and then turned to one of the students and put the categorical question: "What time are you familiar with?" A boy directly behind remarked in a whisper which every one heard, “dinner time." "Ah!" said the Professor, "that depends altogether upon the standpoint from which you look. To Sir Isaac Newton the fall of the apple meant the great law of gravitation, but it meant a very different thing to the pig that came along and picked it up."

THE VALUE OF A THOROUGH APPRENTICESHIP TO THE WAGE EARNER.

W. B. PRESCOTT,

Secretary Supplemental Trade Education Commission of the International Typographical Union.

No one connected with industrialism in any capacity, either as employer, superintendent or employee, will question the efficacy of an apprenticeship system as a means of promoting industrial efficiency. But we must first have a system. It is certainly not to be found in the busy workshops of our great industries. Modern methods of production do not lend themselves to that remnant of feudalism where the employer of an apprentice undertook to go bond for a youth's moral and material welfare. Now the boy is not engaged for the purpose of making a man of him, but rather to make money out of his labor. If he be an unprofitable unit in the machine, the foreman or superintendent is eager to get rid of him with little regard for any promise of future usefulness he may show. What the foreman wants-and he is the major factor in this phase of the problem-are results. And he desires them right. away; he wants them to show on his month's balance sheetnot six months or a year hence. Thus it comes that in highly specialized industries with close profit margins, the boy must "make good" on one job, else he gets no show at all.

For a long time it was the fashionable and easy thing to blame trade-unions for the decadence of the apprenticeship system. This was an error I am convinced, for their interests were subserved by a retention of the system, and they fought for the shadow even after the substance had departed. Let me say parenthetically, that the apprenticeship system tended to develop all-round workmen of good average skill, and I have never known of a union which was hampered by the skill of its members, but I have heard of many that made little.

progress largely because their members were masters of slight skill or the subdivision of labor in the industries had made it impossible for the men to employ all the skill they possessed. Such conditions always lessen the effectiveness of a labor organization. The more difficult it is to master the intricacies of a trade the higher degree of intelligence and the greater patience required-the better the union of that trade, and vice

versa.

Unions are no longer the alleged cause for the disappearance of the apprenticeship system-even our critics know better than that. But now there is a disposition to blame the American boy because he seems to prefer to be a mere jobhunter to becoming a finished mechanic. I do not deny the existence of this disposition; but is the boy to blame? Does not our system of production encourage job-hunters rather than finished workmen? The boy's interests are wholly lost sight of in the quest for quick profits. He has no option but to meet that demand. So he devotes his energies to doing one thing, and it is natural-almost inevitable-that with his limited horizon he should conclude that his lifework lies along that line.

It is also natural that many evils should flow from such a narrow conception of life. But do not blame the boy for being a "one-eyed" workman, as it were, while his economic environment tells in deeds plainer than words that such he must be, and renders it well-nigh impossible for him to be an allround mechanic. When conditions are reversed and boys are encouraged not by exhortations, but by reachable opportunities to develop their faculties, then it will be time enough to berate our youths if they do not make use of those opportunities. And we must always remember that working-class boys are not mature educationists or scientific investigators of industrial phenomena, but "just boys," often from sordid home. surroundings where "How in the world can we live?" is the perpetual question.

The old shop system of apprenticeship has gone, not because workers or employers wanted it or did not want it. Its passing is an incident of industrial progress. I have no

doubt we should continue to progress if there were no apprenticeship system. But as it appears to practical men of today, some such method is necessary. How to supply it is a problem that has many phases. It may interest you to know how one of the great trade-unions proposes to meet the situation. The typographical union is in its aims and objects, as well as historically, typical of the trade-union movement. has a membership of between forty and fifty thousand who are practically unanimous in favor of an apprenticeship system. The union had struggled to maintain the old system whereby the employer assumed some responsibility for the apprentice's future. In this it was assisted by many employers, but it was unavailing to kick against the pricks of economic necessity. The subdivision of labor reigned in the shops and workmen became specialists, doing one of the six or seven processes which a generation or so ago were comprehended in one man's work. Shops were then specialized, restricting themselves to one or two classes of printing. At this stage it became apparent to even the most conservative that shop apprenticeship was doomed, for a boy could not master branches of the trade which the shop he worked in did not attempt to handle. In fact, under such conditions the so-called apprentice can not beg, borrow or steal his much-vaunted trade.

Printers' unions throughout the world have always prided themselves on the skill within their ranks, but with this condition staring them in the face they realized that this very desirable quality would rapidly diminish. It is proper here to comment on a question that has close connection with any system which is to substitute that of shop apprenticeship— leisure. That is the basis of the culture of well-to-do people-the "nice" members of society-and until the workers have a reasonable share of it, trade education will not meet with the practical support it deserves. Fifteen years ago printers worked ten, eleven, twelve and even thirteen hours a day. About that time the movement for a shorter workday began. This intensified "doing of one thing," and that largely mechanical, week after week, month after month and year after year, tends to mental stagnation. It is an imbruting tendency. To correct this evil the workers must have more leisure

-at least so thought the typographical union. With persistence and patience the campaign was prosecuted until at last the eight-hour workday was established.

Before the strike which won this boon for seventy-five thousand persons was over-while benefits were still being paid on account of it-the law making body of the union was listening to an address on the proper employment of leisure, in which the speaker said that some of the time so gained should be employed in acquiring a thorough knowledge of the art-for high-class printing is artistic. The speaker went on to say: "If I have a message for the delegates of this convention it is that they adopt some regulation whereby the craft will take a decided position on the question of trade education supplemental to that now obtainable in the offices. It is coming, for it has proved its efficiency elsewhere. The question is whether we shall have technical education as a cloak under which learners will be exploited or a system with the single purpose of benefiting the student. It is clearly the duty of the union to see that there is no such perversion of any educational system that may be adopted. It can do so if it will. And now is the time to start, when the movement is in its infancy. The way to begin is to show earnestness and leadership by embarking on the work."

No talk listened to by the assemblage was received more kindly than that one. Subsequently the committee on apprentices a time-honored institution in trade-union circles-reported a resolution authorizing the appointment of a commission charged with the duty of formulating "some system for the technical education of our members and apprentices." The commission was endowed with power to institute a system of supplemental education, for which the officers were authorized to appropriate moneys sufficient to defray expenses. These recommendations were approved by vote of the convention and by the union generally. Last December the work of the commission was sufficiently advanced to justify a meeting, and the commissioners assembled in this city. The elective officers of the union, who are in touch with the membership, met with and approved the work of the commission. This and