than casual.
It creates good steady habits and makes the workmen
more efficient, since they are better fed and have a higher
standard of living. Whether, however, this will be suffi-
cient to compensate for the trouble and expense of regulari-
zation in fluctuating trades will depend, partly at least,
on their skill and competence, and in doubtful cases this
often turns the scale. Further, highly skilled labour usually
requires regular conditions to do its best. Otherwise
deterioration is apt to set in. Moreover, even apart from
this, really good men are worth some effort to keep together,

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 427

and a decent firm will recognize that it has a duty in this
direction.1 Where, however, the causes at work produce
inferior hands and a surplus of them, the incentives to
regularization are at their lowest.

It is not suggested that good training can do more than
mitigate such variations, but it does much to reduce them,
and could do more, especially in relation to the shorter
seasonal movements. The longer cyclical fluctuations are
less amenable to the treatment described, though with them
also employers will take a contract at a very low rate of
profit in order to keep a good staff together. Demand, if
brisk, may do even more to mitigate such seasonal and
cyclical causes of unemployment, but training also operates
by influencing it. Better training means more skilled
and more efficient workmen, and so stimulates the very
demand that is so important an element A general im-
provement will have the effect of increasing earnings and,
therefore, purchasing power in every trade. Finally, there
will be less danger that employers, as sometimes happens
now, will have to forego opportunities for extending their
business owing to the difficulty of getting labour of a
sufficiently high quality.

II. THE INFLUENCE OF UNEMPLOYMENT ON INDUSTRIAL

TRAINING.

It is now necessary to consider the matter from the
opposite point of view, and to ask how the existence and
amount of Unemployment influence Industrial Training,
or to speak more broadly how is the latter affected by the
general or long-period Demand for Labour. And here it
may be well to repeat that this last phrase is used with an

1 E.g., A large engineering firm informed me (in the autumn of
1909) that they required the highest class of labour for their work
of a kind that is always difficult to obtain, and their men could
always command full money anywhere and at any time. Hence
to keep their staff together they had not only to keep their men
employed, but on full time in busy and slack seasons alike. They
met the latter by making for stock which sometimes proved incon-
venient, but had to be done. They had not worked short time since
1886.

428 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

implied reference to Supply as well as to Demand, and that
what is important is the relation between the two over a
period of years. For the sake of brevity, however, Demand
is referred to by itself rather than Demand and Supply,
but it always has this relative sense. It may be said to be
good or bad over a number of years when the amount of
employment is, periodic fluctuations apart, either ample or
defective.

A (i). The Influence of the Long-Period Demand for
Labour on other Causes of Unemployment.

In this sense, therefore, the Demand for Labour influ-
ences greatly the degree and character of the Unemploy-
ment that is found in a country. This influence indeed will
depend mainly on the extent to which it renders possible
the Waste of Labour, which may be briefly denned as follows.

Under all conditions some men are likely to be found
who are not fitted to perform definite work of any kind,
but either have grown up without the ability to do so,
or have lost that ability later. Consequently their labour
may be said to be wasted because their faculties cannot be
properly utilized. One instance of this is provided by the
excessive number of boys who spend their youth in Blind
Alley work, and another by the men whose skill is so
deteriorated by unemployment that they sink eventually
into the lowest grade of casual labour, or even into Unemploy-
ableness. In its more extreme form, therefore, this Waste
may be said to be Total, because the men concerned are in an
industrial sense entirely lost to the community. There may
also be Partial Waste, where a man's capacities are either
not fully developed or not fully employed. For instance,
the Reserve of Boy Labour brings into existence many
imperfectly trained mechanics, who, as a result, are em-
ployed casually, or for certain parts of the year only, working
and standing idle alternately.1

1 An instance of failure to develop capacity fully can be found
in the case of the able boy who starts work as a mate or assistant
and failing to rise remains such all his life. Here, too, there is
waste.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 429

Now for such Waste, whether it be Total or Partial, to
take place upon a large scale, some deficiency of Demand
itself is a necessary preliminary. More men are needed
to do the work, when labour is wasted than when it is
economically employed, and if Waste is to be considerable,
there must be a correspondingly ample supply of labour.
Hence the influence of Demand is very great, for whilst it is
impossible under any conditions to prevent it altogether,
the amount of Waste will vary with the state of Demand over
long periods, being small when it is good and correspond-
ingly large when it is bad. Hence the possibility of Waste
will be closely connected with the relations that exist
between Demand and other causes of Unemployment.

The development of industry has generally tended
to reduce seasonal fluctuations, particularly where ex-
pensive machinery is used which has to be kept run-
ning, as regularly as possible. Demand, however, has
a much more potent influence on their extent and
character. In very busy years, indeed, they may almost
disappear. In the South of England, for instance,
seasonal slackness in the Building Trades is, apart from
occasional heavy frosts, the result of convenience rather
than necessity, building in winter involving greater care,
trouble, and, in some cases, expense, but not being rendered
impossible. Now during the last boom in the London
Building Trades (1895-9), employers were so busy that
work was going on regularly almost throughout the year.
With a poor demand, on the contrary, such as has existed
more recently, the slack season begins sooner and ends
later : more men are put off, and they are put off earlier in the
autumn and re-engaged later in the spring. Thus whilst in
any case there may be slackness in December and January,
it will depend on the general conditions of trade whether this
extends over October, November and February.

In like manner Demand will influence the adoption of
the various alternatives to dismissal. When men are
scarce and difficult to replace, employers have far greater
inducement to avoid it, by working short time, by making

430 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

for stock, and by the use of the other devices already de-
scribed. When labour is relatively plentiful, they are less
disposed to do so. Moreover, when things are brisk, orders
are more likely to be spread as evenly as possible over the
whole year, and when they are slack, to be concentrated into a
few months. In England, however, during recent years, the
general supply of labour in many trades has been nearly
always sufficient, if not more than sufficient, for the demands
of the busy season, so that casual employment has
been more readily utilized. A strong demand over a long
period would, on the other hand, mean short slack seasons,
and the regularization of employment for the purpose of
economizing the labour supply.

Similarly the state of Demand can do much to mitigate
or extend long- period or cyclical variations, though owing
to their greater length its effect upon them may not always
be so marked. A rapid expansion of it, however, will cause
a depression to be both shorter and shallower. Thus the
development of the Export Trade in machinery largely
accounted for the comparatively low percentage of unem-
ployment in the British Metal and Engineering Trades
between 1902 and 1905. Sometimes, again, in a particular
trade, district or country, manufacturers continue busy on
old orders long after a general decline has set in. This
happened, for instance, in some important industries in
Germany during 1908. Similar reasons also cause recovery
to come sooner, as in the English Motor and Cycle Trades in
1909.

Brisk Demand may further affect these cyclical fluctua-
tions, not only by reducing their extent, but by altering
their effect on the workmen. A rapid expansion of pro-
duction may necessitate so much overtime that the falling
off when it comes may be met largely by a reversion to
normal hours. Thus the report of the British Consul-
General at Berlin for the year 1908 said :—

" This method of adjustment (i.e., the working of Short Time)
to meet altered circumstances is all the easier to carry out because
when trade was at its very best constant lack of well-trained and

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 431

capable workmen compelled employers to lengthen the daily hours
of labour in order to cope with the additional work."

In other words, a steadily brisk demand over a long period
may mean that a large amount of overtime is worked in
good years and only a small amount of short time in bad
ones. If, on the contrary, demand is consistently slack, the
reverse will be the case. Short time will be freely utilized,
overtime little or not at all.

Finally, as with seasonal variations, Demand will also
affect the adoption ' of various alternatives to dismissal
and the taking of contracts at a low rate of profit will depend
on two things : on whether business has previously been
sufficiently good to justify this, and on whether labour is
sufficiently scarce to make it worth while to keep the staff
together until the return of good trade. Such influences are
at best only sufficient to counteract partially the effects of
a cyclical depression, but they can, nevertheless, mitigate
them considerably, just as in the reverse case their absence
can seriously intensify them.

So much has been said about the third main cause of
unemployment, namely general irregularity and casualiza-
tion, that a few words will suffice here. The intervals
between the bigger jobs are likely to be longer and more
numerous when Demand is slack ; and whenever there is
a choice between regular and irregular methods of employ-
ment, the supply of labour is likely to be the determining
factor, since it requires a larger number to do a given amount
of work by means of the latter. Hence when labour is
scarce, more effort is made to regularize it, and its wasteful
employment is only really profitable when there is an ample
supply and the employer can be sure of being able to get
as much of it as he requires.

Finally, there are the permanent changes in fashion or
methods of production which accompany the progress
of industry. When these destroy or largely reduce the
market for the products or services of particular trades, a
brisk general Demand can do little more than retard the
resulting displacement of labour or make more easy its

432 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

absorption in allied crafts which are not similarly affected.
With the smaller changes, such as the introduction of new
machines, however, employers will probably get in fresh
men or train up youths for the purpose, when the supply is
ample, and when it is not, they will try to adapt those they
already have to the new processes. It all depends upon
whether new men are easy to get. It is often said, indeed,
that work is more specialized to-day than in the past and
that each small process or each machine has its own special
group of workmen, who are not as a rule transferred to any
other. l If this is true, however, it illustrates the same point.
The supply is sufficient to provide each group with as many
as it requires and to render unnecessary their transfer from
one to another.

To sum up, therefore, the Demand for Labour affects
first, not the existence, but the extent and intensity, of
,the other causes that produce unemployment. The brisk-
ness or slackness of Demand helps to determine the length
and severity of cyclical and seasonal slackness, the amount
of irregular and casual employment, and whether industrial
changes shall involve permanent or only temporary dis-
placement. Secondly, Demand influences the means and
methods that are adopted to meet a shortage of employment.
It affects the adoption of Short Time and making for stock
as substitutes for dismissals, and, where there is a choice,
helps to determine whether more or less regular methods of
working are utilized, and whether men are adapted to new
processes or displaced when they are introduced. Brisk
Demand over a long period makes it necessary for employers
to economize labour as much as possible and to keep their
staff of men together by every means in their power, and
so leads to better and more regular methods of employment.
A slack demand has the opposite effect.

1 E.g., A London Labour Exchange was 'asked upon one occasion
to get a man to fill a certain position. Men of this type were scarce,
and one was not obtained until the end of a fortnight. During
the interval, however, the firm had put a man from another depart-
ment to do the work. That is to say, men being scarce, it proved
worth while to take the trouble to do this.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 433

A (ii). The Influence of the Long-Period Demand for
Labour on Boy Labour and Industrial Training.

Thus, so far as adult men are concerned, Long-Period
Demand not only helps to intensify or mitigate the other
causes that lead to Unemployment, but is itself at work
to produce or to prevent Waste of Labour. It is, however,
when juvenile workers and their training are considered
that its effects in the latter direction are most marked ; and
the meaning of the Principle of Waste can perhaps be illus-
trated best by its operation in the case of Boy Labour.

The general influence of a Defective Demand on Industrial
Training is usually manifested in two different directions.
It causes the skilled trades to take an inadequate share of the
growing population, and so compels an unduly large pro-
portion to enter and overcrowd the less skilled employments.
Secondly, there will be Waste in all grades, because those
who are spoilt in boyhood can very well be spared, and the
fact that some grow up inferior workmen will be of less
vital importance.

Now, under any conceivable circumstances, there is bound
to be some Waste of Boy Labour, since it will never be
possible to avoid altogether industrial failures or misfits.
These, however, can be reduced to a minimum. Not only
so, but for Waste of Labour to take place upon a large scale,
there must be labour to spare and to waste. For when it is
spoilt or left untrained in boyhood, it means that it has no
definite use to which it can be put in manhood. In other
words, it can be spared from more regular employments,
and Industry as a whole can dispense with its services ;
and this can only happen if the Supply of labour exceeds
the Demand, and as a result there is Labour to spare. That is
to say, such Waste can only be serious if Demand is defective.
If labour of any kind is scarce it will have to be economized ;
if it is not, it will be possible to waste it, and it will be wasted.
Thus a slack of Demand over a period of years is a power-
ful cause of Waste, and such Waste will take various forms.
One of its results consists of the large number of boys who

. FF

434 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

grow up without trade or occupation of any kind. An
example of this is given in the following quotation from the
Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission :—

" It has been demonstrated beyond dispute that an increasing
number of boys are employed in occupations which are either
uneducative (in the sense of producing no increase of efficiency
or intelligence) or unpromising (in the sense of leading to no
permanent occupation during adult life)."

This again bears out the contention that such over-
employment of boys as there is, is over-employment of
boy labourers, and that it is accompanied by under-employ-
ment of boy learners. Again, the same report says in the
words already quoted :—

" We regard this perpetual recruitment of the unemployable
by tens of thousands of boys who, through neglect to provide
them with suitable industrial training, may almost be said to
graduate into unemployment as a matter of course, as perhaps
the gravest of all the grave facts the Commission has laid bare."

But for this graduation to take place on a large scale,
industry as a whole must be able to spare those who grow
up with their capacities undeveloped. At the present
day it can, or does, afford to do without them, both
as boys and as men. It is true that when trade becomes
really good, it is not always possible to obtain enough fully
qualified workmen to make the best of it, but the effect is
never sufficiently serious and palpable to induce employes
to remove its cause. The evil results are there — that is
generally granted ; and one of its chief causes is the ample
supply of labour, both of boys and men. This limits
the proportion who can be taken as learners and increases
that which is available for jobs which give employment
during boyhood and " turn them adrift at manhood."

Further, such a shortage in Demand is likely to lead to a
wasteful use of boy labour in jobs of all kinds, both skilled
and unskilled, and in the former to cause many to grow up
only knowing parts of their trade, or not fully masters of it,
and they too will be wasted, because they too can be spared,
One of two results therefore will follow. Either no training

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 435

at all is given, or bad and wasteful methods are encouraged.
Instead of careful teaching, or what is often more important,
regular and constant discipline, a boy is left to take his
chance and " pick up " something for himself as best he
may.

As regards unskilled work, this again will have two
results — the one following from the other. First, in spite of
all the Waste that goes on, an ample supply of boys is left
to fill the less permanent jobs. Secondly, these in their
turn grow up into unskilled adults and form that growing
surplus of them which is so often the great problem of a
large town.

These causes in their turn lead to the creation or exten-
sion of fresh forms of boys' work in order to utilize to the
very best advantage the existing supply of them. The dis-
placement of men by boys is rendered easier, and the work
of boys and men is separated and specialized. Now in
many ways, as Mr. Jackson has pointed out, the labour
of boys is not really efficient, but when large numbers
are available, it is easier and more profitable to make
extensive use of them. Where, on the contrary, they are
scarcer, or the demand for learners is greater, a larger propor-
tion is drawn into skilled or permanent jobs, and they are
more difficult to get and to keep for other purposes and have
to be more economically used. Thus the creation of new
Blind Alleys is checked.

Again, the growth in the amount of unskilled labour,
whether juvenile or adult, leads the trades which employ
such labour to develop at the expense of the more skilled
industries. Where these trades employ mainly adult
labour, the result is a change in the character of the em-
ployment, a larger proportion of the population entering
low-skilled work. Where, however, they . employ mainly
juvenile labour, the result is to decrease proportionally the
work available for adults, and at the same time to attract
boys away from skilled and permanent occupations and
still further hinder the growth of the latter.

Finally, increased waste of boys and men is inevitable

436 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

so long as the supply of labour continues to be ample.
Employment grows more and more casual and the boys
become casualized as well as the men. Thus an employer
has little inducement to keep them when things are slack,
or to prevent them moving of their own accord ; and they
themselves, with no particular prospects and nothing to
keep them in any one place, lose all idea of sticking to a
job and so all steadiness. Instead of growing up regular and
disciplined if unskilled workmen, they grow up fit only for
the sort of casual labour which the general conditions are
creating.

Similar results are likely to be found in the skilled trades.
A large available supply helps very much the growth of a
Reserve of Boy Labour, composed as described of those who
enter trades and fail either to learn them at all or to learn
them properly. Hence the Waste that goes on in skilled
work is also large. Less regular methods are adopted which
are calculated to spoil many, and that they are adopted is
due to the numbers, both of boys and men, who are
nearly always available.

To sum up, therefore, a slack or insufficient Demand can
largely accentuate the Problems of Boy Labour. This it
does, first, by rendering possible a large amount of waste,
since the labour market can afford it and the employer can
more safely take his chance of there being enough competent
men. Secondly, this waste creates a Reserve of Boy Labour,
which grows into a reserve of casual adults, both skilled
and unskilled. Thirdly, it increases directly the surplus
of unskilled workmen by reducing the openings for learners ;
and finally, all these things in their turn encourage and
perpetuate irregular methods both of employment m and '
training. On the other hand, a strong Demand would leave
little labour to spare, and would thus tend to bring about
at least a considerable improvement in methods of training.

B (i). The Existing State of Employment in Great

Britain : Among Men.
Qn general principles, therefore, it appears that, both

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 437

among men and boys, a Defective Demand for Labour over
a long period is likely to bring about Waste of Labour and
to increase casual employment. On the other hand, a con-
sistently Brisk Demand favours regular methods and reduces
Waste to a minimum. It only remains to inquire, therefore,
into the existing conditions of employment in Great Britain
and into their industrial results.

Now in recent years the relation of the Demand for
Labour to the Supply of it appears to have been that, apart
from occasions of exceptional prosperity, the amount
available is always ample, and even more than ample, for
the purposes for which it is required. It is not, perhaps,
quite true to say that there is a surplus of labour, because
under existing methods of employment the whole supply
is required for some purpose or other. But there is more
than enough of it to permit the free use of the more irregular
and wasteful methods of employment, and to provide for
the growth of large reserves of labour, both of men and of
boys. In other words, the supply is so ample as to render
possible great Waste of Labour, and there is little need to
economize it. For, as a rule, employers can, in spite of the
waste, get all the workers whom they require. Of this
there is evidence in the large reserves that are found not only
in unskilled work but in many skilled trades as well, and
in the very serious waste of Boy Labour of all kinds —
facts which are admitted and deplored by all competent
observers.

In the view of some of the very highest authorities, indeed,
and notably of Mr. W. H. Beveridge, the existence of these
reserves is not due to any insufficiency in the demand, but
purely to existing methods of doing the work, which re-
quire a large reserve of labour always to be at hand, " either
working or waiting for work." *•

My point, on the contrary, is that the two things go
together, and that to have such a reserve of labour, it is
necessary to have a very ample supply of men, so that suffi-
cient can be spared from more regular work for this purpose.
1 Unemployment : A Problem of Industry.

438 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

There is, indeed, a certain amount of irregular and casual
employment that is inevitable in any case, or that can only
be avoided by careful public organization. Apart from
this, however, casualization is largely a matter of choice.
If it is necessary to economize labour, more regular
methods will be adopted ; if not, probably the more casual.
At present, for instance, some firms on the riverside will
keep a large number of men at work for three or four days,
instead of a smaller one for the whole week, to ensure a
sufficiency against emergencies, whilst in the Building Trades
methods of engagement are very haphazard and leave
much to chance, except when trade is very brisk and labour
scarce. Indeed, any approach to a shortage in this industry
both could and would be met by improvements in organiza-
tion. At present, however, the supply is usually such as to
render them unnecessary.

Two questions have now to be considered : first, whether
the Supply of Labour is so ample as to make possible, or even
to cause, a great deal of waste ; and secondly, whether it is
also growing more rapidly than the demand. On the first
point the evidence seems to show that at any rate among
the lower grades of labour such an ample supply has existed
for a long time, and that if things are growing no worse,
neither are they growing better. On trie second point
the evidence is less definite, but there is a good deal of it
to prove that the amount of unemployment is on the
whole increasing. The available information on these two
points may be briefly summarized.

Thus the Majority of the Poor Law Commission gave
vent to the opinion that :—

" the growth of casual labour to its present dimensions is a modern
evil."

Again, without committing themselves to a statement as to
an actual increase or decrease, the Minority said :— -

" Confining ourselves to adult men, we cannot estimate the
number in the United Kingdom who are thus to-day holding
no situations, continuous or discontinuous, but are existing

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 439

on casual jobs of brief duration, and who habitually do not
get a full week's work, at less than between one and two
millions/'

Coming to detailed figures, the Trade Union percentages
seem to point to an increase in unemployment in good
and bad times alike. The general percentage is unreliable
owing to the greatly increased representation in recent
years of trades like the Textiles and Coal Mining, which
meet depressions mainly by short time rather than dis-
missals. Fortunately, however, much more reliable figures
exist in the case of the Sixteen Trade Unions which have
made continuous returns since 1873, though here again the
figures in some ways exaggerate the unemployment of
earlier as compared with the later years. In other respects,
they somewhat under-estimate them.

Taking periods of ten years, the amount of unemploy-
ment seems to have been greatest in the 'Eighties and be-
tween 0:900 and 1910, and least before 1880 and in the
'Nineties. On the whole, however, the most recent period
has shown the highest percentages, except in one or two
branches of the Engineering Trades. This is further sup-
ported by the returns of individual Unions, which have,
outside the latter group, shown considerable and sometimes
marked increases in the case of almost every Union, whilst
within it the same is true of several important bodies,
notably the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. It should
be added that in the last few years a new period of Low
Unemployment appears to have begun, but the figures for
the previous decade were often startling. If they do not
prove a definite increase, they at least provide a strong case
for inquiry.1

What has been said of unemployment generally applies
also to the years of bad trade. For the sixteen Unions the
percentage in 1908 and 1909 was higher than in any earlier
year except 1879, triough the depression of 1884 to 1887
was of longer duration. On the other hand, that of 1908-9
was only separated from the preceding period of bad trade

1 For more detailed figures see Appendix IV

440 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

(1902-5), a long but shallow one, by two years, in which
there was still considerable unemployment. The Engineer-
ing Trades were as a rule as badly off both in 1879 and in
1884-7 as in 1908-9. l Two of the other three groups
however, showed an amount of unemployment in the
latter years considerably in excess of that of any previous
period, and in the third case, the Woodworking and Furni-
ture Trades, the percentage of 1908 (8*3) was only equalled
in 1879.2

The increase in unemployment, indeed, has been less
marked recently in years of extreme depression than it
otherwise might have been, because of the operation of two
causes. First, the number of actual dismissals has been
reduced by an increase, in industries like Engineering, of
the practice of working Short Time. In 1904, the Second
Fiscal Bluebook stated that " the shortening of hours in
times of slack trade is not prevalent in most districts in the
engineering trades," and held that in them the total amount
of short time was small. In 1908-9, however, the monthly
returns of the Labour Gazette showed that it was very
common in three at least of the more important districts —
Lancashire, Yorkshire and Scotland — and that it was also
utilized in some others. Thus a larger share of the total
loss of employment appears now to be met in this way
than was the case formerly, and this has tended to reduce
the percentages of unemployment compared with earlier
years.

Secondly, allowance must be made for the growth both
in the numbers and proportions of Trade Unionists who are
in receipt of Superannuation Benefit. These are largely
affected by the conditions of trade, since bad trade makes
things more difficult for the older men and compels larger
numbers of them to go on superannuation. Now the per-

1 With one or two exceptions individual Unions show as high
or higher percentages in 1908-9 as in almost any previous year, but
owing to the different rates at which their membership has increased,
the percentage for the whole trade is higher.

2 For the two years 1908-9 the percentage was 8-0 per cent., as
against 6-4 in 1878-9, 4-4 in 1885-6, 4-3 in 1893-4, and 5-8 in 1903-4.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 441

centage of men receiving such benefit in the Unions that
have made returns continuously since 1892, rose from 1-5
per cent, in that year and 2-0 per cent, in 1901 to 4-0 per
cent, in 1910 ; and judging from such information as is
available, there was an appreciable increase also in the years
preceding 1892. It is significant too that between 1901
and 1910 the percentages in the Building Trades, where the
depression was exceptionally severe after an equally un-
precedented boom, rose from i'i to 3-8, whilst in other
trades the rise (from 27 to 4-1) was considerable, but much
less marked.

The increase itself is due mainly to the much larger number
of members who have qualified latterly for this benefit, and
therefore it does not necessarily show that it is more diffi-
cult for old men, as such, to find employment. The point,
however, is that the increasing numbers provided for in
this way are kept out of the labour market. In previous
years some of these men would no doubt have maintained
themselves by their savings, or have come on the Poor Law ;
but the majority of them, by competing for work, would
either have themselves swelled the percentages of unem-
ployed in their trades or else have forced others into them
when they themselves succeeded in getting work. Hence
allowance has to be made for the fact that since 1907 about
35 per 1,000 workmen in various industries have been taken
out of the labour market in this way as against 15 per 1,000
or less previous to 1892. Thus consideration of these two
increases, in short time and in the numbers superannuated,
shows the present position to be even less favourable than
it appears on the surface.

Perhaps, however, the most significant fact of all is the
growth in the amount of unemployment which has been
exhibited in the two years of good trade in 1906 and 1907,*
when the percentage was almost twice as high as in any
previous period of boom. The state of employment in
good years is perhaps the best criterion of whether the

1 This experience has not been repeated in the present year (1913),
when the percentage has fallen almost to the same level as in 1900.

442 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

demand for labour is sufficient fully to absorb the supply,
or whether it is growing so slowly as to render possible an
increasingly wasteful use of it. For a growing amount of
unemployment in good years means an increase in the
numbers who are unemployed, or under-employed, under
almost any conditions.

Now it is significant that in 1906 and 1907 not only was
the general percentage much higher than ever before during
the prevalence of good trade, but that, with two exceptions,1
the same is true of every individual Union for which returns
are available since 1873. Now even if, in some cases,
changes in methods of calculating the percentage cause the
amount of unemployment previous to 1892 to be slightly
under-estimated, the increase in 1906-7, nevertheless, is
considerable.

Had this increase in the amount of unemployment in
good years proved itself to be a permanent feature of our
industrial development, its seriousness could hardly have
been exaggerated. Happily, however, the recent boom in
trade marked a return to the conditions that prevailed
previously. The percentages were 2*5 in 1912 (in the months
not affected by the Coal Strike) and 2*1 in 1913, as against
2-0 and 2 -4 in 1899 and 1900, the increase being thus very
slight indeed.

What happened in 1906 and 1907, therefore, may prove
to have been quite an isolated occurrence, of which there
will be no repetition. Against this, however, has to be set
the enormous emigration of the last few years, and the great
rise in the number of superannuated Trade Unionists.
And after all allowance has been made, the high percentages
of 1906-7, even if they should not recur, do constitute a case
for enquiry as to whether the demand for skilled labour is
keeping pace with the supply.

With unskilled labour again there is evidence of a growing

1 The Associated Ironmoulders of Scotland and the Typo-
graphical Association, and in their case the percentage of 1906-7
was only exceeded on one previous occasion, in 1882-3 and in
1899-1900 respectively.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 443

excess in certain directions, but not enough to constitute
conclusive proof as regards the whole of it. Thus of Dock
Labour in London the following facts were reported to the
Poor Law Commission in I9071 : —

" So far as could be ascertained there appeared to be a general
opinion that in the prospects of employment at the Riverside
there had been a considerable change for the worse in the
last ten or twelve years. ... In 1891-2 the number of those
competing for work has been stated (Life and Labour of the
People) at about 22,000, the number of those needed under the
conditions then obtaining as 20,000. In a later passage of the
same work it was said that there appeared ' to be good work
actually for 14,500 to 15,000, or, allowing for sickness and un-
avoidable friction, for 16,000 men/ A representative of the men
referring to the same four classes of riverside labour . . . states
that ' while these figures may have been correct when the book
was published, they would not be applicable at the present
moment.' . . . When pressed he said that without pretending
to exactness, he would put the number at present competing
for work at not less than 30,000. After a careful investiga-
tion he said that he placed the lowest number employed at
9,500, which would increase at busy times to a maximum of
13,000."

Fuller information might show these estimates to be
incorrect, but as they stand they are significant. For whilst
decasualization and the use of improved machinery have
reduced the men required, they have not led to a decrease
in the number competing for work, but on the contrary,
have been accompanied by a large increase in it. So too
of employment at the Liverpool Docks the same report
says 2 :—

" Sometimes, again, it is said that the steamship companies
cannot get men, or at least . . . men worth engaging. Both
these criticisms are to a certain extent true, although perhaps
the latter is less so than formerly. There is now, as more than

1 Report of Mr. A. D. Steel-Maitland and Miss Rose Squire
on the Relations of Industrial and Sanitary Conditions to Pauper-
ism. Poor Law Commission, Appendix XVI, p. 39 (46 and 47).

2 Ibidem, p, 81 (25),

444 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

one person has told us, ' a permanent surplus of labour. ' Again,
in the words of a superintendent relieving officer, ' there were
a good many more now seeking work than there is work to offer
them. If the Docks were at their busiest, all the men willing
to work could not be engaged.' '

The latter statement, however, no longer holds good,
since the Liverpool Docks have suffered from a shortage
of labour in the last two years. London dock labour,
on the other hand, seems to show a growing number of
workmen competing for a diminishing, or at least stationary,
amount of employment.

When we turn to consider the other trades which largely
utilize casual labour, definite figures are less easy to obtain.
In the Building Trades, which, next to the Docks, appear to
provide the largest market for it, the proportion of the
workmen who are casually employed seems undoubtedly
to have increased,1 whilst even in the great boom of 1895-9
there was no real shortage of labour in the trade, though
what there was had to be more economically used. Again,
looking at the matter from a slightly different standpoint,
the absorption of boys in many forms of purely uneducative
work seems to be growing, but at the same time there are
few signs of shortage, either of skilled men or of learners for
skilled work. In other words, it appears to be possible to
waste a large and growing number of boys in juvenile Blind
Alleys and of men in unskilled casual labour without
paying the price in a lack of trained mechanics. *

The evidence, therefore, suggests that in all classes and
grades of work the supply of labour has for a long time
been sufficient to enable large numbers of men to be
wasted by casual labour or in other ways. As to whether
these numbers are increasing, on the other hand, the evi-
dence is not conclusive, but it appears to suggest an
affirmative answer, though the growth may not be very
large.

1 The numbers employed in this industry declined considerably
between 1901 and 1911. Hence this particular growth is relative
rather than absolute.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 445

B (ii.) The Existing State of Employment : Among

Boys.

Finally, it is necessary to consider the same question in
relation to Boy Labour and to ask whether there is a shortage
or excess of it, either generally or in any particular form.
The question, in fact, is this. Making a reasonable allow-
ance for friction (i.e., sickness, accident, or necessary loss
of time between one job and another), is there or is
there not enough work to keep all the boys regularly
engaged throughout the year ?

So far as good permanent openings are concerned, whether
to learn skilled work or in the better class of semi-skilled
jobs, there are undoubtedly more boys available than can
find places. This is to some extent inevitable since there
will always be some with ambitions in the direction of a
skilled trade who do not possess the capacity for it. But
allowing for this, there are, in London at any rate, undoubt-
edly more who are fit to become skilled workmen than can
actually do so. •

In some important London industries, indeed, notably
Printing and Engineering, there is a good demand for learners,
but in others, notably in Building and the better-class Fur-
niture Trades, it is very small indeed. Taking it as a whole,
therefore, the Demand is decidedly deficient. Men are
wanted, not boys, who are often found to be a nuisance,
and what is more, the men are usually obtainable.1 It
should be added that this tendency is more marked in
London than elsewhere owing to the large supply of adult
labour that comes into it from outside.

Now these facts are far stronger evidence of a shortage in
the demand for learners than any mere surplus of boys
applying for such jobs could be. What is important is
that comparatively few are needed or required to fill these
posts, and yet in spite of the inadequate number that they

1 The Manager of a firm of Wire Goods Manufacturers said : —
I have no need to take an apprentice. If I have a vacancy

there are always plenty of those poor devils outside who are only

too glad of a job."

446 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

train, and the waste of good material even among these,
the employers can nearly always get a sufficiency of men,
though it is true that really good ones may be scarce.
The employers, therefore, want men, not boys, and they
are able to have them. Thus, even allowing for the provin-
cial influx, the small number of learners is significant. Nor
must it be forgotten that the districts from which this outside
labour is obtained probably could not train all the boys that
they do, nor provide for them when they are trained, but
for the openings afforded by London.

Nor is this due to any difficulty in getting boys for skilled
work. On the contrary, in London nearly all firms can get
quite as many as they need and many can get them several
times over, not only in trades where few are taken, but in
others, such as Printing and Engineering, where their
services are fully utilized.1 Such troubles as there are, are
due to special circumstances, like the need for a particularly
high level of ability, the offer of very low wages, or the bad
reputation of a firm. Associations for placing boys, again,
have often great difficulty in finding such Vacancies, little
or none in filling them, and it is often only by the most
vigorous efforts in enlisting the sympathies of employers
that they can create any demand at all. The Labour
Exchanges, indeed, experience some trouble at times owing
to the high wages demanded by the boys themselves, but
apart from this have little difficulty in obtaining, more than
they require.

As regards other towns, the matter is not so clear. In
them, too, there is probably a shortage of vacancies for
learners and a surplus of boys to fill them, but it is less
considerable. In his report on Boy Labour made to the
Poor Law Commission, Mr. Cyril Jackson summarized the
answers of employers to the question "Is there any diffi-
culty in getting boys ? " as follows :—

1 If there is any difficulty it is brought about by the restrictions
imposed by Trade Union rules, and not by shortage of boys, nor
in many cases are these rules unduly strict. Not seldom they are
decidedly generous.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 447

Proportion of

Yes.

No.

Doubtful.

Affirmative to

Negative Replies.

London

164

About i to I2-|-

LV^T.

Other Towns : —

Textile Trades . . .

3-5

Other Trades

I«3

„ i „ 4

Total (other Towns)

212

About i to 3£

Whole Country .

376

About i to 5

The trades employing mainly unskilled labour rarely
suffered from a shortage, and in other cases it is probable
that any difficulties were due rather to questions of capacity
or of wages, or to limitations of numbers by the Unions,
than to an actual scarcity. Again, the experience of
London suggests that they may have consisted chiefly in
finding means to bring employers and boys together.
That there is any real shortage of the latter for good work
anywhere is more than doubtful, and Mr. Jackson's returns
would probably have been even more emphatic on the point
if they had been made in a period of bad trade, not, as they
were, during a boom.1 It seems, therefore, that there is in
London a large surplus available for skilled work, and outside
it a smaller but still considerable one.

As regards unskilled boy labour, on the other hand, a
definite answer is less easy to give. Complaints by em-
ployers are frequent, whilst there is often considerable un-
employment, more particularly among the older boys.
Reference is also made both to their restlessness and their
general behaviour, and probably the trouble experienced
by the employers arises less often in getting boys than in
keeping those whom they have got. A recent comparison

1 The Returns were made in the latter half of 1906, when the
boom of 1906-7 was at its height.

448 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

of the Labour Exchange Returns in four Yorkshire towns
showed in one a large, and in a second a considerable,
surplus, and in two others there was no surplus at all. In
both these last, however, the special circumstances of the
Textile Trades created an unusually large demand.

In London, the managers of some Exchanges find at
times a difficulty in procuring all the boys they want, whilst
others have more on their books than they can place. The
shortage, however, is often only temporary and sometimes
apparent rather than real. Spasmodic demands take place,
for instance, which are too large to be satisfied at short notice.
Many lads also fail to use the Exchanges at all, and employers
have other means of getting those they require.1 The de-
mand for unskilled boy labour, therefore, though often
brisk, is seldom so brisk as to outrun the supply, and a
shortage at the Exchanges may well be concurrent with
insufficient work to employ fully all those who need it.

On the other hand, there is much direct evidence of a
surplus of boys for unskilled work. In London there are
usually some thousands who remain unplaced on the Ex-
change Registers at the end of each month, the number
only falling below 2,000 in two out of twelve during 1911,
whilst some who do not continue registration undoubtedly
remain unemployed for a longer or shorter time. In Mr.
Jackson's return, again, few if any of the firms employing
a lower grade of boy labour had .any difficulty in getting
as many as they wanted, whilst there is much evidence in
other directions to show that there is considerable unemploy-
ment among older boys, and even among lads between
fourteen and sixteen, with whom such shortage as exists is
to be found. A recent inquiry, for instance, into the occu-
pations of boys who had left a number of schools in London
showed a considerable proportion (over 6-0 per cent.) of
those between fourteen and fifteen to be unemployed, or at

1 E.g., one man said that his son " was sent up by the Exchange
to a job and found a whole line of boys waiting there, and when he
tried to push his way further up, got a clout on the head for his
pains."

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 449

least unoccupied.1 Finally, there is little doubt that many
parents experience considerable difficulty in finding their sons
places at all, or are so afraid of not finding them anything,
that they snatch at the first opening, however unsuitable.

All these facts, therefore, suggest that any trouble in
obtaining sufficient boys is not due to a shortage of them,
but to other causes. Partly it is due to the difficulty of
bringing employers and employed together, and still more
to inability »to utilize the available supply. Boys are
restless and continually on the move, employers as a result
make little effort to keep them, and casual methods of
employment grow up. Hence there is considerable and
unnecessary waste of time in moving from job to job, and
in the unemployment, often for long spells, of so many lads ;
and could reasonable regularity be secured, and the supply
be economized instead of squandered, there would probably,
some few towns excepted, be more than enough for all
requirements.

Nor does such shortage as exists justify the idea that it has
any counterpart among adult men. For most of the more
permanent jobs, whether in skilled or low-skilled work, there
appear to be more than sufficient boys. It is in those which
employ boys, and boys only, that an adequate number is
hardest to secure. The greatest demand, in short, is not
for boys to make into men, but for boys who will be required
only for so long as they remain such. The direct displace-
ment of men by boys is a comparatively small part of the
problem. Far more important is the fresh creation or
more rapid growth — chiefly in the distributive trades—
of forms of work which utilize the large supply of boys.
This too contradicts the idea of a real shortage ; for unless
enough and to spare are already obtainable, all will be
absorbed in existing employments. It is when the supply
is more than ample that new uses are found for them, and

1 R. A. Bray, " The Apprenticeship Question " (Economic
Journal, September, 1909', pp. 404 etseq.}. This, however, would be
partly accounted for by boys who had just left school and not yet
started work, and partly also by those of whom for various reasons
no information could be obtained.

450 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

have to be found if their labour is not to be wasted altogether.
What does happen is that difficulty arises from their restless-
ness and lack of discipline, which further reduces the demand
for learners, and in other ways causes more than need do so
to enter and remain in unskilled jobs.

Hence, though the fact is partly concealed by the waste
and loss of time that goes on, there appear to be more than
enough boys for all kinds of work, and a considerable surplus
for positions which require or impart skill. The result is a
state of affairs similar to that described in connexion with
adult unemployment — namely, a sufficient supply of them
to permit of the free use of irregular and wasteful methods of
employment and training. And there is also an increasing
creation or extension of pure boys' jobs.

So too a really strong demand for boys would have similar
effects to those which arise in the case of men. The need
for economizing the supply would lead to the substitution
,of better and more regular methods for existing ones.
These methods would in time become as habitual as present
ones are, and they might become so much a habit as to be
less affected by future changes in the demand. Thus
in Berlin, where the absorption of. apprentices, learners
and others in permanent positions is, in proportion, very
much greater than in London, the result has been to check
the growth of Blind Alleys.1

III. SUMMARY.
To sum up, therefore, it would appear, first, that on general

i1 E.g. " Berlin, though growing luxurious, is not yet so spend-
thrift of its young life as is London. The newspaper boy and the
child street-trader are unknown. The errand boy and the errand
girl, it is true, are on the increase, but the middle-class housewife
still goes herself or sends her maid-of-all-work to bring home the
daily marketings. Shopkeepers, as a rule, do not call daily for
orders, or deliver customers' goods daily. Where a van or a cart
is sent, a van boy is unusual. If a second is carried on a van, he
is generally a' man. The telegraph and messenger services are
usually performed by men (ex-soldiers), not by boys " (Repoit
to the London County Council by Miss F. Hermia Durham, on
Juvenile Labour in Germany).

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND UNEMPLOYMENT. 451

principles a Defective Demand for Labour over a long period
is likely to lead directly to Waste and to increased irregu-
larity of employment both for men and boys, and that a
Strong Demand is likely to reduce both to a minimum ; and,
secondly, that as a matter of actual fact, there is such a
Defective Demand in Great Britain, and that it is leading
to irregular methods of employment, bad methods of
training and Waste of Labour.

Thus the same results are found to follow from the
influence of Demand as from that of the system of Training.
Bad and haphazard methods in the latter case, slackness
or insufficiency in the former, are both potent causes of
unemployment and of the growth of casual labour ; and
both of them seem to be in active operation. They further
exert a mutual influence upon one another. Methods may
be so bad as to deteriorate more or less seriously the labour
of a trade, and so to restrict or hinder its development.
In other cases, the shortage of good men can be got over
by adopting alternative means of production, or by the
growth of a reserve of men and boys. So too a slack De-
mand is a fruitful parent of bad methods. What often
happens is that deficiency of Demand produces these and a
waste of labour. They in their turn cause a decline in the
quality of the workmen, who of necessity become less valu-
able to the employer ; and this still further restricts Demand.

So the two are often in operation at the same time, and
vary in extent together. Hence full benefit cannot be
obtained by a change which deals only with one and not
with both. Inferior teaching has checked Demand ; a
superior training will encourage it by increasing productive
and purchasing power. Moreover existing methods have
become so habitual that it is doubtful if increased demand
by itself will bring about a thorough change in them. A
definite and consistent effort will probably be needed.

On the other 'hand, without an improvement and exten-
sion of Demand, the restoration of a good system of training,
though not impossible, is likely to be long and difficult.
This it must almost necessarily be so long as haphazard

452 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

methods involve less trouble to the employers and yet
provide them with sufficient labour of an adequate quality.
For a rapid improvement, therefore, an increasing Demand
for Labour is essential. For this alone can create conditions,
under which Waste of Labour is likely to produce a short-
age, and better Training to prove not only profitable but
necessary. For the latter involves thought, trouble and
expense ; but where labour is not more than sufficient, still
more where it is scarce, these are found to be well worth
while.

CHAPTER XVII.
EXISTING AGENCIES AND CURRENT PROPOSALS.

I. EXISTING AGENCIES.
II. CURRENT PROPOSALS.

I. EXISTING AGENCIES. — Three Propositions to be laid down respect-
ing existing Agencies for placing and supervision — Classes of
them — Head Teachers — Value of Their Work — Its Limitations
• — Work of Day Trade Schools — Work of Evening Classes —
Work of Clergy and Parish Workers.

Apprenticeship Charities — Their Nature and Work — Appren-
ticeship Associations — Illustration from work of Skilled Employ-
ment Associations — Their Organization in London — Their
Aims — Policy regarding Indentures and Premiums — Bargaining
for Higher Wages — Control of Boys during Service — Educa-
tional Work among Parents and Employers — Limitations
of their Work — Its Defects — Other Similar Institutions —
Statistics of Work of Skilled Employment Associations —
The Plumbers' Company and Apprenticeship — Boys' Homes
— Clubs and Brigades — Latter mainly engaged in Control and
Supervision.

General Organization of Exchanges and Care Committees
— Work of the Latter in Detail — And of the Former — Indi-
vidual Supervision Mainly in the hands of the Care Committees
— Similar Schemes Elsewhere — The Edinburgh System, estab-
lished under the Scotch Education Act of 1908 — The Bir-
mingham System — Question of whether the Organization
shall be controlled by the Education or the Exchange Autho-
rity— Three Main Elements in all systems: the Exchange,
the Advisory Committee, the Care Committee — Different
Forms of Supervision.

The Trade Unions — Regulation of Conditions of Teaching —
The Number of Apprentices — A Fixed Proportion of Boys to
Men — A Varying Proportion — No Limitation of Numbers —
Fixing of Period of Service and Starting Age — Various Regula-
tions— Little Regulation of Wages paid to Apprentices —
Hours and Overtime the Same as with Men — Attitude towards
Trade School — Waning Hostility and Growing Approval —
Little Means of Active Support — Generally Position does not
usually permit of their taking a very strong line in any direction.

II. CURRENT PROPOSALS. — The Majority Report of the
Poor Law Commission — More Comprehensive Proposals by

453

454 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Mr. Cyril Jackson in his Report to the Commission on Boy
Labour — Criticisms of both these Policies and suggestions
for Improvement — Scheme of the Consultative Committee
of the Board of Education — Mr. Seebohm Rowntree's general
suggestions — His Scheme for Unemployed Juveniles — Detailed
Criticism of it — Proposals of the Home Office Report on the
Labour of Van and Warehouse Boys.

Scheme of the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commis-
sion : Industrial Half-Time — Advantage of the Scheme —
Objections and Difficulties — Summary of them — Conclusion.

FULLER reference is now required to those existing agencies
whose purpose it is to place boys in employment and control
them at their work. Strictly speaking, these should include
Trade and Technical Schools, but they have already been
fully dealt with, and will only be mentioned further in so
far as they assist in starting and in supervising them.
In the first half of this chapter, therefore, I propose to
describe briefly the chief of these agenices, their aims and
their methods, and in the second to comment upon some
of the more important proposals for dealing with the prob-
lems of Boy Labour.

I. EXISTING AGENCIES.

As regards the former, three propositions may be laid
down. The reorganization of the system of Care Com-
mittees in 1908, and the establishment of Juvenile Advisory
Committees of the Labour Exchanges, beginning in the
autumn of 1910, marked the first serious attempt to deal
with the juvenile population of London as a whole. Secondly,
there existed previously various institutions and individuals
concerned each with some part, but not with the whole, of
the problem, who were more or less organized each for some
particular purpose. Hence boys and girls were either left
to the uncoordinated control of a number of societies, or
were under no control at all. Thirdly, with some few excep-
tions, these agencies have usually dealt with one or other
of the twin problems of placing and supervision, but not
with both together ; and neither of them is likely to be
fully solved, so long as it is dealt with independently of the
other. For complete success, therefore, all the bodies

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 455

concerned must at least be under a common, central
authority, and this is what the new system is attempting to
secure.

Existing agencies include first those individuals, such as
school teachers, who possess definite positions in connexion
with boys and, as a result, interest themselves in starting
them in life ; secondly, societies whose primary object is
to place them in skilled trades by Apprenticeship or other-
wise ; thirdly, those Lads' Homes which seek as part of
their duties to find suitable work for their boys ; fourthly,
Lads' Clubs, Brigades, Boy Scouts' Troops, and similar
bodies, which are chiefly occupied with supervision ; and
lastly, the Trade Unions, so far as they attempt to regulate
the conditions of juvenile employment.

Among individuals more is perhaps done by the head-
masters and teachers in the Elementary Schools than by
any others. They know the boys well, sometimes inti-
mately. The work done in school and at manual training
gives a rough and ready test of capacity, though trie lad
who does well at school is not always so successful outside
it, and those with push and smartness may do better than
the quiet, industrious boy of more real ability. With all
their limitations, indeed, the head teachers are better
situated for dealing with the matter than almost any other
individuals. Those of them who are well known often have
quite a connexion among firms of good standing, who send
to them when .they want a lad, and in this way positions of
a permanent character are often at their disposal.

The value of their work, however, is limited in many
ways, and as a rule they can only provide for some and not
all of their boys. Too much, again, depends on the per-
sonality of each man. Some, a minority it is true, are by
no means willing to undertake all the extra work that is
involved, whilst a teacher's connexion with employers is a
purely personal one, and apt to be lost on his retirement.
And there are even more serious difficulties. He cannot in
many cases know, or test, the quality of the work that is
offered, and has to risk its turning out badly. Further,

456 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

he cannot do more than place the boys. To supervise
them after they are placed is quite beyond his power, and
this duty is now being undertaken by the Care Committees.
Again, having only those who are leaving or about to leave
his own school to select from, he has not always a suitable
one for a particular job. Nor is he in a position to wait,
since the firm must usually fill the place at once, and if a
boy is not forthcoming will go elsewhere and perhaps offer
no more vacancies in the future. Hence he has to send
the best available, whether he is really fitted for it or not.
On the other hand, a Labour Exchange with a number of
schools to draw on will be much better able to give employers
a wide selection. Moreover, if both the Exchanges and
the teachers are doing the same work, confusion and over-
lapping may result. Until, however, the former are more
fully developed, the latter should be encouraged to continue
their work, but they should notify to the Exchanges the
positions that they fill, and where possible send to them
those which they cannot provide for satisfactorily.

In this connexion mention may be made of the Day
Trade Schools, since they possess special facilities for placing
their boys. In their trade teaching they are confined to a
particular industry and its allied branches and are usually
situated in districts where these are extensively carried
on. The Principals and Instructors, therefore, have as a
rule a considerable knowledge of them. The pupils are a
picked lot and consequently above the average in ability,
they have usually shown special aptitudes for this industry
and select carefully the branch of it to which they will go.
The chief difficulty lies in the doubts and, in some cases,
prejudices of employers and in the legacy of past mistakes,
but these are being overcome. Thus in one case all who
had passed through a certain School were doing well with
one exception, due entirely to the lad's own fault ; in another"
the support of employers was difficult to get, but once
obtained was usually continued and extended. A third
had a clientele of some twenty businesses of good standing,
who always sent to it when in need of a learner.

EXISTING AGENCIES—CURRENT PROPOSALS. 457

These Schools, moreover, assist indirectly in the super-
vision of the earlier years of employment, since most of
their boys continue to attend Evening Classes after they
leave. Similarly, the ordinary Trade Schools do much to
help their students in this way, especially in guiding those
who are migrating from job to job. But here again, both
in placing and control, their work, and more particularly
that of the former, is limited to a comparatively few picked
boys. The Evening Trade Classes, indeed, get into touch
with thousands, but even these include but a small propor-
tion of the whole, and an even smaller one of those who
need them most. Nevertheless, within these limitations
they do most valuable work.

Finally, the Clergy and parish workers also help to find
situations, but do so under circumstances .that are less
favourable than those of the school teachers. They have
not the same knowledge of a boy's attainments, nor as a
rule so many boys to select from, and sometimes get only
the unsuccessful and the unruly ones to deal with. In
individual cases, however, they often give great assistance,
and usually continue to exercise supervision for far longer
than the master can, since their connexion with a boy does
not terminate when he leaves school.

The second kind of agency consists of Apprenticeship
Societies and Apprenticeship Charities. The latter are still
very numerous and possess a large total income, the objects
in which it may be spent including often the provision of
tools and outfit as well as the payment of premiums. Many
of the individual Charities are very small, and quite unable
to provide properly either for the selection or the oversight
of their boys, and the decrease in the use of the indenture,
and still more in the payment of premiums, has caused a
large number of them to divert their funds to the other
purposes, for which provision is made in their trust deeds.
Moreover, advantage is apt to be taken of them by firms
who employ apprentices for the sake of the premium, or
who do not normally demand or accept one. Where, how-
ever, they seriously carry out their work of placing and

458 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

supervision, they can achieve similar results to those
accomplished by the Apprenticeship Societies.

The latter vary considerably in their objects and methods.
For instance, the Skilled Employment Associations and
similar bodies deal with all classes of boys and all skilled
trades. The Jewish Board of Guardians, on the other
hand, confines itself to members of its own religion and,
in practice, mainly to certain occupations. All, however,
endeavour with more or less success to select suitable ones,
and to supervise their boys during their period of service.
Their work, however, may best be illustrated, and illustrated
at its best, by a description of the Skilled Employment
Associations.

In 1909-10 l there were in London Local Committees in
fifteen different districts. These were separately adminis-
tered, and to a great extent separately financed, but were
under the control of the Central Association, which carried
out much of the more general work, such as the canvassing
of employers and the conducting of inquiries into the
methods obtaining in various trades. Similar Associations
in other parts of the country are affiliated to it. Since that
date, however, many of the Local Associations have been
absorbed in the Juvenile Advisory Committees of the Ex-
changes, where such have been established, and their workers
to a great extent continue their work as part of the new
organization.

As their name implies, they aim at organizing generally
various methods of training for skilled employments, and
do not confine themselves to Apprenticeship. Occasionally
they fill some situations outside the ranks of skilled labour.
Where possible, a binding agreement is entered into, usually
for five years, the Associations being a party to it and reserv-
ing the right to break the indenture on due cause being
shown. By this means they have succeeded in overcoming
one of the great difficulties of formal Apprenticeship— that,
namely, of getting rid of an unsatisfactory boy or of removing

1 This year is taken as being the last completed year before the
coming into operation of the Labour Exchange Act (1909).

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 459

one from an unsatisfactory firm. Where possible, a clause
is inserted to allow time off for attendance at Technical
Classes on one or two afternoons a week, and where a pre-
mium is paid, this is usually insisted upon. The Associa-
tions will also accept a verbal agreement, and the proportion
of learners to apprentices is about one to two. Such agree-
ments, not being legally enforceable, are more often broken
than are the indentures, employers and boys being about
equally to blame. Often small difficulties and troubles
are magnified until one of the parties throws the thing up
in disgust. Here, however, thanks to their power of super-
vision, the Associations can step in and set matters right,
before they have gone too far. On the other hand, their
work has not extended to those who are learning by
Migration.

Payment of a premium is avoided as far as possible, and
many firms are found who neither insist upon, nor even
desire, one. Where it is paid, return in the way of
" time-off " or of higher wages is usually provided for, and
in this way trades where the work is specially fine or deli-
cate, or boys whose home circumstances necessitate a high
initial wage, can be satisfactorily dealt with. Usually
such payment is not necessary to secure a reasonable rate.
Finally, the premium is, as a rule, paid in two parts, at the
beginning, and half way through, the period of service, and
the amount is repaid by the boy, nearly always punctually,
in small weekly instalments.

The Associations are further able to do something in
bargaining for adequate wages, and the results of their
efforts have, on the whole, been most gratifying. Some
of them have been able to obtain starting rates of 55. a
week in most trades without a premium, and have saved
their boys from having to accept for the first two years
such as are little more than nominal. At the same time
their powers in this direction are limited to some extent,
since employers can, if necessary, get apprentices elsewhere.
Still they are increasingly recognizing the value of the
Associations to them, and as a result are offering more

460 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

favourable terms. Shorter periods of service are also
arranged for in certain cases. Five years, and less frequently
seven, are still sometimes necessary, but at others a boy
cannot spend more than three or four years profitably in
the same place. Here, under proper safeguards, a Short
Apprenticeship followed by Migration seems to be the best
policy, and some employers already adopt it. So, too,
some at least of the Associations accept and even prefer it,
arid use their powers of supervision to minimize the dangers
of its abuse.

The other side of their work consists of general assistance
to, and control over, the boys. To begin with, their capa-
cities are carefully tested, and efforts are made, often
successfully, to induce them to enter trades that are suited
both to their health and ability. Thus those who wish to
enter an unsuitable one, are offered a more likely post with
the alternative of placing themselves, and those who
possess the ambition but not the capacity for skilled work,
can sometimes be dissuaded from taking it up, and a few
of them are put into good positions of a low-skilled character.
Further, in addition to those whom they place, boys resort
to the Associations simply to obtain advice.

After being started, a boy is kept under regular super-
vision., The home is visited at more or less fixed intervals,
often with the result of improving home conditions. The
employer is also periodically visited and, where necessary,
is kept up to his side of the agreement. Reports of progress
at Trade Classes are obtained, and throughout his time the
learner is well looked after and when it has come to an
end, may even be further assisted to complete his training.

Finally, these Associations do most useful educational
work. They bring home to the parents the character of
different jobs and the dangers attending them, and enable
them to provide better for their boys than they could do
for themselves, supplying that knowledge and information
which so many cannot otherwise obtain. Further, they
interest employers in the matter and even create a greater
demand for learners. In connexion with this, the value

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 461

of what they do in filling jobs with more suitable boys is
admitted ; but it is sometimes denied that they can increase
the demand for them. That more could be taken in London,
is proved by the extent of the provincial influx, and in
trades where there is a shortage of competent men the
teaching of more learners would be likely to promote their
development. And to some extent the Associations have
actually increased the number of openings, either by inducing
employers to take them, and those, who only take a few,
to take more, or by persuading others to reconsider a
decision to give them up. Frequently, too, they interest
them in a particular boy, and not seldom a man, who has
had one in this way, will afterwards have others. This
work, however, is only in its infancy, and should in time be
much extended by the Juvenile branches of the Exchanges.
Apart from this, its value in interesting employers in matters
of training has been very considerable.

The Skilled Employment Associations have been chosen
for detailed description because with them the work of this
class of agencies has reached its highest development.
Among such Societies they have adopted the best methods
and achieved the best results, and realizing the need for
variety in their methods to suit different conditions, they
have avoided the rigid insistence on particular forms that
has been apt to mar the policy of others. Indeed, on a
small scale they have pioneered the work that is now being
taken over by Juvenile Labour Exchanges.1

Nevertheless, their work has had many necessary limita-
tions. They have only been able to deal with a few hundred
boys and girls annually, and the same thing is true of other
similar institutions. They have confined themselves almost
entirely to skilled labour. They have found great difficulty
in many cases in getting the support of employers, and
especially in getting a grant of " time-off " to attend classes.

1 This expression is used for the sake of brevity. Technically
Juvenile Advisory Committees are attached to the branches of the
Exchanges that are dealing with workers under seventeen years
of age.

462 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Moreover, their methods and personnel have come in for
considerable criticism, some of it legitimate, some of it
unfounded. Their most important positions are, as a rule,
filled by experienced social workers, but many of the details
have to be carried out by young and inexperienced persons,
with the result that mistakes are inevitable, and complaint
is sometimes made that they do not utilize fully the means
of information that are available.

Even more serious is the criticism that too great atten-
tion is paid to obtaining an indenture accompanied by
payment of a premium, and not enough to ensuring the
quality of the teaching, and in one case it was stated that,
" provided they could place a boy out with a premium, they
are satisfied." This, together with the indenture, is thus
treated in some cases as a sort of talisman, and chances to
learn under less formal, but otherwise equally good, conditions
are neglected. Where this attitude is adopted, therefore,
they play into the hands of those firms who take boys as
apprentices for the sake of the premium, or use the oppor-
tunity to get a premium for which in other circumstances
they would not ask. Or, again, it may be paid to induce
an employer to take an unsatisfactory boy to the possible
exclusion of a better one. Such complaints have been and
are still raised against Skilled Employment Committees
and in the past there was some considerable justification
for them. They have, however, learnt by their mistakes,
and in this and other cases have largely, if not entirely,
removed legitimate causes of criticism, and such criticisms
are, as a rule, far less applicable to them than to other
similar agencies.

Again, complaint is raised concerning the failure of some
other Institutions to adapt themselves to modern con-
ditions, but this fault cannot now be debited to the Skilled
Employment Associations. For so far as their resources
permit, they do adapt themselves to the requirements of
different firms and trades, even placing boys in temporary
unskilled work to await better openings. Other bodies,
however, praqtically refuse to adopt any method but that of

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 463

indenture, premium and sometimes seven years' service.
Now, owing to the varied conditions of modern industry,
one form of engagement cannot suit all circumstances, and
to insist invariably upon it, is to neglect good openings of
other kinds, and put some boys in less good positions than
might be obtained for them.

The work of the City Companies in connection with
Industrial Training may next be considered. The great
majority of them have confined themselves to giving support
and assistance to Technical Education, sometimes generally
and sometimes for the purposes of the particular trade to
which they belong. The work varies from one Company
to another, and some do a very great deal in this way,
but with one important exception they appear to limit
themselves to it. That exception is the Worshipful
Company of Plumbers, which perhaps does as much as
any other to provide for Technical Education, but has also
established and supported a scheme for securing a uniform
and well-considered system of Industrial Training.

The movement for the Registration of Plumbers was
first started in 1886. On fulfilling certain conditions,
plumbers, whether masters or workmen, are entitled to
be registered, and arrangements are made for the marking
of all work done by them, so that it receives the guarantee
that it has been done by qualified and responsible men.
To obtain registration a plumber has to have passed certain
specified examinations and to have received such a training
as is recognized by the Company. This may take several
forms :—

(i) He may serve with a qualified firm a minimum of
five years' Apprenticeship under an indenture, one
of the conditions of which is that he shall have made
adequate attendance at Technical Classes.1

1 The Indenture form adopted by the Company states that " the
apprentice shall attend and diligently study at the Evening Classes
of any Technical Institution or Trade School now or hereafter to
be established in London as his master shall direct and as shall be
approved by the Plumbers' Apprenticeship Board." The master
undertakes to cause the apprentice to mak6 such attendance,

464 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

(2) He may under certain conditions serve his time under

the supervision of different firms.

(3) In the case of those who enter the trade in other

ways than by Apprenticeship, Registration may
also be obtained, but the tests to be satisfied are
more severe than in the case of Apprenticeship.

Thus the last alternative leaves open other avenues into
the trade, and at the same time gives a preference to the
more regular and formal system. It is claimed on behalf
of the Company that since 1886 there has been a consider-
able increase in the proportion of plumbers who have
entered the trade by Apprenticeship, and that a great
improvement has taken place in the training given to them.
Unhappily, the methods which it favours have not yet
been universally accepted, nor anything like universally,
throughout the trade.

What gives greater value to its work, moreover, are the
means it has adopted to secure efficient administration of
its system. For it has been successful in obtaining the
co-operation of the London Master Plumbers' Association,
and of the men's Union, the United Operative Plumbers'
Association of Great Britain and Ireland, and the three
bodies co-operate closely on this point. In 1900 they formed
a Joint Board, named the Plumbers' Apprenticeship Board,
to deal with Apprenticeship and allied subjects in London.
Further, the Company also co-operates with the professions
and authorities which are chiefly concerned with health
and sanitation — the Municipal Authorities, the Medical
Profession, the Sanitary Engineers and so on. It has thus
secured that the training of plumbers shall be in close touch
with all those who are interested directly in ensuring their
efficiency and that it shall satisfy the requirements not
only of the trade itself but of those wide interests which
the trade has to serve.

The Plumbers, therefore, have afforded an admirable
and successful illustration of how it is possible gradually
to bring about the adoption of a definite system of training
suited to the needs of their business, and at the same time

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 465

to allow, subject to careful regulation, a limited scope for
alternative methods of entry. This is the policy which
appears to be required in most of the trades of London,
and the experience of the one we have been considering
seems to show that such a policy is feasible in practice.
Unfortunately, even with the plumbers, it has not yet been
universally adopted, but it has at least made considerable
progress. In one point, however, it appears to require
extension. As stated in a previous chapter (Chapter VI)
there is some difficulty in regulating the numbers of mates
who learn the business, and this could be done better if it
were made a rule that at a certain point such mates should
be definitely recognized as learners, and that only those
who could satisfy the necessa'ry tests should be allowed to
continue their rise to be mechanics. Such an addition,
indeed, it would appear to be possible to graft without
great difficulty on to the policy of Registration.

Boys' Homes, Clubs, Brigades, and Scouts have next to
be considered. Of the former there are a considerable
number, some being purely residential and for the use of
those already in work. More important for the present
purpose, however, are such as take orphans, " waifs and
strays " or other neglected and deserted children, often
keeping them for some time after they have begun work,
or even themselves starting to teach them a trade, whilst
they are still in the Home, and finding them positions when
they leave it. Such trades are usually those required for
the support of the Homes — e.g., tailoring, boot-making,baking
and carpentering. Some have also a good deal of printing
work to do, and in this case take in outside orders as well.
They appear to be, on the whole, successful in getting their
boys into good work, and sometimes even in supervising
them afterwards ; partly, no doubt, because they keep
them up to about sixteen or even longer, that is to say,
during the years when other boys are most apt to run wild.
Similar work is also done by many of the Poor Law Resi-
dential Schools.

Boys' Clubs and Brigades, again, accomplish their best

466 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

work in keeping their members under supervision, control,
and, in some cases, definite rules of discipline. The drill,
physical training and organized exercise are of special value.
They do comparatively little in the way of actual placing,
and their tendency has been rather to abandon than to
undertake this. Probably the policy is a wise one, since,
though able to assist individuals, they are not, as a rule,
so situated as to make this work both general and effective.
At the same time their members are in a better position to
recover work if they lose it, since the others are often able
to find them vacancies in their own firms. Still the really
valuable element in the provision of such Clubs is the super-
vision and control they exercise, especially if they provide
some definite training or discipline.

The limited number of boys with whom they deal, however,
and the restricted measure of their control over them, has
reduced the scope and value of these various institutions.
The new general system of Exchanges and Care Committees
requires, therefore, some description, since it not only aims
at covering the whole field, but at co-ordinating and render-
ing effective the work of those agencies which are already
in existence. The organization, when complete, will consist
of a network of Committees, attached to each Elementary
School and working in each district in co-operation with
the Juvenile Advisory Committee of the Labour Exchange.1
The establishment of the latter began in the autumn of
1910 with the three areas of Camberwell, Saint Pancras
and Stepney, and the Care Committees first took practical
shape in the reorganization scheme passed by the County
Council late in 1908. By this, among other things, special
officers were appointed to develop the system. Supervision
in each case lasts until the age of seventeen is reached, but
there is much to be said for continuing it up to eighteen in
order to bring it into line with the period of control over
young persons under the Factory Acts.

The Care Committees originally came into existence to
carry out the duties of the Education Authority in refer-

1 There is a Central Advisory Committee for the whole of London .

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 467

ence to the feeding and medical examination and treatment
of school children. Each of the main branches of their
work may be delegated to smaller sub-committees. The
aim is to have one such Committee for every school, but at
present some few take charge of two or more. They are
appointed by the Managers, partly from their own number
and partly* from outside, and Committees in charge of a
single School may contain from six to nine members. Head
Masters and Head Mistresses are invited to take part in the
proceedings. The work of After-Care may now be briefly
described.

From four to eight weeks before a child leaves the pre-
scribed School Leaving Form, which is issued by the Educa-
tion Office of the Council, is filled in by the Head Master
or Mistress and transmitted to the Secretary of the Com-
mittee. The part of it so filled in consists of a school report
and among other things contains information as to a child's
Standard in the School, general ability and conduct, special
ability, if any (including progress at Manual Training or
Domestic Economy), height, health, and the trade and type
of Continuation School recommended. This is signed by
the master or mistress. A more detailed verdict can often
be obtained if these details are filled in by the person
responsible in consultation with a member of the Committee.
An interview between the latter and the individual boys
can then be arranged with advantage to take place at the
same time, and it is very desirable that where possible
there should be one.

For the rest of the form the Committee is responsible. It
covers the father's trade, home circumstances, and the
wishes of the boy and his parents regarding his future.
Where possible a visit to the home is strongly recommended.
Finally, the form, with the Committee's suggestions thereon,
is despatched to the Exchange not less than a fortnight
before the boy leaves school. Usually it is also advisable
to notify him or his parents of the time for calling at the
Exchange and to impress upon them the need of doing so.
This can best be done a few days before he leaves.

468 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

The Juvenile Department occupies usually a part of the
building which contains the adult Exchange, but has
separate rooms and where possible a separate entrance.
Its general policy and administration are controlled by a
Representative Juvenile Advisory Committee appointed
for each Exchange District, such committees having a paid
secretary and staff to carry out the detailed work. Ordinary
applications are received in the mprning, and a Rota Sub-
Committee of the Juvenile Advisory Committee sits on two
evenings a week to interview boys who are still at School,
or who have not yet found work. Parents are generally
seen at the same time. Members of Care Committees who
are interested are also invited to be present. The Exchange
receives and classifies School Leaving Forms, deals with
applications and communicates with the parents of those
who have not applied, requesting them to call. It also
canvasses employers and endeavours to fill vacancies to
the best advantage.

Supervision rests mainly with the Care Committee con-
cerned, each boy being in charge of some responsible person
who may or may not be a member of it. To it those who
have failed to attend at the Exchange or who have with-
drawn their application are referred for a visit and report.
On the other hand, when a boy has been successfully placed,
an " A Form " is sent, giving the character of the job, the
wages, hours and prospects, and recommendations as to
attendance at evening schools. The lad is then visited by
the person responsible for him, and a report sent to the
Exchange within one month, and afterwards twice annually
in May and November. The fact of his falling out of work
is also notified to it as soon as possible, and the attempt is
made to induce him to re-apply. Thus together the Care
Committees and the Exchanges exercise some measure of
control and can check, to some extent, continual changes
of job. They also encourage the-joining of Evening Classes,
Clubs and Thrift Societies. At present the great difficulty
is to get the majority of boys either to utilize the Exchanges
at all or to continue to re-register if they do not at once get

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 469

work ; but this will be overcome as experience of their
practical value increases. Once again it is the case that
the creation of a habit is necessarily slow.

Other towns and a few County Authorities possess similar
schemes. Some of them were created by the Education
Authorities previous to the passing of the Labour Exchange
Act, others after, and as a result of, it. Some again only
carry out parts of the work, only placing boys, for instance,
and not supervising them afterwards. A few undertake
special branches of it, one town providing for the de-
livery of goods by a central service of messengers, instead
of each shop employing its own. Two schemes — those of
Edinburgh and Birmingham — may be shortly described.

The former was established under the Scotch Education
Act of 1908, the Local Education Authority setting up a
bureau of its own, whilst in 1910 a satisfactory compromise
was come to between it and the Exchange Authority by
which a division of functions was made, and effective
co-operation secured.

' The two staffs were placed in adjacent rooms in the School
Board Office and to the parents the fine dividing line between
the functions of the two Officers is almost invisible. To them
the Office is an arrangement at which all sorts of information
as to likely careers for their sons and daughters can be got,
and where, the career being decided upon, a position in some
actual business or industry is found. It does for them what
a wise schoolmaster would do in a small district of only two
or three schools. That is why the office of the School Authority
and not of the adult Labour Exchange is the appropriate place
for housing the joint organization." 1

The duties of the Education Officer include those of
" keeping the system of further education in real touch
with the industrial needs of the locality/' giving advice

1 Paper on " Juvenile Employment : The Edinburgh Method
of Co-operation between the Education Authority and the Labour
Exchange," by J. W. Peck, M.A., F.R.S.E. (Clerk to the School
Board of Edinburgh), read at the First National Conference on the
Prevention of Destitution, May, 1911. The description of the
Scheme is summarized from Mr. Peck's paper.

470 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

as to suitable employment, available vacancies and the
value of particular openings, and finally supervising the
young workers, more especially in reference to continuation
classes. Among the functions of the Exchange are the col-
lection and promulgation of general industrial information,
the registration of applications, and the bringing of employers
offering particular jobs into contact with suitable children.
Both the Education and the Exchange Officers canvass
employers, each for his particular purpose, and their pre-
mises are both connected by telephone with the adult
Exchange. Control over the children continues up to the
age of seventeen.

For their detailed supervision the establishment of Care
Committees was being pressed forward at the time when Mr.
Peck's paper was written. School Leaving Forms and circu-
lars to parents to attend with their boys or girls are utilized
much as in London. There are two registers — a Personal
one of those who have actually attended, and a General
Register of those who have not. The former receive prefer-
ence for employment, and three or four applicants are
usually sent for an employer to select from. The City is
to be covered by a total of twelve Care Committees, dealing
with groups of schools and not, as in London, with a single
one only.

At Birmingham,1 instead of two closely co-operating
departments, a single one was established within which both
Educational and Exchange Authorities receive adequate
representation. At the inception of the scheme, the two
existing Committees were combined into a single " Central
Care Committee/' The Employment Bureau in connexion
therewith forms part of the national system of Exchanges,
but the Local Education Authority, by means of its repre-
sentation on the Committee, is given a fair share in the

1 The description given below is summarized from the Report
of the Special Sub-Committee of the City of Birmingham Education
Committee on the Institution of a Juvenile Employment Bureau
and Care Committee in Birmingham. The scheme with detailed
alterations is that* drawn up by this Committee.

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 471

control and direction of its policy, and the manager of the
Bureau is appointed by the Board of Trade after consulta-
tion with it. It can also request his dismissal. Manage-
ment of the After-Care side of the work is retained by
the Education Authority, subject to the condition of pro-
viding the Bureau with full information as to its work.
The Children's Bureau and the Adult Exchange occupy
separate buildings, but for the convenience of employers
have the same telephone number. Teachers are encouraged
to continue their present work of placing boys and girls,
but are to notify the Exchange of the vacancies they fill.
To assist the central organization, Local Exchanges are
provided in six districts, for the reason that —

"It is advisable that children should have Local Exchanges
within walking distance at which they can make applications " ;

and the following policy is to be adopted :—

" Ordinary situations, requiring no special skill or brains and
offering no particular prospects of advancement, may be rilled
locally. This arrangement is a matter of mere commonsense.
It would be foolish to send a boy from Saltley to apply for a
vacancy in a small factory in Greet, for which there would also
be local applicants. On the other hand, the endeavour should
be made that the most promising lads should have the best
situations throughout the city open to them."

The Branch Committees are under separate officers who
attend on every evening, except Sunday, between 6 and 9.30,
and there are separate hours for boys and girls to apply.
The Branches also receive notices of applications and
vacancies from the Central Bureau.

Supervision of young persons starts, where possible, with
an interview three months before they leave school and
continues up to the age of seventeen. It is in the hands
of Care Committees, and the establishment of a separate
, one for each school is contemplated. Their duties are much
the same as in London or Edinburgh. Each helper, it is
proposed, should take charge of from eight to ten families
who need constant, and of a few more who only need occa-

472 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

sional, supervision, and it has been estimated that about
one-quarter of those under seventeen will require the former.
The Branch Exchanges will act as bureaux of information
for the Committees within their area.

Other systems in existence do not require separate descrip-
tion, but it may be noted that in London Juvenile Advisory
Committees are part of the Exchange Organization and
controlled by the Board of Trade. Each Local Committee,
however, contains ten members nominated by the Education
Committee of the County Council, and two more by the
Head Teachers' Association. The question as to whether
the Exchange or the Education Authority shall be the
controlling body has led to much heated controversy.
Happily in London, as in Edinburgh and Birmingham, a
satisfactory working compromise has been arranged, and
the matter is likely to be settled elsewhere in a similar way,
according to the variations of local conditions. At present
about half the schemes in existence are worked directly
under the Central Labour Exchange authority, whilst con-
trol of the rest is in the hands of the Local Education
Authority under the Choice of Employment Act (1910). A
joint arrangement as to working has been come to between
the Boards of Trade and Education, and whichever is the
nominal head, the division of duties between the Exchange
and Care Committees is on the lines that have been described.

In all cases the same three elements are present, namely,
the Juvenile Exchange, the district Advisory Committee,
and the Care Committee controlling individual schools and
supervising individual boys. The part they will play in
the future organization of Boy Labour must be left to the
next chapter. Their present objects are briefly as follows.
First, there is the purely business one of suiting boys with
jobs and employers with boys, and not merely of bringing
them together, but of bringing the right boys into touch with
the right employers. Their success must depend largely
on their power to convince both parties as to their value,
and at present one of the chief difficulties of the London
Committees is caused by the refusal of so many of those

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 473

concerned to recognize it. Educationally, the problem is
the double one of placing and supervision, and, to be com-
plete, the organization requires to have brought within its
scope workers and jobs of all kinds. • Its functions, therefore,
include the placing of as many of the former and the filling
of as many of the latter as possible, good and bad alike.
Further, provision for actual definite training is required
in some cases, and for discipline and regularity, far more
than for training, in others.

Placing, therefore, includes the proper organization and
dovetailing of jobs, as, for instance, in the use of Blind
Alleys to fill the interval before permanent employment can
be obtained, whilst the work of approaching employers to
secure their support and various detailed improvements
in conditions of employment will for some time occupy a
large share in the time and energy of the Exchanges.

Supervision takes several forms, and is required before,
during, between, and out of employment. The first covers
the provision of the requisite advice and information
precedent to a boy's start in life. The second involves
careful control after he is at work, to see that he receives a
fair chance in the workshop, and makes the best of it and
of himself, together with such information and assistance
as are necessary to his progress. Here the co-operation
of Trade and Continuation Schools will be needed. " Be-
tween employment " includes not only the prevention of
intervals of unemployment, but help in making a change
of job, where such is necessary. Lastly, supervision " out
of " employment will embrace that of home conditions
and will utilize and extend social activities, such as Clubs
and Societies and the means of physical and intellectual
development. And on the gradual growth of such an
organization rests much of the hope of future progress.

Finally, the work of the Trade Unions may be divided
into three main sections, the regulation of the conditions
under which apprentices and learners are taken and taught,
the detailed care and control of them during the process,
and the work of the Societies in connexion with the provision

474 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

or improvement of Technical Instruction. Of these the
first refers to the regulations under which employers are
to be allowed to engage their boys, whilst the second covers
such things as the fixing of rates of wages and efforts to
secure proper teaching. The former is concerned mainly
with three questions : the proportion of apprentices or boys
to journeymen, the period of service and the age at which
it starts, and the position of the Out-of-Time apprentice
or learner.

As regards the first of these, the Trade Unions fall into
three groups : those insisting upon a fixed proportion,
those which adopt varying proportions according to local
circumstances, but enforce these rigidly, and those which
either cannot or do not enforce any proportion at all. In
London, at any rate, the Printing Trades are most energetic
in securing a definite scale. With them the most common
limit is that of one apprentice to three journeymen, and there
is a proviso in some cases that only men constantly employed
shall be taken count of. The London Society of Compositors
further prohibits altogether the employment of apprentices
in Newspaper Offices, and the engagement of improvers
anywhere is strictly forbidden. This proportion, which
is a decidedly liberal one, is enforced in London by the
London Society of Compositors,1 the United Machine Mana-
gers' Society, and the Consolidated Society of Journeymen
Bookbinders. The Federated Electrotypers and Stereo-
typers allow one to two. There is, however, some recruit-
ing of the trade by provincial workmen who, in the case

1 In the case of the Compositors the proportion is accepted by a
large number of firms, but has not been embodied in a definite
agreement. Thus it is stated that "There is no agreement and no
rule as regards the proportion, but the London Society of Composi-
tors endeavours to approximate to one apprentice to three journey-
men. A great many houses have, however, apprentices in excess of
this proportion." On the other hand, the position in many offices is
expressed by the following statement by a well-known firm : "The
Trade Unions, by arrangement with the Masters, regulate the num-
ber of boys to the journeymen, the average being about one boy to
three journeymen." This proportion, therefore, would appear to
prevail over a considerable part of the trade.

EXISTING AGENCIES- CURRENT PROPOSALS. 475

of the compositors at any rate, are admitted to the Union
on proof of membership of any recognized Society ; but in
recent years a proper period of Apprenticeship seems to have
been more insisted upon. The rules of the Amalgamated
Lithographers fix the scale at one to five with a maximum
of six in any establishment, and a new apprentice can be
taken in the last six months of the service of the senior
apprentice.

Other Unions which lay down and enforce a proportion
include the London and Provincial Society of Coppersmiths
and Metal Workers (one to three), the Silver and Electro-
Plate Operatives Society (London Branch) (one to four),
and the United Pattern Makers, at least in some districts,
(one to five). The Amalgamated Brushmakers have a
complicated rule by which the number of apprentices varies
from one to three, and two to five up to nine to 100 journey-
men, and a member setting up for himself is allowed to
have one apprentice without employing a journeyman.
In addition, a good many Societies fail to get their rates
established in London, but succeed in doing so elsewhere.

The chief examples of the adoption of different propor-
tions according to local circumstances by agreements be-
tween masters and men are afforded by the Engineering
Trades and more particularly the Amalgamated Society
of Engineers. This Union has found the enforcement of a
uniform rate impossible, owing to differences in the condi-
tions prevailing in various districts and sections of the
industry, and has been able to work successfully the arrange-
ment of having separate regulations for each of them.
They have even adapted them to the particular circum-
stances of individual firms, and to the number of boys
their business requires. Similarly, the Friendly Society of
Ironfounders leaves the matter to be regulated by the
by-laws of its branches according to local needs, these
by-laws being subject to the sanction of the Central Council.
It is doubtful, however, if they are so successful in enforcing
them as is the Amalgamated Society of Engineers.

Finally, there are a large number of Unions in which no

476 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

such limitation is enforced in London, though in some it
may be elsewhere. So far as the Building Trades are con-
cerned, the small number of boys and apprentices taken
renders the rule unnecessary. If it exists, it is practically
inoperative, since the maximum fixed by the Unions is
practically never reached. Thus the Bricklayers and Stone-
masons neither have nor need a rule to this effect, and the
Plasterers have one, but questions as to its observance
seldom or never arise. On the other hand, the Carpenters
and Joiners have sometimes felt the need, especially to
prevent the flooding of their business with boys during
periods of good trade. They also used to complain of the
influence of the Trade Schools in causing too many to try
to enter it, but less has been heard of this recently. As
a rule the complaint is that employers will not take more
than a few learners.

Outside the Building Trades, there are numerous cases
where no rule is enforced. Thus one of the Smiths' Societies
states that they are recruited almost entirely from hammer-
men, not from boys, and that the question does not therefore
arise, and some of the numerous societies in the Precious
Metal, Instrument and Electrical Industries describe their
attempts at regulation as unsuccessful. Probably the
method of a variation in the proportion according to circum-
stance will be the most successful, since it can be adapted
most completely to the varying needs of different places.
So far as it is practicable, therefore, its adoption is to be
recommended.

The questions of the period of service and of the age for
starting to learn a trade have already been fully dealt with,
and here it is only necessary to refer shortly to the attitude
of the Unions towards them. Once again the distinction
has to be made between those which do and those which
do not, or cannot, enforce regulations. Thus in the Printing
Trades, seven years' Apprenticeship is, as a rule, strictly
adhered to. The Amalgamated Lithographers, however, will
accept five or six in practice and permit a Verbal Agreement
in place of an indenture, provided the consent of the local

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 477

Branch of the Society is obtained. For starting, an age
limit of seventeen is fixed by the Stereotypers, and of fifteen
by the Amalgamated Lithographers, whilst the Compositors
endeavour to prevent boys being bound after about the
age of sixteen. The Machine Minders, on the other hand,
have no limit. The Compositors have a period of a few
months' trial before binding, and the Lithographers have
a rule that a boy must be withdrawn, if he is not bound
within six months after being taken on. As already stated,
the Apprenticeship rule is modified to some extent by the
acceptance of members of Provincial Societies by whom
the full Apprenticeship has not been enforced, but in recent
years greater strictness appears to have been shown in this
respect.

In the metal trades, five years' Apprenticeship or Service
is more usual, and sometimes a definite start must be made
before the age of sixteen. The Amalgamated Society of
Engineers, however, allows an alternative of three years'
work, with a previous period of four years in the Engineering
Department of a Technical Institute. With one Society of
Smiths a hammerman must get full money within four years
after being advanced to smith's work. It fixes no definite
age limit for starting, but gives certain slight advantages,
as regards admission to membership, to those who have
started before a certain age. In House Building, with one
possible exception where the period is five years and the
starting age fifteen, no rules on either point are enforced in
London, and the same appears to be the case with some of
the Art Metal and Instrument Trades.

There is also a certain amount of regulation in the case
of apprentices and other learners who have completed their
service. Thus the Amalgamated Society of Engineers
lays it down that an apprentice must get the full rate two
years after the close of his time, or, if he is to receive a lower
rate, the District Committee must consent to it. The
Boilermakers and Iron Shipbuilders allow one year to get
journeyman's money after the close of the recognized period.
In the Printing Trades, again, apprentices must receive

478 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

full money immediately on coming out of their time, and
improvers are not recognized. On the other hand no
regulation appears to be attempted in a good many trades.

Turning to the conditions under which the teaching is
given, wages are left almost invariably to be arranged by
the employer and the boy. Hours and overtime are fixed
by the Working Rules of a district, those of the boys being
the same as those of the men. Sometimes, however, there is
some attempt to secure proper teaching and due observance
of any contract to provide it. The most definite step has
been taken by the London Society of Compositors, which
has recently set up in many offices Committees of the
" Chapel " 1 to supervise the instruction of the apprentices
and look after their interests generally. Other Societies
in the Printing Trades, the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers, the Boilermakers' Society, and some more take
active steps to bring this about. Usually they deal with
individual employers, and try to put a stop to undue speciali-
zation and other undesirable features. The work done and
its success vary with the strength of the different Unions,
and a great many are not in a position to accomplish much.

Thirdly, their attitude towards Technical and Continued
Education may be described as one of general support and
encouragement. Active opposition is very seldom found
nowadays, and less is now heard of the fears formerly
expressed that the activity of the Schools might cause a
trade to get overstocked with boys. One does, indeed,
meet occasionally with such statements as the following : —

" We feel bound to discourage attendance at the Technical
Schools. Lads of all sorts go to them and naturally turn to

1 "In connection with their Trade Union the Compositors in each
printing establishment are organized as a ' chapel,' and one of the
members, chosen among themselves as 'father of the chapel,' be-
comes the medium between the Union, the individual men, and the
employers" (Booth, Life and Labour of the People, vol. vi., p. 192).
One of the duties of the Father of the Chapel is to make a monthly
return of the number of apprentices and turnovers, and the system
under which they work (Rules of the London Society of Compositors,
xxiii. 3).

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 479

the Woodworking Trades, which get overstocked. We object
to manual training before they leave school for the same reason."

Or again :—

" The officials of the Technical Institutes try to overrun the
trade with boys from their Day Trade Classes."

This attitude, however, is seldom taken up nowadays, but
some Trade Union secretaries, who otherwise are perfectly
favourable to them, are apprehensive lest they should be
" used to turn out blacklegs, which is the great danger " ;
that is to say, men who will go to them and pick up a smatter-
ing of the business and then undercut Union rates by working
for a low wage. This fear, also, is becoming less common.
Other objections are that the teaching is of little value, or
that " their teachers are not practical men," but these are
less frequent than among employers or foremen. On the
other hand, complaints are sometimes made that sufficient
facilities are not provided.

Among the Union Officials as a body, therefore, complaints
and objections are comparatively rare. Usually efforts
are made to bring the Schools to the notice of the boys, to
point out their advantages and to induce them to attend.
Actual compulsion is not practicable, the more so as in
many cases apprentices and learners are not eligible for
membership until near the close of their time, and, until
they are, the Unions have no control over them. Thus,
so far as the boys are concerned, they have been restricted
to persuasion and encouragement. One or two indeed
have tried the policy of offering prizes to their junior mem-
bers for proficiency at their school studies, but this has not
proved a success and has been abandoned. Perhaps the
most practical step has been that taken by the Amalga-
mated Society of Engineers which allows a three- year period
of Apprenticeship or Service, in place of one of five, in the
case of those who have previously spent at least four in the
Engineering Department of a Technical Institute. I be-
lieve, also, that a few Unions, such as the London Com-
positors and the Amalgamated Engineers, also approach

480 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

employers with a view to the grant of time-off for attendance
at classes.

To sum up, the position of the Societies in London is not,
as a rule, sufficiently strong to enable them to carry out an
active policy either to secure increased attendance by
the boys or better facilities for it from the masters. Some
of them, indeed, lament that in neither case is there such
a desire to make use of them as there ought to be. Thus
it has been said to me :—

" We find the boys will not spend, nor sacrifice, money on
going, and the employer won't let them off to do so, though
it might be to his advantage,"

and for this reason some of the more active Trade Unionists
advocate compulsory Technical Instruction.

The position is much the same with the other branches
of their activity, though some few Societies, particularly
in Printing and Engineering, are able to do a great deal.
But the interest taken by the Unions in various matters,
and not least in Trade Teaching in the Schools, should
render possible increased co-operation between them and
the employers 1 in the adoption of improvements by volun-
tary means and the establishment of better rules and regula-
tions for these various matters. Probably the two sides
will be more and more brought together for these purposes
through the medium of Advisory Committees of the Labour
Exchanges, and indeed a start has already been made in this
direction.

II. CURRENT PROPOSALS.2

Schemes and suggestions for dealing with the problems
of Industrial Training are both numerous and varied ; but
there are a few which for one reason or another are of suffi-
ciently outstanding importance for separate consideration.
These include the proposals made by the Majority and

1 The system of co-operation in plumbing, as organized by the
Plumbers' Company, has been described earlier in this chapter.

2 Unless otherwise stated, these various proposals will be con-
sidered only so far as they refer to and affect boys.

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 481

Minority of the Poor Law Commission of 1905-9, those of
their special Investigator Mr. Cyril Jackson, on which the
former at any rate are largely based, the recommendations
made by the Consultative Committee of the Board of Educa-
tion in 1909 in their Report on Attendance at Continuation
Schools, the scheme recently put forward by Mr. Seebohn
Rowntree and Mr. Bruno Lasker, and especially the sug-
gested establishment of Schools for unemployed juveniles,
and the changes advocated by a recent Committee dealing
with the labour of Van and Warehouse Boys. Of these a
short description and criticism may not be out of place.

The Majority Report l adopts almost en bloc Mr. Jackson's
suggestions :—

(i) that all boys shall be kept at School till the age

of fifteen ;

(ii) that exemption below this age shall be granted
only to those leaving to learn a skilled trade ;
and (iii) that there shall be school supervision till six-
teen and replacement in school of those who
are not properly employed.

They also recommend, though without submitting any
definite plans, that improved facilities for technical
education shall be offered to young people after they leave
School, that, to prevent deterioration of physique, physical
drill shall be more prolonged and thorough than hitherto,
and that the Board of Education shall reconsider the whole
curriculum, aims and ideals of the system of elementary
education, especially with a view to the provision of a better
preparation for a life of manual labour.

" We doubt," they say, " if the atmosphere of our School
life is altogether congenial to a career of manual labour " ;

whilst on the second point they remark :—

" Although we are not unanimous on this point, some of us
believe that the most effective and thorough method of infusing

1 The proposals dealing with Boy Labour are given in Part IX
(25) (a) of the Report. Cd. 4499 of 1909, p. 630.

I I

482 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

into boys approaching adolescence a sense of discipline and
self-restraint, both physical and moral, and of improving their
physique for subsequent occupations, would be a universal
system of military service."

This matter is developed more fully by Mr. Jackson, and
deserves full and careful consideration. Some day it may
get it, but of this one cannot be sanguine.

Mr. Jackson l himself goes much further. He recommends
special Labour Exchanges for boys leaving school, the
abolition of half-time employment of children of School
Age, the " better grading of wages " to check the flow of lads
into unprogressive occupations through the temptation of
high, initial earnings, and a system of compulsory Con-
tinuation Schools. He also mentions favourably a sug-
gested amendment of the Shop Hours Acts with a view to
preventing excessive hours of labour on certain days of the
week.

To many of these proposals it is easy to give a cordial
agreement, though probably the time is not yet ripe for the
adoption of some of them. Thus fuller grading of wages
is eminently desirable, but is probably not practicable with
our existing machinery or until the Labour Exchange
Organization is fully developed. The establishment of a
minimum below which no boy shall be employed is as
much as is yet practicable. It will be discussed in the next
chapter. Again, supervision should not end at sixteen as
suggested in the Majority Report, but should continue till
eighteen, the age to which the control of young persons
under the Factory Acts is extended. So, too, replacement in
school would be likely to lead to confusion if the ordinary
Elementary Schools were utilized for the purpose. This
matter, indeed, can best be dealt with by improved measures
for the placing of lads in the classes and grades of work to
which they are fitted, for these would decrease very largely
the number who were not suitably occupied. Those who
were left could then be provided for by means of special

1 Report by Mr. Cyril Jackson on Boy Labour to the Poor Law
Commission (Appendix XX. Cd. 4632 of 1909), especially pp. 29-32.

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 483

Schools for Unemployed Juveniles on the lines suggested
by Mr. Rowntree.

Dealing primarily with attendance at Continuation
Schools, the Consultative Committee x produced what
was quite a comprehensive scheme for extending Industrial
Education. Its chief features were :—

(1) Better and closer connexion between Elementary

and Continuation Schools, and various improve-
ments in the former to fit their pupils more com-
pletely for work at the latter, including the aboli-
tion of whole and half-time exemptions from
attendance for children under thirteen, and, after
a few years, for those under fourteen in the case
of industrial employments.

(2) Exemption from full-time attendance under the age

of sixteen, only where children are, and for so long
as they continue to be, suitably employed. Special
classes to be formed for those retained at School
or recalled to it after an interval of employment.

(3) Juvenile Employment Registries to give advice in

the selection of employment up till the age of
seventeen.

(4) Improvements in existing Continuation Schools, as

conducted on the present voluntary basis.

(5) Owing to the fact that, without compulsion, the

system is not likely to be complete, the Local
Education Authorities to be compelled to provide
suitable Continuation Schools for young persons
under seventeen within their area and to keep a
record of their names and employments.

(6) Local Education Authorities to be empowered with

the consent of the Board of Education to frame
bye-laws for making attendance at them compulsory
for all young persons under seventeen resident and
working within their districts who are not otherwise
receiving a suitable education.

1 Report of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education
on Attendance at Continuation Schools.

484 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

(7) Employers to let off such young persons to attend

these Schools at the hours and periods required by
the Local Education Authority, these latter to be
fixed after consultation with their representatives
and those of the workpeople.

(8) The Local Authority to fix a limit of hours which

may not be exceeded in any day or week by employ-
ment and further education combined.

(9) The curriculum to give effective training for the

duties of citizenship and to have reference to the
crafts and industries of the district, giving promin-
ence to the manual and practical side, but not dis-
regarding the claims of general education. The
instruction should on every ground include syste-
matic physical training.

(10) Consideration whether Continuation School grants

might not be paid on a higher scale in the case of
those authorities adopting compulsory attendance.

There are also various other proposals of a more or less
detailed character.1

The scheme, in its main outlines, is admirable and states-
manlike. The lines of advance which it advocates — im-
proved elementary education, development of the industrial
and manual, as well as of the literary, capacities of the boys,
Juvenile Labour Exchanges, Compulsory Continuation
Schools, reduced hours for juvenile labour — have all a part
to play in the solution of the problem. The suggestion of
special classes largely gets over the difficulty of the Majority
Report proposal for replacement in School, but if Schools
for Unemployed Juveniles are also to be established, the
two will almost certainly have to be combined. Eighteen
again would be a better age than seventeen as the limit to
the control exercised by Education Authorities and Labour
Exchanges, for the reason already given. There is. also

1 E.g. that the occupations of males and females should be shown
in the Census for each year up to the age of twenty-one. They are
actually so given from fifteen to twenty, but not between twenty
and twenty-one in the Census of 1911.

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 485

much to be said for making compulsory attendance at Con-
tinuation Schools legally obligatory, rather than permissive
and dependent on its adoption by the Local Authority, at
least in the case of London and of larger boroughs and
urban districts. Nevertheless the policy of the Committee
would mean a very long step in this direction.

Mr. Rowntree 1 outlined a system of After-Care, under the
control of Juvenile Advisory Committees acting in co-
operation with the Head Teachers, to continue until nineteen,
and an organization of Care Committees to check bad home
influences during the years of school life, each member to
deal with only three or four families. He likewise adopted
a modified form of the half-time proposals of the Minority
of the Poor Law Commission, suggesting that up to the age
of nineteen all adolescents should spend a considerable
proportion — perhaps one-third — of each week in Training
Schools.

His most important contribution to the solution of the
problem, however, is the scheme of Schools for Unem-
ployed Juveniles. It may be described in his own words :—

" The system would work out in this way. Before a lad
left an elementary school, he would be obliged to produce a
certificate signed by a prospective employer, stating that he
would forthwith be engaged in regular work at a weekly wage,
or else to enter immediately a training school where he would
remain until he found work. In this school, which might be
in connexion with an existing Technical School, he would receive
such instruction as would develop his general intelligence and
render him adaptable to any employment that might be forth-
coming. He would, for instance, add to his knowledge of
applied mathematics and drawing. ... He would be taught
to express himself in writing and would receive carefully regulated
instruction in physical drill. An important place in the curri-
culum would be given to industrial training. . . . The lad
would remain in the School till he could produce an employer's
certificate to the effect that he had obtained regular work. The
exact definition of ... regular work would require considera-

1 Unemployment : A Social Study. By B. Seebohm Rowntree
and Bruno Lasker. Chap. I. "Youth under Nineteen Years of
Age," pp. 1-28, and especially pp. 20-24.

486 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

tion, but we suggest that, at any rate, no promise of work for
less than a week should be considered."

Further, up to the age of nineteen, a boy should always
return to the School during any period of Unemployment,
the employer being compelled under penalty to notify at
once the fact of his dismissal. One free meal a day should
be given to the lads, first to maintain physical efficiency,
and secondly as " compensation for the catch jobs they
miss," whilst thirdly it would enable each school to cover a
wider area by making it unnecessary for the lads to return
home to dinner.

The difficulties due to the continual coming and going of
lads of widely different attainments could only be met by
careful grading of classes, which would have necessarily to be
very small. Variations in numbers according to the state
of trade would be provided for by making the staff and
buildings adequate to the larger demand, whilst in busy
times, " the lads unemployed would probably be the least
efficient and, therefore, those standing most in need of the
increased personal attention which could be given by an
ample teaching staff." As regards opportunity of searching
'for work, Mr. Rowntree expresses the hope that this will
shortly be rendered unnecessary thanks to Labour Exchange
development, and school hours could be regulated so as
to give as much time as might still be necessary. He
suggests from nine to twelve and from two to five, with a
holiday on Saturdays, and special leave of absence as
occasion arose.

The scheme shows remarkable promise of better things
and justifies the hope of its authors that under it
" periods of unemployment, so far from being demoralizing,
would be educational " ; but probably the discipline and
control of the boys that it would secure would be a more
valuable result than the actual education they received.
It would give the best possible opportunity for carrying out
the policy of " replacement in school of boys not properly
employed," suggested by the Majority Report and by Mr.
Jackson. As regards those on the point of leaving, however,

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 487

it will probably be better to keep them at ihe Elementary
Schools till a job is found for them, rather than transfer
them to others for the short intervening intervals. Mr.
Arthur Greenwood, indeed, has proposed a similar scheme
under which attendance shall be voluntary, but Mr. Rown-
tree objects, and in my view quite rightly, that it would fail
to reach those boys who most need systematic training.
To some extent, however, it will undoubtedly be necessary
to bring into operation gradually whatever policy is
adopted. Possibly it might be combined with some system
of Juvenile iJnemployment Insurance, in which benefits
would be made to depend on attendance.

A report of somewhat narrower scope has recently been
published by a Departmental Committee of the Home
Office (composed of Messrs. Gerald Bellhouse, Cyril Jackson
and Nigel Walker), dealing with the Hours and Conditions
of Employment of Van Boys and Warehouse Boys.1 It
proposes that no one under eighteen shall be employed as a
van boy for more than seventy hours per week inclusive of
meal times, every one of them having not less than ij hours
per day for meals or absence from work. Where, however,
employment is for not more than eight hours per day, only
one hour need be allowed. Moreover, such boys shall have
the public holidays usual in their districts or days in lieu
thereof. Employers shall keep cards or other records
showing the hours and mealtimes of each boy. Local
Authorities are to be given power to regulate their employ-
ment still further by bye-law, and no one under sixteen
shall be employed in this capacity between 9.30 p.m. and
6 a.m. Boys in warehouses which receive goods from
vans for sorting and distribution shall also be under these
regulations, their employment in storage warehouses shall
be regulated under the Factory Acts or by other means, and
that of young persons in wholesale warehouses, where goods
are displayed for sale, shall be brought under the same
restrictions as are applied by the Shop Acts to persons
employed in retail shops.

1 Cd. 6887 of 1913.

488 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

These proposals which have received a good deal of
futile and unfair criticism from certain quarters appear to
be practical, well considered and as far-reaching as the terms
of reference would allow. Their adoption could hardly
fail to do much to convert many of the jobs under con-
sideration into excellent openings for boys of a certain
class, and so to minimize the dangerous and even injurious
results to which hitherto they have so frequently led.
Probably it will be necessary in the near future to reduce
hours of employment considerably below the maximum of
sixty-one (exclusive of mealtimes), that is proposed by the
Report. There is also much to be said, at any rate in the
case of van boys, for insisting upon compulsory engagement
through an Exchange and a fixed period of employment,
such as will be suggested in the next chapter.

The drastic scheme of the members who signed the Minority
Report of the Poor Law Commission has been left to the
last owing to the highly controversial character of many of
its proposals. Its chief items may be briefly described in
the words of their summary of recommendations.1

' That in order to secure proper industrial training for the
youth of the nation, an amendment of the Factory Acts is
urgently required to provide that no child shall be employed
at all below the age of fifteen ; that no young person shall be
employed for more than thirty hours per week, and that all
young persons so employed shall be required to attend for thirty
hours per week at suitable Trade Schools maintained by the
Local Education Authorities."

' That we recommend these reforms for their own sake, but
it is an additional advantage that they (and especially the halving
of boy labour) would permit the immediate addition to the
number of men in employment equal to a large proportion of
those who are now unemployed or under- employed."

Elsewhere in the report the advantages of the scheme
are more fully sketched. The employment of boys would be
less profitable, and this, together with a probable scarcity

1 Minority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws
and Relief of Distress, Cd. 4499 of 1909. Part IT, Chap. V. "The
Halving of Boy and Girl Labour," pp. 1190-2.

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 489

of boy labour, would lead to the substitution for them of
adult men. A decrease in their earnings would get rid of
the difficulty caused by boys having " even too much pocket
money " and thus becoming independent of home and too
easily led into evil courses, and their leisure would be absorbed
under discipline. Systematic physical training under medi-
cal supervision would rectify to a great extent " the adverse
hygienic conditions of town life." Finally a good general
industrial and manual training could be given, including
" even a groundwork of training in particular handicrafts
such that few even of indentured apprentices obtain,"
and the boys, each according to his capacity, could be made
into adaptable and intelligent workmen, each " ready
to undertake any kind of unspecialized work and com-
petent, even if he does unskilled labour, to do it ' with his
head/ "

The scheme as outlined is a bold and comprehensive one
and is attractive because of its very simplicity. But it
would also lead to very considerable difficulties. Indeed,
setting aside those elements in it (e.g. raising the school
age to fifteen) upon which nearly all the other schemes
outlined in this chapter are agreed, and considering only
suggestions like the system of industrial half-time that are
peculiar to the Minority Report, there seems no doubt that
legitimate objections are very great, and in my view the
advantages that certainly attach to it can be obtained
equally well along other lines to which these objections
do not apply.

In the first place it has to be remembered that the work-
shop plays, and must continue to play, the main part in
teaching boys the more skilled processes and in providing
that regular and disciplined performance of every-day
labour that forms the major part of the training of the lower
grades. It is true that this part has to be supplemented
to an increasing extent by the Trade School or Technical
Institute in the one case, and by the Continuation School in
the other. Still, it is the workshop that does the lion's
share of the teaching, for the reason that a boy has to be

490 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

trained for it and to do the work as it will be done there.
Further, it can give what is required, and expert opinion is
largely agreed that where this is the case, the training
that is given by it is the best of all. So too with the lower
grades, regularity, discipline and adaptability are excellent
things to acquire at a School, but they are better still when
acquired in the workshop, for the workshop and by the
workshop. The primary requisite, therefore, is to take the
latter and its training and make the very best of them by
regulation and control of its conditions and methods — in
short, by the Organization of Boy Labour. In this, indeed,
the Schools have an important part to play, and to enable
them to play it, we need both a measure of compulsory
attendance and a further shortening of the hours of juvenile
labour.

The alternatives, in short, are to use and make the best
of the existing means of training in the workshop, or to
try to substitute for them to a large extent the Trade or
Continuation School. For this is what it is likely to come to.
Now the School is not fitted to take the chief or even an
equal part in the training. There are a number of trades
which it cannot as yet teach at all, and there are others
whose earlier stages cannot, for one reason or another, be
carried out by it. Again, work in the School is not done
under the conditions of the workshop, and therefore is seldom
or never in a position to replace it completely. It can
supplement it, however, or, where these conditions are
likely to prove injurious to young boys, they can be kept
altogether at such institutions as Day Trade Schools up
to the age of sixteen. It is far better, in fact, that the
learner should spend the bulk of his time at the bench, but
with a certain number of hours at a Trade School for pur-
poses both of training and of physical development. The
same is true also of the lower grades of labour. What is
best for them is regular and disciplined employment in the
workshop itself, and this also can be provided by better
organization together with a fuller provision for continued
education.

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 491

Moreover, the proposal to substitute the School for the
Shop to the extent of half-time does to a great extent in-
volve a confession that the latter is not adequate for the
purpose, that its teaching is a failure, and therefore that
some new system must be found to replace it. And if it is
made, the change is likely for a number of reasons to lead
to the supersession, wholly or in part, of the one by the other.
The lack of confidence shown in them will discourage em-
ployers. The feeling will grow that the Schools have under-
taken the job and that it can be left to them, and this may
very well result in a deterioration, rather than an improve-
ment, in workshop methods. Indeed, in some cases it
might cause employers to cease to take boys, trusting to
obtain them ready-made, as has already been found to
occur with the Day Trade Schools in one or two of the
women's trades. The foremen, again, are less likely to take
an interest in their training, when they are only partially
under their control, just as is said to happen with the
migratory improver, when " a foreman will never take the
same interest in a boy another man has trained, as he
does in his own." So, too, the work of a learner will be
difficult to organize, if he is continually leaving it, whether
at dinner time or on alternate days or for alternate weeks. It
is far from easy to arrange it so far ahead, and he will
have to be given such as will fit the time he spends in the
shop so that his progress while he is there may be retarded
rather than accelerated.

Another point concerns the question of discipline and
supervision. These admittedly are often defective at
present, but will they be any less so under a system of Dual
Control ? The foreman will never feel he has full command
when the boy is continually going off elsewhere after half
the day is over, and the instructor at the School may be no
better off. There is also the danger that in some cases
continual movement backwards and forwards will accen-
tuate restlessness and indiscipline, and so counteract in
part the good effect of the physical and technical training.
Moreover, a clash of views and interests between the two

492 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

is almost inevitable. Already, under the voluntary system,
the objection is raised that the teaching of the Trade Schools
is making boys less receptive of that of the foremen or the
men in the workshop and that they are too ready to set up
against them the smattering of knowledge which they have
acquired elsewhere ; and this tendency can hardly fail to
be increased enormously under the half-time system.

Further, there is the general position of the employers
to be considered. The change undoubtedly would lead to
an enormous amount of trouble and inconvenience for them,
and more particularly for firms of small or moderate size.
With large firms who could conveniently employ two shifts
of learners or boys this might not be very great ; with others
it probably would. Moreover, the wages of two boys
employed half-time under the new conditions would un-
doubtedly be greater than that of one full-timer under
existing ones. Hence to justify such a fundamental altera-
tion in the position of Boy Labour, it is necessary to show
either that employers as a body are clearly abusing their
position, or that the advantages which it professes to secure
are obtainable by no other means. Neither view appears
to me to be justified. The first certainly is not ; and, as to
the second, a system of compulsory continuation schools,
with a reduction of the hours of juvenile labour, would pro-
duce all or nearly all the advantages of a half-time system,
and at the same time avoid its difficulties.

A further consideration is that the complete solution
of the problem requires a thorough organization and regula-
tion of Boy Labour, and that in the provision of this the
co-operation of employers will be absolutely essential. At
present their attitude is certainly not unsympathetic
either towards their boys or towards suggestions for im-
proving their conditions. But to attempt to put into force
a system of this kind, which appears likely to cause them
much trouble and difficulty and to which as a body they
are opposed, would be fatal to combined action. And since
this is essential, the proposals adopted must be such as will
secure it, and any others are impossible.

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 49^

There are two further points, both connected with the
tendency of a half-time system to increase the numbers
engaged in Total or Partial Blind Alleys. The Minority
Report expects a large substitution of other methods for the
employment of boys to result from its proposals, and where
men can easily take their place or where improvements in
machinery enable them to be dispensed with, the amount
of boy labouring will be reduced ; but it is doubtful if the
extent of such substitution will be considerable. Where it
does not occur or where boys are essential, many more than
before will have to be employed, probably at an increased
rate of wage per hour. Now there is a good deal of work
which is simply boys' work and not men's, and in this,
even allowing for all improvements, the change will require
larger numbers, and so will increase, or at least retard
the decrease of, Blind Alley Employment.

Secondly, whilst the total cost to the employers who
continue to employ boys may be greater, yet the wages of
individuals are likely to be diminished. The Minority
Report suggests that this .will not be the case to the extent
of one-half, and that they are likely to fall about one-
third. This, therefore, will make it more difficult to ensure
for learners what the average working-class parent regards
as a reasonable payment, especially as in many cases em-
ployers will find it easier to reduce their wages than those of
boy labourers. The result will be a tendency to increase
the number of promising lads who prefer labouring to
learning, particularly in the case of able children in poor
circumstances. At present they can often combine a
reasonable wage with a chance to learn ; but a reduction of
one-half in time and of one-third in wages, as suggested by
the Minority Report, will render this far more difficult, and
may cause some who are capable of better things to go to
low-skilled work.

Finally, there is the question of providing the necessary
schools and teachers. The scheme will involve an enor-
mous increase and development in every direction. Even in
the case of the proposal for compulsory attendance for a

494 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

few hours only in each week, there will be no little difficulty
in securing the requisite extensions. It would appear, there-
fore, to be nearly impossible to bring the new scheme into
force in the immediate future, and at the same time secure
adequate accommodation and a reasonable level of
capacity in the staff. This will be more particularly the
case with actual trade teaching ; for probably enough
experienced teachers could only be obtained by withdrawing
from industrial life an unduly large number of competent
foremen. Nevertheless similar objections apply, if not to
quite the same extent, to all classes of instruction, and a
supply of teachers for them could only be slowly created.
From this side, in fact, a complete scheme such as the
Minority suggest must be approached by gradual stages
and could scarcely be introduced all at once.

The chief objections to the proposed system of Half-Time
may now be briefly summarized. First, trade or industrial
training can best be given in the workshop, and the Trade
School is not fitted to play so large a part as the system
would allot to it. Secondly, the adoption of this change
would involve an admission of the failure of the former
and would discourage employers and perhaps lead them to
leave matters entirely to the School. Thirdly, it would be
difficult to secure from foremen the same interest as before
in boys who were only employed part-time, and to obtain
adequate control over the latter either in the shop or
in the school. Fourthly, it would cause great trouble and
inconvenience to employers and so make it harder to secure
their co-operation in schemes for the general re- organization
of Boy Labour. Fifthly, the reduction in boys' wages might
increase the number who, though capable of better things,
would enter Blind Alley jobs, rather than accept low
wages as learners. Lastly, there would be the difficulty
in the near future of providing sufficient Schools or an
adequate number of competent teachers.

These various reasons, therefore, appear to turn the
scale against the adoption of this policy — at any rate, in the
immediate future. The better course appears to be to carry

EXISTING AGENCIES— CURRENT PROPOSALS. 495

out a strict organization of Boy Labour, accompanied by
improved industrial education. The former will include
the proper placing of lads in, and their control at, work and
the better regulation of their industrial conditions generally.
It will undertake a careful grading of them according to
capacity and the finding of suitable situations, and especially
will give the able children of poor parents the best possible
chance to rise by putting within their reach jobs which will
yield both a decent wage and a chance to learn. Above all,
it will seek to ensure regularity and discipline in the work-
shop itself. Finally on the educational side there will be
compulsory Continuation Schools and a reduction in hours
of labour sufficient to render possible effective attendance.
The whole policy will be described in detail in the next and
concluding chapter.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE AND THEIR
SATISFACTION.

I. THE PROBLEMS.

II. THE NEEDS OF THE SITUATION.

(a] THE ORGANIZATION OF BOY LABOUR.

(b) INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION AND GENERAL EDUCATION

IN RELATION THERETO.

III. SCHEME IN OUTLINE AND SUMMARY.

IV. CONCLUSION.

I. The Problems.

Two Problems — The Organization of Juvenile Labour : Its
Meaning — Training or Education — Its Extent — Existing
Conditions — The Mixture of Methods — Difficulty of Establish-
ing a Standard of Teaching — Wage-earning and Less Regular
Methods — Influence of Lack of Knowledge and Information —
Influence of Blind-Alley Employment — The Problem of the
Skilled Trades — Special Difficulties — Influence of London
Itself — Educational Considerations.

II. The Needs of the Situation. — (a) The Organization of Boy Labour,
Separate Questions to be Considered — (i) The Mixture of
Methods — Possibility of Organization without Establishing
Uniformity — What 'Uniformity means — Variations within a
Trade — How to Establish Uniformity — The Work of Juvenile
Labour Exchanges and Care Committees — Juvenile Trade
Boards — Organization to apply to Low-skilled Labour also.

(ii) General Care and Control — Importance of Character
and Position of Boys — Supervision to start before they leave
the Elementary School — Supervision at Work essential-
Provision for Improved Organization of Juvenile Exchanges
and Care Committees.

(iii) Adapting of Boys to Jobs— Partly accomplished already
— Extent to which it is possible — Classification of Jobs and
Boys — Fixed Dates for Leaving School.

(iv) The Organization of Blind-Alley Employments — How
Improvement is to be secured — Alternative Methods of dealing
with Blind Alleys — Treatment of Partial Blind Alleys — The
Break in Industrial Life — The Co-operation of Employers —
Bad General Conditions — Importance of Boys' own Behaviour —
— Development of Existing Organization — Fixed Periods of
496

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 497

Engagement — Objections to this — Alternative Policies — Com-
pulsory Engagement through an Exchange — Possibility of
Special Rules in Certain Trades.

(v) The Organization of Other Forms of Employment —
Flexibility — Definiteness — Extension of Short Service — Pro-
vision for Capable Boy Labourers — Overstocking — Organized
Migration.

(vi) The Prevention of Intervals between Jobs — Causes of
Juvenile Unemployment — Importance of More Regular Habits
— Other Suggestions.

(vii) The General Regulation of Conditions — Collective Bar-
gaining on behalf of Boys — Following up of Cases of Exploita-
tion— Promotion of Improvements — Help to be derived from
Continuation Schools' Reports — A Juvenile Minimum Wage :
How far possible.

(viii) Summary of Preceding Sections — Encouragement of
Good Habits essential — Co-operation of all Classes required —
Existing System of Organization must be generally developed —
Proposals for Further Developments.

(6) Industrial Education and General Education in Relation
thereto .

Education in the Workshop already Considered — Im-
proved Industrial Quality in all Grades of Labour must be
secured — Knowledge of Some One Job — Adaptability — Changes
in Elementary Education — The Industrial Bias — Full Develop-
ment of Abler Boys — Testing of Capacity — Wide Extension
of Existing System of Central Schools, resulting in Division of
Elementary Education into Two Parts — Provisions to Secure
Full Use of Existing System of Education — Abolition of Half-
Time and of Juvenile Street-Trading — Restriction of it in
London — Limitation of Employment of Children out of School
Hours — Labour Certificates to be granted only in Exceptional
Cases — Raising of School Age to 15 — Increase of Hours of
Attendance between 14 and 15 — Continued Education — Ex-
tension of Day Trade Schools — Evils of existing Voluntary
System of Attendance at Evening Schools — Recent Progress —
Character of the Continued Education that is Required — Need
for Compulsory Attendance up to the age of 1 8— Schools for
Unemployed Juveniles — Reduction in Hours of Juvenile
Labour — Prohibition of Spasmodic Overtime — Need for Varia-
tion in the System adopted.

II. Scheme in Outline. — (a) The Organization of Boy Labour.
(i) The Development of Existing Organization — (2) Uni-
formity of Method — (3) Juvenile Trade Boards — (4) Detailed
Improvement of Particular Methods — -(5) Special Arrangements
for Dealing with Following-up — (6) The Dating Back of Inden-
tures— (7) Dovetailing of Employments — (8) Co-operation with
Employers — (9) Industrial After-Care — (10) Extension and
Reorganization of Care-Committees — (n) Improvement in
School- Leaving Reports — (12) Provisions for Laying Down

K K

498 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

and Enforcing the Observance of Standard Requirements — (13)
Extension to 1 8 of the Period of Control over Juveniles — (14)
Provision for Periodical Continuation School Reports — (15)
Trade Schools for Unemployed Juveniles — (16) Medical In-
spection— (17) Application of Special Rules to Industrially
Dangerous Occupations — (18) Experiments in Enforcing Fixed
Periods of Engagements and in Compulsory Engagement
through a Labour Exchange — (19) A Minimum Wage for
Juveniles — (20) Limitation and Regulation of the Employment
of School Children.

(b) Industrial Education and General Education in Relation
thereto.

(21) Reorganization of Elementary Education — (22) Central
Schools — (23) Raising of the School-Leaving Age — (24) Exten-
sion of Day Trade Schools — (25) Compulsory Continuation
Schools — (26) Reduction in Hours of Labour — (27) Restriction
of Overtime and Nightwork.

IV. Conclusion.

I. THE PROBLEMS.

THIS final chapter appears to divide itself naturally into
the following parts. First, it will be of assistance to give
a very short summary of the state of affairs prevailing
in London, and already described in previous chapters.
Secondly, I shall state, in some detail, the problems of
Industrial Training, and the kind of measures that are best
fitted to deal with them, and thirdly I shall try to give the
outlines of a scheme to meet, as I hope comprehensively,
the whole of these requirements.

To begin with, Industrial Training involves the treat-
ment not of one problem only but of two, which to a great
extent overlap one another. The first is that of the Organi-
zation of Juvenile Labour generally. In other words, we
need to create for it good habits of work and regular con-
ditions, not merely in relation to health, sanitation, wages
and so on, but in relation also to the character of its employ-
ment. Good industrial conditions mean order, regularity
and discipline, and the growth, therefore, of good industrial
habits, and these are at least as important as definite train-
ing and for many in the lower grades of labour form the
main part of it.

The second problem is that of Training or Education

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 499

proper, which is often and quite naturally regarded as the
problem of Industrial Training. It is a wider one than is
sometimes supposed, for it must not be confined to what is
actually learnt in the workshop, but must include the ques-
tion of developing and adapting elementary education to the
needs of the future worker, and after its close the provision
of further instruction in Continuation Schools. Nor
must it be limited to skilled workpeople. It must also
cater for the needs both of the semi-skilled and of the
unskilled, so far as they need definite training as opposed
to regularity and discipline. There is, moreover, a third
problem of Boy Labour, that namely of general factory and
industrial conditions, but this will only be dealt with here
so far as it has a direct bearing on the main question.

Turning to the existing state of affairs, the first point
to be insisted upon is what I have described as the Mixture
of Methods. There are various paths leading to the acquire-
ment of a trade to-day, and so far as each trade or industry
has a method of its own, this may rightly be regarded as
only the natural corollary of the greater variety of modern
conditions. Thus, to take only the more important, there
are four forms of Regular Service — Formal Apprenticeship,
Verbal Apprenticeship, Employment during Good Beha-
viour, and Working and Learning — there is Learning by
Migration and there is Following-up. Now in many trades,
no one of these methods markedly predominates, but several
exist side by side and compete with one another. Some-
times, indeed, two or even more of them may be in use at
the same time in a single firm.

Now the effects of the resulting confusion are decidedly
serious, and produce or intensify many of the other defects
in Industrial Training. For they make it difficult to estab-
lish any proper Standard in the teaching of boys in the
workshop, and, except in a few cases, no such standard
exists. What is required is that there should be some
definite idea which the public opinion of a trade will accept,
as to the kind and character of the teaching and the method
of imparting it. An employer undertakes certain obliga-

500 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

tions, when he employs a boy, and it is necessary for it to
be clearly recognized what these obligations are ; and this
is what is meant by a fixed Standard' of Teaching. Where,
however, there are a number of competing methods,
obligations differ from one firm to another. Some have
undertaken to teach the trade, and others only to give
opportunity to learn it. Others again employ and pay
a boy solely as a wage-earner and he teaches himself as
best he can.

Now apart from the special dangers involved in the latter
case, this Mixture of Methods makes the establishment of
any definite Standard impossible, since what is good, or at
least adequate, treatment in one case, is the very reverse
of good in another. Hence the less regular methods tend
to lower the standard for the more regular, whilst the
existence of several side by side renders it difficult to enforce
any standard at all and causes abuses and exploitation to
be harder to detect or prevent. Public opinion in the
Printing Trades and, to a lesser extent, in Ship- Repairing
enforces certain obligations, because a single method is
almost universal in the one and decidedly predominant
in the other. But of many industries this cannot be
said.

Side by side with this, there is a great growth in the direc-
tion of less regular methods of training. The boy, even in
skilled work, is coming more and more to be regarded as
a wage-earner, and to regard himself as such, and is employed
and paid up to his full value as a worker. He, therefore,
has to teach himself and to take his chance of learning.
This practice is not without advantages. It gives, for
instance, better opportunities to the abler children of poor
parents than they could otherwise obtain, and boys with
their wits about them can successfully learn in this way
who would not otherwise get so good an opening. But for
the majority these advantages are outweighed by the danger
which they run of spoiling their chances, either by sacri-
ficing " learning to earning " or by continually moving
from job to job and failing to stick to anything.

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 501

Both these problems arise largely out of the fact that the
necessary industrial organization is either non-existent
or hopelessly inadequate. Both of them, again, are symp-
toms of a defect that is common to the whole field of Boy
Labour. To begin with, boys and their parents suffer from
a considerable and often complete lack of information as
to their needs, their capacities and their opportunities.
Frequently their choice of a trade is left to the last minute,
that is till they are actually leaving School, and if this is
not, the finding of a job is. Till recently, again, they were
often left completely without help or guidance, and had
to find work for themselves, knowing neither what to look
for, nor where to look. Many, therefore, have no idea
either of the possibilities or of the dangers of different jobs,
and just take the first that offers. Having found it, they
are under no control or supervision, and stay in it or leave
it as chance dictates, often moving continually from one to
another! Thus, even if they have ever realized them, they
soon lose sight of their true needs and interests and so
spoil their opportunities. This, also, further encourages
the growth of less regular methods, and the treatment of
boys as wage-earners rather than learners.

Such, therefore, are the chief causes which create the
problems of Boy Labour. These causes are further accen-
tuated by the character of certain occupations -Blind
Alleys or pure boys' jobs which last only during boyhood
and compel those who work at them to make a change as
they approach manhood, and Partial Blind Alleys which
provide, permanently for some of those who follow them,
but not for all. The difficulty, moreover, consists less in
the fact that the change has to be made, than that when
the time comes no provision has been made for it and the
youths affected have not been fitted or prepared for any
other work. Quite the most serious trouble of all, however,
results from the type of character which the nature of
these Blind Alleys and the existing lack of organization
and control combine to create in the boys themselves. They
tend to make them restless and cause many to lose all

502 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

steadiness and application, and to grow up irregular, casual
and undisciplined instead of, as they should be, regular,
steady and disciplined, even if unskilled. And in many
cases they also cause more to spend time at the jobs
concerned than are actually required to do the work.

Again, in the Skilled Trades, lack of organization and
control is once more responsible for their particular form of
the problem, namely that of Wasteful Recruiting. Some,
after starting to learn, drop out altogether. Others grow up
partially taught, and only able to secure employment
casually, or for part of the year, or on inferior work at a
low rate of pay. Thus a Reserve of Boy Labour is required
to allow for the failures so produced, and far more need to try
to enter a trade than could find permanent places in it if all
succeeded.

Finally there are various special difficulties. It is grow-
ing less and less easy to master the whole of a trade in a
single firm. Machinery is increasingly taking over certain
parts of the work which a boy requires to know and to learn
even if as a man he will never have to perform them. Special-
ization in output frequently makes it impossible for one
firm to teach more than a part of the work. Again, certain
things can often be learnt best in a small shop and others
in a large one, so that sometimes the business can be most
effectively acquired by utilizing both. Then again there
is the provincial influx which is partly a cause and partly
a consequence of London conditions. To some extent it is
inevitable since London will always attract able and ambi-
tious men from elsewhere. But outside London more regu-
lar conditions of teaching often prevail and a general training
is easier to obtain, whilst the supply that is available from
outside encourages London employers to use it to escape
from the difficulties and expense involved in training their
own workmen.

The whole question is further complicated and accen-
tuated by the peculiar characteristics of London. Its huge
size makes all organization difficult, and the scattered
character of its chief industries assists the growth of a variety

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 503

of methods. For the same reason such good jobs as exist
are more difficult to find, and the absence of big localized
industries means that there is no large natural outlet to
absorb the boys of a neighbourhood. These influences,
therefore, encourage, if they do not create, irregular methods
in general and irregular habits in particular, whilst high
rents and heavy rates still further increase the expense
of teaching boys and deter employers from doing so.

Lastly, there are some more purely educational con-
siderations. Certain facts, such as the prevalence of street
trading and of employment out of school hours, prevent the
fullest use being made in -all cases of what is already pro-
vided. Probably also children leave school at an age when,
even if they have obtained a fair measure of literary educa-
tion, they are not capable of coping successfully with the
dangers of juvenile employment. Thirdly, the existing
system is not adapted as well as it might be to fit them for
their future callings. For without attempting to teach
particular trades, much more could be done to prepare them
generally for commercial and industrial life, more especially
if the period of schooling were so extended as to allow a
fuller development of elementary education.

Further provision for continued education is likewise
required. In country districts the problem is mainly to
establish for this purpose schools of a suitable character
and within reasonable reach of the great bulk of the chil-
dren. In large towns and urban districts this need has to a
great extent been provided for, and the difficulty, especially
in London, is rather to get them to attend, or to keep up
attendance. A great proportion of the children never
enter such a school, and of those who do many fail to remain
there for more than, or even as much as, a single session.
Numerous causes, most of which are particularly potent in
London, combine to produce this result. Defective ele-
mentary education prevents some from taking full advan-
tage of the teaching provided, counter attractions are
powerful, and long hours, frequent overtime and the long
distances to be travelled prohibit attendance or make it
unduly arduous,

504 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

II. THE NEEDS OF THE SITUATION.

Having summarized the prevailing conditions, I pro-
pose next to deal with the problems which those conditions
create, and in so doing I shall adopt a method similar to that
utilized by Messrs Rowntree & Lasker in dealing with
unemployment in York.1 Each phase of the question
will be treated in turn and the measures which are required
briefly indicated. Then in conclusion I shall sketch out a
general set of proposals, summarizing and arranging those
that have previously been referred to.

(a) The Organization of Boy Labour. — In doing this, I
shall deal first with Organization, including under this term
those parts of the problem of providing training in the
workshop which really depend upon it. As so extended,
it is possible to distinguish some seven separate questions :—
the Mixture of Methods, General Care and Control, the
Adapting of Boys to Jobs, the Organization of Blind Alley
Employments, the Organization of Other Forms of Em-
ployment, the Prevention of Intervals between Jobs, and
the General Regulation of Conditions. All these will
prove to be mainly matters for organization, and in order
to achieve permanently beneficial results a large and widely
developed system will be needed. This the existing
Labour Exchanges and Care Committees do not yet provide,
but in the likelihood that they will do so in the future, lies
the chief hope of grappling successfully with the problem.

(i). Mixture of Methods, — The evils of the present Mixture
of Methods need not be recapitulated. The object to be
attained is the establishment in each trade or industry
of a definite standard of obligation as regards teaching and
as regards the conditions under which it is given, whatever
be the actual method adopted. To some extent the enforce-
ment of such standards is possible without uniformity in
methods of training. By a careful organization of the
placing of boys and a strict supervision and control of their
employment, it might be possible to guard against the

1 Unemployment : A Social Study.

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 505

dangers of abuse in individual cases and gradually to raise
the standard on both sides. Indeed, where trouble arises
mainly from lack of organization or from restlessness and
ignorance on the boy's part, nearly all that is required can
be done in this way, and since such Mixture of Methods can
only be gradually removed, it will have to be dealt with in
the interim upon these lines. At the same time, complete
and successful treatment of the problem requires the estab-
lishment of uniformity. The superiority of this is illustrated
by its success in Printing, and to a lesser degree in the
Engineering Trades, and the control and supervision of
individual boys will lead naturally towards it.

What uniformity involves, however, should be clearly
recognized, and especially the fact that to apply a single
unvarying system to all trades and districts alike will prove
impossible. What is required rather is that in each trade
the one best suited to its needs should be chosen and its
observance made as nearly universal as possible. In many
cases the method in most common use will best serve the
purpose. As a rule, the chosen system will provide a mini-
mum below which it will not be possible to go, but the use
of stricter conditions might be permitted under careful
safeguards. What is intended, therefore, is that each trade
should eventually obtain a single method of teaching suited
to its needs. The Printing Trades would, for instance,
continue formal Apprenticeship ; in Engineering the Verbal
Agreement might be enforced throughout, whilst Employ-
ment during Good Behaviour seems most likely to be adopted
in the Art Metal and Building Trades. Again, Short Service
and Migration might come in time to be generally adopted
in many cases, and to displace the more normal arrange-
ments.

Sometimes, however, allowance would have to be made
for variations in the character of the work within a trade ;
and thus uniformity might not be possible throughout the
whole of it, and separate methods would prevail in its
different branches. Thus in the Furniture Trades, a higher
level of skill is needed in the retail work of West and

506 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

North- West London than in the wholesale business. Dis-
tinct systems, therefore, will probably be required for them,
but each within its own sphere will need to be as uniform as
possible.

Uniformity, in short, means such uniformity within each
trade or part of a trade, and will not be limited to the mere
establishment of a particular method of teaching, but will
include the enforcement of the conditions under which it
is to be carried out. Some agreement as to the length of
service, hours, wages, and attendance at Technical Schools
will probably be necessary, except so far as they are dealt
with independently.1 Further, in the course of carrying out
the change, opportunities will inevitably occur of removing
existing defects in training and of getting rid of those causes
which now prevent the adoption of better methods ; and
of these full advantage must be taken. For instance,
employers at present are opposed to Formal Apprenticeship
owing to the difficulty of breaking an indenture. But if
uniformity is adopted, it could be accompanied by provisions
to make some public authority, such as the Labour Exchange,
a party to the contract with power to break the indenture
on proof of the failure of either party to observe it.

To carry this policy into effect, however, requires the full
adaptation and development of the work of the Labour
Exchanges in connexion with Juvenile Labour. These at
present are still in their infancy, and have yet to win the full
confidence of employers, of parents and of boys, and hitherto
only a comparatively small proportion of either has made
a systematic use of them. So far, therefore, the problem
is mainly administrative, to develop the machinery of the
Exchanges and of the School Care Committees, working
in co-operation with them, and to utilize it to secure the
uniformity of method that is desired, though their powers
also need to be extended in certain directions. They do
something already to attain this object, but to accomplish
it effectively their complete organization is necessary.

The mere development of the work will tend in the direc-

1 As, for instance, by Legislation,

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 507

tion of uniformity. By organizing the placing oi boys and
getting into touch with employers a system of Juvenile
Exchanges can do much to bring it about gradually. The
present lack of it is due largely to the multitude of engage-
ments which are made independently by individual firms
and workpeople. The mere increase, therefore, in the
number of them which are entered into through a central
authority would reduce this variety very considerably.
Further, through its control over individual boys, and by
co-operation with School Care Committees, the Exchange
can bring pressure to bear upon unsatisfactory cases, and so
raise the standard of the worst up to the level of the best.
Experiments are already being made in the way of getting
into touch with the employers, and these are likely to be
extended.

Moreover, the Juvenile Advisory Committees contain
representatives of the teachers and of the workpeople and of
employers in various industries, and so will come to form in
time a sort of informal Trade Board that will eventually
be able to agree upon general rules to regulate the employ-
ment of boy labour within their respective trades. It is,
however, essential that their policy should be directed
towards obtaining uniformity, wherever this is possible.1 In
London, indeed, much of this work will have to be carried
out through the Central Advisory Committee and not through
those of the separate Exchanges. Otherwise differences
in the agreements made might defeat the main object.

It is worth while also to consider the possibility of estab-
lishing Juvenile Trade Boards, of a similar character to those
which exist in certain sweated industries, in order to secure
and enforce a standard of teaching, wages, and general con-
ditions, and bring the worse employers up to the level of the
better. The proposal is one of those which are ripe for
consideration and discussion rather than for adoption.
Its success would require a complete organization of the

1 One excellent illustration of the way in which this could be
done can be found in the measures adopted by the Plumbers' Com-
pany which were described in Chapter XVII.

508 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Exchanges, and their present imperfect development is of
itself sufficient to prohibit its immediate adoption. On the
other hand, if the system just outlined did get into full
working order, it might very probably be found to satisfy
all requirements without the intervention of a Trade Board,
and might also prove the more flexible instrument of the
two. There would possibly remain certain trades, however,
where the Exchange Organization alone could not be com-
pletely effective, and here the Trade Board System might
be adopted. For the present, indeed, what is required is
to develop fully the existing organization, and in refer-
ence to this two points must be kept clearly in view.
In the first place, modifications and exceptions will, for a
time at least, have to be allowed. Secondly, the matter
will not end with the establishment of uniformity, and when
this has been secured, it will need to be utilized for the
gradual raising and improvement of the general standard.

Nor will this be confined to skilled labour. For the
lower grades will require a similar standard, though their
problem is somewhat different. In semi-skilled work there
is not the same variety of method to be grappled with,
because such teaching as is needed is so much simpler and
less complicated. The difficulty rather is that there are no
definite methods of teaching at all, and boys just chance
to learn or pick up their jobs anyhow. Nevertheless these
semi-skilled positions equally require to be taught and learnt
properly, and therefore definite and uniform conditions are
essential. This also applies to unskilled work. The chief
requisite, in fact, in all these occupations is the growth
of good habits of steadiness, industry and regularity, and
the problem is less that of teaching in the narrower sense
than in the wider one of organization and control. Here,
too, it is a development of the work of the Exchanges and
Care Committees that is most needed.

(ii) General Care and Control. — It is not merely for the
purpose of ensuring uniformity in methods of teaching and
conditions of employment that a general organization of
juvenile labour is essential. However good we may make

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 509

the former, they cannot fulfil their purpose if defects in the
latter spoil the chances of many boys before they find a
trade or job. Indeed, unless we can secure a uniform quality
in the boys themselves, it is doubtful if we can ever establish
uniformity in other respects. For the bad or unsatisfactory
character is an important cause of defective or unsystematic
training. Under existing circumstances many boys are
ruined industrially before they have had time to find their
occupation, others are spoilt by making a wrong choice
and going to the wrong thing, and others again are injured
because the conditions under which they are employed
make successful teaching, or at least the full and proper use
of it, impossible.

Moreover, certain peculiarities of modern conditions,
especially in London, affect and complicate the whole pro-
blem. There is the lack of uniformity already described.
Again, boys are coming to be treated primarily as wage-
earners and only secondarily as learners, and the increasing
difficulty of teaching a trade completely in a single shop has
resulted in increasing migration from one firm to another ;
and all these causes combine to encourage restless habits.
Thus on the one hand the control exercised over a boy within
the workshop is growing less and less, and on the other the
need for it is ever greater and greater.

Further provision, therefore, is required for the care,
control and supervision of the boys themselves. Much of the
present trouble is caused by the free rein that is allowed to
the restlessness of boy nature, by carelessness and want of
thought, sometimes deliberate, but more often unconscious,
on the part of parents and children, and by the general
lack of information and guidance from which they suffer.
Boys, therefore, require not merely supervision in the
narrower sense, but to have all the necessary facts and
information placed within their reach. This is essentially
the work of the Education Authorities, and the School Care
Committees, in co-operation with the teachers, are their
instruments.

Supervision must begin before they leave the Elementary

510 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

School, to make them and their parents realize the con-
ditions and prospects of their future life. For hitherto
many have been allowed to leave without having previ-
ously taken any account of their future. All of them,
therefore, should be approached seriously several months
or even a year before the time comes and made to realize
their needs, and to think over, and, where possible, to make
up their minds as to, their future, so that some sort of
arrangement may be made for them. Something indeed is
done already in this respect, but it is doubtful if members
of Care Committees can find time in addition to their other
duties to do thoroughly this, the most essential one of all.

Further, when the time for leaving comes, fuller and more
detailed School reports are needed for the guidance of those
concerned. The difficulty here is that they would neces-
sitate a great deal of work by the head teachers for which
no payment is made, and so long as this is the case, a really
thorough filling-up of the forms cannot fairly be expected.

Again, many children in London live at long distances
from the Schools they attend, and careful arrangements
are required for their transference to the care of a member
of some Committee which is working in their immediate
neighbourhood. This could be done by requiring that it
should take place at some fixed time — probably as soon as
his School Leaving Form is sent to the Exchange.

Finally, supervision at work by members of the Committees
remains essential for the purpose both of assisting boys to
find places and of inducing them to stick to them when they
are found, and to make such moves as may be necessary at
the right time and in the right way. In London the work is
now done through periodical reports sent to the Labour
Exchanges after visits to the homes ; and this branch of it
is perhaps most efficiently carried out, though more might
perhaps be done to keep in touch with their progress by
means of visits to the employers. Experiments are indeed
being made of sending cards periodically to the latter asking
them for reports upon their boys, but the system of periodi-
cal visits to them which has been adopted with success in

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 511

other districts might well be tried here, since it serves to
keep them interested and to smooth over small difficul-
ties.

A more complete organization of the Care Committee
as of the Exchange System is, therefore, required ; and
various other improvements can be suggested. At present,
except for a small, though efficient, organizing staff, the
work is entirely in the hands of voluntary helpers, whose
numbers are in many cases insufficient. To accomplish
what is needed, therefore, an increase in the paid staff
is essential ; and I would suggest the taking over by it
of the business of approaching and dealing with boys and
their parents up to the time when they leave School, whilst
the voluntary worker would take the matter in hand as soon
as the School Leaving Form had been filled in and be hence-
forth responsible for it. This would necessarily involve
an increase in the paid staff sufficient to cope with these
additional duties, and payment should also be made to the
Head Teachers for what they have to do. With such
improvements it would then be possible to empower some
central authority, in London the Education Committee
of the County Council, to lay down and enforce a certain
minimum of conditions to be observed by Committees and
Headmasters in the work of After-Care, and so to raise the
less efficient to a proper level and gradually improve the
whole system.

(iii) The Adapting of Boys to Jobs. — The grading of the
boys and of the work, both at the Schools and the Exchanges,
is already carried out to some extent. Jobs are classified
by the Exchanges partly according to the skill or brains
which they require, and partly to the prospects of permanent
employment which they provide. Nevertheless this classi-
fication could with advantage be made more detailed than it
is, by distinguishing, for instance, those places which are
temporary in themselves but likely to provide a permanency
in the same firm, and those which will fit in well with vacan-
cies occurring elsewhere at a later age. What is important,
is that a clear idea of the different situations available should

512 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

be obtained, and that they should be graded according to the
qualifications they require.

Similarly with the boys, what is needed is less a strictly
technical classification than that the information as to each
one should signify what his capacities are and in what
direction they will lead him. Definite aptitudes for one
job only are less common than is sometimes supposed. But
certain broad distinctions can be made. First there is that
between clerical and manual labour, since most boys are
definitely suited either to one or the other. There is also a
smaller number who are best fitted for work with the pencil.
Secondly, a very clear line can be drawn between those who
are fitted for skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled work re-
spectively. There will necessarily be some border-line
cases, and their calling will probably be determined by the
number of available vacancies. Thirdly, but less frequently,
boys show definite aptitudes for some trade or group of
trades.

What is required, therefore, is, first, that the jobs available
should be clearly and carefully classified, and that each
boy's talents and capacities should be fully and sufficiently
known beforehand, so that he can be placed at once in the
position that is best suited to them. Secondly, the different
grades of work have to be treated with an eye to the future
as well as to the present, so that each may not merely be
rendered innocuous but may lead definitely to something
and be put to some definite use. Certain jobs, for instance,
will enable children of poor parents but with good abilities
to earn large wages at first and work their way up to good
positions later on, whilst others which give a chance to
learn should be filled by those boys who are likely to take it.

These objects again depend largely for their achievement
on the development of the system of Exchanges and After
Care, and on the proposals already described for improving
them. Thus the discovery of a boy's aptitudes and wishes
whilst he is still at school and the more careful filling-in and
return of the School Leaving Form will provide much of what
is needed. A great difficulty at present is that there are no

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 513

fixed times for leaving the Elementary School, but each
boy is free to do so immediately he reaches his fourteenth
birthday, and usually does so at the end of the same
week. Hence boys have to be placed in work at once in
whatever place is going, and each situation must be filled
with the best available at the moment. Now apart from
any interference with the work of the school, this makes
it inevitable that often the best use is not made either of the
boys or of the jobs. Very frequently the right boy or the
right job is not forthcoming when required, and positions
have to be filled at once, since with a continuous stream of
boys coming and going, employers are naturally unwilling
to wait.

If, however, the times of leaving were restricted to a few
fixed dates, there would then be considerable numbers to
choose from, and each would have a far better chance of
being fitted to his right job. Moreover, employers, being
compelled to fill their vacancies at certain definite times,
would be likely to organize their work accordingly : and
this would reduce the present tendency to insist upon having
places filled at a moment's notice. In return they would
get a far better and wider selection among the boys.

The chief difficulty of adopting such a policy would be
that of dealing with so large a number at once, but with
more careful enquiry at school and more complete informa-
tion available about them, this would be largely overcome.
The change, however, might prove impracticable till this
organization had been provided. Probably the actual
arrangement adopted, at least at first, would be for boys
to leave at the half term or at the end of the term immedi-
ately following their fourteenth1 birthdays, and those reach-
ing this age during the holidays at the close of the preceding
term. There would thus be six fixed dates for leaving school
in the course of the year.

(iv) The Organization of Blind Alley Employments.—
These proposals have so far been directed mainly to pre-
paring the boys themselves for their start in life or to making

1 Or fifteen, if the age were to be raised.

514 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

it possible for those who have to deal with them to do so to
the best advantage. It is also necessary that the authorities
concerned should deal carefully and systematically with the
work to which they are to be sent. With one or two excep-
tions, no job is good or bad in itself, but all may have good
or bad effects according to the conditions under which boys
are set to work at them. It is not the fact that certain posi-
tions are or are not filled that causes trouble', but the manner
in which they are filled ; and thus the same thing may
become the blindest of Blind Alleys or be so utilized as to
give an excellent start in life. Jobs, therefore, need to be
organized, and the organization suited to temporary and
low-skilled work generally, and more particularly to the
Blind Alleys, may first be considered. Here also it must be
borne in mind that the evil consists less in the job itself,
than in the habits and character which it creates and in its
failure to fit a lad for any further work after it comes to
an end.

Such occupations can be dealt with in several ways. In
some cases total elimination is both possible and advantage-
ous. At one time the General Post Office had to dismiss
a very large proportion of its telegraph messengers between
the ages of sixteen and eighteen. It is now able to give to
nearly all of those who wish to stay in its service the oppor-
tunity of permanent employment in one or other of its
branches, and in the immediate future it will be able to
absorb every one of them. As early as 1912-13 dismissals
for " lack of prospects" were only some four hundred as
against about four thousand under the old conditions.1 Such
re- organization would be less possible in a competitive
industry, but it could be very frequently carried out in
many individual firms. Indeed, even now some, of them
avoid the employment of errand boys in non-permanent
positions by setting the younger learners or apprentices
to do their work, or economize their use of boy labour in
various ways.

1 For a description of the changes carried out, see Appendix,
"The Telegraph Messenger and the Van Boy."

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 515

Secondly, Blind Alleys can by proper organization be
made into connecting passages leading to more permanent
employment. Boys can be put into them to await better
openings, or, where the trade they have in view only takes
learners at a more mature age, until such an opening occurs,
whilst those with no definite objective can be placed in
them for the time being, till they can make up their minds
as to what they want.

The same result may be achieved in another way. Many
jobs, notably those of general shop boys about factories
and workshops, may or may not prove to be Blind Alleys.
Many employers offer a " chance to learn " to a smart lad,
and such an one can nearly always obtain promotion ; and a
well-organized Exchange can do much to ensure that as many
of these places as possible shall be so utilized. By making
itself acquainted with the conditions prevailing in different
firms, it can get to know which of them offer such a chance
and which do not ; and knowing also the capacities of the
different lads, it can send to the former those who will
take it, and in so doing will encourage employers to promote
more boys in this way. Such positions, indeed, are parti-
cularly well suited to those who possess ability, but who
are in poor circumstances, since they have to earn good
wages from the very first. Moreover, some firms pre-
fer not to take learners straight off, but to start them for a
few months on the errands and then to promote them if
they are satisfactory. These arrangements might well be
encouraged and made more numerous.

Similar steps can be taken for dealing with the Partial
Blind Alleys. In some cases those who are displaced
from them can be provided for elsewhere within the same
factory in regular low-skilled work. Here again it will be
the business of the Exchanges to acquaint themselves with
the prevailing conditions, and make such arrangements as
are possible. This may involve the selection of two classes of
boys to enter these Partial Blind Alleys — those suitable for
eventual promotion to the skilled work and others who will
be transferred later on to something else. Such a distinction,

516 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

indeed, will be necessary, whether the latter can stay on
in the same firm or not. The former will have to be limited
as nearly as possible to the number of probable vacancies
for mechanics.

Finally, it is one of the distinguishing features of boy
labouring that there comes a definite break in industrial
life when the boy's work ends and a change has to be made
to something else, whereas, once he is fairly started, a
learner's work in his trade is usually continuous. Often,
indeed, the chasm between boys' and men's work can be
bridged in the ways just described, but there will still
remain many cases in which it cannot. What is required,
therefore, is that a boy's labour shall not be considered by
itself but in reference to his calling in manhood. Where,
in short, his employment is not permanent, efforts ought
to be made to prepare him for something else later on, and
this should so far as possible be work of a kind for which his
earlier jobs have fitted him. In the carrying out of this
task Continuation Schools will have to play an important
part, and much can also be done by proper choice of employ-
ment in the first instance. Moreover, as boys' jobs fail,
men's jobs become available to which they can be trans-
ferred, and the filling of these could be carried out in a
much better way than it is at present, whilst the work
of supervision and control during adolescence will help to
produce steadier workmen. For the evil of Boy Labour
consists far less in the fact that it comes to an end at
eighteen than that boys reach this age with nothing
which they can do and nothing else awaiting them.
Much of the work of the Exchange, therefore, will be to
obtain adequate knowledge of conditions in the first place
and then to use it to secure the desired results.

If, however, it is to achieve much success, the co-operation
and sympathy of employers of labour is essential and can
be secured in various ways, besides the present one of repre-
sentation on Juvenile Advisory Committees. At the same
time more complete arrangements are also needed for
the purpose of obtaining and utilizing their support. So

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 517

far the Exchange officer has dealt with the matter simply as
part of the general work of canvassing employers. What
is wanted is a special staff, or a sufficient augmentation of
the existing one, to enable them to be approached systemati-
cally and induced to assist the policy of the Exchange.
At present there is no lack of sympathy on their part with
the general objects of improving the conditions of juvenile
labour ; but some such action is required for it to be
so utilized as to produce real improvement. It would, for
instance, be possible in this way to provide for the pro-
motion within a firm of as many as possible of the boys
employed in a Partial Blind Alley and for the rest to serve
a definite period as labourers until their transference else-
where should be advisable.

A somewhat different question is that of the attitude to
be adopted where general conditions are bad. It has been
plausibly, but in my opinion mistakenly, argued that
Exchanges should refuse to supply boys in such cases. It
is true that, if all engagements had to be made through the
Exchanges, or even if they were used by the great majority
of boys, there would be much to be said for this view.
As it is, however, the result of adopting such an attitude
would be merely that the employer, having still plenty of
boys to pick from, would simply get them from another
source. Hence the proper policy for the Exchange is to fill
such vacancies with as nearly as possible the class of boys
they deserve to have. Inferior firms should have inferior
boys, or, if somewhat better ones have to be sent, they
should be removed as soon as a better position can be found
for them. The Exchange cannot altogether prevent such
firms from getting lads ; but it can make it difficult for
them to get good ones and provide only those of a poorer
class, thus reducing the harm to a minimum.

Lastly, the behaviour of the boys themselves will have
an important bearing on the success of any such arrange-
ments. It is useless to organize their employment unless
they themselves will work steadily and carefully at it.
Restlessness or misconduct on their part and the ease and

5i8 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

carelessness with which they sometimes throw up work can
defeat the best organization, andean only be overcome by
proper control and supervision reinforced in some cases
by engagement for a fixed period. In short, a definite
attempt must be made to classify and organize boys' jobs
and those to which they will turn in early manhood, so as
to make the best and fullest use of all, and of this the care
and oversight of the individual boy will form an integral
part.

Here again success will depend primarily on the develop-
ment of the existing organization, but there are certain
matters, some of them already indicated, in which increased
powers could be provided — the adoption of fixed dates for
leaving school, an increase in the Labour Exchange Staff
and in the paid Organizing Staff of the Care Committees,
and the further subdivision of supervision between the
latter and the voluntary workers. It might be also advis-
able to enact that no boy should be employed in certain
jobs over the age of sixteen, since after this the difficulty
of finding fresh work steadily increases.1

In this connexion, two matters need fuller discussion—
the establishment of a definite period of engagement, prob-
ably of six months or a year, for all temporary jobs, and
the compulsory engagement through an Exchange of all
boys under a certain age. The former policy has great
merits. It would check, perhaps seriously, the continual
change from firm to firm, and so help to induce habits of
steady work. The boys would become accustomed to
taking jobs for at least a certain definite time, and this
would gradually become permanent. It is objected, indeed,
that they would refuse to bind themselves : but whilst
this might be true to some extent of the older lads, those
who are just leaving school are usually eager to start work
and might probably think a formal engagement of this kind
rather a fine thing. The employers, too, are likely to wel-

1 To some extent the Insurance Act is having the good effect of
causing boys so situated to be got rid of at sixteen instead of later.
See Appendix VI.

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 519

come an arrangement that will give them the services of their
boys for a fixed period, and prevent them from continually
coming and going with little or no notice. There might
perhaps be some difficulty in enforcing penalties for breaches
of agreement, but such breaches would probably not be
numerous.

More serious are certain administrative objections. A
fixed agreement for some months might sometimes endanger
a particular boy's chance of a better opening : and this
would require an agreement to be drawn up, so as, under
certain conditions, to allow of the removal of a boy during
its currency. As a rule, however, the employer if properly
approached would not put obstacles in the way. Probably
also the difficulty would be much reduced by establishing a
limited number of dates for leaving school, since in this case
agreements would be more likely to terminate simultane-
ously.

In carrying out this policy, there appear to be three pos-
sible alternatives — to leave the Exchanges free to promote
voluntary agreements on these lines, to fix a minimum
period in all occupations, or to do so only in those in which
the conditions of employment or the habits of the boys are
most irregular. Universal application appears to be im-
practicable under existing conditions, and at present a
combination of the first and third alternatives seems most
feasible. In certain of the most dangerous jobs, therefore,
no one under eighteen years of age should be engaged for a
shorter period than six or twelve months : and the Board of
Trade might be given power, similar to that possessed by the
Home Office under the Trade Boards Act, to add others to
the list by Provisional Order. Elsewhere it would still
be open to the Exchanges to promote voluntary agreements
for such periods. Probably where compulsion was estab-
lished, all engagements would have to be made through an
Exchange.

A similar policy would certainly have to be adopted in
regard to such compulsory engagement of boys through
an Exchange. Universal application is the ideal to be

520 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

aimed at, but as yet the Exchanges are not sufficiently
developed to make this practicable. It would, however,
be possible to enforce it in the cases of boys employed
in certain classes of work. Already, in London, street-
traders' licences are not granted to lads between fourteen
and sixteen years of age until they have made appli-
cation to the Exchange and failed to find other suitable
work.1 Thus, just as under the Factory Acts dangerous
trades are subjected to special rules, so forms of juvenile
employment that are particularly liable to produce the
Blind Alley character could be put under special regula-
tions, such as compulsory engagement through the Ex-
change and fixed periods of engagement. The adoption
of the latter in a trade would probably necessitate that of
the former. In both cases it is likely that the policy
would from small beginnings become widely extended, and
perhaps in time universal.

(v) The Organization of Other Forms of Employment.—
Similarly, in the case of the skilled trades, the establish-
ment of uniform methods and conditions will not exhaust
the possible improvements. Here, too, arrangements can
be made to ensure the smooth working of each method of
teaching and to guard against its dangers and difficulties.

Some of the chief points may be indicated. In a Formal
Apprenticeship a more flexible contract is needed to allow
of its termination in case of misconduct on either side
without resort to the complicated processes that are at
present required. This can be achieved by making the
Exchange a party to the Indenture with the power of can-
celling it as occasion arises. With the less formal kinds of
Regular Service, the Verbal Agreements and Understand-
ings can be made clearer and more definite. Trouble often
arises at present from the fact that these are too apt to
mean different things to the two parties, and this would be
less common if they were more definite. Again, the advan-
tages of a combination of Service and Migration in a three

1 In 1911 the Council adopted bye-laws prohibiting street-trading
by all children of School Age.

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 521

or four years' Apprenticeship, followed by work as an im-
prover, have already been described. Its danger lies in the
fact that the Short Period of Service may very easily lead
to undue specialization. Careful organization of it, how-
ever, should make it possible to multiply its adoption and
avoid its dangers ; and in time its use might become general.
For it appears to be the only possible system that could be
adapted to every variety of modern conditions. Uniformity
may not be obtainable even in the form of Short Service and
Migration. It certainly cannot be obtained in any other.

Again, provision is required for those who start at labour-
ing work and afterwards display fitness to learn a trade.
To a great extent supervision whilst at school will alter the
conditions and enable many of them to go straight to skilled
work. Where it does not, special arrangements might be
made to meet their case. At present there is the danger
either that their chances will be spoilt or that from lack of
regulation too many will enter a trade. Both Scylla and
Charybdis have, therefore, to be avoided, and two alterna-
tives suggest themselves. Either the indenture, as in
Printing, might be " dated back" over part of the time for
which such a boy has already been at work about the shop or
office, or upon showing capacity he might be " recognized "
as learner or apprentice, with, if necessary, a fixed period
of service commencing from the time of such recognition.

The latter device, indeed, is specially designed to minimize
the dangers of over-stocking that arise in certain trades,
notably Plumbing, in which Following- up prevails. This
springs from the difficulty of knowing and still more of
regulating the number of plumbers' mates who will try to
become plumbers. Every mate is a potential plumber, and
only experience can show how many will actually become
such or try to do so. The result, therefore, has been to over-
stock the trade. Now in many ways Plumbing is adapted
to Formal Apprenticeship, but there are two great objections
to its universal adoption. The trade is not well suited to
young boys and often a chap's capacity for it is not deter-
mined until a later age than in many others. Secondty,

522 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

and for this reason, Apprenticeship is liable to exclude from
it really capable workmen who enter it later. What it
requires, therefore, is that, as an alternative, mates shall be
enabled, on proving their competence before a proper
tribunal, to obtain definite recognition as learners or im-
provers, and that only those of them who do so shall be
entitled to learn it. To be carried out effectively such
an arrangement would require an agreement between
masters and men as to its conditions, and especially as to
the proportion of learners to journeymen.1

Finally, the disadvantages of Migration can be overcome
by more careful provision for the individual boy. Since
he has to change his job from time to time, he needs guidance
as to where, when and how to move in each case, and such
guidance he can get partly from the Labour Exchange and
partly through the Trade School. Co-operation between
the two will, therefore, be essential. The latter can report
upon his progress to the former and advise him as to the
sort of work he requires to do next, and, by its teaching,
give him a preliminary insight into each new branch of it
that he undertakes. Probably periodical reports to the
Exchange from a Trade or Continuation School will play
a very large part in the organization of boy labour, and
they will not be confined to cases of Migration. It will
then be the duty of the former to act upon this information
at the right time, to place the boy into the most suitable
job available, thus minimizing those intervals of unem-
ployment that are specially frequent and dangerous in
Migration. In doing this, fixed periods of engagement for
short periods will once again be useful. Even so, indeed,
this method will not always work with complete smoothness,
but at the worst the improver's progress is likely to be safer
and more rapid than it is at present.

(vi) The Prevention of Intervals between Jobs. — The im-
portance of avoiding intervals between jobs, however, is not

1 The arrangements promoted by the Plumbers' Company al-
ready do something to secure these facilities, and could easily be
extended.

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 523

limited to the case of Migration. Juvenile Unemployment
is one of the greatest difficulties that has to be faced, and its
evil results are even more serious than in the case of adults.
Such unemployment is, as a rule, not wholly nor even
mainly due to trade causes. Indeed, with some few excep-
tions, purely industrial fluctuations do not create a very
great amount of it, boys being often kept on when
men are dismissed. Where they do, the difficulty can, to
some extent, be met by dove-tailing with allied jobs in other
industries.1 Methods of Learning, notably Migration, cause
more loss of employment, partly because the needs of the
boys themselves compel them to move, and partly because
their position as wage-earners forces the employer to treat
them as such and to dismiss them as soon as business
becomes slack. Far the largest share of Juvenile Unemploy-
ment, however, springs from personal and social causes,
especially the restlessness and instability of the boys them-
selves.

Much, therefore, depends on the development of better
and more regular habits of work, and on increasing their
willingness to stick to their jobs. For this in its turn will
re-act upon employers. It will be materially assisted by
two things, the development of an organization for filling
vacancies so that those out of work can be placed in new
jobs with a minimum of delay, and the use of definite
periods of engagements. Where unemployment is inevit-
able, the establishment of Schools for Unemployed Juven-
iles on the lines suggested by Mr. Rowntree is likely to
prove beneficial, though probably either compulsion or
the granting of certain special privileges will be necessary
if attendance is to be secured. Possibly the system of
Unemployment Insurance might be extended and receipt
of benefit between sixteen and eighteen made conditional
upon putting in a certain minimum of time at such a school.

(vii) The General Regulation of Conditions. — Finally,
to complete the structure, a further general regulation of

1 As in the case of the woodworkers in the Pianoforte Trades who
can find work during their slack months in the Furniture Trades.

524 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

Juvenile Labour will be required' ; and once more the
machinery for the, purpose will have to be provided by the
Exchanges and Care Committees. Where necessary, the
former will bargain for as good terms as possible on behalf
of the boys and, so far as these are not fixed by statute,
make arrangements with employers regarding wages, hours,
attendance at Trade Schools and so on. Where legal regu-
lation exists, their duties may well include the promotion
of conditions superior to the statutory minimum, and they
will still be the controlling authority where these are already
above the minimum enforceable by law.

Similarly, they will need on the one hand to follow up
cases of exploitation or misconduct, and on the other to
promote improvements by agreements with individual
employers. For where detailed changes fail to be made
merely because the need for them is not realized, much can
be done, by calling attention to them, to get them carried
out ; and something has already been accomplished in this
way. Again, many jobs are far too freely condemned as
dangerous or injurious, when, as in the case of the Post
Office Messengers, they can be converted into quite decent
openings. All these things, therefore, will be mainly the
work of the Exchanges, whilst the Care Committee will have
to keep in touch with the boy himself, his parents and his
home conditions, to see that they play their part, to report
to the Exchanges misconduct or breaches of agreement,
and so generally to supervise them.

Some of the further measures which are needed for the
accomplishment of these objects have already been indi-
cated, but stress may be laid upon reports from the Con-
tinuation Schools to the Exchanges. These would deal with
the general conduct and progress of each boy. They could,
perhaps, be made twice annually and would be of great
assistance in detecting and preventing exploitation, in
recommending improvements to employers, and in guiding
the boys themselves. Other possible action consists of
the regulation or, if possible, prohibition of juvenile street-
trading, at any rate in its more deleterious forms, and of

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 525

better provision for the medical inspection of children both
when engaged in employment and whilst still at School.
The latter would have special reference to their future
occupations. Further regulation is also required in the
case of those forms of work, such as the lifting of heavy
weights, which are specially liable to be injurious to health.

A more debatable point is the fixing of a minimum wage
for juvenile workers. London conditions are in many
respects favourable to the adoption of such a policy, for
nearly all boy labourers and the great bulk of learners are
able to secure a starting wage of 55. per week and many get
more. Those who get less form a very small proportion
of the whole. It seems possible, therefore, to enact that
no boy shall be employed and paid at a lower rate than 55.
for a full week's work, except in return for the grant, to the
satisfaction of the Exchange authorities, of special privi-
leges in other directions. It ought not to be difficult to
enforce this and to bring the comparatively few employers
who pay less up to the minimum level.

The advantage of the change indeed would clearly con-
sist not so much in the actual raising of wages as in its effect
on the minds of boys and their parents. They often do not
realize that a wage of this amount can usually be obtained
together with a chance to learn a trade ; and, not realizing
it, are apt to take jobs without prospects at a rate that is
little if at all higher. Many also will take 55. a week but
are not prepared to take less : and the fixing of a minimum
would thus have the excellent effect of making it clear that
it could always be obtained.1

Beyond this it is not possible to go for the present. The
establishment of a different minimum for each year of age,
or for each grade of work, is not practicable, since it would
require a far " tighter " organization of boy labour than we
possess. But, for London at least, it is possible to set up
a minimum of 5s. below which no boy shall be employed.
Above this the settlement of rates must be left to the

1 It would not always be possible to apply this particular rate
uniformly in all other districts.

526 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

employers and boys, or rather to the collective bargaining
of Juvenile Advisory Committees on behalf of the latter.

(viii) Summary. — This concludes the treatment of the
Organization of Boy Labour. The various measures
required will be summarized in a later section of this chap-
ter. Here it will be sufficient to indicate one or two general
considerations which require emphasis.

First, the supreme necessity is not merely to establish
certain regulations and forms of control, but to encourage
and develop good industrial and social habits. This
involves not only the creation of them in the individual
boy or employer, but that better methods of training and
employment should become as much the habitual things as
are the existing haphazard ones. In many directions stress
has already been laid on the importance of habit — of that
of steady, regular, disciplined work in the case of all boys
and more especially of boy labourers, and of that of pre-
ferring the more to the less systematic methods of teaching in
the case of employers. Reforms only operate through their
effect upon the actions and character of men. They become
successful when these actions grow into new good habits
that displace the old bad ones. They become permanent
when these habits grow into second nature.

Secondly, to be successful, the organization of Boy Labour
requires the support of all classes— employers, foremen,
parents, boys, officials — and must therefore be adapted to
suit the needs and meet the wishes of all. The convenience
of each class must be consulted and measures which clash
badly with the interests of any one of them stand condemned.
A new and complicated organization can only be worked
by general co-operation, and the hostility of even one of the
elements affected is likely to be fatal. For these reasons
proposals for establishing a system of naif-time for all
children under eighteen have to be rejected. The inconveni-
ence and trouble to the employer is very large, the foreman's
control of his boys is interfered with, and the benefits
aimed at can be obtained by methods that avoid these
difficulties.

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 527

Moreover, one can confidently expect that the interest
and co-operation of the great bulk of employers will be
readily obtained. There are and must always be some bad
ones and others who will not take trouble ; but these are
a minority, and usually a very small one. Further, the fact
that the great body of them have not responded readily
in the past, when approached in the wrong way or from the
wrong quarter, proves nothing. What is more to the point
is the consideration that, whilst general conditions make
exploitation easy, there is so little deliberate exploitation,
and that the vast proportion of the trouble is the result of
mere muddle and confusion. In short, the sympathy and
support of employers is to be had for the asking, if only those
who are seeking it know how to ask ; and they must be
obtained if the problems of Boy Labour are to be success-
fully dealt with.

Finally, success will depend very largely on the develop-
ment of the existing system of Exchanges and Care Com-
mittees. For, as regards the Organization of Boy Labour,
they are the pivot upon which everything else turns. Now
the Exchanges and, on the whole, the Care Committees are
still to a great extent in an experimental and undeveloped
stage, and as a result they have still to gain their experience
and to obtain acceptance and support both from employers
and workpeople. Probably less than one-third of the boys
leaving school enter their names at the Exchanges and
still fewer make regular use of them. So, too, employers
as a whole do not realize their value, and many make
at best only a casual and occasional resort to them. In
both respects, however, they are already making consider-
able progress.

Now, to carry out a really successful organization of Boy
Labour, they need to be able to commend themselves as a
business proposition, which it is worth the while both of
employers and workpeople to make full use of. Their
immediate work, indeed, is to develop and improve their
own organization, increase the amount of their business and
prove themselves a valuable aid to the conduct of industry

528 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

and the finding of jobs ; and the future of Boy Labour
must depend on this.

Improvement, therefore, must to a great extent depend
upon and go hand-in-hand with the gradual extension and
development of the work of the Exchanges, and, indeed, some
of the proposals that have been outlined will have to await
this. Others can be adopted at once. But it is the task of
the enquirer not merely to suggest reforms that can be
immediately carried out, but to point to others which are
desirable and under certain conditions feasible, and to
indicate what these conditions are. This is certainly true
in the present case. Much of the necessary machinery
already exists. What is required is to make it work and
to put it to " its most developed use/' and it is as important
to make the best of what we already possess as it is to
supplement it by further improvements.

(b) Industrial Education. — -The second main branch of
the problem is concerned partly with the improvement of
industrial training in the workshop and partly with such
a reorganization of general education as will bring boys to
the threshold of industrial life, as fit as education can make
them for the part they are to play in it. This does not
mean that the Elementary or even the Secondary Schools
are to teach actual trades or businesses, but that they shall
take proper steps to discover, prepare and develop industrial
or commercial aptitudes, and that they shall give a literary
and general education sufficient in quantity and of the
right kind to help their boys to make the best of themselves
at their work, and in short that they shall fit them to use
to the best of their powers whatever talents and abilities
they possess.

The former section of the problem again falls into two
parts. There is first the requisite improvement in the
actual methods of teaching different trades in the workshop,
and secondly the provision of the instruction necessary to
supplement this in Trade and Continuation Schools. The
former has been dealt with already. It is very Iargc4y a
matter of organization, and what is required is the gradual

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 529

evolution of regular systematic methods, suited to the
varying needs of different trades, to replace the existing
jumb e and confusion. Concurrently with this, moreover,
it will be possible eventually to secure both uniformity and
a gradual improvement in the accepted standards of teach-
ing. What remains to be considered under this head,
therefore, is the problem of improving " industrial
quality "generally by means of technical or similar train-
ing.

This applies as much to the less, as to the more, skilled
grades of labour. These, as already described, are specially
liable to cause the workers to grow up without possessing
either command over any particular job, or the power to
work steadily at it, or the capacity to adapt themselves
to changing circumstances. Those affected by the first
two causes fall into three classes. To begin with, .there are
many who have grown up without knowing any job to which
they can turn their hands, and without any power of steady
and regular work. These, the worst cases, consist of men
who during boyhood have changed their jobs so frequently
as to fail to learn anything at all. To do so several times
within a single year is by no means uncommon. In after
life, therefore, they sink to, and overcrowd, the lowest ranks
of casual, unskilled labour. Others, again, have worked
steadily throughout boyhood at simple boys' jobs, but have
not fitted themselves for anything else after these come to
an end. They thus reach manhood able indeed to work
steadily and regularly, but knowing nothing in particular
at which they can work. Sometimes they sink almost at
once into casual labour, whilst, if they find and then lose
low-paid regular work, their lack of adaptability causes
them to do so later on. Lastly, there are those who have
mastered some occupation but have failed to acquire regular
and disciplined habits. The results are most serious in the
first case, but in all there is failure to develop either good
habits, or industrial capacities, or the power of adaptation
to altered circumstances ; and with these men, as with the
skilled workers, the need is largely for organization, control

530 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

and education to secure these things, more particularly
the last.

For one of the greatest needs of the workmen of to-day
is this adaptability to- change. Under modern conditions
trades and jobs are continually undergoing a succession
of small changes, which require corresponding develop-
ment in their powers, and unless this is forthcoming from a
man, he is apt to be replaced by others.

Lack of it is both more frequent and more disastrous in
the lower grades. The work of the mechanic renders him
naturally more adaptable, though not always sufficiently
so. Small changes in a skilled trade have less effect and
seldom lead to displacement, though a big one may do so.
A comparatively slight alteration, on the other hand, may
completely change a low-skilled job, and such work too often
produces incapacity to meet this. The labourer and the
semi-skilled, therefore, need to acquire greater power in this
respect. Better organization will do much by making
them steadier and more regular workmen, whom it is more
worth the employer's while to adapt to new jobs ; but
improved education will do more. In this both the Elemen-
tary and the Continuation Schools must take their share.

The necessary educational changes may perhaps be best
considered by starting with those which affect the former.
Their teaching needs to take proper account both of industrial
and of commercial life. Until recently there has been an
undue bias in the direction of the latter : or at least whilst
it has been fairly provided for, sufficient has not been done
for the former, or to prepare for manual work those who are
intended for it by nature. By this I do not mean that the
Elementary School as such should teach directly individual
trades or commercial employments. It can, however,
give a general training to develop manual and industrial
capacities, just as in giving a literary training it helps to
prepare for a commercial career. Thus it is possible to train
the eye and hand, to give the power to use and handle
certain tools in common use, and to educate in this direc-
tion as well as in the other.

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 531

Further, whilst up to a certain age education must be
as general as possible, it is afterwards advisable to give what
is called a " bias to the curriculum." Where this is done,
boys are divided as far as possible into those intended for
industrial and for commercial careers : and their education
is planned and organized to give a preliminary preparation
for one or the other, but without teaching a particular
calling. With an industrial bias, for instance, general
education goes on, but the old subjects are now studied
and taught with particular reference to the general require-
ments of industrial work, and a large place is given to manual
training, drawing, and the sciences bearing upon industry.1

Something has already been done by the London County
Council, both in providing manual training in connexion
with the ordinary Elementary Schools, and in establishing
Central Industrial and Commercial Schools for the abler boys,
of which sixty are proposed and forty-eight actually sanc-
tioned. Education in them is to last till the age of fifteen.
This question of Central Schools, moreover, has an important
bearing upon two others — the better education of the more
capable lads and the more complete ascertainment of the
craft or calling best suited to every one of them. As regards
the former, the existing Elementary School teaching some-
times fails to develop the abilities of the best boys beyond a
certain point. Even with the addition of the smaller Ex. VII
Standard, headmasters sometimes complain that they
learn all that the curriculum can teach them even before they
reach the age of fourteen, and for this reason oppose their
retention at the Elementary School after that age, not be-
cause further education would not be beneficial, but because
there is nothing further to be learnt there, since even before
this they have been practically marking time. As a result
it is not possible to recognize or develop effectively their
special aptitudes, and for them some particular " bias " is
even more needful than it is for the rank and file.

The need for the discovery during his school days of a

1 In the Central Schools established by the London County Council
from ten to twelve hours weekly must be given to " practical " work,

532 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

boy's capacity and of his probable future calling has already
been dealt with. Here it is only necessary to point out what
the improvement of Elementary Education can achieve in
this direction. We both must, and more~often than not can,
discover the class of calling, the grade of labour, and less
frequently the particular trade for which he is suited : and
the suggested changes can make this choice both more
definite and more exact. The development of manual
training will help in the first place to show different boys'
powers " with the tools." The Central Schools will for their
own purposes require a careful testing of their capacities
and the keeping under observation of doubtful cases.
Finally, their special industrial or commercial training
will make it far more possible to determine exactly what
each of them should go to, and will assist far more of them
to know their own minds clearly before they start work.

Once again, much of what requires to be done will be
achieved by the development of existing policy and institu-
tions, but the system of Central Schools needs a very wide
extension. Valuable as they are already, their training is
only enjoyed by a limited number of picked boys. These
it is true are likely to profit most by them, but the benefits
they receive should be placed within the reach of others.
Two things are required, therefore. First, every boy who
reaches a certain standard and a certain level of general
capacity should be transferred to a Central School to attend
the course there for a fixed period of years. Secondly,
those who do not attain this level must also be provided for,
since they also need preparation for their work, though of
a different kind and quality. Up to a point this could be
provided within the Elementary School itself, but their
removal from it before they reached the age of fourteen or
fifteen would be preferable. For their use a Second and
Lower Grade of Central Schools should be established
with a separate curriculum. To these they should be
sent at a certain age, possibly for a shorter period of years.

The results of the new system, therefore, would be to
divide Elementary Education into two parts : general educa-

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE, 533

tion up to the age of eleven or twelve which would include
an increased amount of manual training, and following this
a course at a Central School with either a commercial or an
industrial bias. The latter would be divided into two grades
with possibly a shorter length of course in the lower one,
and would be used to coverall boys. To make the system
effective it would probably be necessary to extend the school
age to fifteen, a policy which also deserves support on many
other grounds.

Last of all, it is necessary to ensure that the fullest and
best use shall be made of our existing system of education.
Some of our present difficulties are due to failures in this
direction rather than to actual defects in the system itself.
So far, therefore, improvement can be brought about by
putting boys into a position to take the fullest advantage
of it. At present they frequently do not do so, largely as a
result of engaging in some form of work during the years of
school life. Of this one may distinguish three kinds—
half-time after the age of twelve, street trading, and other
kinds of employment out of school hours. Such work has
two chief disadvantages. It prevents boys from getting the
fullest value from their education, and it is apt to produce
serious moral and industrial defects.

The half-time system is scarcely a London problem, since
it has practically ceased to exist there, and is found mainly
in certain centres of the textile industry. It causes the
children's education to be reduced by one-half at too early
an age ; they are too tired to take full advantage of what
they still get ; and their presence often helps to retard the
progress of the classes in which they are placed. Further,
it is also alleged that the atmosphere of the factory has a
bad general effect on the half-timers and they in their turn
on the schools which they attend. There is a strong case
for the abolition of the system.

Unlike half-time, street trading was until recently an even
more serious problem in London than in most other districts.
It covers one large and important occupation, namely
newspaper selling, and several smaller ones. Of the

534 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

22,194 licences issued in England and Wales (exclusive of
London) in 1908, over 16,000 were for the sale of newspapers,
whilst in London 6,780 out of about 15,000 badges were
granted for this purpose. At this time both in London and
elsewhere the great majority of street traders were between
the ages of thirteen and fourteen. In 1911, however, the
London County Council enacted a series of Bye-Laws,1 under
the Employment of Children Act 1903, by which it
prohibited the employment of children of school age in
this way. This policy might well be made general.

The matter, however, may be considered in a little more
detail. Street trading and more particularly newspaper
selling possess to the full all the disadvantages of juvenile
employment, educational, industrial, and moral. As I
have said in another connexion : 2 "Of the various forms
of child employment Street Trading shows the greatest
dangers and least advantages, and the selling of newspapers
in the street focuses all the evils of street trading." These
evils were strikingly exemplified in the report of the
Departmental Committee 3 that dealt with the subject a few
years ago. Thus the Majority Report stated :

" The effect of street trading upon those who engage in it
is only too frequently disastrous. The youthful street trader is
exposed to many of the worst of moral risks : he associates
with, and acquires the habits of, the frequenters of the kerb-
stone and the gutter. If a match seller, he is likely to become
a beggar — if a newspaper seller, a gambler. ... At any rate in
crowded centres of' population, street trading tends to produce
a dislike or disability for more regular employment : the child
finds that for a few years money is easily earned without discipline
or special skill : and the occupation is one which sharpens the
wits without developing the intelligence. It leads to nothing
permanent, and in no way helps him to a future career. There
can be no doubt that large numbers of those who were once street
traders drift into vagrancy and crime. Chief constables testified
that street trading is the most fruitful apprenticeship to evil

1 These Bye-Laws are printed in full in Appendix VII.

2 Economic Journal, September 1910.

3 Cd. 5229 of 1910.

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 535

courses. These results are specially noticeable in the case of
children who have continued street trading after leaving school.
Many boys who trade, particularly in newspaper selling, while
still at school, take up regular employment of a different kind
when they leave school. But much evidence was given to the
effect that the practice of street trading, even though only carried
out in the intervals of school attendance, tends to produce a
restless disposition and a dislike of restraint, which make children
unwilling to settle down to any regular employment."

The views of workers dealing especially with the street
traders bear strongly in the same direction, more particularly
as regards the difficulty of reclaiming those who take to, or
continue, it after leaving School. That it creates large
numbers of loafers, gamblers and petty criminals is also
insisted upon.

The Majority Report proposed complete prohibition by
statute in the case of boys up to the age of seventeen. The
Minority concurred with the Majority as regards the effects
of street trading. It did not, however, recommend complete
prohibition, but preferred strict regulation, with the grant of
powers of prohibition to the Local Authorities in certain
cases. As regards girls, both reports condemned the evils
of the system and insisted upon its moral dangers " in the
narrower sense," and both recommended its statutory pro-
hibition in their case up to the age of eighteen, with one
reservation for further enquiry in the case of the Minority.

Considerable progress has been made in some districts,
with the regulation of the child street trader, and more
particularly in London, especially since its prohibition in
the case of children of school age. But it is more than
doubtful if the problem can be effectively dealt with in
this way, and both Reports maintained that it could not.
Complete abolition seems, therefore, to be the only effective
policy, and bills to carry this out have been introduced into
the House of Commons, by private members in 1912 and
by the Government in 1913, but each of them has been
abandoned from lack of time.1 The urgent necessity for

1 The Children (Employment and School Attendance) Bill of
the present senior, which has already passed Standing Committee

536 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

such a measure is admitted. It would, however, be an
improvement if a uniform age-limit of eighteen were fixed for
both boys and girls to make the period of prohibition for
street traders the same as that of control under the Factory
Acts and as that proposed for the supervision to be exercised
by Juvenile Exchanges and Care Committees.

Other cases of employment out of School Hours do not
have the same evil effects, industrially and morally, as street
trading, and may even be in themselves harmless. But their
influence on education and sometimes on health and physique
may be serious. Such occupations include the delivery of
newspapers, milk, bread and other goods, and altogether
embrace a considerable variety of jobs. The work is done
before the school day begins and after it ends, on Saturdays
and parts of Sunday. The hours are often excessive, and,
except in very moderate amounts, it is apt to interfere
seriously with progress in school and sometimes to cause
permanent injury by over-taxing the strength of the chil-
dren. Moreover, so far as town work is concerned, such
employment seldom or never teaches anything that will be
of value in later life. Its strict limitation to a maximum of
at the outside ten or twelve hours a week, should therefore
be insisted upon, and then it should only be permitted when
the need of such earnings can be clearly demonstrated.
The employment of school children in agriculture, however,
stands in quite a different position.1

Finally, the policy of granting to the abler children Labour
Certificates to entitle them, on reaching a certain standard,

A, prohibits all street trading by male children under the age of 15,
except such as " before the passing of the Act were lawfully en-
gaged in street trading." Boys between 15 and 17 can only engage
in it if they hold a licence from the local authority. It is prohibited
in the case of girls under 18. These provisions, however, do not
apply to rural district councils, or to any borough or urban district
council which is not a local education authority.

1 The following maxima were fixed by the London County Conn
cil in 1906 and included in the revised Bye-Laws of 1911 : —

Children liable to attend school full time, 20 hours, in any week
in which the school is open more than two days, and 30 hours in
any week in which it is open two days or less.

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 537

to leave school and go to work needs careful reconsideration.
Even under present conditions it seems doubtful wisdom
to cut short in this way the school careers of the ablest
boys even though there is sometimes little left for them to
learn during the last few months of their time at school.
When, however, means are provided, as by Central Schools,
to make the very best of them up to the very day of their
leaving, their interests require that they shall continue their
education as long as possible : and all such exemptions
should be abolished except in very exceptional circum-
stances.

Finally, there is the question of raising the age of leaving
school from fourteen to fifteen in London, and first to
fourteen and eventually to fifteen where the age is at
present lower. Probably this will be rendered necessary
if the fuller development of manual and artistic capacities
is to be fully accomplished and the proposed system of
Central Schools completely carried out. The change,
however, can also be recommended on general grounds.
It will enable education to be made more general and
complete, and will allow what is taught to be better,
and therefore more permanently, assimilated. By being
kept at school till the later age, boys, being older and more
experienced, will be better fitted, when they leave, to look
after themselves and avoid the dangers of industrial life.
Thirdly, it will give longer time and better opportunity
to discover the walks in life to which individually they
are best suited, and to make them realize by the time they
start work what their needs and objects are and how they
are to be attained.1

Should this proposal be carried out, moreover, it could
with advantage be accompanied by some increase in the
hours of attendance at school. One great difficulty of the
present day is the sudden transition to the long hours of

1 The Children Bill of the present session raises the school leaving
age to 14 in all cases in which it is at present lower, and gives Local
Education Authorities the power to raise it to 15. For the most
important provisions of this Bill see Appendix VIII.

538 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

the workshop. This must be met partly by reducing the
latter, but an increase in those of the school itself after
fourteen, or even after thirteen, would help largely to
bridge the gap.

To sum up, therefore, the chief developments required
in connexion with the system of elementary education,
include first the establishment of a sufficient number of
Central Schools of a higher grade with an industrial or com-
mercial bias to discover and develop the special capacities
of the abler boys, and of similar ones of a lower grade for
all others over a certain age. The needs of the latter can
also be met in part by giving a wider range to the teaching
of the ordinary elementary schools, and this will also be
needed to provide a more all-round development for the
younger children. To this must be added the abolition of
street trading, the strict regulation and limitation of other
employment out of school hours, the restriction of the grant
of Labour Certificates to exceptional and urgent cases, and
the raising of the school-leaving age from fourteen to fifteen.
Further, an extension of the system of scholarships and
maintenance grants may very likely be necessary to meet
cases of hardship due to extreme poverty or exceptional
misfortune.

There still remains the consideration of how far and in
what way further instruction can be provided after school
days are over and working life has begun. This is needed
first for the purpose of continuing and making permanent
what has been learnt in the Elementary School, since under
present conditions much of it is unlearnt or forgotten in
the years that immediately follow. Secondly, the work-
shop has always required its teaching to be supplemented,
but it requires it now to an ever increasing extent, partly
because modern conditions prevent it from doing the work
completely and partly because of the growing need of
general and scientific knowledge, which falls outside its
scope.

Here one may consider the Day Trade School. Its work
has been fully described in a previous chapter. It seeks

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 539

during a three years' course to combine a continuance of
general education with instruction in the general principles
common to certain industries, and in the last year with the
teaching to the students of the principles and rudiments of the
particular trade selected by the pupil. Its advantages in-
clude careful choice of an occupation, fuller instruction in
its general principles and in its relations to allied trades than
is possible in the workshop, and the keeping of boys under
careful discipline and control, and away from the work-
shop, for the two or three most critical years of their life.

Conditions of production only give real scope for the
utility of a Day Trade School in certain industries which
can be carried out fully inside its walls. But it is specially
valuable where work of high artistic merit is required
or costly material is used, or where for any reason the
employer needs boys with greater knowledge and sense of
responsibility than they usually possess at fourteen.

Moreover, even upon the small scale upon which they
have hitherto been established, these Schools have achieved
considerable success. They have, however, been limited
to a comparatively small number of boys, who are mostly
destined to fill the higher posts in industry rather than
those of the ordinary artisan. An increase in their num-
ber and size, therefore, to cover at least a considerable pro-
portion of the men engaged in the trades to which they are
suited would have beneficial results, especially if accom-
panied by an extension of the scholarship system to meet
the case of those who would otherwise be too poor to take
advantage of them.

But for the lower grades of labour, and for the bulk of
those in skilled employment, means of further education
and trade instruction must be obtained by means of the
extension and improvement of existing Continuation Schools
and by the provision of facilities for utilizing them. At
present something like one-quarter of the boys between
fourteen and twenty years of age are found to be making
some sort of attendance at some kind of Evening Schools
whilst perhaps one-sixth are making regular and effective

540 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

attendance over a sufficient period to give it permanent
utility. Thus the present voluntary system fails to reach
the great majority of the children, and more particularly
those who require the teaching most. It also fails to secure
regular and permanent support from a considerable number
of those who do join the classes.

This is partly due to too long hours or too frequent
overtime, partly to the numerous counter-attractions of
London life, and partly to the long summer vacation
and the consequent refusal to enrol students within the
preceding weeks. Under the voluntary system the last
is probably unavoidable, so that compulsory attendance is
required if the difficulty is to be overcome. It accounts
for a large number of those who drop off between one
session and the next and retards, often seriously, the progress
of those who do not.

Moreover voluntary attendance seriously hinders the
organization of the teaching on the most efficient lines.
Students are free to come or go at their pleasure, and can
take such instruction as they please. It is often difficult
therefore, to get them to study the theoretical aspects of their
trades, or to acquire scientific knowledge bearing upon them,
or to accept a definite course of instruction. The London
County Council is, however, under a recent scheme for
reorganizing its Evening Continuation Schools,1 attempting
to establish and make compulsory a course system in a large
number of its institutes, and the result of the experiment
will be awaited with interest. It certainly deserves success.
The course only lasts for a single session, and one that
extends over a number of years is much to be preferred.

For continued education needs to be carefully organized
so as to cover a long period, since the kind of instruction
required varies with the age and occupation of the student.
Probably for the first year (or two years if the age of leaving
is kept at fourteen), the teaching should continue to be on
lines similar to those adopted in the central schools ; and with
the lower grades it will continue to be so throughout. It
1 See Chapter XIII.

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 541

will include, however, enough of general manual training to
secure the adaptability of the worker and to give him
sufficient command over tools for ordinary domestic pur:
poses. With those employed upon skilled work, on the
other hand, trade or technical teaching should occupy a
large share of the time, at any rate after the age of sixteen
is reached.

For a variety of reasons, therefore, it appears necessary
to arrange for compulsory attendance at Continuation
Schools from the time of leaving the elementary schools up
to the age of eighteen by all children, other than those
who are suitably provided for in Secondary or Day Trade
Schools. The age of eighteen is suggested rather than the
more usual one of seventeen, for the purpose already noted
of securing a uniform period for the control of young
persons. Weekly attendance should be compulsory to
the extent of six or eight hours per week, the shorter
period being enforced up to the age of sixteen and the
longer one afterwards.

The course of instruction would then be arranged to cover
the whole period on the lines already laid down, and the
proper co-operation of Trade and Technical Schools with
those giving more general education would be provided for.
There would, as with the Central Schools, be separate
organization to meet the needs of industrial and commercial
employments. The long summer break would be avoided
and attendance for the specified periods would be com-
pulsory for about forty-five weeks in the year.1 The
curriculum would probably need to include provision for
such matters as gymnastics and physical culture.

Special arrangements could also be made to provide
schools for Unemployed Juveniles on the lines laid down
by Messrs. Rowntree & Lasker,2 and for the ordinary Even-
ing Schools to act in concert with the Labour Exchange
and After-Care System. They would thus be able by means

1 A Bill (No. 108) introduced into the House of Commons in the
session of 1913 suggested not less than forty- four weeks.

2 Unemployment: A Social Study. By B. Seebohm Rowntree &
Bruno Lasker. Chapter I.

542 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

of periodical reports as to the progress of the boys to assist
materially in making supervision and control effective.
For these purposes, reports upon each boy should be re-
mitted twice annually to the Exchange, and special reports
should be made as occasion required. In addition to this
the instructors will necessarily play a great part in advis-
ing the boys themselves as to changes of situation and as
to the general progress of their work.

Moreover, to carry out such a system with reasonable
hope of success and without placing an unfair burden on
many of the boys, some readjustment of the hours of em-
ployment will be necessary, since those at present in force
often prevent attendance altogether or impose an undue
strain upon such as make it. With existing hours, in-
deed, compulsion would almost certainly fail to achieve
its objects. Some very drastic proposals have been made,
but what seems feasible is the fixing of a definite maximum
week for boys and girls under eighteen, which to begin with
might be forty-eight hours per week, with subsequent
reductions to forty-five or even to forty-two.

In addition to this all spasmodic and irregular overtime
should be prohibited, except in very exceptional circum-
stances. At the same time an arrangement might be
adopted, similar to that in use under the Factory Acts,
by which a limited amount of overtime is allowed in
certain industries for not more than a certain number of
days in the year. Similar permission should be given in the
case of boy labour at certain prescribed periods varying
with the trades concerned, but only on the condition of a
corresponding reduction at some other time. In such cases
the weekly attendance at School might also vary with the
hours of labour.

Very great care would have to be taken to meet the wishes
of employers and arrangements would have to be made for
special cases, such as those of men and boys working in
pairs. It should be permissible, for instance, though not
compulsory, to employ double shifts of boys, each for half-
time. In this case additional provision for school attend-

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 543

ance would have to be made. Similarly various alternative
forms of attendance at Continuation Schools should be
allowed so far as is consistent with educational and adminis-
trative efficiency. The success of the whole plan will
depend on the support and co-operation of employers, and
therefore, as a matter both of policy and justice, every effort
must be made to consult their convenience and put these
changes in operation in such a way as to reduce friction
and inconvenience to a minimum. Both employers and
workpeople would, of course, receive adequate representa-
tion upon the councils of the various schools and a fair
share in determining their policy.

In this connexion somewhat fuller consideration may be
given to the hours of Continuation School Attendance
and to the form which the reduction in working hours shall
take. As regards the former, times which immediately
follow the close of the day's work or which provide for the
boys' absence during the last hours of it are likely to secure
them the maximum of benefit and at the same time to
cause the minimum of disorganization in the workshop.

As a normal thing, therefore, hours of attendance will
probably begin between 5.30 and 7 and close between 7.30
and 9. Various alternatives will, however, be possible,
and care must be taken to avoid fixing times which will
unduly break-up, or interfere with, the working day.
In this respect the Continuation Schools Bill introduced
last year 1 erred somewhat badly, since by limiting attend-
ance to between the hours of 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., it would
have caused an unnecessary amount of inconvenience.
Possible variations include arrangements to allow of
absence for two half days per week, or the working of a five
day week with a free Saturday, or the making of the neces-
sary reduction by excusing attendance before breakfast on
the days following the classes. In any case a varied and
flexible system will be necessary if the combination of com-
pulsory Continuation Schools and reduced hours is to prove
workable.

1 No. 105 of 1913.

544 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

III. SCHEME IN OUTLINE.

A brief summary of the general proposals already dis-
cussed will give greater clearness to the whole scheme. It
will include not only proposals for legislative changes, but
indications of the ends at which administrative action
should aim and suggestions for improving the existing
machinery from within.

(a) The Organization of Boy Labour.

(i) Existing Organization. — First of all, there is required
an organization to deal with the general care, control and
supervision of boys and with their employment, upon the
lines already indicated. For this the necessary machinery
is actually in existence in the Juvenile Branches of the
Labour Exchanges, acting through Juvenile Advisory Com-
mittees, and in the School Care Committees. To a great
extent, therefore, the problem is mainly an administrative
one, to get what already exists into full working order, to
obtain for it the support both of employers and boys, and
so enable it to extend over the whole field the principles
of regulation and supervision that it is beginning to establish.
Much also has still to be done to perfect the co-operation
between the Exchanges and the Care Committees. There
has also been some dispute as to which authority should have
supreme control over the whole organization, but happily
the two central authorities concerned, the Boards of Trade
and Education, have come to a working arrangement on
the matter, and the functions and duties performed by and
under each of them are much the same, whichever is the
nominal head.

(2) Uniformity of Method. — The objects of the Labour
Exchange should include that of securing uniformity in the
methods of teaching each trade or branch of a trade, so
that definite standard conditions could be gradually secured
in it. This does not mean the application of one unvarying
system to all trades, but the adoption in each of them of a
single method of training suited to its needs. Once uni-
formity is established, moreover, it will be far easier to raise
and improve gradually the standard of teaching, and such

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 545

uniformity will extend to wages, hours and conditions of
employment. At first, however, certain modifications will
have to be allowed.

(3) Juvenile Trade Boards. — In certain cases these objects*
could be best attained by bringing together representative
employers and employed to consider the problem^ of juvenile
labour in their particular industry, and to come to agree-
ments as to the conditions of employment and teaching
that shall be recognized. The Exchange would then
attempt to promote the voluntary adoption of them through-
out it. The establishment of Juvenile Trade Boards with
compulsory powers to deal with these matters is also ripe
for discussion. Their formation must, indeed, await the
fuller development of the Exchange System, and this
will very probably render them unnecessary in the majority
of cases. Certain trades, however, may prove incapable
of the necessary organization by voluntary means, and
here in the last resort Trade Boards with compulsory powers
could be set up ; but this is a policy for the future rather
than for the immediate present.

(4) Improvement in Particular Methods. — Most of the
existing ones have certain definite defects. Formal Ap-
prenticeship is often too rigid and should be made more
flexible by allowing the Exchange to be a party to the
indenture with power to break it on due cause being shown.
Verbal Apprenticeships and Understandings are often too
indefinite and mean different things to the parties to them.
They should be made clear and definite, so that each side
should understand what is involved. In Migration stricter
control and guidance of the individual is required : and
careful arrangements should be made for procuring the
co-operation of the Trade Schools in the provision of this.

(5) " Following-up " and " Recognition." — One great
danger of this method is that of over-stocking a trade owing
to the difficulty of regulating the numbers who enter it, and
the right of a mate or assistant to learn it should be made
conditional on obtaining Recognition. That is to say, he
would have to satisfy a competent authority of his capacity

546 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

for the work, and on doing so he would be accepted as a
Learner. This authority should, if possible, be a joint
board representing masters and men, and within limits
should have power to regulate the numbers entering a trade.
In some cases (e.g. Plumbing) such entry might be made
partly by Formal Apprenticeship and partly by Recognition.

(6) Dating Back. — In some firms in which learners are
already employed under a definite agreement, capable boy
labourers are also taught the business. Such arrangements
are to be encouraged and would be facilitated if power were
given to date back the agreements in such cases over part
of the time during which such boy labourers have already
been employed by a firm.

(7) Dovetailing. — Where employment in a particular job
is not likely to be permanent, particular attention should
be paid to ensure that boys engaged on it should have some
definite aim in view and also have ready for them, when
they leave it, work to which they could go, and this should,
if possible, be of a kind for which their previous employ-
ment had fitted them. So far as possible arrangements
should be made for their transference to other jobs within
the same factory, for the use of temporary jobs in other
cases to fill up the time whilst they wait for something better,
and for making the jobs themselves actually permanent.

(8) Co-operation with Employers. — An increase in the
staff of the Labour Exchanges is required for the better
carrying out of their work in connexion with boys. Among
other duties the increased staff should make systematic
efforts to approach employers, to gain their support and
sympathy, and to induce them, individually as well as
collectively, to bring about changes and improvements in
their methods of employment.

(9) Industrial After-Care. In London this is limited at
present to visits to the homes of boys in work. It should
be extended either by sending employers cards to be
returned with particulars as to their progress,1 or, better

1 Experiments in this direction have already been made.

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 547

still, by periodical visits to them by members of the Care
Committees concerned, as is done in Birmingham.

(10) Extension and Re-organization of Duties of Care
Committees. — These require to be increased in various
directions, as, for instance, by approaching children and
their parents more systematically before boys leave school,
and after they have left by Industrial After- Care. These
requirements have been fully described earlier in the chap-
ter. There is already a shortage of voluntary workers.
If, therefore, these additional functions are to be efficiently
performed, a new division of duties will have to be made
between them and the paid organizing staff. The work of
dealing with the children up to the time of the despatch
of the School Leaving Report to the Exchange should be
carried out by the latter. Subsequent supervision, includ-
ing Industrial After-Care, should remain with the former.
Increases in the paid staff will be necessary. To meet the
difficulties arising where a child's home is at a great
distance from the school he attends, arrangements should
be made for transferring those so situated to the super-
vision of Care Committees working in their immediate
neighbourhoods .

(n) School Leaving Reports. — Measures should be taken
to ensure the full and detailed filling-up of these : and to
secure this payment should be made to the Head-teachers
for each report so filled in. In return for this the Labour
Exchange should have the right to. compel the provision
of adequate information.

(12) Observance of Standard Requirements. — When these
changes have been accomplished the Local Education
. Authorities, in London the Education Committee of the
County Council, should be given power to enforce certain
minimum standards to be observed by the Care Committees
and Head-teachers in carrying out this work and to alter
and amend them from time to time. Local Authorities in
their turn should be under the control of the Board of
Education, which might be well advised to draw up a se1
of model rules for their use.

548 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

(13) Period of Control. — The control of the Education
Authorities and Juvenile Branches of the Labour Exchanges
over young persons should continue until the age of eighteen,
instead of seventeen as at present, making this age uniform
with that adopted under the Factory Acts. Apart from this,
extension of control to the later age would have many
advantages.

(14) Continuation School Reports. — On the establishment
of a system of universal compulsory Continuation Schools,
the various teachers in them should transmit to the Labour
Exchange concerned reports dealing with the progress of
the boys under their charge. These reports should be
made twice annually, and on special occasions as required.
Adequate payment should be made for the work involved.

(15) Trade Schools for Unemployed Juveniles. — Measures
should be taken to secure the attendance of unemployed
juveniles at Trade or Continuation Classes for a fixed period
daily : and classes specially for this purpose should be
arranged at the different schools. To ensure their attend-
ance, some form of Unemployment Insurance should be
adopted for all juvenile workers in which payment of benefit
would be dependent on making the requisite attendances.

(16) Medical Inspection. — There should be increased
medical inspection of elementary school children, with
special reference to their future careers, and of young
persons engaged in employment. So far as possible the
work should be done by the same persons. Certifying
surgeons should have additional powers of restricting or
conditioning the work on which particular children are to
be employed and of preventing their employment in lifting
and carrying weights so heavy as to be dangerous to
health.

(17) Special Rules for Industrially Dangerous Occupa-
tions.— In cases of employments which are likely, by reason
of irregular conditions or other causes, to be injurious to the
industrial prospects of the boys engaged in them, the Board
of Trade should receive powers to publish Special Rules for
regulating them. These powers would include that of per-

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 549

milling the engagement of young persons for such employ-
ments to be made only through a Labour Exchange, and
that of fixing a minimum period of engagement. This
would usually be of six months or a year's duration. Certain
definite jobs, such as those of van boys, rivet boys, and lather
boys in barbers' shops, might be dealt with originally and
the Board might be given power to add to their number by
Special Order. In some cases it might also be laid down
that no boy should continue to work at such a job after the
age of sixteen.

(18) Fixed Periods of Engagement : Compulsory Engage-
ment through a Labour Exchange. — At present universal adop-
tion of these is quite impossible, though they can be
applied to particular trades in the manner just described.
Eventually, however, with improved organization it might
be practicable.

(19) A Minimum Wage for Juveniles. — It should be
enacted by law that, for the future, no child over the age
of fourteen is to be employed full time for less than 55. per
week. This should be a matter for legal enactment. In
the case of the Leaving School Age being raised to fifteen,
the minimum should be 6s.

(20) Employment of School Children. — Street Trading in the
case both of boys and girls under the age of eighteen, and
the half-time employment of children of school age, should be
prohibited. The granting of Labour Certificates to boys
and girls on reaching a certain standard and a certain age
should be abolished or only given in exceptional circum-
stances. Employment of children of school age out of
school hours should be limited to a maximum of twelve per
week and should be confined to children whose home cir-
cumstances make their earnings essential.

(b) Industrial Education and General Education in
Relation thereto.

(21) Reorganization of Elementary Education. — To meet
the needs of industrial as well as of commercial life, this
requires to be reorganized on the lines already laid down.
First, by developing such branches of teaching as manual

550 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

training, it should seek to cultivate ,the manual as well
as the mental capacity of all the boys, and to train the eye
and hand as well as the mind.

(22) Central Schools. — For all boys over a certain age
sufficient Central Schools should be provided in which the
instruction should have an industrial or commercial bias.
Their aim should be to prepare boys generally for the branch
of employment, i.e. industrial or commercial, that they are
going to take up, but not to prepare them for particular
trades. Such Schools should be divided into two grades — a
Higher Grade for the abler boys on the lines of the existing
Central Schools and a lower one for the rest, specially
adapted to the needs of those who will enter low-skilled
work.

(23) The School Leaving Age. — This should be raised at once
to fifteen in London and in any other districts in which it is at
present fourteen. Elsewhere it should be raised immediately
to fourteen and after a few years to fifteen. After the age of
fourteen, or even thirteen, school hours should be increased.

Turning to education continued after the close of the years
of Elementary Schooling, we get—

(24) Day Trade Schools. — The extension of these should
be carried out in trades in which the conditions are favour-
able to them, so as to provide for a far larger number of
learners. The number of Scholarships in connexion with
them should be increased proportionally.

(25) Compulsory Continuation Schools. — Attendance at
these should be made compulsory for all boys under the age
of eighteen, who are not otherwise satisfactorily provided
for, for not less than about forty-five weeks in the year.
The weekly attendance should be from six to eight hours
per week. The teaching should be adapted to the ages,
occupations and abilities of the various students, and
close co-operation between ordinary Continuation Schools,
Trade Schools, and Technical and Commercial Institutes
should be organized. Provision should also be made in the
curriculum for such things as physical drill and organized
games : and the present long summer vacation should be

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 551

replaced by a holiday of about one month's duration.
The lines on which this system might be organized have
been described earlier in the chapter.1

(26) Hours of Labour. — In order to render the above
system possible, those of young persons under eighteen
must be reduced. What is proposed is an immediate
reduction to a maximum of forty-eight per week, to be
followed by a further decrease to forty-five and eventually
to forty-two.2 Certain exceptions may have to be allowed.
Employers who prefer to do so may work their boys in
two shifts, each for half time, and for these further con-
tinuation school accommodation will have to be provided.
To meet the convenience of employers alternative ways
of meeting the reduced hours will have to be allowed.

(27) Overtime and Nightwork. — All irregular and spasmodic
overtime by boys under eighteen should be prohibited. But
a limited extension of boys' hours in certain periods of the
year should be permitted, subject to the proviso that there
is a reduction to at least an equal extent in other months.
Nightwork in continuous processes should be further re-
stricted on the lines laid down by the recent Committee
on the subject.

IV. CONCLUSION.

Such are my main proposals for dealing with the Problems
(for there is more than one problem) of Industrial Training.
Some of them will involve far-reaching changes which can

1 The Children (Employment and School Attendance) Bill gives
Local Authorities power to require children, who have left the
Elementary School and are under 16 years of age, to attend
Continuation Schools for not more than 8 hours per week. It
may also make bye-laws regulating the maximum number of daily
and weekly hours for which children under 16 may be employed,
and the age below which, and the hours between which, employ-
ment is illegal. One unfortunate provision was added in Com-
mittee, limiting the hours of work on the days which a child attends
Continuation Schools to a maximum (including such attendance)
of 8. This would be likely to cause a great deal of inconveni-
ence, and in my view it is far better to fix a maximum week's work
for all children and arrange the daily hours according to convenience.

2 Exclusive of attendance at Continuation Schools.

552 INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

only be brought about by legislation ; and among the most
important of them are many which have been continually
before the public for some years. These include the prohibi-
tion of half time and street trading, the raising of the School
Leaving Age, compulsory Continuation Schools, and re-
duction of the hours of juvenile labour. Others, so far as I
know, have not previously been put forward, as, for instance,
the suggestions for special rules in Industrially Dangerous
Trades and for Juvenile Trade Boards. Nor have pro-
posals for a Minimum Wage for juveniles, for reduction in
their hours of work and for restriction of overtime taken the
exact form that they have been given in this chapter.
Indeed, the problem, if it is to be effectively dealt with,
requires bold and far-reaching measures ; but these alone
will not be sufficient.

For the preceding summary consists to a considerable
extent of proposals for utilizing existing institutions and
of suggestions for small detailed administrative improve-
ments, and these are no less necessary than more important
changes. For progress often lies far more in the gradual
building up of an organization than in sensational legisla-
tive change : and this is undoubtedly, perhaps unusually,
true in the present case.

Lack of system and method have led to bad habits and
slipshod ways and to the neglect of more important future
interests for less important but more immediate ones.
There is surprisingly little of deliberate exploitation, sur-
prisingly much disorganization and confusion. Indeed so
much are " muddle " and lack of organization at the root
of the trouble that whilst the results are very serious indeed,
no class in particular is to blame. For deliberate exploita-
tion on the one hand and misconduct on the other play but
a small part in producing them. And the remedy is Organi-
zation— slow, detailed, complicated if you will ; for by it
good may be made to replace bad, right habits to grow up
gradually, and the wrong ones that exist at present to
disappear bit by bit.

And education, training and organization are necessary

THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE. 553

if we are to make the best of our national faculties and
opportunities and to make full use of the increasing national
demand. For at the present moment there are signs, and
more than signs, that failure to train properly in the past has
led to a lack of capable workmen now that a real boom has
come, and when it is over the permanent expansion in our
industries is likely to be less than it otherwise might have
been. Progress demands the elimination of the untrained
and the ill- trained, so that instead of some being fit only for
casual labour, all maybe ready to take each the job suited
to his capacity, and to play steadily their part in the work
of the community.

But if this is necessary in order to make the best of the
national industry and to satisfy to the full the national
demand for labour, a steady and adequate growth in the
latter is no less essential if permanent improvement is to
be made in training and education. Failure in industry
and demand to absorb fully the supply means inevitably that
there is labour to waste and that it will be wasted —
whether by the irregular employment of men or the
irregular training of boys. On the other hand a brisk
demand means economical methods both of employment
and teaching.

But it is the former result that appears to have come
about in recent years. There has been labour to waste
and it has been wasted ; and now in a real boom it proves
insufficient, if not in quantity, at least in quality. To
ensure good methods, increase in the national demand and
national output are essential, and by some means or other
they must be obtained. Increased production cannot be
secured without improved methods of training, and im-
proved methods of training will not be permanent without
a brisker and more adequate demand for labour. The two
go hand in hand. This book has attempted to deal with
one of them, the other lies outside its scope.

APPENDIX I

FORMS USED AND QUESTIONS ASKED IN APPROACH-
ING EMPLOYERS, FOREMEN, TRADE UNION OFFI-
CIALS AND OTHERS.

A. Form of Questions adopted in dealing with Employers and

showing the Chief Points on which Information was
sought. x

1. What is the policy of your firm as regards teaching boys
the trade.

2 . What classes of mechanics do you employ ?

3. At what age does a boy usually start ? Does he come
direct from school.

4. What is the usual period of service ? Is it sufficient ?

5. Is there any recognized proportion of boys to journeymen ?

6. Are any preliminary precautions taken to see that a boy
is suited to his trade ? If so what are they ?

7. Do you give any preference to your employes' sons ?

8. Do you use indentures and premiums ? At what wages
does a boy start ? Does he get continuity of employment ?

9. What part is played in teaching the boy by (a) the em-
ployer, (b) the foreman, (c) the men in the shop ?

10. What work does a lad start at ? How does he progress ?

11. Do you insist on your boys attending Technical Schools ?

12. What part do such schools play in teaching a trade ?

13. Is your trade " picked up " by errand boys, improvers
or labourers ?

14. Is your trade recruited at all from outside London ?

B. Form of Questions used in dealing with Trade Union Offi-

cials and showing the Chief Points to which Enquiry
was directed.

i. What is the usual method of teaching boys in your trade ?
Are any other methods adopted ?

1 The questions in this and the following table were used chiefly to form
a basis for oral discussion of the subject, rather than for the purpose of
obtaining written answers.

556 APPENDIX I.

2. Does your Trade Union lay down any rules respecting
apprentices and learners ?

3. What is the usual age at which boys start to learn a trade
and the usual period of service ?

4. What is (a) the normal, (b) the recognized, proportion of
boys to men.

5. Are any measures taken by the Union to assist its members
in placing their sons, or to see that the lads who are put to the
trade are suited to it ?

6. Are indentures and premiums usual ? Is there any regula-
tion of learners' wages ? Do they get continuity of employment ?

7. What is the actual method of teaching usually adopted,
and the part played in it by (a) employers, (b) foremen, (c) the
men.

8. Are the latter favourably disposed towards the lads ?

9. What attitude is adopted by the Trade Union towards the
Technical Schools ? Does it encourage, e.g. by means of prizes,
or compel, the lads to attend ?

10. What is the actual value of a Technical School to the lads ?
In what relation does it stand to their work in the shop ?

11. Should lads move about at the close of their time ?

12. Is the trade picked up in any way, e.g. by learners, errand
boys or labourers ?

13. Has the development of machinery influenced the methods
of teaching the trade ?

14. Do many provincial workmen come into your trade in
London ? Are tkey better taught than the London men ?

C. List of the Chief Questions asked of the Students l of Trade
and Technical Schools for the purpose of obtaining
their Industrial Histories.

1. Method by which the boy learnt or was learning his trade,
e.g. by apprenticeship, etc.

2. Age on leaving school and at the time of the interview.

3. Father's trade.

4. Boy's reasons for choosing his employment.

5. Jobs, if any, at which he worked previous to the one on
which he was engaged at the time of the interview, and details
of them.

6. Wages received in his present and previous jobs.

7. Continuity or discontinuity of his employment.

8. Character of the shops in which he has worked. Numbers
of journeymen and learners employed.

1 These were in all cases interviewed personally.

APPENDIX I. 557

9. The kind of work on which the boy has been engaged.
How much has he learnt ? Does he actually use the tools ?

10. Who is responsible for teaching him ? Is he actually
taught ? What is the employer's attitude in this respect ?

IT.- Attendance at Trade Schools: for how many sessions?
for how many hours per week ? is he let off early from the work-
shop ? how did he come to go to such a school ? what attitude
have his employers adopted towards his attendance at it ?

APPENDIX II.

TABLES ILLUSTRATING IN DETAIL THE TRADE
DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION IN LONDON
AND IN THE REST OF ENGLAND AND WALES.

A. Tables giving the number of workers employed in some of
the larger industries of London. Dealers are, so far as
possible, excluded.

(i.) Industries in which the general level of skill is high and in
which London has an excess, often a considerable excess, of
workers.

Rest of

Number in

London.

England

London if

and Wales.

the propor-

Actual

Industry.

Number.

Per

10,000

Occu-

Number.

Per

10,000

Occu-

the same as
in the Rest
of England

Excess in
London.

pied.

and Wales.

Precious Metals, etc.

33.670

156

49,069

11,471

22,199

Building and Works

of Construction .

217.324

1,004

728,803

785

169,903

47,421

Woodwork and Fur-

niture

7O,I2I

324

146,268

157

33.981

36,140

Skins and Leather .

18,597

47,294

11,038

7,559

Paper and Printing

74.520

344

100,979

109

23,592

50,928

Total ....

414,232

1,914

1,072,413

1,154

249.9851

164,247

1 In this table and in tables (ii.) and (iii.) the totals in this column are
those obtained by adding together the separate items in it and not by
taking the total number per 10,000 at the rate given for the Rest of
England and Wales.

558

APPENDIX II.

559

(ii.) Industries in which the general level of skill is moderate, and
in which London has some excess of workers.

Rest of

Number in

London.

England

London if

and Wales.

the proper -

Actual

Industry.

Number.

Per

10,000

Occu-

Number.

Per

10,000

Occu-

the same as
in the Rest
of England

Excess
in London.

pied.

and Wales.

Dress ....

89,625

414

285,710

308

66,663

22,962

Chemicals, Drugs,

Dyes, etc .

21,126

53,723

12,553

8,573

Production of Food

33.748

I56

111,201

120

25,972

7,776

Gas, Water, Electri-

city and Sanitary

Service

28,i68[

I30

74,07I

17,315

10,853

Total ....

172,667

798

524-705

565

122,503

50,164

(iii.) Industries, other than those practically non-existent in London ,
in which it shows a considerable deficiency of workers.

Rest of

Number in

London.

England

London if

and Wales.

the propor-

Actual

Industry.

I Per

"-»*-• i S£?

Number.

Per

10,000

Occu-

the same as
in the Rest
of England

Deficiency
in London.

pied.

and Wales.

Metals, Machines,

Implements and

Conveyances x

162,538

751

1,112,391

1,197

259,075

96,537

Bricks, Cement, Pot-

tery and Glass

8,178

119,603

129

27,920

19,742

Total ....

170,716

789

1,231,994

1,326

286,995

116,279

1 Excluding the Conversion of Metals.

56o

APPENDIX II.

B. Tables showing the numbers of male workers in certain in-
dividual trades in which London possesses a marked
proportional or gross excess of workers.

(i) Skilled occupations showing a marked excess (i.e. more than
twice as many in proportion employed in London as in the
Rest of England and Wales).

Trade.

London.

Rest.

Relative
'roportions
! between
the num-
bers
>er io,oool
(Rest =
100).

Number.

Per

10,000

Occu-
pied.

Number.

Per

10,000

Occu-
pied.

Electrical Apparatus Makers

27,671

128

57,075

210

Gold and Silversmiths and

Jewellers

6,597

13,068

2I4

Scientific and Surgical Instru-

ment Makers ....

6,985

7,283

40O

Musical Instrument Makers .

8;449

5,666

650

Painters, Decorators and

Glaziers

61,056

282

123 SO7

JOO

212

Gasfitters

8.070

x ^O'-J /
Q 046

OO
IO

37O

Cabinet Makers ....

19,393

.j/
90

y,v^w

30,617

O/
273

French Polishers

8,164

9,187

380

Upholsterers

=; 786

10,910

22S

House and Shop Fitters

j»/ uv-
5.309

8,265

~-*o

278

Wood Carvers ....

5,408

5,957

4J7

Wooden Box and Packing-case

Makers

4 788

6 QSQ

014

Printers and Lithographers .

T-JP/ *-'*•

57,471

266

w, :?,J :?
70,547

O T1

350

Bookbinders

7 248

c 712

SCO

Furriers and Skinners

/ ftf'r"
5,605

O/>
26

o,/

2,921

D D

867

Leather Goods Makers .

5,252

5,377

400

Brush and Broom Makers .

3-454

6,359

229

Motor Drivers ....

10,486

9,457

480

Total

257,192

1,188

387,913

418

26l

1 The number per 10,000 employed in the trades concerned in the
rest of England and Wales is in this and the following trades taken as
100, and the number per 10,000 employed in Greater London is shown
as a percentage of this.

APPENDIX II.

(ii.) Occupations, predominantly low-skilled, showing a marked
excess in London.

Londo

Rest

Relative
Proportions

Occupation.

Number.

Per
10,000
Occu-
pied

Number.

Per

10,000

Occu-
pied.

the num-
bers per

10,000

(Rest =
100).

Porters, Messengers, and
Watchmen
Warehousemen ....
Builders' Labourers .
Paperhangers and White-
washers

73,850
3,256
37,696

4 249

341
15

128

149,158
6,538
38,33°

I 711

I6l

7
4i

212
2I4
312

1,000

Stationery, Envelope and
Paper Box and Bag Makers

5,922

5 608

5,836

9^.16

45°
260

Barmen

13,177

I5,5i6

359

Total

123 7^8

618

226 43=;

244

253

(iii.) Occupations showing a smaller proportional, but a large
gross, excess.

London.

Rest.

Relative
Proportions
between
the num-
bers per

10,000

(Rest— 100)

Occupation.
Number.

Per

10,000

Occu-
pied.

Number.

Per

10,000

Occu-
pied

Cabmen and Stablemen . . 22,990
Carmen and Van-boys . . i 84,158
Dock Labour 28,058
Plumbers 14 886

1 06

389
I30

52,371
211,120

74,581
50,082

56
227
80
54

189
171

162
128

Total ... i 150,092

693

388 154

418

1 66

o o

562

APPENDIX II.

C. Table showing occupations in which London has a noticeable
deficiency of any kind.

Occupation.

London.

Rest.

Relative
Proportions
between
the num-
bers per

10,000

(Rest=ioo)

Number.

Per

10,000

Occu-
pied.

Number

Per
10,000
Occu-
pied.

Railway Engine Drivers and
Stokers .....

9,580

3,551
13,006

16,897
5,125

8,526

I.OIO

2,320
999

44
16
60

78
24
39

60,103
98,640
112,299

I5L54I

57,888

59,125

58,099

38,104
9,57°

65
1 06
121

I63
62
64

41
10

68
15
50

48
39
61

27
50

Iron Founders ....
Blacksmiths and Strikers .
Erectors, Fitters, Turners (in-
cluding Labourers)
Masons and Masons' Labourers
Navvies and Paviours .
Brick, Plaster and Cement
Makers

Earthenware and Pottery
Makers

Tanners

Total

61,014

282

645,369

696

APPENDIX III.

TABLES ILLUSTRATING THE ATTENDANCE AT

TRADE AND CONTINUATION SCHOOLS IN

LONDON.

The Number of Classes which qualified for Grants held in the
Chief Groups of Subjects in the County Boroughs and
certain Administrative Counties in England in the year
ending July 31, IQI2.1

Subject.

Number Percentage of
of Classes. Total Number

English

9,033

12-9

Languages ......

3,261

Mathematics ......

10,936

15-6

(a) Mathematics (3,027).

(6) Practical Mathematics (7,909).

Science ......

4,78o

6-8

Mental Science and Psychology

206

0'3

Sociology ......

1,769

2-5

Industrial Subjects ....

7.4I3

10-6

(a) Engineering and Metal Trades (3,214).

(b) Building and Woodworking Trades

(1,680).

(d) Mining and Metallurgy (857).

(e) Textile Trades (710).

(/) Clothing Trades (245).

(g) Book and Printing Trades (234).

(h) Home Industries (22).

(j) Miscellaneous Trades (90).

Rural Subjects .....

474

0-7

Nautical Subjects .....

o-i

10.

Commercial Subjects ....

13,220

18-9

ii.

Domestic Subjects ....

10,328

14-8

12.

Ambulance, Midwifery and Home Nursing

1,510

2-2

13-

Physical Training .....

1,827.

2-6

I4.

Manual Instruction ....

1,749

2'5

15-

Art

2,188

3'i

16.

Music .......

1,143

1-6

Total

69,891

IOO-0

It should be noted that the 9,644 classes in Domestic Subjects are confined
to girls.

1 Statistics of Public Education for England and Wales. Part I, Edu-

563

APPENDIX III.

B. Table showing the Number of Enrolments in Evening C asses
and the Number and Percentage of Students who quali-
fied for Grant, in London and elsewhere, in the year
ending July 31, igi2.1

Boys and Men.

Women and Girls.

Number
of
Enrol-
ments.

Number
who
qualified
for grants.

Percent-
age who
qualified
for
grants.

Number
of
Enrol-
ments.

Number
who
qualified
for grants.

Percent-
age who
qualified
for
grants.

London

96,247

70,508

73-2

80,965

56,744

70-1

Other Administra-

tive Counties

(not working

under Rule 34)

9LI56

76,116

83-5

62,165

52,731

84-8

County Boroughs

I50.456

132,206

87-9

97,598

82,926

85-0

Total . . .

337,859

278,830

82-5

240,728

192,401

79'9

cational Statistics, 1911-12, Table 86, pp. 227-230 (Col. 6934 °f I9i3)-
The Evening Schools' Statistics for England are returned in two parts.
Of these one gives the figures for the County Boroughs and for those
Administrative Counties which do not work under the provisions of
Article 34 of the Evening Schools Code, and the other those for the twenty-
five Administrative Counties which are working under that Article. The
statistics in this table are those given in the first part which includes
London. It may be added that in the districts covered by it the number
of students enrolled was 578,587 in 1911-12, of whom 471, 231 qualified for
grant, as compared with 144,189, of whom 135,349 qualified for grant,
in Counties working under Article 3/j.
1 Table 90 of Cd. 6934.

APPENDIX III.

565

labie showing the Proportion of all Boys and Girls under
twenty years of age in the County of London, who were
enrolled as Evening Students and who qualified for
Grants in the year ending July 31, 1909.

Age.

Boys.

Girls.

Enrolments.

Grants Earned.

Enrolments.

Grants Earned.

Per cent.

I2-I4 • • •
14-15 . . .
15-20

10-0
48-5

22-5

2-6

26-4
15-4

23-2

59-4
16-0

14-3
367
10-4

14-20

25-5

167

19-4

12-5

Z). Proportions of Students earning Grants to the Total Number
enrolled at each year of age from 14 to 21, and above
that age, during the year ending July 31, 1909.

Age.

Boys and Men.

Girls and Women.

Total.

i4-J5
15-16
16-17
17-18
18—19

54'4
647
68-5
69-2
71-1

61-6
66-5
647

64-3

647

57-6

65H
67-1
67-4
68-6

19-20

2O-2I

Over 21 ....

717

73-i
6s-4

64-5
64-6
69-2
• 64-^

68-9
68-8
71-1

64'Q

14 zu .
Average

68-2

66-4

_ 67'4

566

APPENDIX III.

E. Table showing the Number of Students engaged in certain
Trades and attending Evening Schools of any kind in
London in 1910-11, and the total Numbers of occupied
Males in the County of London in those Trades between
the ages of 14 and 20 at the Census of 1901, as given in
a paper read by Sir Robert Blair, Education Officer of
the London County Council in March, 191 1.1

Industry or Trade.

Total at
Evening
Schools.

Estimated
Numbers
engaged in those
occupations at
the Census of
1901.

Building Trades —

Bricklayers ......

228

I>143

Carpenters and Joiners

1,492

3,834

Painters and Decorators

464

1,814

Plasterers ......

107

622

Plumbers ......

834

2,053

Masons and Stone Carvers

291

5°7

Engineering and Metal Trades —

Electrical Instrument Makers

294

2,526

Brass Finishers .....

244

771

Boiler Makers, Platers and Rivetters

I67

579

Fitters, Turners and Machinemen .

2,201

!,5i7

Metal Plate Workers ....

341

2,645

Motor and Cycle Engineers .

412

645

Blacksmiths and Strikers

346

1,274

Wood and Furniture Trades —

Cabinet Makers .....

1,078

2,5°5

French Polishers ....

210

1,290

Upholsterers .....

295

802

Coach and Van Builders and Wheelwrights

269

875

Wood Carvers and Gilders

217

919

Art Metal, etc. —

Gold and Silver Smiths and Jewellers

590

1,128

Optical and Scientific Instrument Makers

(other than Sight-Testing Opticians) .

412

843

Musical Instrument Makers .

114

1,312

Horological Trades ....

135

359

Printing and Bookbinding —

Printing and Lithography (including paper

and stationery trades)

2,794

• 9,362

Bookbinding .....

511

1,033

Photographic Trades ....

526

352

Leather Trades —

Leather Manufacture ....

108

1,212

Boot and Shoe Manufacture

539

i! 2,263

Saddlery and Harness Makers

114

489

1 The figures for the total number occupied between 14 and 20 are
those of Sir Robert Blair's paper, based on the Census of 1901. In a note

APPENDIX III. 567

introductory to the statistics, he states that " the list of occupations was
not based on the classification of the Census returns, but was drawn up
after consultation with the principals of various polytechnics, technical
institutes . . . and represents the best that can at present be done with
the information given on the students' enrolment forms." Hence the
figures given in the Census of 1911 would not, owing to differences of
classification, be always strictly comparable with those of the number
attending evening schools. It must be remembered that in many trades,
there was between 1901 and 1911 a decline, and even a considerable decline,
in the numbers of youths between 14 and 20. In all Evening Schools in
London, the students between these ages were in the session of 1911—12
rather less than three-fifths of the total number in the case of nten and boys,
and less than one-half in that of women and girls.

Sir Robert Blair also stated that students would not in all cases be attend-
ing classes bearing directly on their occupations, but that the great majority
would be.

APPENDIX IV

TABLES ILLUSTRATING THE CHANGES IN THE PER-
CENTAGES OF UNEMPLOYMENT FROM 1870-1909,

A. Table giving the ten-yearly averages of Unemployment from
1870 to 1909 in certain Industries and Unions.1

Industry or Union.

1870-9.

1880-9.

1890-9.

1900-9.

All Unions making Returns (uncor-
rected percentage) ....
Percentage of Sixteen Trade Unions mak-
ing continuous returns since 1873
Engineering, Shipbuilding and Metal
Trades

3-8
473

S'O

5-6
57

7 'O

4-4
4-6
6*0

5-3 (6)

6-8

Amalgamated Engineers
Iron Founders
Iron Moulders (Scotland)
Boiler Makers and Iron and Steel
Shipbuilders

3-6
7-6
8-9

4-4

8-1

4'3
6-3
12-3

9-T

4-9
9-1
14-8

1 1 "2

Building Trades (Amalgamated Car-
penters and Joiners only)
Woodworking and Furniture Trades .
United Coachmakers ....
Furnishing Trades Association
Amalgamated Woodcutting Machin-
inists .... ...

2-3
3-5
4-4
0-9

5'4

4-0
27

2*1

2-4
2-9
2-7
1-4

1-8

6-8
5'3
47
5'4

5^T

Printing and Bookbinding Trades
London Compositors ....
Typographical Association .
London Bookbinders ....

2-4
2-5

2-0

3-2

1-9

4-1
3'8

4-6

47
4'9

1 The returns given are confined to the general percentage, the sixteen
Trade Unions that have made continuous returns since 1873, and the four
groups which make the bulk of the returns. The miscellaneous group of

other trades " is omitted. The way in which the returns have been made
does not allow of a fair comparison over a long series of years, and no de-
tailed figures are given for individual trades. In the returns for these
trades there is not the same marked tendency for an increase in the per-
centages during the last decade (1900-9).

2 In 1908 a change in the method of estimating the percentage was
made. The new percentage (a) averaged about 0-4 per cent, a year less
than the old one (6), for the years for which both were published. For pur-
poses of comparison with earlier decades the latter is much fairer and this
is available till the close of 1908, and is estimated for 1909 to complete the
genera] percentage for the decade 1900-9.

9 1873-9 only.

APPENDIX IV.

569

B. Table showing the Percentage of Unemployment in certain
Industries and Unions during the chief periods of Good
Trade between 1870 and 1909. (The averages given
are for the two lowest consecutive years in each boom.)

Industry or Union.

Early
Seven-
ties
(usually
1872-3)

Early
Eighties
(usually
1882-3)

About
1889-
1890.

About
1899-
1900.

About
1906-
1907.

All Unions making Returns

2-2 (a)1

3-6 (a) i

(uncorrected percentage) . i -o

2-4

2-1

2-6 (b)

4-1 (b)

Percentage of Sixteen Trade

Unions making Continuous

Returns since 1873

1-4

2-4

2-0

2-3

4-6

Engineering, Shipbuilding and

Metal Trades ....

I-I

2'5

2-2

2-5

4 '5

Amalgamated Engineers

1-8

2'3

2-9

Iron Founders ....

1-9

2'3

2-4

5'2

Iron Moulders (Scotland)

2-2

9'5

5'9

6-1

7-9

Boilermakers and Iron and

Steel Shipbuilders .

I-I

1-2

2-2

8-1

Building Trades (Amalgamated

Carpenters and Joiners

only)

0-6

3-5

2-0

i-o

7-1

Woodworking and Furniture

Trades

1-9

2'5

2'3

2-1

United Coachmakers

2-3

2-9

2-4

2-2

Furnishing Trades Associa-

tion

o-i

0-8

0-9

4-8

Amalgamated Woodcutting

Machinists ....

0-9

0-8

4-8

Printing and Bookbinding

Trades

i '4

2-1

2'3

3-8

4-4

London Compositors

i'3

2-8

2 '4

3'°

Typographical Association .

i-i

1-6

4'5

4-4

London Bookbinders

i-3

1-2

4-0

5'5

1 See note 2 to Table A.

2 The course of Unemployment with the London Compositors differed
from that of other trades, being lowest in 1903-4.

57°

APPENDIX IV.

C. Table showing the Percentage of Unemployment in certain
Industries and Unions during the chief periods of Trade
Depression between 1870 and 1909. (The averages
given are for the two highest consecutive years in each
Depression.)

Industry or Union.

Later
Seven-
ties
(usually
1878-9)

Mid
Eighties
(usually
1878-9)

Mid

Nineties
(usually
1893-4]
or
1894-5)

1902-5
(usually
I9°4~5)

1908-9
(usually
1908-9)

All Unions making Returns

5 '5 (a)1

7 7 (a)1

(uncorrected percentage) .

9-1

7-2

6-0 (b)

8-1 (6)

The Sixteen Trade Unions

making Continuous Re-

turns since 1873

9'3

IO-I

8-0

6-9

io-9a

Engineering, Shipbuilding and

Metal Trades ....

I2-I

13-2

n-3

7'5

12-7

Amalgamated Engineers

7-1

8-4

5'4

9'3

Iron Founders ....

I9-2

13-0

10-8

IO-I

177

Iron Moulders (Scotland)

20-3

32-9

19-0

137

29-8

Boilermakers and Iron and

Steel Shipbuilders . .

9.4

21-9

16-6

12-8

22-1

Building Trades (Amalgamated

Carpenters and Joiners

only)

7-1

7-6

4-1

7-6

II-6

Woodworking and Furnishing

Trades

6-3

4.4

4'2

6-3

7-9

United Coachmakers

5'2

3'4

5'i

7-6

Furnishing Trades Associa-

tion

3'i

4'3

2-4

6-7

IO-O

Amalgamated Woodcutting

Machinists ....

2'5

2-8

2-5

5'4

8-4

Printing and Bookbinding

Trades

3-6

2-5

5-3

4'9

5'5

London Compositors

4-1

3'3

5'i

5-o

6-1

Typographical Association .

3'3

1-8

5-8

5-o

5'i

London Bookbinders

4-9

3'9

5'9

6-4

7-1

1 See note 2 to Table A.

2 Estimated for 1909.

APPENDIX V.

THE TELEGRAPH MESSENGER AND THE VAN BOY.*

One of the most carelessly used terms of to-day is that of Blind
Alley Employment. In its usual sense, it refers to jobs which
give employment from the time a boy leaves school up to the
age of from eighteen to twenty, and then compel him to seek
other work. Thus they only last during boyhood, and do nothing
to fit him for anything else. Now, employments of this kind,
which do not absorb their boys at all or only a small proportion
of them, are to be regarded as Blind Alleys par excellence ; since
unless special arrangements are made, they must normally end
in this way.

But the term may also be used in a wider sense. In its essence
Blind Alley employment does not consist solely in lack of per-
manence in a particular job, but in the failure to provide boys
with a definite occupation. Thus a skilled trade may generally
give permanent employment to those who enter it, but for
various reasons some who do so, reach manhood without learning
anything. They may, for instance, be badly trained and when
they are men be unable to get work. Or, they may fail to stick
to their job and wander from trade to trade, and learn none of
them. In either case, they grow up without having any single
definite thing which they can do. Hence the job that ends at
about eighteen is the chief but not the sole source of this ; but
Blind Alley employment covers every failure to acquire a trade
or occupation, using the latter in a wide sense to include all per-
manent work of any kind. All boys cannot become mechanics,
every boy can and should acquire during boyhood some definite
job, to which he can turn his hand afterwards.

Thirdly, there is not only Blind Alley work, but what may be
called the Blind Alley character. Not only must a man have
learnt some definite job, but even when unskilled, he needs to be
steady, regular and disciplined. Hence two questions have to
be asked. First, does a job provide permanent employment for
its boys ? And, secondly, does it fit them to become steady and
regular workmen ? And its character as a Blind Alley will

1 Reprinted from the Clare Market Review, November, 1913.

571

572 APPENDIX V.

depend on the answer to both. In this respect, some occupations
are more dangerous than others. Thus the first Report of the
Standing Committee on Boy Labour in the Post Office said :
" While the more or less intermittent nature of a messenger's
work, and its lack of any directly educational influence, no doubt
tend to reduce, they do not destroy the value of the strict disci-
pline and physical training under which the lads pass their ser-
vice." On the other hand, the van boy has little discipline
and control, he has to undergo little steady exertion, and at the
same time his hours are often unduly long and quite preclude
attendance at evening schools. The object of this article is to
consider these two occupations as Blind Alleys from each of
these aspects, and to discuss the desirability of the measures
proposed or adopted for removing or mitigating their Blind Alley
character.

There are several alternative methods of dealing with such
employments. First, in extreme cases there is absolute prohibi-
tion, on the ground that, as in the case of Juvenile Street Trading,
moral and industrial results are so serious that this alone can
effectively prevent them. Secondly, it may be possible to remove,
partly or wholly, the Blind Alley character of a job, either by
reducing the number of boys employed in it, or by increasing
the openings for permanent employment. Where feasible, this
is perhaps the best alternative, but in the majority of cases such
complete re-organization is not practicable. A third line of
policy includes regulation of hours and conditions of labour to
fit the boys better for other employment later on, and proper
arrangements by means of Labour Exchanges to draft them at
the right time into positions suited to their capacity.

The new organization in the Post Office that is now nearly
complete forms an admirable instance of the successful adoption
of the second alternative. Until a few years ago, the Post Office
Messenger formed a stock example of Blind Alley employment.
Every year it was necessary to dismiss some thousands of boys
solely for lack of prospects, and many of them found their chances
of good permanent employment destroyed, or seriously injured,
in spite of advantages in the occupation as regards discipline
and control. Further, owing to the standard of attainment
required by the Post Office, the boys thus turned adrift were
those who had reached the seventh standard at the Elementary
Schools. At length a popular outcry against these conditions
resulted in the appointment in 1910 of a strong Standing Com-
mittee on Boy Labour in the Post Office.

On beginning its work it found an establishment of boys
amounting to nearly 16,000, including, however, a certain number
of them between sixteen and nineteen, who had qualified for per-

APPENDIX V. 573

manent employment. The total numbers dismissed at or before
sixteen were 6,185 m 1908-9, and 6,267 in 1909-10, or counting
only those dismissed for lack of prospects, 4,322 and 4,471. The
first step was to consider and adopt various means of economizing
boy labour. In certain indoor work, girl probationers were sub-
stituted for boys, 485 of the former with shorter hours eventually
replacing 334 of the latter. Other expedients were the increased
use of cycles, the employment of Assistant Postmen in the de-
livery of telegrams, telephonic delivery, and the use of pneumatic
tubes and other labour-saving devices. Thus from 15,790 in
March, 1910, the establishment had been reduced to 14,506 in
September 1911, with the prospect of further reduction to 14,000.
Eventually the Third Report of the Committee, dated July 23,
1913, expressed the hope that the final figure would be 13,000 or
at most 13,500. This latter means on the old basis a reduction
in dismissals for lack of prospects of over 1,100 annually.

Secondly, the Committee examined the means of increasing
the numbers of boys who could be absorbed either in the Post
Office itself or in other branches of the Government service.
The latter were found to be unlikely to provide for many ; but
a considerable increase is expected in those kept on by the Post
Office. They estimate that eventually the total number will be
some 2,275 annually, some 1,650 of these being promoted on
reaching the age of nineteen, and the rest earlier. Previous to
1911 the number absorbed never reached 1,700. This will mean
a further reduction in dismissals of 600 per annum.

Thirdly, the number of boys required to keep up a given estab-
lishment obviously varies with the period of service. Under the
old system, when the majority were dismissed at sixteen, over
6,000 fresh boys were taken on yearly. Now, an increase of the
time worked by each of them leads to a corresponding reduction
in these numbers, since two working five years each are equivalent
to five working only two. Moreover, many boys use the Post
Office temporarily and leave it when they find better work, and
this leakage increases with every addition to the period of service.
The Committee propose, therefore, to extend this till nineteen,
thus making it last for five years instead of two, and as a result
they expect to absorb permanently every boy of sufficient char-
acter and attainments who wishes to remain in the Postal Service.
Interim measures are also proposed to meet the difficulties of
transition, and already the numbers dismissed from lack of pros-
pects at sixteen have been reduced from 4,322 in 1908 to 1,227
in 1911, and 433 in 1912. Finally, when the scheme has got into
full working order, the Committee expect that some 1,600 boys
will require to be provided for each year on reaching the age of
nineteen and that about 1,650 places will be available.

574 APPENDIX V.

Finally, measures have been taken to organize continued
education. Special classes for messengers are arranged where
possible, and up to sixteen four hours attendance a week has been
made compulsory for all of them. The work has always had on
the whole a favourable effect on the character of those employed
in it, and previous defects have been removed by better organiza-
tion. Hence the Committee can justly claim that under their
scheme employment in the Post Office now offers unusually good
prospects, and that the problem with which they had to deal is
very near complete solution. In short the result of their policy
has been to turn the boy-messenger's job from a Blind Alley into
an occupation that will last him through life.

Such a complete solution of the difficulty is, unhappily, not
often possible, and for many reasons it is particularly inapplicable
to the case of vanboy labour. The openings for the Post Office
messenger are both better and more numerous than the carmen's
jobs which are as a rule the best the vanguards can hope for.
Hence neither can they be tied down for four or five years with
nothing better to offer them at the close, nor, even if they could
be induced to stay so long, would there be sufficient places to
absorb them. Again the Post Office is a single undertaking
organized on an enormous scale. Carrying work is divided up
among a large number of businesses of varying size ; and there-
fore expedients for reducing numbers or increasing openings are
far less easy of adoption. Hence the choice rests between the first
alternative — prohibition — and the third — regulation.

On the surface there is a strong case for the former. The job
is a marked Blind Alley in the first sense. For, while the Railway
Companies and some of the larger carriers manage to absorb
all the boys, who wish to stay, in other branches of their business,
elsewhere a large proportion have to be got rid of. But further
the employment produces to a marked extent the Blind Alley
character. Lack of discipline and sustained exertion leads to the
growth of casual and irregular habits ; and many boys stay in it
long enough to acquire bad habits and otherwise injure their
prospects, but not long enough to rise to be carmen. Again the
hours of labour are often such as to prevent attendance at Even-
ing Schools or self-improvement in other directions. Indeed some
think the conditions under which the work is done render this
last inevitable, but the Committee on Vanboy Labour hold that
it can be overcome by organization, similar to that already
adopted by the Railways. Other disadvantages can similarly
be removed and the employment has some merits. The
work, being in the open air, is healthy. In itself it is not arduous ;
and it is well suited for boys who are never likely to rise beyond
low-skilled labour.

APPENDIX V. 575

But if reorganization is to be successful, it must provide for
three things : first, for reducing the excess of boys to the minimum
that the actual conditions will allow ; secondly, for establishing
such improvements in hours and general conditions as shall give
those employed reasonable opportunities both for education
and for recreation ; and thirdly, for ensuring, by control and
supervision, that the boys shall make the best both of them-
selves and of their opportunities.

As regards the first, steps are already taken by the Railway
Companies and some other large employers to provide for all who
wish to stay with them, and the substitution of motor lorries for
horse vans is to some extent replacing boys by older youths or
men. Apart from this not very much can at present be done, but
as the Labour Exchange organization is improved, it should be
possible to induce a larger and larger number of firms so to arrange
their work as to provide permanently for a bigger proportion of
their vanguards, and, as prospects are thus improved, to de-
crease the number required by increasing the time that each of
them spends at the work.

As regards the second matter, certain difficulties arise owing
to variations in the size of loads, and to the influence of the
weather. These, in the view of the Committee, make the fixing
of a maximum day's work impossible, but do not preclude a
limitation of the number of hours to be worked per week. In
both respects they are probably right : and their well-thought-
out suggestions are admirably adapted to the needs of the em-
ployment. Boys under eighteen are limited to a maximum
week of seventy hours, including meal times — one and a half per
day, and are to receive the usual public holidays or days in lieu
thereof. No boy under sixteen is to be employed between 9.30
p.m. and 6 a.m. Daily records are to.be kept by employers of
the hours worked by each boy and the times allowed for meals ;
and local authorities are to be given the right of further regulation
by bye-law. .Even if, therefore, they do not go as far as some
would like, these proposals should get rid of the worst cases of
excessive hours and fix them at or near the limit adopted by the
best firms — in this case the Railway Companies. Perhaps, how-
ever, the best hope of further reduction lies in the extension of
their policy of refusing to collect after a certain hour. The evi-
dence shows that employers would look with favour on such a
regulation, and that difficulties are more likely to arise from their
customers. Otherwise, further progress will probably have to
come as part of a general policy dealing with boy labour as a
whole.

Finally measures require to be taken to see that the boys make
the best of these improved conditions, and these must take the

576 APPENDIX V.

form of a proper system of care and control. First, such jobs
should be filled by the right type of boy, that is, except where
better prospects are given, either by those who in the ordinary
course ofe events can hope for nothing better than low- skilled
labour, or by those who are waiting for a better job. Secondly,
provision should be made to draft them, when the time comes,
into other places, for which their work at Evening Continuation
Schools should so far as possible prepare them. Thirdly they
must so far as may be be kept steadily at work. The occupation
is liable in any case to produce casual and irregular habits and
these- are rendered worse by the failure of the boys to stick to it.
They require to grow up regular, steady and disciplined
workmen, and since the job is not favourable to this, care and
control are the more essential. It may further be suggested,
moreover, that the engagement of vanguards should only be car-
ried out through a Labour Exchange, and that such engagements
should be for fixed periods of not less than a year. This would
increase the control over them, and check effectively the restless
habits of so many, thus reducing the excessive numbers which
enter the job. These proposals may appear drastic : but just
as trades dangerous to health are subject to special rules under
the Factory Acts, so those that are dangerous otherwise might be
similarly treated. And such a comprehensive body of regulations
as this would convert this employment into a form of unskilled
work well suited to the less capable boys.

To sum up, therefore, these two occupations illustrate, each in
its own way, the niain methods of dealing with the Blind Alley.
Conversion into a job with prospects is the more advantageous,
but by far the less practicable ; and the Post Office provides one
of the rare cases where it can be carried out. In normal circum-
stances, however, careful regulation is the only available policy,
and it can be made successful. Complete prohibition is a counsel
of despair. The measures suggested above would, if successful,
meet the difficulties and dangers that beset the vanguard, and of
ordinary boy employments this is perhaps the most dangerous.
If, therefore, regulation should in practice prove successful, there
is hardly a Blind Alley job that would not yield, and yield more
easily, to the same process.

APPENDIX VI.

NATIONAL INSURANCE AND BOY LABOUR1

Upon this subject the Insurance Act raises two important ques-
tions— that of the proper age for Insurance to commence, and
that of the danger of encouraging the substitution of juvenile for
adult workers. In the original Bill contribution to Health Insur-
ance began at 14, but up to 16 only medical and sanitorium
benefits were paid, and a lower rate up till 21, except where the
insured person had others dependent on him. In Unemployment
Insurance contribution began at 18, and benefits six months
later. Since then, however, the starting age has been fixed
uniformly at 16, or rather within one year of attaining that age.

The Health Insurance proposals were originally attacked on
the ground of the injustice of exacting contributions and not
paying benefit, and on July 10, Mr. Godfrey Locker-Lampson
moved an amendment providing that " in respect of employed
persons under 16, the employer's contribution only shall be paid."
Against this it was urged that benefits between 14 and 16 were of
less value than the additional ones that would accrue when the
Reserved Values deficit had been paid off. The amendment was
rejected, but afterwards the even wider change described was
carried out.

A bigger question is involved, however, of the effect of the contri-
bution on choice of employment. The flat rate, exacted alike from
the apprentice's 45., the learner's 55., and the errand-boy's 8s.,
pressed w ith greater severity on the lower wages. The number who
at present deliberately sacrifice the present to the future is probably
small. More often the poverty of the family compels this,
especially with the elder children : or again lack of information will
lead to taking the first decent job that offers. The one thing that
many working-class parents do really realize is the wage offered,
they do not and often cannot know the potentialities of different
jobs. So the rate of wages settles the matter, not because other
things are sacrificed but because they are not understood. Others
again insist on getting a certain rough minimum rate, usually 5s.
or 6s., and are prepared to sacrifice the extra shilling or two above
1 Reprinted from the Clare Market Review, February, 1912.

577 PP

578 APPENDIX VI.

this for a chance to learn a trade. In this respect it is their mini-
mum of subsistence, from which the employed contribution means
a considerable deduction. It reduces the value of the wage,
therefore, and in some cases will turn the scale in favour of the
better paid job of worse prospects, where the margin available
for paying the contribution will be greater.

Now take the employer's contribution. Whether or not there is
a shortage of labour for unskilled boys' jobs, the numbers offering
for the better posts are usually far in excess of requirements.
Many employers do not find learners profitable and therefore are
offering pretty nearly their full value already, and owing to the
present unorganized conditions of boy labour will often be in a
position to offer less, whatever Juvenile Advisory Committees
may do in the future. Hence not only will the employed contri-
bution reduce the value of the wage, but the money wage itself
will in some cases be lowered.

Hence the fixing of entry into insurance at 16 both for employers
and employed was a thoroughly wise move. In many if not most
cases, a trade is definitely selected before 16, and at 14 parents are
not likely to take into account such a payment two years later ;
and the number who because of it will throw up good work will
be small. Wages too are appreciably higher at 16, and the
disparity between those of learners and boy labourers is often
less and probably other children are beginning to earn. Taken
all round, therefore, the arguments for the postponement of
insurance were overwhelming.

The second problem is centred round the fear that the Act may
encourage "the substitution of younger for older labour, either at
21 when the sliding scale on low wages comes into force, or
when contributions begin at 16. The danger that this would be
done at 1 8 in the case of Unemployment Insurance was a very
real one, and the reduction of the age to 16 was as wise as the
raising of it in Health Insurance. But as the Act has passed, the
practical danger is not great.

The demand for boy labour is roughly in inverse proportion to
its age, being greatest at 14, and declining till at 18 or 19
there comes a break in the working life of many when fresh
employment has to be sought. Eighteen, therefore, is a critical
age, so for the reasons already given is 14, and 16 is perhaps the
least dangerous.

Hence the likelihood of displacement at 16 by younger boys
is not great, and those who will then be displaced are not the
learners, since an employer would defeat his own object if he put
them off. It would be those who would in any case have to be
dismissed at 18, and of the two, 16 is the better age for it
since there is a far greater chance for them still to find a decent

APPENDIX VI. 579

opening. At 18 it is often too late. To get boys out of Blind
Alley jobs comparatively early therefore is really an advantage.
What is needed is efficient Exchange organization to put them into
the right work afterwards.

Now turn to 21. So far the employer has paid a uniform 3^.
which will then be increased for wages below 2s. 6d. a day. Will
this cause a tendency to substitute juvenile labour ? In the
towns the problem is rather one of low earnings. Wage rates are
comparatively high, but irregular employment reduces the amount
earned ; and the Bill only deals with rates of wage. So far, then,
the danger of substitution is not great, Secondly employment
is usually fixed by the time this age is reached. The transition
from boy's work to man's comes earlier, namely at 18, and by
21 they have settled down to the new occupation. In Agriculture
especially, when wages are low, it would mean the substitution
for a trained man of an inexperienced youth. Moreover sub-
stitution of boys for men is mainly in jobs that demand only a boy's
strength.

The danger, therefore, is at a minimum at 21. To bring the
sliding scale into operation earlier, therefore, is to increase the
danger which reaches a maximum at 18. For it is then that
youths are most likely to be replaced by younger boys, and at this
age the operation of the sliding scale will have its worse effect.
For it is the age too at which it is most dangerous to turn anyone
adrift.

Not only, therefore, can no change for the better be made in
this way, but the age of 21 seems obviously the right one for this
purpose. Both the problems raised by the Act are dealt with
most wisely. For entry into insurance is so fixed as to avoid both
the two critical ages of 14 and 18, and is put at 16. Therefore
whatever its defects in its original form, it has now found out the
policy that is likely to prove far and away the best in practice,
extending and amplifying the one first advocated so ably in the
Lampson amendment of July 10.

APPENDIX VII.

BY-LAWS IN FORCE IN LONDON DEALING WITH THE
EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN AND WITH STREET
TRADING BY YOUNG PERSONS, ADOPTED BY THE
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL BEFORE AND DURING

1911.
(Reprinted by kind permission of the London County Council.)

BY-LAWS made by the London County Council, pursuant to
the provisions of Sections i and 2 of the Employment of
Children Act, 1903, regulating (a) the employment of children
generally and (b) street trading by persons under the age of
sixteen years within the County of London (exclusive of the
City of London).

Note — By Section 13 of the Act the expression " child "
means a person under the age of fourteen years.

AS TO THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN GENERALLY.

1. A child under the age of n years shall not be employed.

2. A child liable to attend school full time shall not be em-
ployed on days when the school is open in industrial work at
home except between the hours of 5 p.m. and 8 p.m., or on other
days, except between 9 a.m. and 12 noon and between 5 p.m. and
8 p.m., or on Sundays.

Industrial work shall mean any work in which manual labour
is exercised by way of trade or for purposes of gain in making,
altering, repairing, ornamenting, finishing, adapting for sale
or cleaning any article.

3. No boy or girl under the age of 14 years and liable to attend
school full time shall be employed —

A. — On days when the school is open —

(1) For more than 3j hours in any one day.

(2) Between 8 in the morning and 5 in the evening.

(3) Before 6.30 in the morning.

(4) After 8.30 in the evening.

580

APPENDIX VII. 581

B. — On days when the school is not open —

1) For more than 8 hours in any one day.

2) Before 6.30 in the morning.
(3) After 9 in the evening.

4. A child liable to attend school full time shall not in any week
in which the school is open on more than two days be employed
for more than 20 hours.

5. A child liable to attend school full time shall not in any week
during which the school is open on two days only or less be em-
ployed for more than 30 hours.

6. A child shall not be employed on Sundays except between
the hours of 7 a.m. and I p.m. for a period not exceeding three
hours.

7. A child shall not be employed in or in connection with the
sale or delivery of intoxicating liquors except on premises where
such liquors are exclusively sola in sealed vessels.

8. A child shall not be employed in any process carried on in
a laundry to which the Factory and Workshop Act, 1901, does
not apply.

9. No boy or girl under the age of 14 years shall be employed
to lather customers or in similar work in any barber's or hair-
dresser's shop.

AS TO STREET TRADING OF PERSONS UNDER THE AGE OF l6 YEARS.

10. No girl under the age of 16 years shall be employed in or
carry on street trading.

11. No boy under the age of 14 years shall be employed in or
carry on street trading.

12. No boy under the age of 16 years shall be employed in or
carry on street trading before 6 in the morning or after 9 in the
evening.

13. No boy under the age of 16 years shall at any time be
employed in or carry on street trading unless —

(1) He is exempt from school attendance and

(2) He first procures a badge from the London County
Council, which he shall wear whilst engaged in street trad-
ing on the upper part of the right arm in such a manner as
to be conspicuous.

The badge shall be deemed to be a licence to trade, and
may be withheld or withdrawn for such period as the Lon-
don County Council think fit in any of the following cases —

(a) If the boy has, after the issue of the badge to him,
been convicted of any offence.

582 APPENDIX VII.

(6) If it is proved to the satisfaction of the London County
Council that the boy has used his badge for the purpose of
begging or receiving alms, or for any immoral purpose, or
for the purpose of imposition, or for any other improper
purpose.

(d) If the boy commits a breach of any of the conditions
under which such badge is issued ; such conditions to be
stated on such badge or delivered to the boy in writing.

14. A boy to whom a badge has been issued by the London
County Council shall in no way alter, lend, sell, pawn, transfer, or
otherwise dispose of, or wilfully deface, or injure such badge,
which shall remain the property of the London County Council,
and he shall, on receiving notice in writing from the London
County Council (which may be served by post) that the badge
has been withdrawn, deliver up the same forthwith to the London
County Council.

15. A boy under the age of 16 years, whilst engaged in street
trading, shall not enter any premises used for public entertain-
ment or licensed for the sale of intoxicating liquor for consump-
tion on the premises for the purpose of trading.

16. A boy under the age of 16 years, whilst engaged in street
trading, shall not annoy any person by importuning.

17. Nothing in these by-laws contained shall restrict the
employment of children in the occupations specified in section
3 (a) of the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act, 1904, further
than such employment is already restricted by statute.

Numbers i, 2, 4 and 5 to 8 (formerly numbered 6 to 9) inclu-
sive of the foregoing by-laws were made by the London County
Council on the 3ist day of July, 1906, and were confirmed by
One of His Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State on 4th Octo-
ber, 1906. Numbers 3 and 9 to 17 inclusive of the foregoing by-
laws were made by the London County Council on 2ist day of
March, 1911, and were confirmed by One of His Majesty's Prin-
cipal Secretaries of State on 3rd June, 1911.

APPENDIX VIII.

THE MOST IMPORTANT CLAUSES OF THE CHILDREN
(EMPLOYMENT AND SCHOOL ATTENDANCE) BILL,
NOW BEFORE THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.1

(Reprinted by kind permission of H.M. Stationery Office.)

i. — (i) A local education authority may make by-laws under
section seventy-four of the Elementary Education Act, 1870, as
amended by any subsequent Act —

(a) Requiring parents to cause their children up to the age

of fifteen years to attend school, as if in that section as
amended fifteen years were substituted for fourteen
years :

(b) Providing for the total exemption from attendance at

school of any child —

(i) who has attained the age of thirteen years
or such later age as may be specified in the by-laws ;
and

(ii) who is about to enter some occupation or
employment which will, in the opinion of the
authority, arrived at after consultation with the
parent, be beneficial to him ; and

(iii) with respect to whom the authority is satis-
fied in such manner as may be specified in the by-
laws that in view of his educational attainments and
capacity he may properly be exempted.

(2) Where exemption from attendance at school is granted
to any child under this section, the local education authority
shall give to the child a certificate of exemption in such form
as the authority determine.

(3) Where a local education authority has given to a child
a certificate of exemption under this section, and has subse-
quently become aware that the child has either not entered or
has left the employment in respect of which the certificate was

1 Bill 190 of the present session.
583

584 APPENDIX VIII.

given, the authority shall have power to revoke such certificate.

(4) The local education authority may make it a condition
of the grant of a certificate of exemption that the child exempted
shall attend continuation classes.

(5) Any by-law in force at the commencement of this Act
which fixes a less age than fourteen as the age until which
parents are required to cause their children to attend school,
shall have effect as though fourteen were substituted for the
age so fixed, and any enactment or by-law then in force so far
as it provides for the exemption of children from school attend-
ance shall cease to have effect, without prejudice to any exemp-
tion already granted :

Provided that this subsection, so far as it affects the law re-
lating to the employment of children in factories and workshops
under the Factory and Workshop Act, 1901, or to the education
of children so employed, shall not come into operation until the
first day of January nineteen hundred and seventeen.

2. In any proceedings for the breach of any by-law made
under section seventy-four of the Elementary Education Act,
1870, as amended by any subsequent enactment, the court may,
instead of inflicting a penalty, make an attendance order which
shall have the same effect as an attendance order made under
section eleven of the Elementary Education Act, 1876.

3. The Factory and Workshop Act, 1901, shall be construed
and have effect as though —

(a) the following provision were added to section sixty-two

thereof —

In England and Wales a child shall not be em-
ployed in a factory or workshop unless lawfully so
employed on or before the first day of January nine-
teen hundred and seventeen ; and

(b) the following proviso were added to the definition of

" child " in section one hundred and fifty -six thereof —
Provided that in England and Wales the expression
" child " means any person who is under the age of
fourteen years and any person over the age of four-
teen whose parent is under an obligation to cause him
to attend school, but does not include a child to whom
a certificate of exemption from school attendance
has been granted under the Children (Employment
and School Attendance) Act, 1914.

4. A local education authority may make by-laws —

(i) prescribing for all children under the age of sixteen
years, or for boys and girls separately, and with respect
to all occupations or to any specified occupation —

APPENDIX VIII. 585

(a) the age below which employment is illegal ;
and

(b) the hours between which employment is illegal ;
and

(2) prohibiting absolutely or permitting subject to con-
ditions the employment of children under the age of
sixteen years in any specified occupation.

The authority confirming the by-laws may require the local
education authorities of contiguous areas to confer together for
the purpose of making by-laws with respect to the matters
provided for in this section when it appears to the authority that
it is desirable that the by-laws should be uniform in the areas.

5. — (i) A boy under the age of seventeen or a girl under
the age of eighteen shall not be employed in or carry on street
trading :

Provided that—

(a) a boy over the age of fifteen, or a boy under the age

of fifteen who, before the passing of this Act, was law-
fully engaged in street trading, may be employed in
or carry on street trading if he holds a licence granted
in 'accordance with the provisions of this Act ; and

(b) the provisions of this section shall not apply in the

areas of rural district councils nor in the area of any
borough council or urban district council which is not
a local education authority if there are in force in the
area by-laws relating to the employment of children.

(2) If any person carries on trade in contravention of this
section he shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not
exceeding twenty shillings, and in the case of a second or sub-
sequent offence to a fine not exceeding five pounds.

(3) The expression " street trading " includes the hawking of
newspapers, matches, flowers and other articles, playing, sing-
ing, or performing for profit, shoe-blacking, carrying of luggage
(except in the course of regular employment), and any other
like occupation carried on in streets or public places, but does
not include the sale in a market or fair of agricultural or horti-
cultural produce.

(4) This section shall not apply in respect of any person over
the age of fourteen who is employed to assist his parent or
guardian in street trading in any area in which by-laws under
the preceding section are in force expressly permitting such
employment.

586 APPENDIX VIII.

6. — (i) A local education authority may grant to any boy
over the age of fifteen and under the age of seventeen, or to any
boy under the age of fifteen who before the passing of this Act
was lawfully engaged in street trading, a licence to engage in
street trading within the whole or any part of the area of the
authority, and may prescribe the conditions on which such
licences shall be granted, and may permit such conditions to be
varied in accordance with the circumstances of each licensee.

(2) A local education authority may make arrangements with
any committee constituted for the purposes of the Education
(Choice of Employment) Act, 1910, or, subject to the approval
of the Board of Trade, with any committee appointed by the
Board of Trade to give advice and assistance to juvenile appli-
cants at labour exchanges, whereby the committee shall under-
take all or any of the duties of an authority under the preceding
subsection.

(3) No licence for street trading shall be granted to a boy
for whom the local education authority is able to secure more
beneficial employment.

(4) No licence shall be refused on the grounds of poverty or
general bad character of the applicant.

7. In considering whether any occupation or employment
is beneficial to a child the local education authority shall have
regard to its prospect of affording the child a useful training
for permanent employment and to its compatibility with any
continued education which in the opinion of the authority is
available and suitable to the child.

8. A child under the age of fourteen years shall not be em-
ployed between the hours of nine in the evening and six in the
morning, or, on days when he is required to attend at school,
if he is not employed in accordance with the provisions of the
Factory and Workshop Act, 1901, between the hours of eight
in the evening and seven in the morning :

Provided that a local education authority *iay by by-law
vary these hours either generally or for any specified occupation.

9. The conditions of employment imposed by by-laws made
under this Act, and the conditions under which licences under
this Act are granted, may, in the case of children no longer
under an obligation to attend an elementary school, include a
condition requiring attendance at continuation classes.

10. — (i) Where a child is required under this Act to attend
continuation classes, the child shall attend up to such age, not
exceeding sixteen years, and during such hours not exceeding
eight in any week, as the local education authority may direct.

(2) A local education authority may on cause shown remit
or modify any direction under this section with regard to attend-
ance at continuation classes.

APPENDIX VIII. 587

(3) A child who is required to attend continuation classes
(other than classes for physical training) shall not be employed
in any day upon which his attendance is so required for a num-
ber of hours which, when added to any time spent by him dur-
ing the day in attendance at continuation classes in pursuance
of that requirement, exceeds eight.

(4) If a child fails without reasonable excuse to comply with
any requirement imposed upon him under this Act for attend-
ance at continuation classes he shall be liable on summary con-
viction to a fine not exceeding five shillings, and the fact that
any such failure is due to the child having been required to
attend at his place of employment in a manner inconsistent with
his due attendance at continuation classes shall, without pre-
judice to the generality of this subsection, be deemed to be a
reasonable excuse.

(5) If any parent of a child by wilful default or by habitually
neglecting to exercise due care has conduced to the commission
of an offence under the immediately preceding subsection or
otherwise to failure on the part of a child to attend continuation
classes as required under this Act, he shall be liable, on sum-
mary conviction, to a fine not exceeding one pound, and, in the
case of a second or subsequent offence, whether relating to the
same or to another child, to a fine not exceeding five pounds.

(6) If any person employs a child in contravention of this
section he shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not
exceeding two pounds, or in the case of a second or subsequent
offence, not exceeding five pounds.

(7) The local education authority shall consult with local
employers as to the arrangement of periods of attendance at
continuation classes, and shall give to the employer of any child
who is required to attend continuation classes under this Act
particulars as to the amount and the time of attendance at
continuation classes required in the case of that child.

INDEX

AFTER-CARE and migration, 186

Age at starting work, 215-222.
distribution of continuation

students (table), 317
of boys in various employ-
ments (table), 208.
proportions in furniture trades
(censuses, 1901, 1911), 395
statistics of boy labour, 381

Agencies for industrial training,
454-480.

Apprenticeship, advantages of, 53
and learnership, 171
and plumbing trade, 521
as now understood, 4
associations, 177, 326
breaking of, 176
charities and societies, 457
direct to men, 87
enforcement of, 216
in printing trades, 175
in small towns, 360
influence of system, 63
meaning of term, 18
needed extension of oppor-
tunities, 67
objections to, 172
periods required for, 229
probation and, 219
self-training of boys in, 263
shorter period for, 92, 230
suggested improvements, 520
trade unions' attitude, 476
under special conditions, 83, 85
See also Premium.

Art metal trades, 41, 50, 71

BELLHOUSE (Gerald), on van and

warehouse boys, 487
Berlin, boy labour in, 450
Bespoke work. See Bootmaking.
Beveridge (W. H.), on industrial

training and unemployment, 416

on reserve of labour, 184, 437

Birmingham, juvenile employment

scheme, 470
Blair (Sir Robert), on continued

education, 316

Blind alley employment, 209, 371

377-389

and specialization, 48
improvers' work, 383
influence of semi-skilled labour,

159, 162

meaning of term, 29
organization, 513
statistics, 375, 381-382
See also Partial blind alley.
Boilermaking and following up, 130
heredity of occupation, 240
proportion of boys to men,

391

Bookbinding, apprenticeship con-
ditions, 6 1

boy labour influx, 361
semi-skilled labour, 146
Bootmaking, semi-skilled labour,

145
Booth (C.), on apprenticeship, 61

London building trade, 93
Bowley (A. L.), quoted, 9, 249
Boy, meaning as a term, 24
Boy labour, age statistics, 381

and blind alley, 377-389

and efficiency, 418-423

and industrial training, 2

and specialization, 48

changing conditions, 235

classification of, 29

criticized, 419

definitions, 5, 28, 370

excess of, 396

influence of long period de-
mand, 433

influence of semi-skilled em-
ployments, 158, 162

organization problems, 490,
498, 504, 544

problem summarized, 411

recruiting of, 345

reserve of, 404-408

restlessness in, 387

skilled trades, 380

statistics, 373-375

supply of, 447

trade unions' conditions, 474

589

590

INDEX

Boy, unskilled trades statistics, 381
Boys, adaptation to jobs, 511

ages in various employments,

208
and men, proportion question,

390
attitude to trade schools, 324,

333, 338

clubs and brigades, 197, 465
current proposals for training,

480-495
existing state of employment,

444

homes, 465

in outdoor labour, 384
practical difficulties in training,

273

proportion employed in Lon-
don, 115

starting in trades, 192, et seq.
trade schools for, 310-311
training by employers, 258
training by men, 261, 272
wages, percentage table, 249
Bray (R. A.), on unemployed boys,

448
Bricklayers in London, statistics,

137

Bricklaying, service conditions, 79
Browne (Sir Benjamin), on semi-
skilled workmen, 142, 147, 148,
150, 157, 234

Brushmaking, boys' work, 62, 246
Building trades, apprenticeship,
180, 230

migration in, 102, 356
proportion of boys to men,

393

regular service, 73, et seq
wages of youths, 245

CABINET-MAKING, heredity of occu-
pation, 237

migration, conditions, 103, 107
migration, typical cases, 104
school training in, 294
specialization in, 47
Capacity of boys and choice of em-
ployment, 226
Care committees' work, 197, 466,

et seq.

Carmen, wages and conditions, 149,
Casualization, 424, 431
Census of occupations (table], 10-11
Central schools. See under London
County Council.

" Chapel " in compositors' union

475

Chemical workers, semi-skilled la-
bour, 155
Children (Employment and School

Attendance) Bill, 551
Choice of occupation problems,

197, et seq.

City companies and training, 463
Classification of industrial training,

1 8 et seq.

London industry, 13
Clerical and manual work, 225
Clerical employment, and blind

alleys, 377

boy labour, 379
Compositors. See Printing trades,

apprenticeship.
Concentration in London labour,

39, 49

Continuation schools. Refer to
Schools.

Country-trained apprentices, 93

County and London areas, non-
coincidence, 9

Crane men, semi-skilled labour, 154

DAY trade schools. See under

Schools.
Definitions in industrial training,

18, et seq.
Demand for labour, term defined,

417

See also Long-period demand.
Depression and employment, 426
Displacement, 420, 425
Distribution of London industry,

division of employments, 13
Dock labour, unemployment, 442
Drivers. See Carmen.
Dual control in training of boys, 491
Durham (Miss F. H.), on boy

labour in Berlin, 450

EARNINGS. See Wages.
Edinburgh, juvenile employment

scheme, 469
Education, authorities and training,

469

industrial, 528, 549
technical, 283
Efficiency, questions in bov labour,

418-423
Elementary schools. Refer to

Schools.

INDEX

591

Employers, and technical schools,
328

part in training boys, 257

Employment, agencies, 458, et seq.
during good behaviour, 20, 57
in London, table of divisions,

of boys, existing state, 444
of men, existing state, 436
Engine drivers (stationary), semi-
skilled labour, 154
Engineering, heredity in occupa-
tion, 241

London, boy labour influx, 361
payment of boys, 245, 254
period of apprenticeship, 229,

230

semi-skilled labour, 147
subdivision of trades, 64
Errand boys, 378
Essex, statistical urban boundaries,

Evening schools. Refer to Schools.
Excess of boy labour, 396, 420

FIXED time wages, 243
Fleshing, payment of boys, 245

special form of apprenticeship,

87
Following-up, 25, 266

in Greater London (statistics],
167

in partial blind alley, 390

method and effects, 117, et seq.

service conditions, 81

subdivisions, 166

summary of process, 189
Foreman, term discussed, 3
Formal apprenticeship, 57

in plumbing, 125

obsolete, 69

predominance of, 168

See also Apprenticeship.
French polishing, grading of labour,

Furnishing industry, age propor-
tions in labour, 395
in London, 35, 43

GERMANY, compulsory evening

schools in, 327, 342
Gibb (S. J.), on van boys, 149
Girl labour, not discussed, 7
Girls' trade schools. See Schools.
Glass blowing, 137

Grading of work, and blind alleys,

and migration, 109
Great Britain. Refer to United

Kingdom.

Greater London. See London.
Greenwood (Arthur), and schools

for unemployed juveniles, 487
Grouping of industries in London, 38

HALF-TIME, objections to, 494, 533
Health, question in choosing occu-
pations, 225

Heredity and preference in occu-
pations, 236-242
(statistics], 240
Hertfordshire, statistical urban

area, 10

Hours of labour, and demand, 430
and evening schools, 329, 334
improvements recommended,

543

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