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THE SCHOOL OF PRINTING, NORTH END UNION, PARMENTER STREET, BOSTON WHERE THE APPRENTICESHIP BULLETIN IS PRINTED

the usual opportunities of the actual workroom and the sympathetic interest of his foreman and fellow-workers.

A

JUDGE in New Jersey, some time ago, was surprised to receive a note from two boys, begging him to send them to the State's prison for two years rather than be sent to a local prison for a shorter term. On sending for the young men (who probably would never have been brought before him if they had been afforded a reasonable chance to learn an honest trade) the judge learned that their desire for a longer sentence at the State prison was because it would give them an opportunity to learn a trade. The judge granted their request, expressing the hope that it would make better men of them.

THE employing printer who has no inden

tured apprentices attached to his establishment is making no provision for his future working force. This is just as unwise as when he fails to charge enough for his work to provide for depreciation in his machinery.

BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

J. STEARNS CUSHING, J. S. Cushing & Co., Norwood GEO. H. ELLIS, President United Typothetæ of America J. W. PHINNEY, American Type Founders Co., Boston H. G. PORTER, Smith & Porter Press, 127 Federal St. GEO. W. SIMONDS, C. H. Simonds & Co., 297 Congress St. JOSEPH LEE, Vice President Massachusetts Civic League SAMUEL F. HUBBARD, Superintendent North End Union A. A. STEWART, Instructor

THE

HE SCHOOL OF PRINTING was established in January, 1900, by the North End Union, under the supervision of a number of leading master printers of Boston. It has had to demonstrate its purpose in practical results, and is gradually being recognized by those who realize the important need in the trade of such a method of technical instruction.

The aim of the School is to give fundamental and general instruction in printing-office work, and to offer young men, through a system of indentured apprenticeship, an opportunity to learn the things which are becoming each year more and more difficult for the apprentice to obtain in the restricted and specialized conditions of the modern workshop.

The course of study embraces book, commercial, and advertising composition, and platen presswork. The School is supplied with hand and job presses, roman and display types of various styles, and the usual furniture and material of a modern printing office.

The School is continuous and pupils may enter at any time. The hours are identical with those of a regular workshop, from 7.40 A.M. to 5.45 P.M., excepting Saturday afternoon.

The tuition fee for one year is $100. Applicants must be sixteen years of age or over.

Further information may be obtained by addressing SAMUEL F. HUBBARD, 20 Parmenter Street, Boston.

THE APPRENTICESHIP BULLETIN is intended to be issued each month in the year. Price 25 cents for the twelve numbers. The composition and presswork are done by the apprentices in the School.

PRINTING TRADE SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND

United States Government Report of the
Commissioner of Labor, 1902.

SOME employers in this industry say
that technical training for printers has
not had time to show results, but they are
hopeful of much good from this source in
the future. Others, who seem to have had
more extended observation and
experience, say that technical
schools have been a benefit to the

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You will do the greatest good to the state if you shall raise, not the roofs of the houses, but the souls of the citizens, for it is better that great souls should dwell in small houses, rather than for mean slaves to lurk in great houses. Epictetus.

industry. They turn out better equipped workmen, and it is obvious that the more an apprentice knows of the nature of his trade the higher wage he can command. While the schools now in existence are doing much for the betterment of the industry, the establishment of more schools and better facilities in those already established would bring still greater benefits, and it is thought that failure to make such further provision will undoubtedly cause the industry to suffer. This is especially true in color work. In some localities there is a lack of interest on the part of print. ers to avail themselves of the facilities now offered by the schools.

Labor unions generally limit the number of apprentices in such trades as compositors, pressmen, stereotypers and machine tenders, and where the unions do not fix a limit custom does. The term of apprenticeship fixed by the unions is seven years. This is not generally regarded as too long; but one man says that it is absurdly so, and thinks for technically trained apprentices the time should be reduced to four or five years. It is affirmed that shop training alone does not make all-round good workmen. In some instances this is due to the apprentice failing to realize the importance of becoming thoroughly efficient; while in other cases it is because the shop does not afford opportunities to learn anything pertaining to the trade outside of the particular department in which the apprentice happens to be placed. The training in the shop is usually not systematic. The departmental division of work does not give an apprentice the opportunity to pass through all the processes a printer should know, and it thus becomes necessary for him to attend a technical school if he expects to become thoroughly skilled in his trade.

The founders of the schools have been mainly associations of private persons. They are usually either persons engaged in the industry, as in the case of the silkweaving school of Zurich, which was founded by the Silk Weaving Society, or associations such as societies of public welfare. Practically all the schools receive subsidies from the federal government and from other sources. Some of the schools are still the property of the private persons who established them, but the most important ones have become municipal or cantonal institutions.

The most numerous schools are those for the watch-making industry and they have reached a high state of development. All reports agree that these schools have played no small part in placing the Swiss watch-making industry in its present high state of development.

Apprenticeship shops are intended as a substitute for the instruction which is otherwise given in the shops of master workmen engaged in industry. Pupils who attend are regularly indentured as apprentices, and the instruction given is mainly practical. In Switzerland there are but two subsidized institutions known as apprenticeship shops, and the character of the instruction given is about the same as that of a regular trade school. On the other hand, some of the institutions known as trade schools require their pupils to be regularly indentured as in an apprenticeship shop. The plan of paying a master workman, who carries on a regular business, to undertake the training of apprentices, as is done in some countries, does not seem to have been undertaken in Switzerland.

TRAINING is the discipline that teaches

a man to set labor above whim; to develop the less promising parts of his mind, as well as the more promising; to make five talents ten, and two talents five. Prof. Briggs.

For Trade Schools and Endentured Apprenticeship

JULY, 1907

EDITED AND PRINTED AT THE SCHOOL OF PRINTING
NORTH END UNION, BOSTON, MASS.

WHAT KIND OF BOYS ARE LEARNING

THE PRINTER'S TRADE?

ONE of the great benefits that a trade school and an apprenticeship plan can render to an industry is to promote a more careful selection of the boys who are to be the future workmen in that calling. In every important occupation, and especially those which require a good degree of intelligence and skill, there is a large number who have mistaken their calling, who were never adapted for the work, and who struggle along by hook or crook and the grace and assistance of their better fitted fellows.

VOL. 1, No. 7

evenings and other spare time is spent wholly in dawdling amusements - boys who "hate books," to whom a deliberate exercise with pen and paper is a matter of utter repugnance, and who in one week forget everything they were taught in the public school.

That this unwise custom of taking into a skilled trade boys who are not fitted for the work is not peculiar to Boston, or even to

The man who has
his common sense
so trained that he
can put it into im-
mediate operation
to meet any emer-
gency that arises
need not fear the
competition of
those who never
think at all if they
can help it.

In the printing industry there is no doubt that many incompetent and unsuccessful workmen are so because of their unwise selection of an occupation. In spite of the fact that printers should have at least a fair degree of cultivation and literary education, boys with none of these qualifications whatever, and no indications of acquiring them, are induced or allowed to enter the trade. Especially is this so with regard to the compositor's trade; boys without even rudimentary knowledge of spelling, punctuation, or the use and meaning of common words, and in many cases without interest or ambition to learn such matters, will confidently undertake the work. As a consequence, we have a quantity of illiterate work, done in slovenly workrooms, by slipshod and unprofitable methods, such as to give the vocation of printing anything but the creditable standing it deserves.

It does not require any testimony that can be offered by the School of Printing to emphasize the great need for a careful selection, from an educational standpoint, of the boys who are to learn the printer's trade. Competent printers are not developed from boys whose mental attainments qualify them for nothing higher than carrying bricks-boys who come from bookless homes and whose

America, is testified to in a report of the manager of an English printing trade class, which, in referring to instruction in spelling and punctuation, says that "at least thirty per cent of the caseroom apprentices in the classes put their pens to paper for the first time since leaving school, and a close examination of their writing, spelling, composition of simple sentences, and capitalizing, leads one to think that many of them never went to school at all. Yet these students will be, later on, members of a craft which is distinctly educational in its character."

It is not to be wondered at that master printers will not take boys of this class as indentured apprentices, nor will they spend much time properly educating them in their work; nevertheless such boys are taken in because they can be used for menial tasks, and in the course of a few years they become journeymen to whom the employer must pay the scale of wages.

The boy who wishes to become a compositor should know :

How to spell;

How to use capital letters;

How to punctuate ordinary sentences; Common rules of grammar and arithmetic ; How to use his hands (manual training); Something of free-hand and mechanical drawing.

He should learn at least something of these subjects in the public school, before he enters the trade school or the workroom.

SPECIALIZING IN APPRENTICESHIPS THERE appeared recently in a leading

trade paper an editorial under the above title, of which the following is an extract: The beginning seems to have been made among the large machine shops of fixing specialization upon the apprentice system. By this is meant eliminating the training of the all-round mechanic, and in his place rearing the highly trained expert hand. The belief has begun to grow that there is no longer, as in the old days, the imperative need of the allround man, and that the years of apprenticeship

life, so that he becomes quickly self-support-
ing and has entered a career that is ever
open at the top. In Southern Italy the same
grade of person might be a beggar on the
street, because there is no chance for him to
get a start in a good career. The system of
narrow specialization is bad whenever the in-
Idividual is induced to take a short-cut and
be a narrow specialist when he might have
done better by a broader all-round training.
(2) Is it necessary,
in the manufacture
of machine pro-
ducts, to have any
considerable num-
ber of all-round
workmen; if so,
what proportion
(approximately) to
the whole number
employed?

would be best spent in learning some branch of the AMONG the most ad

trade, and learning it well. The advocates of the change maintain that such a course would be better for the apprentice as well as for the man who is to employ the apprentice when he becomes a journeyman, and incidentally he would be more valuable as an element of production during his apprentice years. Desiring a comprehensive idea of the effect of such a system on productive industries, the following questions were sent by one of the supervisors of the School of Printing to a score of manufacturing machinists and toolmakers. With the permission of Mr. M. P. Higgins, president of the Norton Company of Worcester, we reprint his replies.

OTHER things being

equal, the workman

with the broadest skill and experience is the most efficient specialist. The educator says," First the man, then the specialist." The far-seeing manufacturer says, "First

(1) Is it desirable
that beginners, say
from the age of
sixteen to twenty,
should specialize
narrowly in learn-
ing a mechanical
process?

the mechanic, then the specialist." But these views and theories must be modified by circumstances, especially those affecting the life of the apprentice.

The boy in the poor family must get about his life's work early, and it is no small part of his life to secure, first, self-support, then family support. No one can deny that it is worth more in the life of a man to be a thorough "all-round" machinist than to be simply a vice-hand or an expert lathe-hand. But since the narrow skill sometimes will bring nearly as much pay an hour, the boy with limited opportunity and limited courage and limited confidence in his future, cannot afford to lay a very broad foundation for his career; and so he specializes narrowly in learning a single mechanical process.

Specialization is both a good thing and a bad thing. It is good because it enables the individual who is low in opportunity and outlook to get a footing in the field of productive

vanced nations manufactured products are produced by special machines, and the more advanced the people, the more automatic and perfect become their machines of production. But this great truth (which is sure to prevail more and more) does not eliminate the mechanic of broadest all-round skill, nor does it lessen the demand for all-round skilled workmen. On the other hand, it emphasizes the demand for higher grade skilled workmen and more of them.

The industrial progess of a people depends as much upon this grade of skilled workmen as it does upon the engineer and the scientist. The proportion of highly skilled and of broadly trained workmen to unskilled workers depends very much upon the kinds of mechanical industry you are considering. But it is safe to say there is no danger of a community having too many all-round skilled workmen. In any community the higher the skill of its mechanics and the more thorough and broad and suitable their training and experience, the brighter and more promising is the industrial life of that community. The place or locality having the greatest number of mechanics of the highest skill and efficiency will attract the most profitable industry from other parts of the world. That is the locality where the vocation of the mechanic is exalted, his wages increased, and his out

look in life widened.

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of all grades, from the lowest up to the super

(3) Is it of advantage, commercially, to the manufacturer to have all employees, from porter to superintendent, educated beyond the domain of their immediate activities?

intendent, each technically trained not for his immediate activities, but far beyond and outside of his specific duties, provided his education and training emanate and radiate from his own vocational life. Not that his thought and education should be confined to the narrowness of his specific work. Not at all that. His education may be ever so broad, so that it does not lead him to "see double."

His vocational life should ever be to him the center of all human existence. Happy is the man who can view the universe from his own standpoint, which to him is the center of his horizon. Miserable indeed is the workman who has no love for the fields extending from his daily work.

I dare say this third question would not have been asked had it not been for the fact that some species of training have heretofore educated men not for their work but away from their work. From this danger comes the vital argument for educating boys life rather than for life." This is the danger in industrial education to be guarded against and prevented. A mechanic, for instance, must never for a moment lose sight of the marvelous beauty of his work and the limitless range of the creative field in which he is engaged. The vital question is not how much education is profitable, but what kind. THE American system

leaders are born, but this is a just grading
system.

(5) As machinery THE great development
grows more perfect,
of scientific industry
as science enlarges
enormously increases the
its functions with
demand for broadly train-
every new discov
ed workmen. The demand
ery, as competition
is already beyond the sup-
grows keener, is
there, in conse-
ply. There is an increasing
deficiency, both in the
number of skilled work-
men and in the quality of
personal skill. To wisely
and effectively supply this demand for
broadly trained workmen is the question of
importance with the manufacturer.

quence, an increas-
ing economic
demand for broadly

trained workmen?

IN

(6) Does specializa-
tion result in mak-
ing of the work-
man an "animate
tool," or does the
perfecting of ma-
chinery call for a
corresponding
development of
human intelligence
in connection
with it?

Na highly specialized industry some of the workmen are little more than "animated tools." They are sometimes very poor tools; but this is not the fault of specialization, nor is it the result of specialization. The manufacturer wants better op"inerators, but he is obliged to take what he can get. He would be glad to develop the special operator into a better man and a better specialist, but he cannot. Why? Because he is of very low mentality to start with, and he is not at all ambitious to develop himself or to be developed. There is no place in all human activity where such a person could be developed against his inclination. He has been taken on at a point in the industrial system just as high as he can start. If at this point he could take a little enterprising interest to clean up the floor where he stands, or wipe the machine he operates, or give its groaning joints a drop of cooling oil, his enterprize and budding ability will be recognized and rewarded. There is much harm done the working man on this phase of our industrial system, and much injustice done the system by false preaching about specialization making tools of men. The perfection of machinery calls for more intelligence, not only to operate the highly perfected machines, but infinitely more to make and repair them; and no special operator should be satisfied until he can care for the machine he operates.

(4) Is this system of high specialization inconsistent or not with encouragement to aspiration on the part of bright men?

of high specialization, division of labor, automatic machinery, piece work and what not, is certainly the best industrial system yet revealed to the world. I may mention two reasons why it is best: (1) This system offers a chance that no other system ever offered for the individual of low capacity and small thought power to take hold and work at a point where just a little extra thought and a very little better effort has the promise of early reward. (2) This is a system where from bottom to top merit counts, and ability is recognized and regarded. As has been said by someone: Watch six boys in a factory. In a short time five of them will be asking the sixth boy, "What shall I do next?" Without doubt

HABIT is habit; and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but must be coaxed downstairs a step at a time.-Mark Twain.

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