I shall not, therefore, make any attempt to apply to other towns the detailed method of investigation I have endeavoured to employ in the case of London. It will be enough to show that the general conditions are the same. What differences exist are differences of degree, and not differences of kind.
(a)The Employment of School-Children.
The investigations of the Interdepartmental Committee has proved beyond doubt that throughout the country it is common for children, while still attending school, towork long hours for wages. One or two quotations will be sufficient to justify this statement. The Report declares “that, as the door has been closed to their employment in factories and workshops and during school-hours, there has been a tendency, which many witnesses believe to be an increasing one, towards their employment in other occupations before morning school, between school-hours, in the evening, and on Saturdays and Sundays. Provided they make eight or ten attendances every week, they may be employed (with a few exceptions, and these little enforced) in the streets, in the fields, in shops, or at home, for the longest possible hours, and on the hardest and most irksome work, without any limit or regulation.”[147]Evidence abounded to show that such possibilities of overwork were frequently realized. Examples have already been quoted in the case of London, and it is unnecessary here to go over the same ground again.
That legislation, as at present enforced, has done little to cure the evil of overwork may be seen from the reports of school medical officers. Some of these are quoted in the Annual Report for 1909 of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education. The school medical officers were not asked to report specially on the problem, but their inspection of school-children revealed the magnitude of the evil.
“Several school medical officers report on the question of child labour during 1909. Dr. Thresh (school medical officer, Essex) places on record the serious extent to which children are employed out of school-hours in theGrays and Tilbury districts, and gives many individual examples. Dr. Forbes (school medical officer, Brighton) gives some interesting particulars from a statement prepared by the Inspector under the Employment of and Cruelty to Children Acts. In this area the head-teachers furnish regularly lists of children known by them to be employed out of school-hours. Among these children it was found that 39, 25, and 22 per cent. were illegally employed during 1907, 1908, and 1909 respectively. Dr. Clarke (school medical officer, Walthamstow) found that 19 per cent. of the boys examined were employed out of school-hours, of whom 19 per cent. worked an average of eleven hours per week; 32 per cent. worked ten hours and over on Saturdays; 20 per cent. worked twenty hours or over during school-days. A full analysis of all children known to be employed out of school-hours at Yeovil is made by Dr. Page (school medical officer), who found that 22 per cent. of all children eight years of age and upwards were so employed, and of these 40 per cent. worked for twenty hours and upwards per week. Dr. Hope (school medical officer of Liverpool) produces evidence to show how usefully medical inspection may be linked up with the arrangements made to put into force by-laws relating to the employment of children. Thus, all cases where there was reason to suppose that the by-laws were being infringed were reported to the Sanitary Department. These children cases numbered 308 during the year, and a table is given showing in what manner they were dealt with. At Leamington, 119 boys and 30girls were reported by Dr. Burnet as employed in a wage-earning capacity either before or after school-hours, and 90 boys and 11 girls both before and after school-hours. Of these, 63 children were of subnormal nutrition, 22 were suffering from anæmia, 2 from phthisis, 8 from heart disease, and 25 had enlarged tonsils. Several of these children were quite unfit for such employment, and the subject is deserving of a thorough investigation with a view to adopting protective measures where necessary. At Southport, 131 leaving boys (32·7 per cent.) were found to be doing unskilled or casual work, and in Oldham 179 of the children inspected were similarly engaged.”[148]
As in London, so in other parts of the country, school-children work for long hours, and no adequate means exist at present to prevent the evil. As in London, so in other parts of the country, signs of serious physical weakness are the common accompaniments of this employment, and the health of the rising generation is injured. As in London, so in other parts of the country, the forms of employment in which children are engaged are uneducational, and tend to lead children, when school-days are over, into the “blind-alley” occupations.
Besides these children, there are about 38,000 “half-timers.”[149]It is needless here to dilate on the evils of the half-time system, which allows children who havereached the age of twelve to spend half the day in the factory and workshop. It is condemned by all qualified to pass on it an impartial judgment. Its continuance reflects little credit on the humanity of those employers and those trade unions who have repeatedly opposed its abolition.
(b)The Entry to a Trade.
The survey of conditions of juvenile employment in London made clear certain facts. There was the growing demand for boys in what has been called “blind-alley” occupations, and the demoralizing effect of such work. There was the difficulty of obtaining adequate training for those who had entered a skilled trade. There was a general lack of supervision in the workshop. And, finally, there was no easy passage from youth to manhood. It is impossible to read the Report of the Poor Law Commission and the volumes of evidence, or to study the various investigations into the conditions of sundry towns, without being convinced that London is in no way peculiar. The chief difficulty in approaching the problem lies in the selection of the all too numerous witnesses.
The Report of the Poor Law Commission probably provides the best summary of the mass of evidence on the subject. Both Reports—Majority and Minority—alike realize the gravity of the problem, not for London alone, but for the whole of the country. “The problem,” says the Majority Report, “owes its rise in the main to the enormous growth of cities as distributive centres, giving innumerable openings for errand-boys, milk-boys, office and shopboys, bookstall-boys, van, lorry, and trace boys, street-sellers, etc. In nearly all these occupations the training received leads to nothing; and the occupations themselves are, in most cases, destructive to healthy development, owing to long hours, long periods of standing, walking, or mere waiting, and, morally, are wholly demoralizing.”[150]Or, again: “The almost universal experience is that in large towns boys, owing to carelessness or selfishness on the part of the parents, or their own want of knowledge and thought—for the parents very often have little voice in the matter—plunge haphazard, immediately on leaving school, into occupations in which there is no future, where they earn wages sufficiently high to make them independent of parental control and disinclined for the lower wages of apprenticeship, and whence, if they remain, they are extruded when they grow to manhood.”[151]Or, to go to the Minority Report: “There are the rivet-boys in shipyards and boiler shops, the ‘oil-cans’ in the nut and bolt department, the ‘boy-minders’ of automatic machines, the ‘drawers-off’ of sawmills, and the ‘layers-on’ of printing works, and scores of other varieties of boys whose occupations presently come to an end.”[152]Or, again: “In towns like Glasgow, Liverpool, Bristol, Newcastle, the proportions of van-boys, etc., are as large as in London.”[153]Employers do not always conceal the fact: “In the words of a frank employer, they (the boys) are not taught; theyare made to work continuously at their own little temporary trades.”[154]If we desire actual figures of those engaged in one class of the “blind-alley” occupations—messengers—Mr. Jackson tells us that “under fourteen years of age there are no less than 32,536 (23·5 per cent. of those occupied under that age), while there are 41,659 aged fourteen, and 54,592 from fifteen to nineteen years of age inclusive, of which it is probable that the bulk are under seventeen years of age.”[155]Writing of Norwich, the same writer says: “There seems little doubt that the boy labour is used up for industrial purposes, and that they are left less capable members of the community, with little prospect of good work when they become adults.”[156]
Apart from the Report of the Poor Law Commission, individual writers of wide and varied experience outside London have voiced the same view. “It has never been so easy,” writes Dr. Sadler, “as it is in England to-day, for a boy of thirteen or fourteen to find some kind of virtually unskilled work, involving long hours of deteriorating routine, in which there is little mental or moral discipline, but for which are offered wages that for the time seem high, and flatter his sense of being independent of school discipline and of home restraint.”[157]And the same writer continues: “Certain forms of industry, which make large use of boys and girls who have recently left the elementary schools, are in part (except where the employers make special efforts to meet theirresponsibility) parasitic in character, and get more than they ought, and more than their promoters realize that they are getting, of the physical and moral capital of the rising generation.”[158]
The Rev. Spencer J. Gibb, who has devoted special attention to the problem, writes: “The characteristic evils of boy work invade office work in a peculiarly subtle and dangerous form. In every city small offices are to be found in which the whole of the business, such as it is, is carried on by the master himself, who has frequently to be absent from his one-roomed office. The office-boy, who constitutes the entire staff, is meanwhile left in charge. He has probably nothing to do, and spends his time either in vacancy, in mischievous expeditions along the corridor, or in reading trash of a bloodthirsty nature.”[159]Under such conditions supervision and control are negligible factors in the training of the workshop. It seems unnecessary to multiply examples; all persons of experience lament the increasing employment of boys in “blind-alley” occupations, and deplore the general lack of supervision.
The question of the skilled trades has received less attention, and there is much need of such a careful inquiry in various towns as had been made by Mr. Tawney in the case of Glasgow. Writing of the woodwork trades in that town, he says: “There is no regular training system; a boy learns incidentally, and is only shifted from one machine to another when the shop needs it....One of its employés was the best producer of wooden rings in his town, but could not make a wage at turning a table-leg,” and adds that, “with the exception of a few old men who were trained under the apprenticeship system, the foremen are the only men with all-round skill.”[160]While of the engineering trades he says: “On entering the works the lad who is going to be a fitter goes straight to the fitting shop and learns nothing else; a lad who is going to be a turner goes to the machine shop and does not learn fitting.”[161]Specialization is pushed even farther, and lads are kept to a single machine. Drilling, milling, slotting, punching, band-sawing, or screwing machines can be used after a few days’ training, and this is all the experience a boy gets. And, speaking generally of Glasgow firms, Mr. Tawney says: “Boys are kept, as a rule, in their own departments. They are not taught; they are made to work.” These facts were obtained as the result of a careful inquiry among 100 firms in Glasgow.
Glasgow, then, repeats the story of London; and there is good reason to believe that other towns, if submitted to a similar examination, would demonstrate the fact of the inadequacy of the workshop training of to-day. Apprenticeship, according to numerous witnesses, is everywhere decaying, and there is nothing except the technical school rising to take its place; and under existing conditions the technical school can touch only a fringe of the problem.
(c)The Passage to Manhood.
The evidence of the last few pages, relating to the increase in the number of “blind-alley” occupations and to the inadequate training of the workshop, would show that, as in London, so likewise in other towns, there is no easy passage from the work of the youth to the work of the man. There is a break in the continuity of the service somewhere about the age of eighteen. New openings have then to be searched for, and new beginnings made, when the habits of learning have disappeared, even if the opportunities for it presented themselves.
It would seem superfluous to repeat for other towns the statistical evidence in support of this statement which was given in the case of London. “Blind-alley” occupations and troubled passage to manhood necessarily go together. Mr. Tawney’s researches in Glasgow indicate clearly the difficulties of this transition period. A single quotation must suffice: “A district secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers says of a world-famous firm which employs several thousand men making a particular kind of domestic machine: ‘It is a reception home for young bakers and grocers. Boys go to it from other occupations to do one small part of the machine.... When they leave they are not competent engineers, and find it difficult to get work elsewhere.’”[162]Detailed figures for the country as a whole in respect of certain trades may be found in Mr. Jackson’s Report on BoyLabour. All evidence, from wheresoever collected, goes to show the existence of the break between the work of the boy and the work of the man.
It is trusted that sufficient evidence has been produced to prove conclusively that the conditions of boy labour in London do not differ essentially from the conditions of boy labour in other towns. The evidence could have been multiplied indefinitely and, what is most striking, among the mass of witnesses forthcoming there is none found to venture a contrary opinion. We may take it, then, as a well-established fact that in other towns besides London, supervision, training, and the provision of an opening are alike gravely and progressively defective. In other words, among the urban districts of the country no true apprenticeship system exists or is in course of creation.
§ 3. RURAL DISTRICTS.
No comprehensive inquiry has been made into the conditions of boy labour in rural districts and small towns. A few studies of individual villages exist—as, for example, “Life in an English Village,” by Miss Maude Davies—but these are not sufficiently numerous to justify any general conclusions. The return on Children Working for Wages, made to the House of Commons in 1899, gives certain statistics. From the returns on pages 21 and 23 we see that for England and Wales some 5·2 per cent. of children above Standard I. were working for wages.The percentage for boys alone would be 8·5 per cent., or for boys eleven years and upwards about 17 per cent., compared with 24 per cent. for London alone. These figures would seem to show that, while common, work among school-children over the country as a whole does not quite reach the London level. So far as can be gathered from the returns, it is in towns that the employment of school-children is most frequent, though in rural districts it is frequent enough to constitute a grave evil.
The same return gives the occupation of children as they leave school. On page 163 is the summary.
The table is incomplete: “In London the proportion of children is no less than 94 per cent.; in the group of large urban districts, 72 per cent.; while in the rest of England and Wales, including the rural districts and small towns, the percentage sinks to 47.”[163]Without a careful analysis, such as only local knowledge could supply, it would be dangerous to give much weight to the return. It does, however, appear from the summary that “blind-alley” occupations bear a close relation to urbanization, and that the two increase together. Or looking at the question from another point of view, a boy in rural districts enjoys greater opportunities of continuity of employment in the passage from youth to manhood than he does in the towns.
OCCUPATIONS OF BOYS ON LEAVING SCHOOL IN (1) LONDON, (2) LARGE URBAN AND MANUFACTURING DISTRICTS, AND (3) RURAL AND SMALL URBAN DISTRICTS OF ENGLAND AND WALES.[164]
OCCUPATIONS OF BOYS ON LEAVING SCHOOL IN (1) LONDON, (2) LARGE URBAN AND MANUFACTURING DISTRICTS, AND (3) RURAL AND SMALL URBAN DISTRICTS OF ENGLAND AND WALES.[164]
There is good reason to believe that the prospects of an all-round training are more favourable in a village than in a town. The fact, already mentioned, that immigrants from rural districts obtain the better positions in London trades, especially in the building trades, would seem to justify this conclusion. There is also the general consideration that rural districts are always nearly a century behind the industrial development of the towns, and represent therefore an older condition of affairs. Workshops are smaller, the gulf between man and employer less impassable, and the old paternal relation between boy and master more possible of attainment. We may therefore assume, without much risk of error, that training is better in rural districts than in towns.
On the other hand, while it is true that in industrial progress the villages lag behind the towns, they still follow them, though at an interval. Machine-made goods, especially in the woodwork trades, are in villages replacing the hand-made goods, and the demand for manual dexterity is to this extent decreasing. It would also seem to be true that the old indentured apprenticeship is falling into disuse. In the Wiltshire village of Corsley, for example, while apprenticeship occupied a prominent position in the past, in the story of to-day it passes almost without mention. In Miss Davies’s[165]study of the occupations of the inhabitants of that village, only one apprentice is mentioned. It is also a fact that those who are concerned with the administration of local charitiesfor apprenticeship are finding increasing difficulty in discovering masters who are willing to take boys as indentured apprentices, even for a premium, and boys who are desirous of being indentured.
We may, perhaps, therefore assume that, while the conditions of boy labour are more favourable in rural districts than they are in towns, the old machinery of training is falling into disuse, and no adequate substitute is taking its place.
V.
The Break-up of Apprenticeship.
The survey of the elements that make up the apprenticeship of to-day is now complete. Each of the factors which contribute to the result—the State, Philanthropy, the Home, the Workshop—has been examined, and their influence appraised. It is therefore possible to pass judgment on the system, and, by realizing the present situation in all its relations, to understand clearly the nature and the extent of the problems which call for solution in the immediate future.
The period of apprenticeship has been shown to divide itself naturally into two parts. There are the years during which the boy is at school, ending somewhere about the age of fourteen. For the right use of these years we have seen that the State is beginning to accept full responsibility. Whether we have been concerned with the conduct, the physical welfare, or the training of the child,we have found collective enterprise assuming new duties, and carrying them out with a growing enthusiasm. Nor can we have remained blind to the large measure of success achieved. If defects here and there mar the result, they are clearly the defects that belong to all experiments in the early stages, and are obviously not the ineradicable faults of a worn-out system. In short, so far as regards the earlier years of the apprenticeship of to-day, there is no cause for despondency. Progress is the distinguishing characteristic of this first period; the boy is the centre of influences increasing in number, and deliberately planned to promote his well-being. One disquieting phenomenon that calls for attention is the large mass of school-children working long hours. Health is undermined, the effect of education impaired; while the occupations, essentially of the “blind-alley” type, encourage an unfortunate taste for this form of employment. Further, the various local authorities, especially in rural districts, have been very lax in using the powers conferred by the Employment of Children Act.
The second stage of apprenticeship covers the years between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. In our survey of this period we have been unable to find much cause for satisfaction. The State no longer recognizes its responsibility for the well-being of all its youth; it is content to offer opportunities of training to those who are able and willing to avail themselves of these advantages, and these last form only a small minority of the whole. Thesuccess of evening schools, technical institutes, and other places of higher education, so far as concerns those who come within that sphere of influence, only adds to our regret that that sphere of influence is so narrowly restricted. The majority, at least two-thirds, of the boys pass out of the control of the State, and for the completion of their apprenticeship we must look in other directions. Our search in these other directions has met with little reward; we have found everywhere failure, and, what is worse, failure that is rapidly progressive. Nowhere on a large scale can we discover provision made for the supervision and training of juveniles; from all sides we receive a tumult of complaint that things have gone astray. Philanthropic enterprise, whether represented by the religious bodies or lads’ clubs, laments the lack of control over the boys, and frankly confesses its inability to deal satisfactorily with more than a small minority. The testimony of the home is the same; parents complain of the growing independence of their children, and to a large extent have ceased to attempt to exert any restraint over the conduct of their sons. Under the stress of modern industrial conditions and accentuated urbanization, the old patriarchal system of the family has broken down; the home represents an association of equals, in which, perhaps, the young can claim a predominant influence.
When we pass to the workshop, in the hope of reaching law and order and constructive thought, it is only to be confronted with the most signal example of an organizationwhich defies every principle of a true apprenticeship system. That the boy of to-day is the workman of to-morrow is a thought that suggests itself to only a few of the most enlightened employers. To the many he is merely a cheap instrument of production to be used up, and then scrapped as waste machinery. He is kept at “his own little temporary task”; and, to make things worse, he is in so much demand that discipline cannot keep him very steadily even to this, or his services will be withdrawn. With the separation of man’s work from boy’s work there is no easy passage from youth to manhood. With the minute subdivision of operations, there is small chance of a lad in a skilled trade becoming a master of his craft.
Apart from the small amount of medical inspection required by the Factory and Workshop Act, no attempt is made to insure that the growing lad is physically fit for the work in which he is engaged. His health is the concern of no one till its breakdown brings him under the Poor Law or thrusts him into the ranks of the unemployable. Undisciplined, with health and training neglected, the lad of eighteen tends to find himself more and more left without prospects, and a person for whom no one in particular has any particular use. In short, our survey of the problem of the apprenticeship of to-day shows conclusively that we have, in the true sense of the word, no apprenticeship system. The old apprenticeship system has broken up, and there is nothing come to take its place.
It would be incredible if serious consequences did not accompany this complete break-up of the apprenticeship system; and it needs but little search to discover evils of far-reaching significance. There is first the evil of an uncontrolled youth. A child at the age of fourteen is not fitted to enjoy the independence of an adult. This statement is a truism, but there is tragedy in the fact that society of to-day confers, as we have seen, this irresponsible freedom, in a more or less unqualified form, on the majority of boys when they leave the elementary schools. In the hooligan of the streets or in the youthful criminal we have the most striking example of the fruits of an undisciplined boy. The report of the Commissioners of Prisons for the year ending March 31, 1908, makes this clear. Writing of the Borstal Association, they say: “In this admirable report” (the report, that is, of the Borstal Association), “which should be studied by all who are interested in the causes of crime, after specifying many circumstances which induce the criminal habit, they refer in particular to the absence of any system of control or organization for the employment of the young, as one of the principal causes of wrong-doing. ‘When a boy leaves school the hands of organization and compulsion are lifted from his shoulders. If he is the son of very poor parents, his father has no influence, nor, indeed, a spare hour, to find work for him; he must find it for himself; generally he does find a job, and if it does not land him into a dead alley at eighteen he is fortunate, or he drifts, and the tidy scholar becomes a ragged and defiant corner loafer. Over 80per cent. of our charges admit that they were not at work when they got into trouble,’”[166]The Poor Law Commission calls attention to the evil effects of certain forms of employment which the boys choose because of the freedom they give.“‘Street-selling, for example,’ says the Chief Constable of Sheffield, ‘makes the boys thieves.’ ‘News-boys and street-sellers,’ says Mr. Cyril Jackson, ‘are practically all gamblers.’ ‘Of 1,454 youths between fourteen and twenty-one charged in Glasgow during 1906 with theft and other offences inferring dishonesty, 1,208, or 83·7 per cent., came from the class of messengers, street-traders, etc.,’ says Mr. Tawney.”[167]And it would be easy to multiply indefinitely examples of this kind. It must not, of course, be assumed that all boys become hooligans or criminals, but all do suffer from the want of control and the need of a more disciplined life. Hooliganism is merely an extreme type of a disease which in a milder form fastens upon the boys who are allowed unrestrained liberty. The disease is the disease of restlessness—the restlessness of the town, the dislike of regularity, the joy in change for change’s sake, and the habit of roving from place to place.
This disease, with the lack of proper technical training, leads on to unemployment when the age of manhood is reached. Unemployment is not the fate of the old only; it is becoming common among the young. “Thepercentage of men under thirty years of age qualified for assistance under the Unemployed Workmen Act, 1905, was:[168]
“It has become clear,” says a manager of boys’ clubs with a very wide experience, “to all students of the labour problem that a wrong choice of their first work—or, rather, no choice at all, but a drift into it—is responsible for the presence of considerable numbers of young men amongst the unemployed.”[169]The Reports of the Poor Law Commission, Majority and Minority alike, repeatedly voice the same opinion. “The great prominence given to boy labour, not only in our evidence, but in the various reports of our special investigators, leads us to the opinion that this is perhaps the most serious of the phenomena which we have encountered in our study of unemployment. The difficulty of getting boys absorbed, through gradual and systematic training, in the skilled trades is great enough; but when to this are added the temptations, outside the organized industries, to enter at an early age into occupations which are not themselves skilled and give no opportunity for acquiring skill, it seems clear that we are faced by a far greater problem than that of finding employment foradults who have fallen behind in the race for efficiency—namely, that the growth of large cities has brought with it an enormous increase in occupations that are making directly for unemployment in the future.”[170]The Minority Report is equally emphatic. “There is no subject,” it says, “as to which we have received so much and such conclusive evidence as upon the extent to which thousands of boys, from lack of any sort of training for industrial occupations, grow up, almost inevitably, so as to become chronically unemployed or under-employed, and presently to recruit the ranks of the unemployable. In Glasgow nearly 20 per cent. of the labourers in distress are under twenty-five, and one-half of them are under thirty-five.”[171]Or again: “It has been demonstrated beyond dispute that one of the features of the manner in which we have chosen to let the nation’s industry be organized is that an increasing number of boys are employed in occupations which are either uneducative (in the sense of producing no increase of efficiency and intelligence) or unpromising (in the sense of leading to no permanent occupation during adult life); secondly, that there is a constant tendency for certain industrial functions to be transferred from men to boys, especially when changes in the processes of manufacture or in the organization of industry are taking place rapidly. The resulting difficulty is the double one of the over-employment of boys and the under-employment of men.”[172]
It is hoped that the present chapter may have made clear the various steps in this unfortunate process of industrial development. First, we have the qualities which are the result of the school training—qualities of regularity, obedience, and intelligence—qualities required, indeed, in all forms of work, but supplying a complete technical outfit alone for the “blind-alley” occupations. The boys leave school, having had expended on them in each case a capital sum of public money of about one hundred pounds. They are valuable assets, and employers have discovered the fact, and adjusted their methods of production or distribution to make full use of this new and valuable supply. High wages attract the boy, who makes his own choice, and earning is regarded as more attractive than the laborious and less remunerative learning.
This leads on to the second stage, the “blind-alley” occupation or the skilled trade where there is no real training. Four years of this kind of work dissipate the effects of elementary education. Too often weakened physically by long hours of employment, demoralized by the life of freedom and the fatal facility in obtaining a second job when fancy has made him throw up the first, robbed by disuse of the power to learn even if the inclination were present, he is, at the age of eighteen, a distinctly less valuable asset in the labour market than he was four years before. The hundred pounds investment of public money intended for life has been squandered in youth; the employer has possessed himself of it; and when the boyasks the wages of a man, he is informed that his services are no longer wanted, and told to transfer them elsewhere.
Then comes the final stage of degeneration—unemployment or under-employment. The habit, acquired through four years of constant practice, of throwing up a job on the smallest pretext, remains with the lad of eighteen, but the facility of finding another is no longer his. The intensity of the demand for men varies almost inversely with the intensity of the demand for boys; the two are competitors in the same labour market, and of the two the boy is the cheaper and the more efficient instrument of production. Further, habits of boyhood have too often bred a liking for casual employment, with its frequent holidays. Here, also, the employers are willing to oblige him; they find it convenient to have at their beck and call a reserve of labour which can be drawn upon when business is brisk, and discharged in times of slackness. Finally, if he desires regular employment, it is none too easy to discover a suitable opening. The sphere of his usefulness is small; he has for sale a certain amount of animal strength, none too well developed, but has little else to offer. He can push and he can pull indifferently well, but in the world of industry there is not, as is supposed sometimes, an unlimited demand for pulling and pushing. And all the time he is faced with the fact that recruits to the army of pushing and pulling are coming from all sides. Men skilled in the performance of a single operation, and robbed of their well-paid employment by a new invention; men from decaying tradesand incapable through lack of training of adapting themselves to fresh conditions; men a little past the vigour of manhood; men discharged for misconduct; men who have lost their work through the bankruptcy of a company or the death of a master—all alike, when everything fails them, turn in desperation to pulling and pushing; and meanwhile machines of novel design decrease year by year the demand for pulling and pushing.
All these effects, with innumerable variations, are the result of a wrong start, and of the neglect during the years that lie between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. Want of supervision, want of technical training, want of an opening for which special preparation has been given—these are the three great and characteristic evils of the present industrial situation. Taken together, they are a negation of all apprenticeship in the true sense of the word. During the course of the last few years we have at least learned to know the cause of our suffering, and to know the cause is at least the first step in the path of prevention. And, further, we have begun to see rising from the ruins of the old stabilities of life and the ancient order of industrial organization an edifice—small, indeed, at the moment, but bearing the mark of constructive thought, because reared by the growing power of collective enterprise; and, knowing this, we can turn in a spirit of hope to the task of creating a new apprenticeship system.
THE NEW APPRENTICESHIP
In the present chapter we must endeavour to find some remedy for the evils disclosed in the preceding pages. The old apprenticeship system has broken up, and there is nothing come to take its place. In consequence, the youth of the country is to a large and growing extent passing through the years of adolescence without supervision, without technical training, without prospects of an opening when manhood is reached. These are defects in the industrial organization so obvious that they are now attracting general attention, so grave that there is need of immediate and comprehensive measures of reform.
In what direction is the remedy to be looked for? From what quarter may we expect the new apprenticeship to come? The survey of the conditions of boy labour, contained in an earlier portion of this volume, has disclosed two forces at work in the training of the youth of the country. The one force is destructive in its action; the other constructive. Reform obviously lies in the repression of the former and in the encouragement of the latter; there is no other alternative.
The force of destruction has been found throughoutassociated with the characteristic phenomena of the industrial revolution. The accentuated spirit of competition, the increasing use of capital and machinery, with the consequential development of large undertakings, and the rapid changes in methods of production to meet new demands or to make use of new inventions, have all alike been hostile to the well-being of the boy. The system, created by what may be called the natural growth of modern business organization, has been a system which has, in one form or another, continually attempted to exploit child labour. Under this system children, in days gone by, were driven to the mine and to the factory, or herded in gangs in the fields and barns of the farm, and even at the present time are allowed to perform tasks far beyond their strength. Under this system we have watched the slow and continuous decay of indentured apprenticeship, the steady decrease of facilities for obtaining an all-round training in the workshop, and the ever-broadening gulf separating youth from manhood in the sphere of industry. As a result of this system we have seen the hand of control lifted from the shoulder of youth, and have noted lads, under the wayward guidance of an irresponsible freedom, drifting into the path of crime and disorder. We are driven to believe that it is the young who swell the armies of unemployment, and have realized with sudden dismay that, young though they are, they are yet too old to break the set habits of an unfortunate past. And we are beginning to perceive clearly that these phenomena, of ill omen, are not a mere accident,but an integral part of the industrial organization; and to understand that, in spite of numerous superficial changes, the system, born of the revolution of a hundred years ago, has not altered in essentials, and now, as then, threatens with destruction the youth of the land.
That system has never enjoyed full freedom of development, but the limits set on its power for evil have not come from within; they have come from without, and been imposed on the employers by the legislative action of the State. It is the State which has throughout the period supplied the second or regulative and constructive force in the training of the youth of the country. It has forbidden the employment of boys in some occupations, and in others limited the hours of employment. Acting without any clearly defined plan, but striking at the evils, which gusts of popular opinion denounced and refused to tolerate, it has yet made impossible the worst abuses of child labour. It has, however, long since passed beyond the realm of mere veto, and has these many years entered the sphere of constructive reform. The scheme of compulsory education, the provision of opportunities for technical instruction, and the powers, recently conferred on local education authorities, to attend to the physical condition of school-children, are all signal examples of the beneficent influence of the second force.
We are left, then, with these two forces—the force of destruction and the force of construction; and the fate of the youth turns on the issue of the struggle between the two. They are not, indeed, the only forces concernedin the problem of boy labour, but, compared with their influence, all others sink into insignificance. The State and the industrial system both possess the characteristic of universality, and no other organization can make the same claim. Philanthropic and religious associations have always been found to protest against the abuses of child labour, but their protest only became generally effective when the State gave to it the force of law. Philanthropic and religious associations have been pioneers in the field of education, but the advantages were offered to all only when the State stepped in and assumed the responsibility. Individual employers have always been found to offer to their lads humane conditions of work and full opportunities of training, but these remained the privileges of a few, and it was only through State interference that the many obtained their share. As pointing the way to reform, these other agencies have been, and are, of priceless value to the community, but as themselves the instrument they have invariably proved a failure. We are left, then, with two forces which alone need to be taken into account—the industrial organization and the State. For the creation of the new apprenticeship system either the industrial organization must reform itself, or the State must reform the industrial organization: there is no third alternative.
Let us begin with the first alternative, and ask ourselves whether there is any reasonable hope of reform from within the industrial organization. The experience of the past is uniformly hostile to any such expectation.In the history of the last hundred years there is no single exception to the rule that all general improvements in the conditions of boy labour have come from without, and not been carried out from within. The experience of the present repeats in an even more emphatic way the experience of the past. It is impossible to point to one single example of an industrial reform now in course of development, and affecting on a large and beneficent scale the prospects or the training of the boy. It would be easy to cite a hundred instances of the contrary process. The whole of the last chapter is nothing but a detailed summary of the progressive defects of the industrial system, and its attempts to exploit in its own interests the value of boy labour. We saw how, by the multiplication of “blind-alley” occupations, the industrial system contrived to lay hold on and use up most of the products of an improved elementary education initiated by the State. Past and present experience are in accord; we cannot look for reform from within.
It is necessary to guard against a possible misinterpretation. There is no thought here of blaming the employer. The fight lies not between boy and employer, but between the force of the State and the force of competition, using the last word to denote the most marked characteristic of the industrial revolution. The employer is in general as much a victim of the process as the boy. He cannot be justly blamed for what he cannot be fairly expected to prevent. The exigencies of competition drive him to select the cheapest methods of production at themoment. If these methods involve the exploitation of the boy, it is unfortunate for the boy, but the employer has no other alternative. To produce as cheaply as his neighbours is the one condition of success; more remote considerations cannot enter into a business undertaking. Those well-intentioned persons, with a smattering of ill-digested science and a system of economics far removed from all practical realities, who talk amiably of the interests of employers and their boys, as future workmen, being identical, confuse the good of the present generation with the good of the generation that comes after. It is undoubtedly a fact that any system which injures the workers will in the long-run injure the trade of the country, but this is true only in the long-run, and the run is often very long. Now, survival in business is determined in the immediate future. The heavy charges on fixed capital, the interest on outstanding loans, the weekly wages bill, and the long tale of daily outgoings, make it impossible for the employer to follow proper methods of training in the hope that the new generation of workers will, by their added efficiency, recoup him for his expenditure. To last till that time he must live through the interval, must obtain that contract to-day, this order to-morrow, and must get it at a profit—in other words, he must choose the cheapest method of production here and now; there and next year will be too late. It will be no inducement to him to reflect that his methods would in the long-run prove the best, if he knows that he cannot stay the course. Competition isof to-day; it takes no account of the happenings of to-morrow. Those who in the struggle cannot survive this year will not live to reap the harvest of future years. Agreement among employers on such questions has been found impossible; the temptation to win by evasion an illicit success proves too strong for the majority. Those who pursue the better methods disappear; those who pursue the worse survive to propagate their kind. There is valid in the world of business a law somewhat analogous to Gresham’s law in matters of currency; the bad pushes out and replaces the good. There is a real struggle between the interests of one generation and the next. The employer must concern himself with the things of his own day; it is for the State, whose life is ageless, to guard the welfare of those who are to come. By insisting on the methods that are good in the long-run, by forbidding those which are good only in the immediate present, it places all employers on the same level, and enables the best of them to do what was before impossible. It does not thereby interfere with competition; it merely changes the direction of competition by guiding it into less injurious channels. But the secret of success, as demonstrated by the experience of more than a century, must be sought in the enactment of general regulations, which will apply to all employers, and not be looked for in what is sometimes termed the spirit of growing enlightenment. Unless it can be shown that the immediate interest of the employer is one with the proposed reform, nothing really effective can be done by moral suasion;while, if the two are in accord, moral suasion is superfluous. It can hardly be supposed that the contemplative outsider should know the business of the employers better than they do themselves. The mere fact of calling to our aid the power of moral suasion should be enough to show that enlightened self-interest will not suffice; we do not appeal to a man’s conscience when we can appeal to his pocket. If, then, reform and the immediate interest are not in accord, consent on the part of one employer means risk of failure in a world where salvation depends on very small margins of profit.
It is, therefore, for the most part labour lost to devote time to the consideration of reforms which do not rest on the basis of legal obligation, and we might at once turn to considerations of State control and State enterprise if it were not for the fact that in the minds of many there still remains a hope of the coming of salvation from another direction. They advocate the revival of the old indentured apprenticeship system, and believe that they have only to explain the situation adequately to the employer for him to realize that his interests lie in its revival. This belief assumes, as already mentioned, that the outsider knows the business of the employer better than he does himself—a tolerably large assumption. We might drop the matter with this criticism, but a re-examination of the old apprenticeship system, in the light of the industrial revolution and of the proposals for its revival, will help us on our journey towards the goal of the new apprenticeship. Such examination willshow, first, the conditions which a true apprenticeship must fulfil; and, secondly, that those who hark back upon the past for their ideals of reform are conscious that the past must change its dress before it can hope to commend itself to the critical taste of the present.
Now, in its best form, as was shown in the second chapter of this book, the old apprenticeship system was a success. It did afford means of adequate supervision over the youth of the country; it did supply them with technical training; and it did provide an opening in an occupation for which special preparation had been made. But a closer examination of the problem showed that success depended on the satisfaction of three conditions: First, it was essential for the apprentice to live with his master, or at any rate that the relations between the two should be of a paternal character; the second essential was the universality of the small workshop, with the facilities it gave for an all-round training; and, thirdly, an essential part of the system was the existence of the gild, which represented masters and men alike, and in the interests of all inspected and controlled the methods of the workshop. With the dissolution of the gilds we saw the first weakening of the apprenticeship system. There was now no authority guarding the interests of the trade as a whole; compulsory apprenticeship was often used as a means of supplying the employer with cheap and enforced labour, for whose future he had no responsibility. With the advent of the industrial revolutionwe watched the steady disappearance of the small workshop. Training became difficult, and often impossible. With both masters and men formal apprenticeship lost favour, and the system entered on its second stage of decay. With the multiplication of “blind-alley” occupations, with the growing cleavage between man’s work and boy’s work, and with division of labour pushed to its utmost extreme, came, as has been proved, the break-up of the apprenticeship system.
Now, there is nothing in the signs of the times to herald the approach of a new industrial revolution and a return to the old order of the Middle Ages. Machines and machine methods have come to stay, and must stay if the varied needs of the huge populations of to-day are to be satisfied. The more serious advocates of the revival of indentured apprenticeship admit this fact, and fully realize that modifications of the system are necessary. They suggest that committees of volunteers should assume certain of the functions of the gild; they should exercise a kindly supervision over the boy in his home, and take steps to insure that the conditions of the indenture are observed by the employer. Secondly, they propose that the one-sided training of the workshop should be supplemented by technical classes provided by the education authority and supervised by an advisory committee of representatives of the trade. Finally, they urge that these proposals, so far from being visionary, have actually been realized in practice with complete success.Why may not we look for a general extension of these methods?
The answer is tolerably obvious. The experiments have undoubtedly been successful. They have shown the steadying influence exerted over the boy by an indenture; they have shown the advantages that come from friendly visiting at the home or the workshop; they have shown the value of technical classes and trade schools supervised by representatives of the trade. But what they have not shown is that the experiment, while resting on a purely voluntary basis, admits of indefinite expansion. Indeed, the fact that the co-operation of the education authority is invoked, in order to provide technical instruction that shall supplement the training of the workshop, is sufficient evidence that we cannot dispense altogether with the assistance of the State. But much more remains to be said against the possibility of indefinite extension. Take the case of indentures. It is true that some employers can be found willing to receive indentured apprentices, and some boys willing to be indentured. But this does not affect the general rule that the conditions of the modern workshop do not allow of the use of apprentices, whose training is enforceable at law, or discount what is a matter of common observation—that neither employers nor boys like to bind themselves together for a period of years. Indentures may be an excellent plan for curbing the independence of the boy, but it does not, unfortunately, follow that the boys who most want curbing will be the boyswho will accept this fretting restraint. What happens in practice is that a select number of boys willing to submit to control are brought into relations with a select number of employers willing to be troubled with boys. This is good as far as it goes, but it goes no way in the direction of providing supervision for the boys who most need it. Or take again the question of supplementing in the technical institute the training of the workshop. Experience here and in other countries shows conclusively that technical instruction, to be really effective, must be given during the daytime, when the lad is fresh, and not during the evening, when he is wearied out by the day’s work. But, ignoring the necessarily limited number of cases in which boys are able to forgo earning altogether, instruction during the day is possible only where employers allow their apprentices time off during the day to attend classes. It is true that some few employers have given this permission, but their number is strictly limited. In the hope of extending the principle, the London County Council recently carried out an elaborate inquiry among employers, but with very small results. “If we compare,” says the report, “the magnitude of the elaborate inquiry carried out by the principals of polytechnics and technical institutes, by the skilled employment committees, and by the Council itself, with the extent of the success attained, we are bound to admit that the results are of the most meagre dimensions. There appears no prospect of inducing employers on any large scale to co-operate with us in the establishment of a satisfactorysystem of ‘part-time’ classes.”[173]Extension on a large scale and on a voluntary basis is impossible.
But, neglecting the question of possibilities, is the revival of an indentured apprenticeship, as a method of learning certain trades, in itself a thing to be desired? There remains one difficulty that has never satisfactorily been surmounted. If indentured apprenticeship is the door leading to a skilled trade, there will be a movement in the trade to close all other doors. Those who have paid a premium, or at any rate served their time for low wages, cannot be expected to allow without complaint vacancies in the trade to be filled by men who have not passed through a similar period of servitude. If the door is closed, there is no way of recruiting the trade in times of expanding business. But, in general, prohibition has not proved practical, and other ways of entry are discovered, and as these ways are easier, it is only natural that people should tend to choose the easier path. Indentured apprenticeship has never escaped from this dilemma; either the trade is closed to strangers when there is no means of expansion, or the trade is open when there is no inducement to be apprenticed. The change in modern industry, with its tendency to break down the barriers between trade and trade, only accentuates the acuteness of the dilemma.
Finally, assuming indentured apprenticeship to be both practical and desirable, would it provide a solution forthe problem of boy labour? It is obvious that it would only touch a fringe of the question. We have already seen that some two-thirds of the children, as they leave the elementary school, enter a form of occupation which leads only to unskilled labour, and even for that provides no adequate training. An apprenticeship system would not affect these two-thirds. A boy cannot be apprenticed as an errand-boy, or in one of those workshops where practically only boys are engaged. Not only is this class the most important in respect of numbers; it is also the class most urgently in need of control. It is here that degeneration and demoralization are most marked, while it is here that indentured apprenticeship offers not even a shadow of a remedy. A system which ignores the majority, even if it provided for the favoured few, cannot be regarded as affording a possible solution of the problem of boy labour.
We cannot, therefore, look to the revival of apprenticeship, even when supplemented by technical training, to carry us far on the road of reform. It would, however, be a mistake to under-rate the lessons of the experiments. They have shown the value of indentures as a means of controlling the boy; they have shown the value of sympathetic supervision; and they have shown the value of the technical school in widening the inadequate training of the workshop. The defects of the experiment lay in the necessary limitations of the case. Remove the limitations, and you remove the defects. We want universal indentures, universal supervision, universaltraining. To guard against the dangers of creating a privileged class through the establishment of an apprenticeship system we must see to it that all alike serve a period of apprenticeship. Obviously, we cannot apprentice all boys to employers; we must, therefore, apprentice all boys to the State. There is nothing new in this proposal. Already, through the law of compulsory attendance at school, all boys are so apprenticed between the ages of five and fourteen. What is necessary is an extension of the period of an already existing apprenticeship system.
In the search of a means of preventing an evil, the most difficult task is always to exclude the inadequate and the irrelevant. When all paths of advance, with one exception, have been blocked, there is no longer any choice or risk of losing one’s way. We have now seen that all ways, except the way of collective control and collective enterprise, fail to reach the desired goal, and, having exhausted all other alternatives, must fall back upon the State. Some do this willingly, some reluctantly, but all, with a few exceptions that may be disregarded, appeal to the State when they are convinced that help can be looked for from no other source. We are now in that position, and must frankly face the situation.
Failing assistance in any other direction, we must call on the State to organize a new apprenticeship system. Such a system must make due provision for supervision, training, and an opening. It remains to be considered how these three essentials can be secured.
I
Supervision.
A boy must be under some sort of supervision until he reaches at least the age of eighteen. Such supervision must have respect to his physical well-being as well as to his conduct. Neither the home, nor philanthropy, nor the workshop can be looked for to provide this supervision. They have all failed, and that failure is progressive. The State remains as our only hope. The State has not failed; it has made impossible the worst abuses of child labour, and through its educational system has been an influence for good in the moral and physical development of the children. Its success has been great, and that success has been progressive. Where it has failed, it has failed because its supervision has been withdrawn too soon. The remedy is obvious: we must extend the sphere of State supervision. Three reforms are urgently necessary: (1) The raising of the age of compulsory attendance to fifteen; (2) the complete prohibition of the employment of school-children for wages; and (3) the compulsory attendance of lads between the ages of fifteen and eighteen at some place of education for at least half the working day. With regard to these proposals, it may be said that all three are supported by the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission and by the labour organizations which have in general expressed theirapproval of that Report. (1) and (3) are the recommendations of the Report of the Education Committee of the London County Council, adopted unanimously by that body in February, 1909; while (1) and (3) also received a qualified approval from the Majority Report of the Poor Law Commission, and from the Report of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education on Continuation Schools. They have, therefore, behind them a strong backing of expert opinion.