posted 06-23-2017 04:36 AM            

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Decadence of the Apprentice System

We do not remember when there has been so great a demand for competent workmen in the jewelry trade as during the past year, nor a time when such demand was so hard to fill. We are in constant receipt of applications from jewelers and watchmakers in all sections of the country for workmen who are able to do the general run of work that comes to dealers located in small places, from repairing a fine watch to soldering a pin on a broken breast pin. While we have sent a number of workmen in response to these applications, in many instances we have been unable to comply with them, while at the same time there were several names of workmen on our books desirous of situations. The trouble was that they were not competent workmen—they have a little smattering of the business, but never having served an apprenticeship were wholly incompetent to attempt the general work that ordinarily flows into the shop of a retail dealer; a complicated watch would be to them as great a mystery as the Sphynx, and even some of the tools of their trade would be puzzles to them. The fact is, the boys of the present day are too ambitious to become "mere mechanics;" they aim to achieve for tunes speedily, and would sooner commence their business life as an office boy for some stock broker or gambling speculator than to attempt the irksome apprenticeship necessary to make them competent workmen in some honorable branch of industry. Indeed, there are no apprentices nowadays; occasionally a lad can be found who is willing to work in a shop till he can "find something better to do," but the idea of "learning a trade " is repugnant to them. These few shop boys go on for a time, picking up a little information now and then, catching up a few technical phrases, watching the workmen and " doing the chores," but at the end of a few months they feel they have learned all there is to know, and so set them selves up as journeymen. If they are fortunate to find employment as such, their first week's experience only serves to prove how little they know, to disgust their employer, and to secure for themselves the grand bounce." They are now started on their careers as tramping journeymen, too ignorant of their, trade to hold a situation, and too proud or too indolent to commence at the bottom again and learn their trade thoroughly. There are hundreds of workmen who have had just such a start as this. They never intended to make themselves competent workmen, but made a convenience of the trade till something better should offer itself. Like Micawber, they are "waiting for something to turn up " that will enable them by a lucky chance to accumulate a fortune and cut the shop. The decadence of the apprenticeship system has been fatal to the development of accomplished American workmen. The introduction of machinery into so many branches of the trade has also had a tendency to prevent boys from acquiring a thorough knowledge of the trade. As boys they enter a factory, and, after serving a time as errand boys, they are placed in charge of a machine that does one certain thing; they learn to run this machine, to do it well, and to become experts in the production of this one thing; beyond that they learn little. They are more valuable to the employer when doing well the one thing they know how to do than they would be learning the trade thoroughly, so they go on year after year tending the same old machine; probably after a time they get paid by the piece for what they produce, then their ambition is to earn as much as possible, and they have no ambition to learn anything further. Of course, these never become competent workmen. Trades unions, too, are largely responsible for the fact that there are so few good workmen. When labor was in the ascendancy and held capital by the throat, and was able to dictate its own terms, the trades unions limited the number of boys that might be employed in each shop, and, consequently, the opportunities for boys to learn trades were greatly reduced. As a consequence, good workmen, who would have been glad to have apprenticed their boys, have been forced to see them grow up in idleness, become street loafers, possibly criminals, because the privilege of earning a living honestly was denied them by trades unions.

From a variety of causes, a few of which we have alluded to, good American workmen are hard to find, and there are comparatively few being trained for future demands. The result of this is that foreign workmen are filling the places that our own native born citizens might have if they would consent to become mechanics instead of builders of castles in Spain, wasting their time scheming how to become suddenly rich. Of course, there are many expert American workmen, but not enough to supply the demand. When an American does take the trouble to learn a trade thoroughly, he generally makes the very best kind of a workman, for, in addition to his acquired skill, he brings general intelligence, native ingenuity, quick wit, and a degree of perseverance that will never acknowledge itself conquered. It is a great pity that more of our boys will not consent to learn trades, for with a good trade at his fingers' end, a man may defy poverty and misfortune for he always has a living at his command. It gives him a feeling of independence and more courage to enter into the battle of life. It is to the general decay of the apprenticeship system that we have to attribute much that is dangerous and extravagant in social tendencies and trade management. American boys too seldom choose to take up a respectable trade in the thorough manner that makes both the occupation and them selves honorable. They propose without any consideration of their ability to enter the professions or to become immediately rich men to be, in short, " as good as anybody." They pass through the public schools and are apt to emerge half-taught, shallow and inefficient, with no preparation for the practical work of life. If they were taught good trades and made to feel the dignity of labor, and to appreciate the responsibilities incident to manhood, we should have fewer tramps wandering about the country and fewer convicts in our States prisons. Employers might contribute much towards securing a reform in this matter by emancipating themselves from the control of trades unions, and taking more pains in the education of the young men in their employ.

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