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sometimes provided also that an employer who discharges an apprentice without good reason shall not be permitted to replace him.

Apprentices are often admitted to the union, either from the beginning of their apprenticeship, or, more frequently, as they approach the end. Their dues and benefits are usually less than those of journeymen. Sometimes in the last year of apprenticeship they are admitted to the union meetings, without payment of dues, without benefits, and without vote, simply that they may be prepared to take their places in the union when their apprenticeship is over.

The commonest terms of apprenticeship as defined by the organizations are three and four years. In a few cases a shorter term is mentioned, and the Pattern Makers and the Watch-case Engravers require five years. In many cases there is a rule requiring apprenticeship to begin before the age of 16; in some unions before 15 or 14. An upper limit for beginning is sometimes named also; usually 18 years or 21, but sometimes as low as 16. The Plate Printers require that apprenticeship begin between the ages of 17 and 18.

There is a strong tendency, where the strength of the union and the nature of the trade make it possible, to fix a definite limit to the ratio of the number of apprentices to the number of journeymen. Of limits fixed by the rules of national organizations, the commonest is perhaps 1 to 10. Occasionally a ratio as low as 1 to 15 is named. On the other hand, the Pressmen, the Trunk and Bag Workers, and the Flint Glass Workers (as to mold shops) allow 1 to 4. A tendency often appears to favor small shops rather than large. This is sometimes done, as by the Machinists and the Iron Molders, by allowing one apprentice to each shop, irrespective of the number of journeymen employed, and in addition one apprentice to 5 journeymen among the Machinists, and to 8 among the Iron Molders. The Lithographers allow one apprentice for the first 5 journeymen or less in any branch of the business, one additional apprentice for the next 10, another for the next 15, and another for the next 25. The Stone Cutters forbid employing more than one in a yard which employs less than 15 journeymen, more than two where there are less than 100 journeymen, or more than four in any case whatever.

All these regulations represent standards set by the national organizations; actual conditions may conform to them closely, or loosely, or not all. It may be impossible, generally or locally, to enforce the written law. On the other hand, local unions may make harder rules than those of the national union, and may enforce them. On the whole, it seems probable that the actual restrictions are somewhat milder than the rules which national organizations have made might indicate. The weaker and less closely organized national bodies are not likely to undertake to control the matter. Such national rules as appear, therefore, are likely to be of the stricter sort. It may be that the ratio of 1 to 5 is the commonest among those actually enforced by local unions. It sometimes happens that the number of apprentices which a union is willing to allow proves to be greater than the masters care to take on.1 If an apprenticeship of 3 years is enforced, and one apprentice is employed for every 5 journeymen, the training of new journeymen goes on, at any given moment, at a rate which would double the existing number in 15 years. Since the working life of

a journeyman is considerably greater, such a ratio, with a 3-years' apprenticeship, would provide for a considerable increase of the number of journeymen from year to year. Moreover, since the number of apprentices would be based on a constantly increasing number of journeymen, the increase would proceed at a geometrically accelerated rate, as money increases at compound interest. It is probable that such rules would permit an actual doubling of the number of journeymen in less than 15 years, even with due allowance for those who die and those who leave the trade. A ratio of one apprentice to 10 journeymen, on the other hand, with an apprenticeship

1 Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. vii; Testimony, pp. 853, 854.

of 3 years, would allow new journeymen to be trained only at a rate which, if continued without change, would produce a number equal to the existing number in 30 years. It is doubtful whether such rules, strictly enforced throughout a trade, would even provide new blood enough to replace the natural losses from the ranks. It is obvious that the chief motive which influences the unions in the shaping of their apprenticeship rules is the desire to maintain their wages, by diminishing competition within the trades. The only motive which is not included within this formula is the desire, for reasons which may be classed as artistic, to prevent a lowering of the standard of skill. This feeling can not be supposed to exert more than a minor influence upon actual policy. Yet the desire to modify, in some degree, the working of competition, as manifested in the number of apprentices and in the training of them, is not so absolutely unreasonable nor so evidently injurious to society as persons outside the working class sometimes assume.

First, it is maintained that, in the absence of restrictions, there is a tendency to get a large part of the work done by boys, who work for trifling sums, to the displacement of the mature men, who should be the breadwinners of their families.1 Employers of the less scrupulous sort, who are willing to follow this policy, are able to underbid the more careful and conscientious. So far as this results in imperfect and shoddy work, it is injurious to the consuming public, as well as to the trade. Second, it is argued, the effect of such a policy is bad, even upon the boys themselves. The opponents of restriction lament the fate of the boys who are shut out of the skilled trades. But, says the unionist, it is not the aim of the employers to teach trades. Their aim is to get their work done, this week and this year, for the least possible money. This purpose is not consistent with the giving of thorough instruction in a craft, but is promoted, first, by the restriction of each boy to some narrow specialty; and, second, by discharging each boy as soon as he demands a man's wages, and putting in a new one. The policy of the unions, they declare, is meant to make it sure that when a boy undertakes to learn a trade, he shall have a chance to learn it. They require that he remain in his apprenticeship long enough to learn it, and they require that instead of being kept, as the interests of the master would dictate, on a narrow range of duties, he be employed in turn at each of the branches which together make up the trade.

Besides these arguments of a general kind, which might be plausibly brought forward anywhere and at any time, the special circumstances of this country give the unions a special incentive to restriction. The trades are steadily recruited by immigration. This can not be lessened by any union rules; and the unions are therefore the more tempted to lessen, if they can, the number of native recruits.

It must be admitted that the restriction of apprentices, just as far as it is successful, makes America more attractive to skilled European mechanics, and in the long run tends to increase the immigration of them. That result, however, is comparatively far off. Of the immigrants who are coming to us at the present time, only a small part are skilled workmen, or come into direct competition with the members of the stronger labor organizations. But the restriction of apprenticeship does not succeed in diking the trades-except in a few narrow and closely controlled industries, like the glass maunfacture-even against the inflow of American youth. If the unions do not allow enough apprentices to supply the normal demand for journeymen, trades are picked up in country places and in nonunion shops. The men who learn there are possibly, on the average, less skilled than those who have learned in union establishments; but their competition is hardly the less to be feared on that account. They have certainly not been trained in the spirit of organization; and for that reason they are the more to be dreaded.

1 Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol, vii; Testimony, pp. 546, 620-622, 657, 970, 971.

PIECEWORK.

There is a widely prevalent belief that the policy of trade unions in general is antagonistic to piecework wages. This belief does not appear to be supported by a study of the actual practice of union men, either in Great Britain, where trade unionism had its first and has had its strongest development, or in the United States, which, in respect to the strength of labor organizations, now begins to rival Great Britain.

The following table is not complete, but it indicates the customs of most of the important American trade unions. It contains all the national unions, in occupations suitable for the application of piecework scales, concerning whose attitude on this question definite information is at hand:

Unions whose members work by the piece, at least in some departments, without active opposition on the part of the organizations.

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Bookbinders.

Bricklayers.

Unions which either forbid piecework or actively discourage it.

Carpenters, Brotherhood.

Painters (paper hanging excepted).

Plasterers.

Plumbers.

Stonecutters.

Tile Layers.

Amalgamated Glass Workers.

Wood Workers.

Wood Carvers.

Carriage Workers.

Machinists.

Amalgamated Society of Engineers.

Iron Molders.

Pattern Makers.

Blacksmiths.

Bakers.

Brickmakers.

Watch Case Engravers.

Jewelry Workers.

Oil and Gas Well Workers.

Mr. and Mrs. Webb give tables of those trade unions in Great Britain which insist on piecework, those which willingly recognize both piecework and time work in different departments, and those which insist on time work.1 Counted by the number of members, those which insist on piecework are a majority of the whole, and those which either insist on piecework or are willing to make use of it in some departments are more than two-thirds. These tables are not altogether comparable with the tables of American unions, given above; but so far as they embrace the same classes of workers they indicate a remarkable uniformity of policy in the several trades in

1 Industrial Democra 'y, pp. 286, 287.

the two countries. The same trades, for the most part, which have been led, according to Mr. and Mrs. Webb, to a preference for piecework in Great Britain, have been led independently to follow the system in the United States, and those trades which in Great Britain regard the piecework system as an engine of oppression have on this side of the water reached the same conclusion.

In both countries the building trades generally, the machinists, the foundry workers, the carriage workers (if the British coach makers may be regarded as in some degree corresponding to them), and the bakers reject piecework. In both the textile operatives in general, the makers of clothing, shoes, and hats, the workers in steel mills, the glass and pottery workers, the miners, the typesetters, and the cigarmakers employ it. So remarkable a parallelism seems to indicate fundamental differences in the operation of the piecework system, according to the circumstances of the several trades.

Several sets of conditions may be specified which determine the desirability of piecework rates in particular classes of occupations. In cotton spinning, for instance, the work done depends upon the number of spindles which the spinner attends to, and on the speed of the machinery. Day wages would subject the spinner to increased exertion with the gradual increase of the size of the mules, and, in an even more insidious way, with the gradual and perhaps unnoticed increase of speed. The piecework system gives the operatives a proportionate increase of pay for every increase of performance, and as mechanical improvements progress puts upon the employer the onus of demanding a lowering of rates. A second case is that of the

miners, whose work, from its nature, is incapable of effective supervision by a foreman in the ordinary manner. The only alternative here, it has been held, is piecework for each individual miner, or the employment of small contractors, each of whom hires one or more men at day wages, and works with them at the face of the mine. The contractor sets the fastest pace that his own strength permits, and compels his men, so far as he can, to keep up with him. He gets the benefit, not only of his own extra exertion, but of theirs. The result to the majority of the workers is a piecework intensity of exertion for day-work wages.1

In the trades whose unions reject piecework it will often be found that comprehensive piece work scales, insuring uniformity of pay, have not been found practicable. In such work as that of the machinists, the iron molders, the stonecutters, and the plumbers, there are such differences between job and job that piecework rates would practically do away with the union scale, and reduce the remuneration of labor to a matter of individual bargaining. This is the result which every labor organization is bound at all hazards to avoid. In those trades in which piecework prevails, and in which a considerable variety of work is covered, long and elaborate tables of specifications grow up, which are intended to include, so far as possible, every item of work. The printed price list of the Glass Bottle Blowers contains some 1,200 specifications. The garment workers of New York, in their agreements with their employers, prepare a very elaborate list, and provide that prices for new styles or garments shall be determined in no case by a bargain of an individual worker, but by the employer and a committee of operators and tailors employed in his factory. In some trades those branches of work which it has been found possible to reduce to a uniform scale are habitually paid by the piece, while other work is paid by the

1 This system, which is known in Great Britain as the butty system, does not now seem to prevail in America, except in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania, and there only in a modified form. In the anthracite mines, a single contracting miner used sometimes to employ as many as 10 laborers. He furnished all tools, powder, and other supplies, and paid the laborers one-third of their earnings, as reckoned according to the terms of his contract. The laborers were therefore actually paid on a piece-price basis. Yet the system has caused much friction and strife, and as soon as the United Mine Workers acquired the power, at the time of the strike of 1900, they restricted it by limiting each contract miner to not more than 2 assistants. (Letter, dated August 31, 1901, from John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers.)

day. Among the Boiler Makers and Iron Ship Builders most of the new work in shipbuilding is done by the piece, but repair work on ships and almost all boiler work is done by the day. The Sheet Metal Workers make a distinction between building work and work on sheet metal ware. The ware, on which the fixing of uniform piece prices is comparatively easy, may be made by the piece; but piecework on buildings is prohibited. The granite cutters of Concord, N. H., have a scale of prices for different classes of work, filling 16 printed pages, and accompanied with an elaborate series of diagrams illustrating the different classes of work and explaining the price lists. A diagram with the price marked on it must be given to the workman with each stone taken by the piece. All stones not covered by these agreed specifications, as well as all under a certain size, must be done by the hour.

The Longshoremen, before the establishment of their union, worked for day wages under contractors. Since the union has become strong enough to control the situation at the most of the ports on the Great Lakes, it has established a system of cooperative piecework. The piecework rates are fixed for the season by agreement between the union and the dock managers or the association of vessel owners, as the case may be. At each port gangs are made up, by mutual consent, each with a foreman elected by the men. The gangs take turns in employment. When a vessel comes in, the gang whose turn it is does the loading or the unloading of it. The pay is divided equally among the members of the gang, including the foreman.

It appears, then, that the circumstances of a considerable number of trade unions make piece prices seem more favorable to their interests than day wages. It must be admitted, however, that our tables exaggerate the favor with which piecework is regarded. There are unions in which piecework rates are universal, but among whose members there is, notwithstanding, a strong desire to escape from them. The piecework system, in their case, is an inheritance from the days before the unions were established. Thus the bulk of the clothing manufacture, from the work of the high-class tailor to the worst-sweated manufacture of underclothing, is done by the piece. The Jewish garment workers of New York would strenuously resist any attempt to establish a system of time wages. Their instincts, however, it may be said, are not those of workingmen, but those of traders. Their ambition is, by a few years of furious work, to lay by a little capital and set up as clothing contractors. The United Garment Workers, as a whole, would be glad to see the piecework system wiped out. The hope of wiping it out is expressed in their constitution. It is the hope not only of the officers, but of many of the workers; even of those whose position is comparatively good. For instance, the manufacture of overalls is carried on exclusively in factories, under comparatively fair conditions and at relatively good wages. Yet the girls who do the work, or at least the intelligent leaders of them, would be glad to substitute time work for work by the piece. In their case the complaint is that though the weekly wage is fair, it is earned at the expense of killing exertion, and that seven or eight years in an overall factory wears a girl out. The secretary-treasurer of the Boot and Shoe Workers says that four-fifths of the labor in shoe factories is piecework, but that the system is simply endured by the organization as one of the necessary evils of close competition and minute subdivision of labor. "The piecework system tends to give decent wages to none but the swiftest workmen, thus leaving the slower workmen oftentimes earning wages which seem to be below the subsistence point." The nervous strain on piecework employees, due to the high relative speed at which they are induced to work, is mentioned by this officer as one of the serious evils of the system. The secretarytreasurer of the Boiler Makers would be glad to have piecework abolished in all branches of his trade. The Northern Mineral Mine Workers, who report that 80 per

1 See pp. 369-372.

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